The scientific perspective that informs Sebastian Seung’s bestselling popular neuroscience book Connectome is so familiar to cryonicists that the bulk of this book could be mistaken for an extensive introduction to the philosophy of mind embodied in cryonics. His book offers a rigorous exposition of the view that our identity is encoded in the connections between neurons, the “connectome,” which itself is shaped by our genes and life experience. The strength of this book is not only its review of the empirical evidence that supports this outlook but its encouraging the reader to think about its implications. Readers who are intimately familiar with the argument in favor of cryonics should not assume that there is little to learn from this book. As imaging and storage technologies evolve, cryonicists can do more now than in the past to learn about their individual connectome, strengthening the likelihood of successful resuscitation.

One important element of the connectionist premise that structures Seung’s book is that it does not completely resolve competing theories about how the brain works. For example, the recognition that long-term memory (and identity) does not depend on transient electrical activity but has a more robust long-term physical basis that persists during cessation of brain activity (examples are hypothermic circulatory arrest and short periods of cardiac arrest) does not imply a single perspective on how the genome provides the neurological bases for memory formation, retention, recollection, and re-prioritization. One interesting perspective, “neural Darwinism,” which was anticipated by the economist Friedrich Hayek, proposes a theory of brain function in which a genetically determined wiring of the brain is subject to competing experiences that strengthen or weaken populations of synapses throughout life. One of the interesting implications of this theory is that consciousness can be treated as an emergent outcome of micro-events in the brain, instead of a mysterious, autonomous property of the brain (think of the curious concept of “free will”).

Seung devotes two chapters to the nature-nurture debate through a connectionist perspective. One of the unfortunate effects of the nature-nurture distinction is that it masks the obvious point that what we call “nurture” (upbringing, environment, etc.) is not exempt from biology but simply concerns the relationship between biological systems and between a biological system and its physical environment. Social scientists who have a strong “nurture”-bias should therefore not be exempted from describing “nurture” in verifiable physical terms, something that many of them do not feel the slightest obligation to do. Another unattractive feature of this debate is that it is routinely portrayed as one between genetic determinists and “environmentalists.” In reality, the debate is mostly between serious scholars who acknowledge that behavior and learning are shaped by both genetics and the environment and those who basically consider the mind a blank slate—a position that is clearly contradicted by existing science but remains popular as a premise in contemporary public policy and certain political ideologies. One of the interesting topics that Seung discusses in these chapters is whether the plasticity of the brain changes over time.

From the perspective of cryonics, the relationship between the genome and the connectome is of great importance. If some of the basic wiring of the brain that encodes personality and temperament is determined by genes and is fixed (or mostly fixed) at an early age, then some parts of the connectome might be inferred from a person’s genome, which opens up an exciting research program for cryonics. A systematic study of the field where genetics meets neurodevelopment might help in understanding the relationship between the genome and brain ultrastructure. This in turn could assist in future resuscitation attempts. To date, the assumption in cryonics has been that the complete ultrastructure of the patient must be preserved (or at least preserved in such a manner that it can be inferred), but if some of it can be inferred from the genome the repair requirements for resuscitation of cryonics patients may be relaxed. Looking for such invariable features in variable brains is an important element of a credible cryonics resuscitation research program.

The power of comparing connectomes is also recognized by Seung in a separate chapter (“Comparing”). There he reviews technologies and approaches to compare connectomes with the goal of understanding personality differences and understanding neuropathologies or “connectopathies.” This chapter is one of several in which the author reviews the existing and emerging technologies that are enabling us to produce a complete connectome, including the innovative equipment of brain preservation advocate member Kenneth Hayworth to perform serial electron microscopy. Also discussed are technologies such as diffusion MRI (dMRI), which allows for non-invasive mapping of the connectome at the macro scale using water as a probe. This technology may not be adequate to map the connectome at the cellular level but its contribution to comparative connectomics has already been recognized. It may also hold promise as a means to collect identity-critical information about an individual while alive, which again may lessen the computational challenges involved in cryonics resuscitation. One of the exciting prospects of the field of connectomics is that it can contribute to a further narrowing of the challenges involved in restoring cryonics patients to good health.

Seung closes his chapters on emerging technologies with a review of the prospects of connectomics for the treatment of neurological diseases. One of the potential treatments involves the re-programming of a person’s own (skin) cells to neurons, which can then be introduced in the brain to treat a disease or enhance brain function. Such an approach may also be used to fill the “missing gaps” in the brain of a cryonics patient (alternative technologies include molecular construction of neurons by advanced molecular nanotech­nology).

