The diminishing returns of reactive medicine

16. November 2010 · Comments Off · Categories: Cryonics, Science · Tags: , , , , , ,

In an article for Slate, Jay Olshansky argues in favor of a position that one would expect to be common sense at this point:

While we can extend life in aging bodies through behavioral improvements and medical treatments, the time has arrived to acknowledge that our current model of reactive medicine, of trying to treat each separate disease of old age as it occurs, is reaching a point of diminishing returns.

So what is the reason why vast amounts of money are spent on research to treat age-associated diseases but so little on eliminating or mitigating aging as such? Why is this “one-disease-at-a-time model” so dominant? One reason might be that most people believe that overcoming one specific manifestation of aging is easier to do than overcoming aging itself. Not surprisingly, most academic and commercial research is shaped by short term ambitions or short-term financial interests.

Many people who deal with serious age-associated diseases hope that a cure can be found within their lifetime.  This is not so strange if you consider that many people who do advocate meaningful rejuvenation research are technological optimists who think the same thing about overcoming aging. In that sense, people show little interest in supporting research that has little personal benefit to them or close relatives. This is further evidenced by the fact that people are more inclined to contribute to anti-aging efforts that promise benefits in their lifetime. This in turn provokes criticism from mainstream scientists of not being realistic, which further discredits the field.

But as Olshansky indicates, the diminishing returns of the approach to just fight the symptoms of aging should force people to change perspective. Olshansky also observes  that “manufacturing survival time in the absence of decelerated aging” can produce a lot of hardship and suffering in old age:

It’s important to acknowledge the fundamental differences between disease and aging. Although age-associated changes in the body produce an increased risk of disease, the reverse is not true. That is, reducing the risk of disease has no influence on biological aging. Thus, if a population is preserved with increasing efficiency by advances in technology that reduce the risk of disease, those saved will live into increasingly later sections of the lifespan where aging takes a greater toll on body and mind. Life extension achieved in this way could extend old age by exposing survivors to the high-risk conditions of frailty that are common, and largely immutable, near the end of life—the very outcome that medicine and public health practitioners are trying to avoid.

For people who have made cryonics arrangements, there is another danger; the possibility of life extension at the price of increased vulnerability to identity-destroying diseases.  There is no shortage of cryonics patients with Alzheimer’s or impaired brain function. As much as we would like to deny it, there could be a disturbing trade-off between life extension and true personal survival as long as treatments for neurodegenerative diseases are not available.

Cryonics, trans-temporal communism and future squatters

22. October 2010 · Comments Off · Categories: Cryonics, Society · Tags: , , , , ,

Cryonics advocate Eugen Leitl puts forward some hard-hitting and thought-provoking observations about cryonics (reminiscent of Mike Darwin’s more recent thoughts on the subject):

Cryonics, like Natural Selection, or the theories of General and Special Relativity, is core-smashing in character, and in the case of cryonics, the idea is so antithetical to the existing order of civilization that it can it only be advanced by insurgent means. This is so because cryonics overturns the Vitalistic view of life, challenges the conventional definition of death, invalidates the core tenets of contemporary medicine, erodes the need for a mystical afterlife, radically redistributes capital (disrupts inheritance, bequests, and mortuary customs), mandates a complete change in reproductive behavior, perturbs generational succession, requires space colonization, requires (and supports) profoundly disruptive technologies such as cloning, regenerative medicine, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and finally, ends the species and enables, if not requires Transhumanism. As a consequence, cryonics creates adverse emotional and intellectual states within the existing culture such as survivorship guilt, indefinitely extended anxiety and uncertainty accompanying life-threatening illness (the cryonics patient remains ‘critically ill’ for decades or centuries), prevents the psychological closure that accompanies “true” death with disposition of remains, creates indefinite anxiety about the well being of cryopreserved loved ones, disrupts the intimacy of family interactions during the “dying” process, may bitterly divide family members who are opposed to cryonics versus those who are in favour, and blocks or disrupts deeply held mechanisms for coping with death and bereavement that are inculcated from childhood by eliminating the customary wake, funeral, and other comforting rituals.

In particular, he opines that “the idea that cryonics was just an extension of medicine and is compatible with religion and existing social and political institutions, while superficially satisfying, is both mistaken and bound to fail.” After this observation one would expect him to advocate some radical form of transhumanism as a vehicle to promote cryonics. But he further believes that:

