RE: I signed up to be cryogenically frozen

Thu, 18 Dec 2014 23:27:08 -0800 

 

 

From: [email protected] 
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John Clark
Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2014 10:57 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: I signed up to be cryogenically frozen

 

On Thu, Dec 18, 2014  'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List 
<[email protected]> wrote:

 

> Water expands when it freezes;

 

Yes. 

> Until a method of preserving the exquisite micro (and possibly also 
> nano-scale) structures of the brain are developed freezing an organ destroys 
> it. 

 

Freezing will certainly destroy the functionality of my brain no doubt about 
it, but there is a far more important question, will it scramble the 
information on how the atoms in my brain were arranged before it was frozen so 
profoundly that even advanced nanotechnology can't recover it? Even 
functionality has been preserved in the case of human embryos frozen in liquid 
nitrogen and they contain millions of cells; granted that still vastly smaller 
than a human brain but still it gives some reason for optimism.      

 

Okay… perhaps some incredibly advanced technology that could scan the thousands 
of trillions of broken and also moved (during the process of becoming embedded 
in the matrix of shard like ice crystals that will randomize what had been an 
ordered system.) elements without causing them to heat up and lose their 
cryogenic state as a result of the scanning process. Perhaps some kind of 
reverse of additive manufacturing could shave away your preserved head nano 
layer by nano layer and go on to process the next nano layer before it lost the 
ordering preserved in the cryogenic matrix. But this is not anything that is on 
the horizon.

  

 

> Certain species can freeze and thaw back out and be fine, but they have 
> evolved blood containing anti-freeze in it 

 

And Alcor will infuse my brain with a cocktail of anti-freeze agents, the same 
sort of agents that are used to protect human embryos from minus 320 degree 
temperatures, except that Alcor will use much higher concentrations so my brain 
will not freeze but will undergo a glass transition process and vitrify.   

 

Interesting. How long will it take for the blood to become mostly replaced by 
the solution containing the cocktail of anti-freeze agents? During this time 
and as a result of this infusion process will the end of life snapshot of the 
information state of your brain sustain irreversible damage? I agree with your 
position that it is this information picture that you should seek to preserve 
if a shot at immortality (or at least a re-awakening from the death) is what 
you desire. The actual brain and everything in it is toast (and will have been 
poisoned by the chemicals preserving its information structure)… but it is 
also, not what is fundamentally important to preserve. 

 

 

> (which is highly toxic to humans by the way).

 

Yes when anti-freeze agents are used in high concentrations (as Alcor does) 
they are highly toxic largely because they denature proteins, that is to say 
they change the way the sequence of amino acids fold up to form the protein, 
and the shape a protein folds up into determines how it functions. However the 
sequence of amino acids does not change so although the protein no longer works 
the information on what the shape the protein was in before it was denatured 
was not destroyed.      

Agreed; if there exists a feasible pathway back to a reconstruction of the 
information state on your brain at a molecular level, and a means exists to 
encode, store, transfer, and write this information into some new vessel (could 
be digital perhaps as well so highly virtualized).. then there is a long shot 
chance that some incredibly advanced technology could reverse engineer your end 
of life state of mind from the jumbled conditions it would have been in. 

> I do not see how the trillions of ruptured cells (from the micro-shards of 
> ice) 

 

With cryoprotectants that shards of ice business isn't much a problem but 
severe dehydration of cells is real and would totally destroy functionality, 
but as I said resorting functionality to that frozen block of protoplasm isn't 
my concern, preserving the information in it is.  

> constituting the resulting thawed mush of what once had been a functioning 
> system with trillions of parts can be put back together.

 

First of all I'm not interested in what happens during thawing, I'm only 
interested in what happens during freezing because I'm only interested in 
preserving information. The key question is will my brain enter a turbulent 
state when it is frozen or will the flow be laminar. If it's turbulent then 
small changes in initial conditions will result in large changes in outcome and 
I'm dead meat, even nanotechnology couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together 
again; but if it's laminar figuring out what things were like before they were 
frozen would be pretty straightforward.

 

Fluid flow stops being smoothly Laminar and starts to become chaotically 
turbulent when a system has a Reynolds number between 2300 and 4000, although 
you might get some non chaotic vortices if it is bigger than 30. We can find 
the approximate Reynolds number by using the formula LDV/N.  L is the 
characteristic size we're interested in, we're interested in cells so L is 
about 10^-6 meter. D is the density of water, 10^3 kilograms/cubic meter.  V is 
the velocity of the flow, during freezing it's probably less than 10^-3 meters 
per second but let's be conservative, I'll give you 3 orders of magnitude and 
call V 1 meter per second.  N is the viscosity of water, at room temperature N 
is 0.001 newton-second/meter^2, it would be less than that when things get cold 
and even less when water is mixed with glycerol as it is in cryonics but let's 
be conservative again and ignore those factors. If you plug these numbers into 
the formula you get a Reynolds number of about 1. 1 is a lot less than 2300 so 
it looks like any mixing caused by freezing would probably be laminar not 
turbulent, so you can still deduce the position where things are supposed to be.

Interesting, I can see you have given this some thought.

Actually to my mind the most serious obstacles to the success of my program are 
not scientific at all, they are these:

1) Will my brain really be frozen soon after my death?

2) Will my brain remain frozen until the age of nanotechnology?

Number 2 seems like a big one. I recall reading that this already happened at 
one cryo facility during a blackout.

 

3) When it becomes possible to retrieve the information in my frozen brain will 
anybody think I'm worth the trouble to actually do it?

Or to what end will you be re-awakened… what if it for the sadistic amusement 
of some Jupiter brain toddler with a bad attitude and love of breaking its toys.

Concerning that last one, I think it will either be impossible to do so or 
cheap and easy to do so, the time when it will be possible but expensive to 
revive me will be very short. I'm willing to concede that my value to a Jupiter 
Brain will be almost zero, but my (perhaps hopelessly optimistic) hope is that 
it is not precisely zero. Given a choice between no chance and a slim chance 
I'll pick a slim chance every time.   

 

> In the case of John Clark's brain... he won't care that the information 
> encoded in his brain has just been destroyed by  the process -- he paid 80 
> grand for -- meant to preserve it... because he will have died (and won't 
> miss that 80 grand either I guess)

 

If cryonics doesn't work I'll never have any regrets about doing it because 
I'll never know it didn't work, and If it doesn't work I won't be one bit 
deader than you will be who took a more conventional approach and had your 
brain rot in the ground or be burned up in a furnace.  

Or to be disemboweled and fed to vultures – in order to be of some utility to 
another species, after I no longer am in need of this transient vessel, as is 
the practice amongst Tibetan Buddhists. 

-Chris

 John K Clark

 

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