[extropy-chat] Cryonics is the only option?

[ben]

Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:

> Emergency care people are required by law to treat anyone, even if
> they're not covered (this gets frequently abused, of course).

That's good news, at least.


> They won't switch you off if the relatives continue demanding
> treatment. It may be living hell on earth, but you will be kept
> alive.

My idea is that the patient will be capable of doing the demanding. 
Hopefully.


>> Once you've had a good innings in conventional terms, there would 
>> likely be little incentive to make great efforts to keep you alive.
>>  Perhaps it would be a good idea to try to promote the creation of
>>  'transhumanist-friendly' medical clinics. Probably a bit too much 
>> to hope for.

 > If you have the coin, you can buy any service you need.

Only if that service is available, though. If the service you need is 
immunologically-matched bone marrow tissue and there's none available, 
you're likely to be dead before it can be sorted out.

>> Actually, one good reason for removing the brain from a failing 
>> body would be for ease of access to all the life-support systems, 
>> and ease of swapping them out for others as and when necessary. The
>> 'body' would be whatever physical infrastructure the life-support
>> modules were plugged in to, and you could then take advantage of 
>> heterostasis, keeping local conditions optimal for each system 
>> separately, without upsetting the rest of the body.

 > "Moving the brain" while keeping it alive is quite impossible with
 > current surgery. It is rather difficult to extract even a fixated
 > brain (a very different animal from live brain) from the cranial
 > cavity without injuring it.

Now that's interesting. I wasn't quite thinking along the lines of using 
a giant ice-cream scoop, but presumably there are lots of connections 
and so on that would make removing the skull difficult? Or is the 
problem at the other end, with the blood vessels and so on?

Would leaving the brain in the skull but gradually removing the bone be 
a better idea?


>> It would also make cryonic suspension much easier if that was 
>> eventually

 > It wouldn't. Just leave the brain in its natural container, see
 > http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/casereport8504.html
 > for details.

I can see why you say that, but i was thinking that most of the stuff 
you would want to preserve lies in a thin layer on top of the brain, and 
it's difficult to quickly cool that region with a good few millimetres 
of bone on top of it, so you must use the vascular system. If that layer 
was already exposed while the brain was alive, you could cool it very 
quickly.

>> decided upon. Plus easier other things, too, like neural 
>> interfacing and eventual uploading.

> Gradual/incremental in vivo uploading is quite a way off, since
> requiring medical devices assembled by NC-chemistry, aka
> machine-phase.

Probably right. I'm not talking about right away, the whole point of 
this idea is to buy time, and keep you out of the freezer unless it was 
absolutely necessary to preserve the brain, and not just because your 
liver packs in.

ben zaiboc