Distinct from initialization failures, there are inherent in cryonics several corrosive and self destructive ideas that have grown over time until they have virtually overwhelmed cryonics today. The first of these is “temporal load shifting,” or more colloquially, the problem of ‘our friends in the future…his causes cryonicists to increasingly shift the burdens, technological and financial, present and future, onto the people (supermen) who we believe will revive us from cryopreservation, a concept that may fairly be called Trans-Temporal Communism: from cryonicists now according our ability (none); and from our ‘supermen friends in the future’ according to our needs (infinite). Trans-Temporal Communism leads to the creation of ‘Future Squatters; people who believe that technological advances will happen when conditions are right for them to occur. This is a brilliant position because it is never wrong; it is the perfect piece of circular reasoning that justifies doing nothing. This creates a perverse situation wherein intelligent and talented people who enter cryonics do not, as might at first be thought, find it impossible to believe that cryonics, vast extension of the human life span, or, for that matter, many of the transformational technologies of Transhumanism are impossible, but rather they that find it not only believable, but inevitable that these developments will occur within their lifetimes (i.e., Kurzweil and deGray)….The Future Squatters who have come to dominate contemporary cryonics are not merely parasites content to sit and wait until robots show up at their doors with immortality on a silver platter, all too often they are actively contemptuous and dismissive of the (fewer and fewer) people working hard to build a practical, sustainable and robust cryonics that withstand the tests of time and deliver its patients to a future they have created; a future not only technologically capable of restoring them to life; but morally and financially impelled to do so, as well.

If one rejects both cryonics-as-medicine and the futurist / transhumanist vehicle to communicate the idea of cryonics, one wonders what the correct approach should be. The observation that “the core problem in cryonics is the absence of a philosophical and moral basis for cryonics and the accompanying ethics and dogma required to enforce it” does not seem to follow from the preceding observations.  Most importantly, what is this “philosophical and moral basis for cryonics” that is required, and why is it separate and different from the general moral conduct that social interaction and reason generate?

It is becoming clearer and clearer that demonstrating the technological feasibility of cryonics is not sufficient for the acceptance of cryonics. There seems to be a growing consensus that “fear of the future” and lack of closure are among the biggest hurdles for giving the idea a charitable hearing.  But little thought is being given to this topic, and it is quite correct that this omission can be squarely attributed to a kind of simplistic futurism that is circulating in cryonics circles. If  even most self-identified transhumanists cannot bring themselves to make cryonics arrangements, why would one expect the rest of the population to embrace the idea?

Cryonics advocates often seem to believe that if they refute the common scientific and technical objections to cryonics (which is not that hard to do because the psychological resistance to the idea prevents critics of checking even the most basic facts about the rationale and practice of cryonics) the social and psychological reservations will take care of themselves. This is not just incorrect, such reservations are often the most fundamental.

One would be surprised if an invasive, experimental medical procedure would lack detailed information about post-procedure care, responsibilities of  the hospital and family members, and reintegration. Considering that for many people cryonics constitutes a solitary leap into an unknown and far-away future, is it reasonable that providers of such care, and advocates of cryonics, think about doing a better job of responding to these concerns. This is mostly unexplored territory because even the most alienating events in human life as we know it cannot capture this aspect of cryonics.  It is doubtful that such concerns can be removed by altering the philosophical and moral basis of cryonics.

 

Meta-research and medical skepticism

19. October 2010 · Comments Off · Categories: Health, Science · Tags: , , , ,

The Atlantic features an important article about “meta-researcher” Athina Tatsioni, who has published a number of influential papers about the quality of biomedical research:

He and his team have shown, again and again, and in many different ways, that much of what biomedical researchers conclude in published studies—conclusions that doctors keep in mind when they prescribe antibiotics or blood-pressure medication, or when they advise us to consume more fiber or less meat, or when they recommend surgery for heart disease or back pain—is misleading, exaggerated, and often flat-out wrong. He charges that as much as 90 percent of the published medical information that doctors rely on is flawed. His work has been widely accepted by the medical community; it has been published in the field’s top journals, where it is heavily cited; and he is a big draw at conferences…

He chose to publish one paper, fittingly, in the online journal PLoS Medicine, which is committed to running any methodologically sound article without regard to how “interesting” the results may be. In the paper, Ioannidis laid out a detailed mathematical proof that, assuming modest levels of researcher bias, typically imperfect research techniques, and the well-known tendency to focus on exciting rather than highly plausible theories, researchers will come up with wrong findings most of the time. Simply put, if you’re attracted to ideas that have a good chance of being wrong, and if you’re motivated to prove them right, and if you have a little wiggle room in how you assemble the evidence, you’ll probably succeed in proving wrong theories right.

This raises a number of important issues from a life extension perspective. For starters, these findings reinforce that it is just not credible for mainstream researchers and medical professionals to sustain these arrogant attitudes towards serious research efforts in life extension and cryonics. Good research is hard to do, and there is little of it.  This applies particularly to research that translates into meaningful medical benefits.  It  may be hard to swallow that a lot of  what constitutes conventional medicine is based on flawed studies and interest-driven research, but there is no escaping this conclusion.

