[ExI] Max More - New CEO Alcor Life Extension Foundation

[Adrian Tymes]

On Sun, Dec 26, 2010 at 1:11 PM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> There are some serious problems in cryonics which prevent it from
> going mainstream.
>
> See
>
> 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

TL,DR: "Waaah!  Society hasn't accepted cyronics yet so it never
will!"

This analysis does not seem credible.  Just to quote slide 31, it states
that cyronics:

* Mandates a complete change in reproduction

Nope.  No change in reproduction is necessarily linked.  (Potential
population increases can be dealt with in other ways, and that's a
topic that exists even without cryo.)

* Perturbs generational succession

Not for a long time - until regenerative medicine has increased to
the point where this perturbation is being dealt with anyway.

* Requires Space Colonization

Hardly.  It's possible, with better - if "mundane" - agricultural and
housing technology to dramatically increase the number of humans
living on the Earth's land masses, and that's not even getting into
aquatic colonization..

* Requires (and supports) profoundly disruptive technologies:
cloning, regenerative medicine, nanotechnology, AI

Only regenerative medicine is necessarily linked - though that might
in turn support cloning.  Nanotechnology is only linked through the
fact that anything biotech is arguably "nanotechnology", but that's
an abuse of the term.  AI is not necessarily linked at all (save
through uploading - which could happen with or without cryo).

* Ends the Species: Enables Transhumanism

Again, no.  Regenerative medicine might enable it, but A might
cause B might cause C is a tenuous chain.  (A = cryo, B = reg.
med., C = transhumanism)

The rest of this - I stopped reading a bit under halfway through
part 1, after seeing fallacy upon fallacy upon fallacy.  Perhaps Max
should read this, though, as practice for the kind of arguments he's
going to have to debunk repeatedly.