# Ultimate Fate of Cryogenics Movement **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 22, 2022, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ultimate-fate-of-cryogenics-movement/959974 "2022-02-22T23:02:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2022, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ultimate-fate-of-cryogenics-movement/959974/41 "2022-02-24T01:58:43Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > To be clear: I think you are very likely correct. No one who’s head is currently frozen will ever be revived. I’m simply not willing to say it’s 100%, because just as some of today’s technology would be considered totally impossible and absurd in the past, I expect the same will be true of future technology. It doesn’t depend on future technology, but on today’s preservation tech. A frozen brain of today is mush, dead, gone, dysfunctional, and all the information is lost forever, so that even the most advanced future humans are absolutely unable to revive it, just like we today are unable to revive a thousand year old skeleton, though we’ve come a long way to get much information from it. ---
**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2022, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ultimate-fate-of-cryogenics-movement/959974/42 "2022-02-24T02:29:40Z")
This thread strongly reminds me of the novel [Tomorrow and Tomorrow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow_and_Tomorrow_(novel)) - specifically, a point I brought up earlier in the thread - even if the future can bring you back, why would they bother, and what would the cost to you be? The protagonist figures that the best way to ensure he is awakened is to make sure he has first hand knowledge of several subjects/persons of his ‘current’ time period, figuring that would make him useful as a primary source for some future researcher. And while it succeeds, it also ends up costing him years out of his life to payoff the debts resulting from his defrosting. It also addresses a point we didn’t bring up earlier, at least, specifically: of all the things a future society would want to spend it’s time and energy researching, it is likely not going to be a rare disease that only was responsible for the death / freezing /etc of a very few people in a time long divorced from the present. For example, let us say that 400 years from now, we’ve long destroyed our only remaining samples of smallpox and it is fully dead and gone. Would a researcher of that time (who might need to work on a cure for NanoTrumpism) care about researching an ancient virus that was rendered extinct nearly 500 years ago? Probably not. ( yes, I’m exaggerating for effect, but the point remains). Anyway, it was an interesting novel for the first half (I don’t care for the rest, when it gets kinda SF trope-y for my tastes, but…) and worth a read if you find cryonics interesting. ---
**Author:** ![SunUp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea5d25/32.png) [@SunUp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SunUp)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2022, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ultimate-fate-of-cryogenics-movement/959974/43 "2022-02-24T02:47:24Z")
Omigod. I had seen that before a few times, but I never noticed Grover Cleveland’s head… _twice_. It’s like the reliquary that held the skull of John the Baptist as a young boy… ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2022, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ultimate-fate-of-cryogenics-movement/959974/44 "2022-02-24T06:00:19Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > It doesn’t depend on future technology, but on today’s preservation tech. A frozen brain of today is mush, dead, gone, dysfunctional, and all the information is lost forever, so that even the most advanced future humans are absolutely unable to revive it I think this is likely, but not certain. Going back to the mammoth analogy, until we understood DNA and how to extract and view it, when the last organism died, that was it. Is a currently frozen brain actually without the information required to reconstitute the mind, or is it simply very messy and noisy, requiring a degree of sophisticated scanning and simulation that’s so many orders of magnitude beyond our present abilities that it seems impossible, but maybe is not actually. > [@Voyager](#): > > And the people who would rather throw their money away selfishly on the small chance they get revived are exactly the ones any just future society would not want to revive. I don’t find this argument compelling as a prediction (although I mostly agree with the morality). If it had turned out that the ancient Egyptians had been on the right track and mummification was a way to preserve people, and our current society figured out a technology that could revive some of the pharaohs, we’d for sure 100% do it, right? Even though they were not good people and spent hundreds of slave lifetimes on building monuments to the few god-king dead. It is possible that future societies will have different values, but our current society would not revive people to reward them, but because there’d be so much to learn from them. I strongly suspect that if the cryonics people are actually onto anything, at least some of them will be revived if the technology exists for the novelty and historical value they’d have. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2022, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ultimate-fate-of-cryogenics-movement/959974/45 "2022-02-24T06:21:05Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > Is a currently frozen brain actually without the information required to reconstitute the mind, or is it simply very messy and noisy, requiring a degree of sophisticated scanning and simulation that’s so many orders of magnitude beyond our present abilities that it seems impossible, but maybe is not actually. And when the people are brought back, they can celebrate with [an instant photo cake](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UnYPaENQVDc)! ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2022, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ultimate-fate-of-cryogenics-movement/959974/46 "2022-02-24T09:26:56Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > . . . but our current society would not revive people to reward them, but because there’d be so much to learn from them. When we develop sufficient brain-mapping tech to do all these things, there may not be any need to revive anybody if the only reason is to learn all their history. We should be able to decode all that directly from their brain maps. > [@GreenWyvern](#): > > . . . but with the current methods being used, that information is simply destroyed. That information does not exist anymore, and no technology can get back what doesn’t exist. Of course, to get entirely quantum theoretical about it, no information is ever destroyed. There are no singular (irreversible) transformations, and all information that exists or has ever existed always will exist and is recoverable. All we need is sufficiently advanced technology, of the sort that Arthur C. Clarke suggests we would call “magic”. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2022, 9:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ultimate-fate-of-cryogenics-movement/959974/47 "2022-02-24T09:30:58Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > And it says here in your papers that you know COBOL! This is a truly excellent joke and I approve heartily. Also, cryonics as a way of defeating death is 100% horseshit, at least as it has been conceived with modern technology and for the foreseeable future. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2022, 9:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ultimate-fate-of-cryogenics-movement/959974/48 "2022-02-24T09:40:37Z")
Thing is, if I live to be a decrepit, arthritic, stiff-and-sore 95-year-old geezer and then I die – Would I really _want_ to be frozen and later revived only to continue living as a decrepit, arthritic, stiff-and-sore 95-year-old geezer? If they could clone me and then re-implant my entire cognitive being (like they did with Mr. Spock) into my cloned much-rejuvenated body, then I might be interested. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2022, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ultimate-fate-of-cryogenics-movement/959974/49 "2022-02-24T13:38:26Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > I think this is likely, but not certain. Going back to the mammoth analogy, until we understood DNA and how to extract and view it, when the last organism died, that was it. That’s the thing - mammoths are comparatively easy. DNA itself has a shelf-life (up for some tens of thousands of years or perhaps even a hundred thousand years maybe to have a hope of a full 100% recovery - and that’s if there are plenty of samples). Mammoths fall just within the window and even then it’s more of a 99% thing. We’ll never recover species that went extinct before that - the DNA required for the process has degraded beyond the point of recovery. The Jurassic Park concept of samples preserved in amber doesn’t work in real life. Appealing to the wonders of future technology is like invoking magic. Yes, we’ve made discoveries that made certain things possible that weren’t before. But we’ve also made discoveries that tell us there are natural limits that more research or effort won’t overcome. Example: the philosopher’s stone. Scientific advance has given us the knowledge that transforming lead to gold is possible. It has also given us the knowledge that the alchemical concept of a simple or cheap process (whether you want to call it the philosopher’s stone or anything else) cannot exist. In the case of recovering these frozen brains, the people who are currently frozen have not “scrambled” their mind-states in a way that future tech can “unscramble”. Rather than strewing the contents of their house all about like a tornado has gone through them, they have burned their house down, saved the ashes, and have expressed a hope that future-tech ™ can and will somehow ‘recover’ that house and its contents from those ashes. And that’s what these would-be revenants have themselves done to their own minds - destroyed the operative bits they wanted to save in the first place. Future Tech ™ may get to the point where recovery of a mind is possible. Nobody denies that. But the idea of recovery of these frozen minds is a different beast. It’s like arguing that just because a nuclear reaction to turn lead to gold is possible then a magic stone to do the same must also be within the realm of possibility. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2022, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ultimate-fate-of-cryogenics-movement/959974/50 "2022-02-24T13:46:50Z")
> [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > And that’s what these would-be revenants have themselves done to their own minds - destroyed the operative bits they wanted to save in the first place. The ancient Egyptians carefully prepared mummies for the afterlife, preserving the whole body—except for that useless goo in the skull, which they scooped out through the nose… ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2022, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ultimate-fate-of-cryogenics-movement/959974/51 "2022-02-24T16:33:59Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > I’ve got it. > > The year: 2999 > The Place: New New York Write it up and shop it around? I know people in the book industry who could give advice where to shop a book around but I have no idea about movies. > [@SunUp](#): > > It’s like the reliquary that held the skull of John the Baptist as a young boy… There are also relics of the 3 Magi [despite the Bible not mentioning how many there were, or something like that] ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2022, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ultimate-fate-of-cryogenics-movement/959974/52 "2022-02-24T16:52:40Z")
The only part of me that exists now, of yesterday’s me, is a person who thinks _they were me_ yesterday. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2022, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ultimate-fate-of-cryogenics-movement/959974/53 "2022-02-24T17:39:50Z")
The classic comic on the subject of uploading consciousness from [Wondermark](http://wondermark.com/c1485/): [![](https://i.postimg.cc/MGxXqsVG/2019-06-28-1485upload.png) ](https://i.postimg.cc/MGxXqsVG/2019-06-28-1485upload.png) [Part 2](http://wondermark.com/c1486/) [Part 3](http://wondermark.com/c1487/) [Part 4](http://wondermark.com/c1488/) [Part 5](http://wondermark.com/c1489/) ---