Having a strong interest in the results is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it makes one more susceptible to bias and cherry-picking. On the other hand, it can produce a determined mindset to tackle ambitious research goals (rejuvenation, vitrification). For example, the breakthroughs in vitrification technology at a company like 21st Century Medicine would have been unthinkable if the principal researchers would not have had an enduring strong personal interest in the technologies they are researching. This phenomenon can  also throw some light on the observation that often committed amateurs have more knowledge than professional researchers. Academic researchers often move from one (grant-funded) fad to another without obtaining a wide and deep understanding of the fields they are investigating. Unfortunately, such fashionable researchers are often featured in the media as “experts.”

Athina Tatsioni’s findings should also have a sobering effect on those who think we are in a period of accelerating medical progress. Even the  more credible medical research often fails to contribute to the expected clinical breakthroughs. To those familiar with the complex biochemistry of life, and the opportunity to introduce (long term) side-effects along with beneficial interventions (including attempts to just “repair” something), this should not be a surprise.

Naturally, Athina Tatsioni does not have a high opinion on research that claims benefits for vitamins and supplements:

For starters, he explains, the odds are that in any large database of many nutritional and health factors, there will be a few apparent connections that are in fact merely flukes, not real health effects—it’s a bit like combing through long, random strings of letters and claiming there’s an important message in any words that happen to turn up. But even if a study managed to highlight a genuine health connection to some nutrient, you’re unlikely to benefit much from taking more of it, because we consume thousands of nutrients that act together as a sort of network, and changing intake of just one of them is bound to cause ripples throughout the network that are far too complex for these studies to detect, and that may be as likely to harm you as help you. Even if changing that one factor does bring on the claimed improvement, there’s still a good chance that it won’t do you much good in the long run, because these studies rarely go on long enough to track the decades-long course of disease and ultimately death.

The take-home message is that skepticism is a useful disposition when looking at all research, medical practice, and triumphant claims about accelerating technological progress. One advantage of those who have made cryonics arrangements have is that they have time and, in theory (!), should be less prone to wishful thinking and jumping on the latest bandwagon. As Michael Anissimov writes, “When I talk to older transhumanists that are into cryonics, I see people who are psychologically calmer than those who endlessly obsess over their food, questionable supplements, and other minutiae that will mean jack squat if they get into a simple car accident.” It also reinforces the approach of arguing in favor of cryonics using skeptical arguments (about our arbitrary and evolving concepts of death)  instead of making bold claims about existing and future science.

Further reading: John P. A. Ioannidis – Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.

October 2010 Cryonics Symposium in Germany

11. October 2010 · Comments Off · Categories: Cryonics, Science · Tags: , , , , , , ,

On the first weekend of October, 2010 I was an invited speaker at “Applied Cryobiology – Scientific Symposium on Cryonics” held in Goslar, Germany: http://www.biostase.de/us/symposium2010.html. The meeting was the first effort by the German Society for Applied Biostasis (DGAB) to create a milieu for scientific discussion of cryonics-related issues as well as to elevate the scientific status of cryonics and bring more scientists into the field. DGAB hopes to have another such symposium in two years.

Goslar, Germany is a World Heritage Site and tourist center based on the fact that it was the beginning of German industry nearly a thousand years ago as a rich source for mining many minerals. Goslar became a free imperial city and was a favorite residence for many emperors. Goslar is also the city where the conference organizer lives.

With only about 10,000 tourists per year, and a location that is not close to a major city, Goslar can only be reached after several hours by car or train by those coming from outside of Germany. I chose to rent a car, partly because it was so much less expensive than train, and partly because of my curiosity about the Autobaun.

The German Autobahn is probably the only major highway system in the developed world that has portions without a maximum speed limit. I have no enthusiasm for speeding, but was curious to see what it is like to drive on the Autobahn. I reasoned that such a motorway would not be permitted to exist if it were littered with corpses and smashed vehicles. I found that much of the Autobahn had speed limits, there were many construction zones that restricted speed, and traffic jams were sometimes so bad that any forward motion was slow and intermittent. But there were a few times when I was traveling over 90 miles per hour in the flow of traffic, and being passed on my left by cars going so fast that I could have been standing still, relatively speaking. Nonetheless, it did not seem too dangerous.

The symposium was originally to be held mainly in German, but there were twice as many attending (about 50) as had been anticipated — and so many were from outside Germany that the organizers decided to have all sessions in English. Although many of the participants had impressive scientific backgrounds, they were overwhelmingly people with a personal interest in cryonics. The organizers struggled to get speakers with scientific credentials, but many of those who would have been otherwise interested and qualified did not want to risk their careers by participation. Peter Gouras, MD, PhD was the most credentialed scientist presenting. There was a medical examiner whose presentation concluded that cryonics can’t work in Germany, a perfusionist-turned-journalist, an embalmer who failed to attend, a nanotechnology PhD, and me. The other presentations were not about cryonics science.

I was scheduled to speak about challenges in cryonics technology, but became concerned that there was no general introduction to cryonics technology in the program. I requested that I give an introductory presentation as the first speaker, and give another presentation on technical challenges later in the program. Instead, the organizers gave me double the time for my presentation as first speaker (following the Mayor of Goslar). I believe that I did a good job combining introductory material with technical challenges in cryonics. My presentation and the question period that followed were recorded on video, which I am hoping will be put on YouTube.

