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0 pointsmoyix10y ago0 comments

> Unless there's a chance that at the moment of death the conscience is still there (due to great redundancy in the brain), it might be futile, after all. This is one issue that I believe all cryonics companies and advocates prefer to wholly overlook.

You seem to be arguing that death is a binary state, but I don't think this is particularly well established. There are all sorts of arguments over what constitutes definite proof of death [1]. It seems more likely to me that the process of dying is a transition, and that the exact point along that transition where someone is irreversibly gone depends on our current level of medical technology – which is exactly what cryonics is betting on.

As an analogy, when RAM loses power, the data on it doesn't vanish instantly, but rather degrades over some period of time [2]. Depending on how the information is stored, what you're willing to do without, and what you can piece together, you can declare the data in RAM "gone" at different points throughout that process.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_definition_of_death

[2] https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/sec08/tech/full_papers/h...

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listic10y ago

I didn't mean to disagree argue that; just didn't have enough time to think this question over before typing.

Yes, death is not a binary state physically, but it is legally. This is what cryonics counts for.

Also, conscience is not binary; there is plenty of evidence that it is uneven and noncontinuous. People lose conscience and then regain it and live on all the time. Many people live in reduced states of consciousness most or all of the time. Our mind tries to maintain illusion of continuity of consciousness for our convenience. Sometimes people survive ridiculous amount of brain damage (men living with a hole in their head). All this is evidence that whatever forms our conscience is very redundant and just might survive the damage of what today is considered death and future restoration. Especially with the help of whatever medical technology will be available in the future (nanotech, hi-res brain scanning, etc.); especially if it would be needed anyway to counter the damage sustained during cryopreservation.

wutbrodo10y ago

> People lose conscience and then regain it and live on all the time.

Do you mean "consciousness" here? I assumed you actually meant conscience at first but this sentence doesn't seem to make sense with that word but then you use consciousness later which means it isn't just a spelling error. I'm not asking to be pedantic, but because I'm now getting confused about what you're trying to say in parts of your otherwise interesting comment.

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