Ending death for most people in the United States is feasible. What's your excuse?

[Razncain]

Even when younger and other parts of my life, I wouldn’t want it if I couldn’t share it with other loved ones. You project too much. Besides, plenty of people with the puniest of souls make too much fuss over theirs.

[Dewey_Finn]

@SamuelA

So what kind of moron states that they want to make sure they are part of the last generation that dies? Now, yeah, we may not have any choice. Preserving the brain using methods we have in 2017 may just not be good enough. We may need nanotech snake-magic* from the year 2300 in order to actually do this. But that’s no excuse for being actively defeatist.

So you recognize that what you’re proposing might not be possible for a very long time. So why do you insist that we’re all nuts for not planning our lives around this future technology?

In the meantime, there are many other issues that we face individually, and as a species. Climate change, for one.

[SamuelA]

@Dewey_Finn

So you recognize that what you’re proposing might not be possible for a very long time. So why do you insist that we’re all nuts for not planning our lives around this future technology?

Because it’s a rational form of Pascal’s wager. It might not be available for a long time. And it might work using methods we have right now. And it might be possible to make the methods we have right now a lot better with just a few years of development.

You may not live to see tomorrow. So are you a nut for preparing for tomorrow?

There are very good reasons to think if your brain was preserved you could eventually be revived in some form, just like there is a good reason to think that if you iron your clothes, when you wake up tomorrow you will be able to wear them. It’s the same logical reasoning.

[TriPolar]

@SamuelA

Because it’s a rational form of Pascal’s wager. It might not be available for a long time. And it might work using methods we have right now. And it might be possible to make the methods we have right now a lot better with just a few years of development.

You may not live to see tomorrow. So are you a nut for preparing for tomorrow?

There are very good reasons to think if your brain was preserved you could eventually be revived in some form, just like there is a good reason to think that if you iron your clothes, when you wake up tomorrow you will be able to wear them. It’s the same logical reasoning.

It doesn’t work right now, and there’s no reason to think it will work in the future for a brain preserved now.

[Dewey_Finn]

@SamuelA

@Dewey_Finn

So you recognize that what you’re proposing might not be possible for a very long time. So why do you insist that we’re all nuts for not planning our lives around this future technology?

Because it’s a rational form of Pascal’s wager. It might not be available for a long time. And it might work using methods we have right now. And it might be possible to make the methods we have right now a lot better with just a few years of development.

You may not live to see tomorrow. So are you a nut for preparing for tomorrow?

There are very good reasons to think if your brain was preserved you could eventually be revived in some form, just like there is a good reason to think that if you iron your clothes, when you wake up tomorrow you will be able to wear them. It’s the same logical reasoning.

OK, let’s say you’ve managed to convince me. What would you have me do? In particular, what do I need to do so that you stop asking me what my “excuse” is or calling me a moron?

[ThisIsTheEnd]

Most people are assholes, they’d just be immortal assholes.

I’m in favor of death, if there were fewer assholes, I’d like to live longer; otherwise I look at it as a wash 'cause at least I’m going to be getting the fuck away from them.

[Bone]

@SAMUELQQ

No one has the right to live forever, what a dumb topic

Welcome to the Straight Dope. Do not threadshit.

Please familiarize yourself with the board and forum rules.

[/moderating]

[SamuelA]

@Dewey_Finn

OK, let’s say you’ve managed to convince me. What would you have me do? In particular, what do I need to do so that you stop asking me what my “excuse” is or calling me a moron?

You have now been told, by me, that the brain is a machine made of matter and that freezing it such that the key components are intact enough to scan later would let you later rebuild or emulate that machine.

Since you clearly haven’t switched sides, I take it that you have checked this claim, right? You’ve found credible evidence disproving my statements.

If you haven’t found such evidence, then why continue to argue? What if the tables were turned. Suppose I’m insisting that gravity is wrong, but can produce no proof. You’d call me a moron, right?

[up_the_junction]

@SamuelA

You have now been told, by me, that the brain is a machine made of matter and that freezing it such that the key components are intact enough to scan later would let you later rebuild or emulate that machine.

It’s either a machine or its organic. Make your mind up. Definition of ‘machine’:

an apparatus using mechanical power and having several parts, each with a definite function and together performing a particular task.

[GreenWyvern]

@SamuelA

You have now been told, by me, that the brain is a machine made of matter and that freezing it such that the key components are intact enough to scan later would let you later rebuild or emulate that machine.

Since you clearly haven’t switched sides, I take it that you have checked this claim, right? You’ve found credible evidence disproving my statements.

If you haven’t found such evidence, then why continue to argue? What if the tables were turned. Suppose I’m insisting that gravity is wrong, but can produce no proof. You’d call me a moron, right?

The problem is that the key components are NOT intact enough, or anywhere near. The synaptic connection information is only a very tiny portion of the total information needed, and all the rest is totally destroyed.

From the MIT Technology Review:

The False Science of Cryonics
by Dr Michael Hendricks, neurologist at McGill University

“Any suggestion that you can come back to life is simply snake oil.”

Synapses are the physical contacts between neurons where a special form of chemoelectric signaling—neurotransmission—occurs, and they come in many varieties. They are complex molecular machines made of thousands of proteins and specialized lipid structures. It is the precise molecular composition of synapses and the membranes they are embedded in that confers their properties. The presence or absence of a synapse, which is all that current connectomics methods tell us, suggests that a possible functional relationship between two neurons exists, but little or nothing about the nature of this relationship—precisely what you need to know to simulate it.

Additionally, neurons and other cells in the brain are in constant communication through signaling pathways that do not act through synapses. Many of the signals that regulate fundamental behaviors such as eating, sleeping, mood, mating, and social bonding are mediated by chemical cues acting through networks that are invisible to us anatomically. We know that the same set of synaptic connections can function very differently depending on what mix of these signals is present at a given time.
…

While it might be theoretically possible to preserve these features in dead tissue, that certainly is not happening now. The technology to do so … does not yet exist even in principle.