Holger Zorn discussed his experience as a perfusionist who had worked in the field of hypothemia. He said that cannulation for cooling perfusion could be done in two minutes. When cooling for cardiac surgery they used diluted blood (low hematocrit). Holger discussed cases of forensic perfusion in which reperfusion was performed weeks after death on corpses to elucidate puncturing by knife or gunshot. He said he had worked with hypothermic perfusions down to 18 degrees Celsius, and had never seen a case of shivering. This conflicts with studies reporting shivering between 34 and 35.5 degrees Celsius in therapeutic hypothermia, requiring drugs for suppression:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19535948

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19679849

There has been recent criticism of the use of drugs to suppress shivering in cryonics cases.

Dr. Peter Gouras, who is on the Cryonics Institute Scientific Advisory Board (and whose wife is German) has been involved in cryonics for many decades. He is an ophthalmology professor at Columbia University. He was introduced as the “father of retinal pigment epithelial transplantation.” He discussed his work studying macular degeneration in rhesus monkeys on calorie restriction, concluding that calorie restriction has less benefit for primates than for rodents. He expressed the view that enthusiasm for cryonics is genetic, and that any attempt at persuasion is fruitless. Somewhat contradicting this claim is his claim that reviving a whole mammal from cryopreservation would have a huge impact on the acceptance of cryonics.

The Nanotechnology and Cryonics presentation by Klaus Mathwig was somewhat standard nanotechnology fare for me. What I found most interesting was the question of how nanomachines would know how the correct structure would look after increasing levels of damage. It was suggested that there might be a need to scan the brain structure beforehand. So if your last scan was a month or two before your deanimation, you might be reconstructed as you were at that time. But with a good scan, what need is there for the original material? I thought the purpose of nanobots was to partly to discover the original structure.

Christoph Meissner is a medical examiner who works at the Department of Forensic Medicine at a university hospital. He had done an impressive amount of research on the subject of brain deterioration following stoppage of the heart. Many of the studies he cited were decades old because such studies would not currently be approved by ethics committees. In his experience, the corpse of a murder victim is not found in less than four hours. Under the best of circumstances he believes that a death certificate cannot be issued in Germany in less than one or two hours. He believes that it would not be possible to revive a cryonics patient who had experienced that amount of warm ischemia. During the question period he was asked why he would come to a cryonics conference if he had such a negative view of cryonics prospects. He answered that he is a scientist and that he was trying to make a reasonable assessment of cryonics. I believe that he is sincere and had no “ax to grind” about cryonics one way or the other. The fact that he was specific about probable delays in Germany being the source of his negative prognosis implied that he has not decided that cryonics is hopeless ifcryopreservation is prompt. Ironically, one of the studies he cited showed that rat brain neurons in cortical slices recover function upon reoxygenation as well after five hours post-mortem as they do after immediate post-mortem reoxygenation.

David Styles announce the beginning of Eucrio, an organization intended to give Suspended Animation, Inc -like standby/stabilization services to all the countries in the European Union, plus Norway. Cryonics patients would be vitrified in Europe with CI’s VM-1 vitrification solution, and then shipped on dry ice to Michigan or Arizona for cryostorage. Given the welter of European languages, laws, and insurance policies this is an ambitious undertaking. David has a lot of energy, intelligence, and determination, so if anyone can make this project work, he is one of the few. David spent much time discussing the equipment Eucrio has or is obtaining. Eucrio currently has seed capital for the first year of operation, and it is expected that Eucrio members paying 35 euros per month will keep the organization going even when there are no patients. Fees for service are calculated with a goal of breaking even, based on the assumption that one-third of insurance policies don’t pay (which has not been CI experience).

Sebastian Sethe is a lawyer who spoke on Ethical Problems in Cryonics. Sebastian asked many questions for which he gave no answers. When challenged on this matter, he said that ethicists are more interested in questions than answers, whereas scientists are the opposite. I sometimes think that ethicists are sadists who enjoy torturing people with questions. As a case in point, Sebastian asked whether if the CI facility caught fire, if Ben Best should be saved or the 100 cryonics patients in storage. Part of his question was entailed in Sebastian’s assertion that “It is reasonable to assume that cryonics is not going to work.” After the lecture I tried to pin Sebastian down on his assertion, asking him why his assertion should be more true than “It is reasonable to assume that cryonics is going to work.” He answered that the true opposite of his assertion is “It is unreasonable to assume that cryonics is not going to work.” I at least got him to say that cryonics has more than a zero chance of working, although I had a hard time nailing down what he thinks the most limiting considerations are — technical, organizational, societal, financial, etc. He suggested that the cryonics organizations are financially threadbare and vulnerable.

I considered discussing the preventative measures against fire that are in place at the Cryonics Institute, but did not do so.

