That is what I am saying. Your ‘ you are trying to turn cryonics into a religion’ is a simplistic take on the situation.

In a way your post is timely, because I just uploaded an article explaining that I can’t possibly bring the time, talent and countless other resources to bear here, or anywhere for that matter, to protect and preserve cryonics; that will require the participation of many minds and many pairs of hands.

Next up. I’m not an expert in cryopreservation techniques. That would be Greg Fahy, Brian Wowk, and precious few other people in cryonics, or much more worrying, in the world.

As to religion, which seems to be your solution to the problem of cryonics’ non-acceptance, I’ve pretty much stated my position on this before. It has very valuable elements which are essential to the success of any multi-generational, transcendent activity. Cryonics is not just about cryopreserving people, it is about eliminating mortality and the tyranny of time. One of the things that has become increasingly clear to me as I’ve traveled, and as I’ve learned more about the increasingly successful attempts to technologically exploit matter at the quantum level, is that the universe is an incredibly bizarre and creepy place. It is weird out of measure. A good lay-level overview of what’s likely (IMHO) to be ahead, is Julian Brown’s “Minds, Machines, and the Multiverse: The Quest for the Quantum Computer.” If THAT isn’t BETTER than religion, then I don’t what is.

BTW, the Failure Analysis lectures are more than 50% slides, which are in turn mostly pictures, and the text is 18 point. Reduce that to standard hard cover book print, and you have maybe, 120 pages. Most of the CULTURAL REASONS for cryonics’ failure are in Lecture 1. If you can’t manage 30-40 pages of text, then you aren’t interested. I’ll go further and say that if you can’t manage 300 pages, you aren’t really interested, either.

Finally, as I’ve said before (and I won’t be saying again), I have zero interest in turning cryonics into a religion. If that’s your agenda, then I think you need to start a blog or find a street corner and make some signs, because it’s for sure that this isn’t the right street corner for you. — Mike Darwin

But I will ask you this: where do you consider religion in all this? Culture? Taboo?

The real nitty gritty questions about cryonics are not about cryopreservational techniques, although these are important, but rather how do religion, culture and taboo fit into the picture?

Oh, but Mike, you are the world’s foremost eryopreservation expert! Hey, I will grant you that. But that don’t mean you know jack about how religion, culture and taboo will help answer WHY cryonics is not accepted.

Stick with what you know….

Also admit, both of you, that it is going to take DECADES before any proof of the cryonics concept is available, i.e., before science is mature enough to allow a revival of some animal.

Oh, but of course, if we just give and give and give, the cryo tech would juuuuusssttt around the corner.

“Dig DEEP, my flock, and ye shall be saved, I say unto thee!”

Eh?

As the physicist and quant blogger Scott Locklin says, “People need to grow up and attempt to achieve real things, rather than imagining how cool it would be if we had nanotech factories which would give us genie-like superpowers.”

Too many cryonicists have invoked Future World’s magic nanomachines to excuse today’s “ritualistic” suspensions, as Mike call them, and that has to stop – both the botched suspensions, and the quasi-religious faith in certain technological fantasies which probably will never work.

I would go further to say that I don’t think Eric Drexler published his books as deliberate trolls, but they’ve taken on that character after 20 years for reasons he probably couldn’t have anticipated. I, for one, have no emotional investment in Drexler’s reputation. If his ideas suck, we need to acknowledge that fact and start to look for better ideas. I have to wonder now what cryonics in 2011 would look like in an alternate universe where Drexler hadn’t gone out of his way to link “nanotechnology” with cryonics in the 1980′s.

I do not understand the people running things at Alcor (or CI). Perhaps Max will turn things around at Alcor. Max does understand the technical issues involved. He is also less “dreamy” about the potential of molecular nanotechnology than most of the people who have passed through Alcor since the mid 90′s.

Brian’s storage units appear sensible from an engineering standpoint. They also appear to be low-cost and easy to support.

People are not into cryonics because they do not think it will work. The publicized flakiness of the organizations, especially surrounding the cryo-preservation of Ted Williams, has not helped matters either.

I believe the reason why Dora Kent did not garner the negative publicity that Ted Williams did is because Alcor was not depicted by the media as being flaky and incompetent with Dora Kent. Rather, the media focused in on the incompetence and malfeasance of the (Ringling Brothers) Riverside County coroner’s office as well as the law enforcement in general.

Much of the negative publicity surrounding the Ted Williams cryo-suspension was based on the perceived flakiness and incompetence of Alcor and cryonics in general. It is the same negative publicity that resulted from the Chatsworth disaster in 1979. I believe that negative publicity based on either malfeasance or incompetence of the organization in question is very bad.

http://cryoeuro.eu:8080/download/attachments/425990/Cryonics_Failure_Analysis_Part_1_v3.0.pdf
http://cryoeuro.eu:8080/download/attachments/425990/Cryonics_Failure_Analysis_Part_2v5.2.pdf
http://cryoeuro.eu:8080/download/attachments/425990/Cryonics_Failure_Analysis_Part_3v5.4.pdf

I suggest you read Part I as many times as it takes to grasp the deep disconnect between the core values of cryonics, and those of the culture it is stuck in. The purely practical reasons, such as the disruption of the coping mechanisms for dealing with death, interference with the inter-generational flow of wealth, and surviorship guilt, are plenty of good reasons for why cryonics was rejected. The fact that it DOESN’T WORK didn’t help matters either. People are naturally skeptical of things that can’t be validated, and they know instinctively that the the more extravagant the claims, the more skeptical they should be, and thus the MORE EVIDENCE they should demand.

Cryonics is a lot like that old Wendy’s commercial, where the little old lady lifts up the top half of a nice, big, bun to find an itty, bitty hamburger, and then barks out, “Where’s the beef!” That’s plenty of reason for being a big flop. Unless you produce the beef – in this case in indirect ways; since we can’t revive cryonics patients, AND WE NEVER WILL BE ABLE TO. The reason we will never be able to revive a single cryonics patient is that the instant you can revive a cryonics patient, he is no longer a cryonics patient! By definition a cryonics patient is someone who is waiting for medicine to catch up to his needs – he’s a medical time traveler. Once you arrive, you ain’t a traveler no more ;-). — Mike Darwin