Raelifin

TLDR: I flew to Oregon to investigate Nectome, a brain preservation startup, and talk to their entire team. They’re an ambitious company, looking to grow in a way that no cryonics organization has before. Their procedure is probably much better at saving people than other orgs, and is being offered for as little as $20k until the end of April — a (theoretical) 92% discount. (I bought two.) This early-bird pricing is low, in part, due to some severe uncertainties, in both the broader world and in Nectome's ability to succeed as a business. Meta: * I'm Max Harms, an AI alignment researcher at MIRI and author. * This deep-dive only assumes functionalism and a passing familiarity with cryonics, but no particular knowledge of Nectome. * I have been a cryonics enthusiast for my whole adult life, and that is probably biasing my views, at least a little. I want Nectome to succeed. * That said, I am also a rationalist, and I have worked very hard to set aside my wishful thinking and see things with cold objectivity. * Throughout the essay, I've attached explicit probabilities for my claims in parentheticals. You can click these probabilities to access Manifold markets so we can bet. * This essay is titled "Nectome: All That I Know," but technically I know a few things that were off the record and that I agreed not to share. I do not think they change the overall picture very much.[1] Contents: 1. The Problem 2. The History 3. The Team 4. The Plan 5. The Money 6. The Future 7. The Bottom Line 1. The Problem Cryonics has a big problem. The most basic, high-level story says: the patterns that make up a human mind don’t disappear instantly when someone’s heart stops beating, but rather when their brain decomposes. If we reduce the temperature of a brain, this halts decomposition, and gives time for medical technology to progress to the point of potentially being able to rescue the person before their pattern is truly