Torsten Nam spoke on Cryonics and Transhumanism. He described transhumanists as people who want to use technology to improve their physical and mental abilities, and to overcome their (biological) limitations. He said that 8% of transhumanists are cryonicists, which by his calculations means that a transhumanist is 200,000 times more likely to be a cryonicist than someone in the general population. He called FM-2030 the father of modern transhumanism, while acknowledging Robert Ettinger’s transhumanist classic MAN INTO SUPERMAN. Among major milestones he listed Francis Fukuyama calling transhumanism the world’s most dangerous idea and a 2007 European Union report on human enhancement. In the early days it had been common to compare transhumanism to fascism (Nietzsche’s Superman), but now the subject is entering the academic mainstream. Some transhumanists want to dissociate themselves from cryonics in order to be more acceptable.

On Sunday the Robert Ettinger Medal for outstanding merits in the field of cryonics was awarded to its first recipient: Robert Ettinger.

Medal Front

Medal Back

I accepted the medal on behalf of Mr. Ettinger, which meant that I had to make a speech. I said that Robert Ettinger is above all a man ofideas, who nonetheless also felt obliged to exert his influence in the physical world by, among other things, helping found the Cryonics Institute because he was not satisfied with what the other cryonics organizations were offering. I also said that Mr. Ettinger deserves a lot of credit for the creation of CI’s fiberglass cryostats, something he is rarely credited for.

In the Round Table discussion I provocatively asked David Styles how Eucrio would provide good stabilization service in Germany, where they would have to wait 1-2 hours after cardiac arrest to get a death certificate before proceeding with cooling and Cardio-Pulmonary Support (CPS).The situation is worse in Italy where 24 hours must pass before getting a death certificate, and in France where cooling is not permitted. France and Italy both require embalming before a body can be shipped out of the country. There was a lengthy discussion/argument wherein David defended his ability to expedite obtaining death certificates and to adapt legal requirements to cryonics purposes. In my own talk I had cited studies showing that neurons are more durable than generally believed, and can survive hours of warm ischemia. Good vitrification in Europe and shipment in dry-ice would definitely be an advantage over the alternative of spending days in water-ice during shipment.

I mentioned the importance of vital signs alarm systems for cases of sudden death where no standby is possible — and the greater availability of such systems in Europe versus the United States, notably the  Vivago Care watch. Dr. Klaus Sames became very impatient and stressed that a scientific symposium should discuss more scientific issues. Dr. Peter Gouras then began beating the drum for raising money for cryonics research — and his preference for small animal whole body experiments. I re-emphasized that Aschwin and Chana de Wolf are doing the most focused cryonics research in their experiments that have found ways to improve perfusion in cryonics patients that have suffered ischemic damage (virtually every cryonics patient). I believe that it would be a great boon to cryonics science if there was money for Aschwin and Chana to do full-time research, rather than just on weekends.

Dr. Sames again felt that this subject is not purely scientific, which led to some discussion of methods of cryonics research. Dr. Sames questioned that the results of small animal experiments are applicable to large animals (humans). Dr. Gouras argued that mouse experiments are the basis of most modern medicine. I described the whole body vitrification experiments at 21st Century Medicine, and the electrophysiology studies on vitrified hippocampal slices. I noted that my information is three years old and that the next public update on 21st Centrury Medicine research is not likely to happen until the May 2011 Suspended Animation Conference in Florida.

Dr. Gouras repeated his claim that experiments on small mammals provides more rapid feedback than organ cryopreservation. No one seemed very inspired by my contention that the greatest breakthrough for cryonics would be elimination of cryoprotectant toxicity. We only have vague theories of what cryoprotectant toxicity is — there should be focused research on this topic, understanding the mechanisms of cryoprotectant toxicity would be a significant step toward understanding how to eliminate it. Whole body vitrification efforts are easily distracted by perfusion problems, and trying to analyze every organ at once makes the problem hopelessly complicated. Analyzing cryoprotectant toxicity on single organs, perhaps even with biochemical tools (because it is ultimately an issue in molecular biology), has the best chance of addressing the toxicity problem, in my opinion. But “cryomouse prize” and whole body vitrification approaches win the popularity contests by a large margin over a cryoprotectant toxicity “X-prize”. I believe that given adequate funding, Aschwin and Chana de Wolf could contribute significantly to finding less toxic cryoprotectants, and I would like to be involved in the project.

At the symposium I met many people whom I had not known before, many I had known, but not met, and quite a few others that I enjoyed meeting again. I will only mention one, however: Roland Missionnier.

In the late 1960s the Cryonics Society of France was the largest cryonics organization outside of the United States. Roland was the President and Anatole Dolinoff was Vice-President. Roland showed me a list of officers and directors of the organization, pointing-out who had been fighting with whom, and the fact that virtually all were dead without having been cryopreserved. Dolinoff believed that cryonics was illegal in France because of a decree issued by the French Minister of Health in 1968. On page 13 of the October 1989 issue of CRYONICS magazine, Saul Kent said that he would investigate challenging the French law if it had an substance, but if he did so, I never heard the result of his efforts. Roland has been trying to re-start a cryonics organization in France, but he is also planning to move to Florida where he can live close to Suspended Animation, Inc. Roland said that with some money and a lawyer, almost anyone could move to the United States.

