> After removing the carotid cannulae, Kim’s cephalon was removed from the enclosure and transferred to a modified LR40 dewar
It has been said that death has the most euphemisms of any subject. Cephalon? As in cephalic, Greek for head. Passive voice, too. I suppose one would want to create some distance. "We removed the tubes from the arteries and put the head in a thermos."
Sure, and experimental things fail all the time. Doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying. Learning from failures is how progress is made.
I'm skeptical of this cryonics stuff, but I can see the appeal: even if the chance of being eventually revived is a tiny fraction of 1%, if money isn't an issue, why not? If humanity doesn't destroy itself over the next century or two, it might be fun to see what the future is like.
Ok, but this is what people pursuing perpetual motion say, too. Meanwhile, the fundamentals of what's being attempted here are pretty implausible. Not all scientific advancements pattern match to the conventional journal article track on which most science is done today, but the oddball projects are signaling something.
I don't like getting super deep into these threads, because my normal tendency will be to nerd out on all the reasons I think Alcor is kind of shady, but I'm acutely aware that there are real people involved here and these situations are always incredibly sad. I really just want to chime in to push back on the idea that "modern" cryonics have the problems worked out; I think it's kind of likely that the insurmountable problems here are fractal.
> on all the reasons I think Alcor is kind of shady
If Alcor actually is doing shady things, then I would certainly agree with you. I read up on them quite a bit around 10 years ago, but I haven't really kept up since then. But my impression was that they weren't giving false hope, and were telling people that the chances were slim that they'd ever wake up again. I also didn't read anything to suggest that their post-death care is something other than what they promise, and I thought it was sensible how they require patient care to be funded. But admittedly I didn't dive as deeply into third-party criticism as I probably should have (instead I just lost interest).
> I really just want to chime in to push back on the idea that "modern" cryonics have the problems worked out
I don't think anyone is saying that, though? If I've said something that made you or anyone believe that, my apologies, because that's certainly not what I believe. Certainly modern cryonics is more advanced than simply "lower body temp slowly until it seems like it might vaguely be safe to bring in the LN", but "advanced" in this case doesn't mean "it works". No one knows, still, of course, and I would strongly expect that it doesn't work.
> I think it's kind of likely that the insurmountable problems here are fractal.
The promise of only-in-sci-fi "suspended animation" or "stasis" is, well, just that: sci-fi. I certainly would hope that these problems aren't insurmountable, and that we can actually find a way to more or less press the "pause" button on organic degradation. Certainly the current cryonics tech is nowhere near that; the hope is that any damage done by the cryonics process could eventually be reversed with sufficiently-advanced technology, and then eventually the cryonics process gets good enough that little to no damage (beyond the cause of death) ends up being done.
Who knows if that's possible, eventually, but I'd like to think it is.
I agree that what's being attempted is pretty implausible, but you're comparing it to people pursuing perpetual motion, which is in direct contravention of physical laws.
A better comparison might be people pursuing fusion for power generation -- something known to be possible, albeit potentially beyond human capabilities either now or in the future.
Yes, all I'd be saying with that comparison is that the logic used above proves too much. Of course, people also say the same sorts of things about advances that pan out.
maybe even these horribly failing cases would actually make these people happy and not sad that they at least tried, instead of turning straight into nothing?
Do you mind going into a little more detail on the problems? The last I knew we had examples of smalls creatures freezing and thawing but it didn’t seem to scale up very well, and from what little I knew the problem seemed to be that freezing itself would damage cell walls (tiny chunks of ice poking calls through things all over your body), even if you managed to do it very fast and minimize the size of crystal formation.
But I learned all that a decade or two ago, so if you have a moment to update/correct me I’d be grateful.
I'm not apologizing. This is a public space, and nobody has the privilege of demanding that anyone else not respond to them. If 'kragen wants to reach out and communicate something more complicated than that thought to me, I'm all ears. I recommend email for that, in this specific case. That's all. No drama, but good to be clear about norms.
What you were specifically doing doesn't much matter, though "responding sympathetically" might be a closer fit.
From my own experience in online interactions, what I've observed is that if I've managed to antagonise someone, no response seems to be the best response, including apologies. Again, regardless of who's in the right or wrong.
(If there's some other offense against yourself, you might address that separately and directed at others.)
But what I've seen across decades, fora, and people, is that once a nerve is hot and inflamed, it's best left alone for a good long while.
https://www.alcor.org/docs/alcor-case-report-a-2643.pdf