**Author:** ![Jim\_B](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jim_b/32/4338_2.png) [@Jim\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_B)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2022, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ultimate-fate-of-cryogenics-movement/959974/54 "2022-02-24T21:35:35Z")
I just had to ask. Is [this](https://medium.com/the-infinite-universe/quantum-scrambling-could-lead-to-resurrection-of-the-dead-e5cf3e668119) article relevant to this discussion? (I did read thru it quickly. But it did catch my eye 🙂 .) ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2022, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ultimate-fate-of-cryogenics-movement/959974/55 "2022-02-24T22:12:24Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > I don’t find this argument compelling as a prediction (although I mostly agree with the morality). If it had turned out that the ancient Egyptians had been on the right track and mummification was a way to preserve people, and our current society figured out a technology that could revive some of the pharaohs, we’d for sure 100% do it, right? Even though they were not good people and spent hundreds of slave lifetimes on building monuments to the few god-king dead. A few would be to let the historians question them. Any world leaders would be also. But tens of thousands of the rich? Not unless they had something for them to do they’d be especially suited for. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2022, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ultimate-fate-of-cryogenics-movement/959974/56 "2022-02-24T22:16:41Z")
> [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > But we’ve also made discoveries that tell us there are natural limits that more research or effort won’t overcome. We’ve also made what _we think_ are discoveries about natural limits, only to later find that our model of reality was flawed, and actually those things weren’t limits at all. > [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > In the case of recovering these frozen brains, the people who are currently frozen have not “scrambled” their mind-states in a way that future tech can “unscramble”. A lot of people are asserting this, but I simply don’t believe that it’s for sure correct. Based on our best understanding of neurology today, it is true. But, honestly, our current understanding of neurology is pretty limited. This is not a knock against neurologists. It’s legitimately a very complicated field, and a lot of the sorts of experiments you might want to do are ethically dicey. > [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > That’s the thing - mammoths are comparatively easy. > > DNA itself has a shelf-life (up for some tens of thousands of years or perhaps even a hundred thousand years maybe to have a hope of a full 100% recovery - and that’s if there are plenty of samples). Mammoths fall just within the window and even then it’s more of a 99% thing. But 100 years ago, based on our best understanding of biology, once an organism was extinct, _that was it_ on getting more of them. Then we later acquired the knowledge that actually the information required to do so was actually present for thousands of years in some case, and we’re maybe on the cusp of acquiring the technology to actually create an organism from that information. If you spoke to any biologist 100 years ago and asked them if a mammoth frozen in ice could be used to make more, living mammoths, they’d tell you of course not. It’s literally impossible. As soon as you thawed the mammoth out it would just be dead rotting mammoth mush. But they were wrong. I believe that there is a nonzero chance that current neurologists are also wrong and there will be enough subtle breadcrumbs remaining that sufficiently powerful computers and scanning technology could reconstruct it. So speaking to a neurologist today, potentially hundreds of years before the scientific knowledge to say for certain on this subject exists, should not be considered the last word (even though we agree today’s neurologist is very probably correct). Certainly, they’ll have a better shot with a frozen brain than with one that rotted in the ground decades ago. > [@Voyager](#): > > But tens of thousands of the rich? Not unless they had something for them to do they’d be especially suited for. Agreed. Which makes it a fairly poor bet for some random rich guy to freeze himself, but does not preclude the possibility of _anyone_ being revived (assuming that the technology long-shot actually arrives). ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2022, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ultimate-fate-of-cryogenics-movement/959974/57 "2022-02-24T22:21:14Z")
This is great 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2022, 8:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ultimate-fate-of-cryogenics-movement/959974/58 "2022-02-25T08:41:42Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > If you spoke to any biologist 100 years ago and asked them if a mammoth frozen in ice could be used to make more, living mammoths, they’d tell you of course not. It’s literally impossible. As soon as you thawed the mammoth out it would just be dead rotting mammoth mush. But they were wrong. Curiously, more people have eaten Mammoth ‘mush’ than there are ‘resurected’ Mammoths . . . food,hehe, for thought! ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2022, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ultimate-fate-of-cryogenics-movement/959974/59 "2022-02-25T16:49:29Z")
> [@Jim\_B](#): > > I just had to ask. Is [this](https://medium.com/the-infinite-universe/quantum-scrambling-could-lead-to-resurrection-of-the-dead-e5cf3e668119) article relevant to this discussion? It’s the same old “duplicate the brain somehow” argument. He makes it more science-y by adding quantum scrambling. But he says, “Another objection might be whether unscrambling can actually occur. In the history of the universe, this has never happened.” So all you need to do is throw another impossibility on top of all the known impossibilities and voila! For context, you might note that anyone can put up an article on [Medium.com](http://Medium.com). And that one of his earlier articles is titled “Science may depend on God for its existence.” The article adds up to be less meaningful than the discussion here. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ultimate-fate-of-cryogenics-movement/959974.md?page=2)