Cryonicist Charles Tandy, PhD, wants to publish the symposium proceedings through his Ria University Press.

Those of you who read Finnish can read the summary by Ville Salmensuu or you can stick the link in Google translate: http://translate.google.com/#fi|en|

Mark Plus on cryonics and double standards

08. October 2010 · Comments Off · Categories: Cryonics · Tags: ,

One of the mysterious things about cryonics is that some of the arguments that are invoked against it would be considered ridiculous, or even insensitive, if they would be raised in the context of other live-saving technologies. As Alcor member Mark Plus writes:

Why do we call engineering efforts to solve a hard problem which haven’t worked so far “failures,” while some people call cryonics’ attempts at intervening into the death process “denial”?

The difference seems to involve a double standard. We don’t call other efforts to save human life “denial” when they don’t work in some cases, and not just in a medical context. The effort to rescue those trapped miners in Chile may not work, for example; but nobody I know of calls the rescue project “denial,” wants to stop it as a waste of resources, and admonishes the doomed miners to “Get over yourselves,” as one of Ted Williams’s relatives has said to cryonicists.

The same goes for medicine in general. How would we react if authority figures scolded us for seeking health care for serious illnesses or injuries, saying that we should instead deal with our “denial” and “fear of death” issues through, say, strength of character, rather than trying to stay alive and functional through modern medicine? Even opponents of recent political efforts to “reform” American health care haven’t gone that far, to the best of my knowledge.

Read his complete post here.

Thought experiments as knowledge

03. October 2010 · Comments Off · Categories: Cryonics, Neuroscience, Science · Tags: , , ,

One of the most remarkable aspects about the ongoing debates concerning the technical feasibility of mind uploading is the excessive confidence that some people have that these issues can be resolved without further experimental validation. The (implicit) assumption seems to be that our current understanding of the neuroscience of consciousness is sufficient to demonstrate the technical feasibility of mind uploading by logical deduction from these findings alone. This is a mysterious claim for at least two reasons. The most fundamental reason is that the scientific study of consciousness has not nearly evolved to a stage that allows for making bold claims about the subject, let alone its far-reaching consequences. The other reason is that, in the absence of empirical examples of substrate-independent life in general, it cannot be argued that such logical arguments are just innocent or inescapable conclusions from what we already do know.

It should not be surprising that such arguments fail to convince some of the participants in the debate. After all, many “mind uploaders” also believe that the case for cryonics is just a straightforward exercise of Pascal’s Wager and the technical feasibility of molecular nanotechnology can be settled by arguing that the idea does not “contradict the laws of physics.” As I have argued in a more detailed article about this tendency, the common denominator in all of  this is the excessive role that is assigned to logical arguments (or rationalism). But there is an important difference between, let’s say, predicting the unmeasured viscosity of a specific aqueous solution from a formula that has been derived from numerous measurements on the one hand and drawing far-reaching conclusions from general scientific observations or even philosophical premises (materialism, reductionism) on the other hand.  This does not mean that one should completely refrain from speculation about future technologies, but it should induce a habit of having less confidence in your conclusions as the chain of assumptions and logical arguments lengthens, let alone if your conclusions are highly controversial.

One could object that since advocates of mind uploading are generally strong advocates of cryonics, that even treating their arguments with skepticism risks alienating prospective supporters of cryonics. The fact of the matter is, however, that presenting cryonics as just one element in a larger futurist framework strongly weakens the point that cryonics is an experimental medical procedure, not an ideology or life-style. It is not possible to present cryonics in a fashion that does not alienate anyone at all. But presenting cryonics as an experimental medical procedure without additional ideological, philosophical, or sociological add-ons  has the important merit of reducing this amount of alienation to the greatest possible degree. It also has the distinct advantage that it facilitates the recruitment of people who can move the field forward; experimental scientists and medical professionals.

Mind uploading, falsifiability and cryonics

22. September 2010 · Comments Off · Categories: Cryonics, Neuroscience · Tags: , , , , ,

On the cryonics discussion list Cryonet cryobiologist Brian Wowk weighed in on the topic of mind uploading in a post that merits quoting in its entirety:

I read with interest Bob Ettinger’s recent remarks about Mark Gubrud’s piece in The New Atlantis.

http://futurisms.thenewatlantis.com/2010/06/why-transhumanism-wont-work.html

Although I have not been around as long Bob, I have nevertheless observed arguments about uploading, identity duplication, and related subjects for decades.  In all that time there are two things I’ve never seen: (a) A truly new argument, and (b) Someone change their mind.  What is seen are people who passionately believe they are correct, and who believe that they have just the argument to finally convince the other side that they are right.  They never do.

