I've been considering lately whether it would perhaps be best to develop and promote terminology that splits cryonics into two distinct concepts for easier consumption:
1) old-style cryonics, cryopreserving people at the cost of nontrivial damage that can't yet be reversed, and
2) the tech goal of being able to demonstrably bring someone back from a (very low-damage) cryopreserved state.
"Real cryonics" vs "sci-fi cryonics", if you will.
As I reckon it, trying to achieve cryonics definition #2 in your lifetime is no more incredible on the surface than trying to defeat aging or engineer self-improving AI in a similar timeframe. Actually in some ways it seems easier. Yet it gets so much less press. Even cryonics advocates seem rarely prone to enthuse about it.
Is it possible that cryonics #1, as a feature of the collective mental map, is actually in the way of cryonics #2? Should I be worried, for example, that promoting cryonics #1 actually costs 100,000 lives per day over some stretch of future time because it is preventing people from noticing cryonics #2 and actually taking action on it?
Many people I talk to who are new to the topic seem to have some hazy preexisting idea of cryonics #2 that gets mangled up with cryonics #1. Perhaps they would grow into enthusiasts with attention spans for the subject matter if encouraged to pursue this simple-to-grasp concept in its own right, instead of trying to forcibly retrain into more advanced concepts.
while they await the outcome of clinical trials and new approaches
http://xkcd.com/989/ seems relevant despite the slightly different subject matter. Clinical trials can't happen if all the potential subjects are frozen.
The effect does not seem likely to be very strong to me. What we would need for this to be a problem is serious long-term delays in progress. A few short term delays would actually be acceptable in this context.
Consider that:
Most potential test subjects lives are currently being wasted. Disease progression and death does not happen on a set schedule, and we only have data and brainpower to support a limited number of experiments anyway. This would give us a high precision control over the death and dying process, making it easier to study.
I've been considering lately whether it would perhaps be best to develop and promote terminology that splits cryonics into two distinct concepts for easier consumption:
1) old-style cryonics, cryopreserving people at the cost of nontrivial damage that can't yet be reversed, and
2) the tech goal of being able to demonstrably bring someone back from a (very low-damage) cryopreserved state.
"Real cryonics" vs "sci-fi cryonics", if you will.
As I reckon it, trying to achieve cryonics definition #2 in your lifetime is no more incredible on the surface than trying to defeat aging or engineer self-improving AI in a similar timeframe. Actually in some ways it seems easier. Yet it gets so much less press. Even cryonics advocates seem rarely prone to enthuse about it.
Is it possible that cryonics #1, as a feature of the collective mental map, is actually in the way of cryonics #2? Should I be worried, for example, that promoting cryonics #1 actually costs 100,000 lives per day over some stretch of future time because it is preventing people from noticing cryonics #2 and actually taking action on it?
Many people I talk to who are new to the topic seem to have some hazy preexisting idea of cryonics #2 that gets mangled up with cryonics #1. Perhaps they would grow into enthusiasts with attention spans for the subject matter if encouraged to pursue this simple-to-grasp concept in its own right, instead of trying to forcibly retrain into more advanced concepts.