I have come to believe that the question of whether a computationally equivalent duplicate of a human mind (assuming equivalence in this context is even definable) constitutes a continuation of the original person may be objectively unanswerable.  It’s almost a matter of taste, like alternative interpretations of quantum mechanics that assume different underlying realities that give exactly the same measurable results.

Eventually the distant day will come when the computational processes of a human brain are duplicated in an electronic computer, or even in another identical organic substrate.  When that day comes, we can be certain of this: If the person who was “duplicated” believed before duplication that duplication constitutes survival of the self, then, by definition, the duplicated entity will insist vociferously that indeed they did survive.  This has ethical implications.  Conversely,
an entity derived from a person who did not believe in this form of survival might be quite unhappy to be told that they were the product of a destructive scan of somebody.  This too has ethical implications.

Philosophical truth aside, evolution selects against humans who spend time worrying about whether sleep, anesthesia, or biostasis endangers personal identity.  Similarly, it is easy to predict which side of the uploading and duplication debates will win in the long term.  There is no entity more invulnerable or fecund than one that believes it consists of information.

Recent discussions of the topic of mind uploading on the Cryonics Institute members mailing-list contradict Wowk’s claim about people changing their mind about mind uploading. Robert Ettinger posted an itemized list with objections against the idea of mind uploading as a strategy for personal survival and I weighed in on the (current) lack of experimental evidence to settle the matter. The effect was that some people changed their mind or became more agnostic about mind uploading.

Wowk may be correct that the question whether a “computationally equivalent duplicate of a human mind…constitutes a continuation of the original person may be objectively unanswerable.” The discussion about mind uploading and persistence of the original person has distinct similarities with discussions about solipsism, consciousness, and the existence of the external world. It is not inconceivable that in a world where mind uploading has become routine the debates will still continue because the hard problem of persistence of the person is not falsifiable in a meaningful manner.

There are mind uploaders and there are Mind Uploaders. The Mind Uploaders are a small but vocal minority who display little patience for the argument that the technical feasibility of mind uploading requires empirical verification and cannot be completely settled by logical deduction or thought experiments. As cryonics activist and ex-Alcor Board member David Pizer says, “Having existed with Uploading Lovers for many years now, I believe they are as firmly entrenched in their beliefs as  traditional religious persons believe that their souls are going to Heaven after death here on Earth.”

Cryonics is often associated with ideas like mind uploading and transhumanism. One negative consequence of this (un)intentional association is that some people who are considering cryonics feel that they have to embrace a much larger set of controversial ideas than what they are actually being asked to consider. As a result, there is a real risk that people reject cryonics for reasons that have little to do with the proposal of cryonics itself. Advocates of cryonics do not do themselves a favor by promoting the idea of human cryopreservation as part of a larger set of futurist ideas instead of just promoting cryonics as an experimental medical procedure to extend life. There is too much at stake to alienate people by piling more controversial ideas on top of what is already considered to be a radical idea. Such a low-key attitude will also produce a more consistent message because it extends the element of uncertainty that is inherent in cryonics to other areas of life as well.


David J. Chalmers on the Singularity, mind uploading and cryonics

16. September 2010 · Comments Off · Categories: Cryonics, Neuroscience, Science · Tags: , , , ,

If I would make an argument in favor of mind uploading (or substrate independent minds) it would not be a logical deduction from what we know about neuroscience but from what we don’t know.  As one of the leading philosophers of mind David J. Chalmers has argued in this insightful paper about the Singularity and mind uploading:

Can an upload be conscious? The issue here is complicated by the fact that our understanding of consciousness is so poor. No-one knows just why or how brain processes give rise to consciousness. Neuroscience is gradually discovering various neural correlates of consciousness, but this research program largely takes the existence of consciousness for granted. There is nothing even approaching an orthodox theory of why there is consciousness in the first place. Correspondingly, there is nothing even approaching an orthodox theory of what sorts of systems can be conscious and what systems cannot be….

It is true that we have no idea how a nonbiological system, such as a silicon computational system, could be conscious. But the fact is that we also have no idea how a biological system, such as a neural system, could be conscious. The gap is just as wide in both cases. And we do not know of any principled di differences between biological and nonbiological systems that suggest that the former can be conscious and the latter cannot. In the absence of such principled di differences, I think the default attitude should be that both biological and nonbiological systems can be conscious

One can argue with this derivation of what the “default position” should be, but his more skeptical approach has a degree of modesty in its favor that is often lacking in transhumanist circles.

David J. Chalmers also discusses cryonics in a favorable context:

Cryonic technology off ers the possibility of preserving our brains in a low-temperature state shortly after death, until such time as the technology is available to reactivate the brain or perhaps to upload the information in it. Of course much information may be lost in death, and at the moment, we do not know whether cryonics preserves information sufficient to reactivate or reconstruct anything akin to a functional isomorph of the original. But one can at least hope that after an intelligence explosion, extraordinary technology might be possible here

On his blog he also writes that “for the last couple of weeks I have been in Oxford giving the John Locke Lectures on Constructing the World.  The title is an homage to Rudolf Carnap’s 1928 book Der Logische Aufbau Der Welt. The lectures are based on a book I have been writing for the last couple of years, trying to execute a project that is reminiscent of Carnap’s in certain respects.”

A person who discusses mind uploading in a meaningful context, gives cryonics a fair hearing, and has a work in progress that is inspired by Rudolf Carnap’s The Logical Structure of the World should not be ignored, let alone be ridiculed.

Edward O. Wilson's Consilience

07. September 2010 · Comments Off · Categories: Science, Society · Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson believes that a major reason why the social sciences have made so little progress is that its practitioners have ignored the biological basis of human behavior. He is not impressed with arguments that purport that the complexities of human behavior cannot be reduced to more elemental physical principles as embodied in modern neuroscience and biochemistry. Wilson recognizes that his view on the unification of the sciences carriers forward the logical positivist ideal of the Unity of Science. In his book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge he writes:

Logical positivism was the most valiant concerted effort ever mounted by modern philosophers. Its failure, or put more generously, its shortcoming, was caused by ignorance of how the brain works.

The canonical definition of objective scientific knowledge avidly sought by the logical positivists is not a philosophical problem nor can it be attained, as they hoped, by logical and semantic analysis. It is an empirical question that can be answered only by a continuing probe of the physical basis of the thought process itself.

Wilson is basically saying that logical positivism was not empiricist enough, a view that was anticipated by the logical empiricist Hans Reichenbach in his seminal work Experience And Prediction: An Analysis of the Foundations And the Structure of Knowledge.

On the tension between religious and scientific  perspectives of the world he writes:

The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology. Acceptance of the supernatural conveyed a great advantage throughout prehistory, when the brain was evolving. Thus it is in sharp contrast to biology, which was developed as a product of the modern age and is not underwritten by genetic algorithms. The uncomfortable truth is that the two beliefs are not factually compatible. As a result those who hunger for both intellectual and religious truth will never acquire both in full measure.

Remnants of such supernatural thinking are still with us today when we exempt humans from physical reality and attribute agency and free will to them.

Wilson is sensitive to the scenario that defective or disadvantageous genes increase and persist in modern human life but he believes that such a course of events will be relatively short-lived as humanity will master and embrace human genetic engineering. On the use of such technologies he writes:

I predict that future generations will be genetically conservative. Other than the repair of disabling defects, they will resist hereditary change. They will do so in order to save the emotions and epigenetic rules of mental development, because these elements compose the physical soul of the species. The reasoning is as follows. Alter the emotions and epigenetic rules enough, and people might in some sense be “better,” but they would no longer be human. Neutralize the elements of human nature in favor of pure rationality, and the result would be badly constructed, protein-based computers. Why should a species give up the defining core of its existence, built by millions of years of biological trial and error?

His reconciliation of human enhancement and cultural incrementalism is reminiscent of the “conservative transhumanism” of the biologist Alexis Carrel.

Buddhism and the scientific worldview

15. August 2010 · Comments Off · Categories: Neuroscience, Society · Tags: , , , , ,

On his blog The Life of Man Qua Man on Earth Mark Plus takes a critical look at Buddhism:

Transhumanists who endorse Buddhism tend to annoy me. Buddhism not only has the problems John Horgan points out, but the empirical evidence doesn’t support its fans’ claims about happiness…The developed countries where Buddhism has had the least presence and influence, with the exception of Japan, now report the highest levels of happiness; while the poorer countries with Buddhist cultures report significantly lower levels of happiness…Ironically the legends about the Buddha show that he depended on others’ dukkha for his subsistence and cult building.

Because Buddhism can be more easily adapted to support secular believes and modern science, its popularity among some transhumanists is not surprising. It has been argued that indeterminism in physics and the currents findings of neuroscience about the existence of “the self” have been anticipated by Buddhism. Of course, there are also metaphysical, epistemological, and moral ideas within the Buddhist tradition that are harder to reconcile with modern science. It is challenging to understand why one should make a conscious effort to reconcile Buddhism and contemporary science. We can embrace the findings of  science that are consistent with Buddhism but reject the  metaphysical baggage of Buddhism and many other “isms” as obstacles to a proper scientific conception of the world.

Buddhism is not unique in offering guidance about how to live in an increasingly technological world. Contemporary physics and neuroscience leave little room for the existence of “free will.” Living without free will seems disconcerting to many people (including self-identified atheists) but traditional Calvinists have learned how to cope with such a possibility. Considering the long and diverse history of religion, it stands to reason that some of the concerns expressed in various belief systems still hold relevance for humans today. But none of these belief systems can substitute for the skepticism and moderation that a proper understanding of science brings.

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