At this point, I think we can foresee a rather optimistic future for cryonics research and the prospect of resuscitation. Instead of conceptualizing cryonics as the preservation of clinically dead people in the hope that future medicine can restore these people to good health, we can envision a more complex, but more encouraging, path. The work of resuscitation and restoring identity is not something that is expected to occur exclusively in the future but rather will be an ongoing process that starts as soon as the patient is cryopreserved. And with the rise of advanced genomics and non-destructive imaging technologies, some of the initial work can be done while the person is still alive. One of the exciting aspects of being a cryonicist today is that you can take proactive steps to learn about your own connectome and other identity-relevant information.

Seung devotes no less than a whole chapter to human cryopreservation (and the associated idea of chemopreservation). The author recognizes that his own views about the connectome are so similar to the philosophy of mind that underpins cryonics that he needs to do some justice to the rationale of cryonics. One unfortunate aspect is that he situates his discussion of cryonics in the context of religion and immortality. It is undeniable that some cryonicists are motivated by visions of personal immortality but this idea is not intrinsic to cryonics (neither is mind uploading or transhumanism.) Properly conceived, cryonics is an experimental medical procedure that aims to stabilize patients at cryogenic temperatures in anticipation of future treatment. What really distinguishes cryonics from mainstream medicine is not uncertainty (which is a fact of life), but the temporal separation of stabilization and treatment. One regrettable implication of attributing religious motives to people who make cryonics arrangements is that it cheapens the use of the word ‘religious.’ Instead of referring to worship of a higher being, it is here used as a strong belief in something in the absence of conclusive evidence. But by putting the bar so low, Seung (unintentionally) classifies many aspects of life, including choosing novel experimental treatments in mainstream medicine, as “religious.”

What really distinguishes cryonics from mainstream medicine is not uncertainty (which is a fact of life), but the temporal separation of stabilization and treatment

At one point Seung writes that research aimed at demonstrating that contemporary vitrification technologies can preserve the connectome will “finally bring some science to Ettinger’s wager.” This is a remarkable statement because even the earliest arguments in favor of cryonics were never presented in the form of a pure wager. In his book The Prospect of Immortality, Robert Ettinger reviews existing evidence from cryobiology and neuroscience and argues that, combined with the expectation that medicine will continue to evolve, the choice to be cryopreserved is a rational decision. Since Ettinger’s book cryonics organizations and wealthy donors have expended a lot of money and time in perfecting preservation techniques and looking at the effects of new technologies on the structure and viability of the brain. Compared to the state of, let’s say, interventive biogerontology, the scientific progress that has been made in cryonics is not trivial. For example, it is doubtful whether the widespread adoption of vitrification in mainstream cryobiology would have been possible without sustained research into using this approach for complex organs by cryonics supporters. To my knowledge, cryonicists have always been quite eager to generate experimental knowledge to inform their decision making. Now that more advanced technologies to map the human brain are becoming available, cryonics organizations are eager to use them instead of just passively maintaining their “faith.”

Ultimately, Seung still fails to recognize that cryonics inherently involves an element of uncertainty that cannot be eliminated without it not being cryonics anymore (i.e., elimination of uncertainty makes it suspended animation). To his credit, the author recognizes that it is not necessary for a preservation technology to perfectly preserve the connectome as long as it remains possible to infer the original state (or missing information) from what has been preserved. We can speculate what the limits of such “neural archeology” will be, but I do not think anyone can make conclusive arguments. In this sense, cryonics cannot be completely moved from the realm of informed decision making into the realm of indisputable fact. An element of uncertainty will always be associated with it, even if the experimental evidence in favor of this medical procedure keeps mounting.

The author also discusses alternative preservation approaches such as chemical fixation and plastination. One drawback of existing chemical preservation technologies is that they are irreversible by contemporary techniques (literally a “dead end”) and do not permit whole organism functional recovery.

There is one formidable challenge that will inevitably arise if chemical preservation is offered as a means of personal survival. It is how to deal with the fact that if chemical fixation is delayed, perfusion impairment in the brain will prevent complete cross-linking of biomolecules. Chemopreservation requires that the procedure be started prior to, or immediately following, circulatory arrest. In absence of this, the fate of a person’s connectome is uncertain, and may even worsen during storage—a problem cryonics is exempt from. This can be mitigated by complementary immersion fixation and/or ultra-low temperature storage but this introduces all the kinds of complexities and trade-offs that have traditionally been associated with cryonics. Clinical chemopreservation also requires traditional Standby, Stabilization, and Transport (SST) procedures to bring most cases in the realm of good preservation.

One interesting consequence of thinking about preservation and evidence from a connectomics perspective is that it provides a powerful framework how to think about evidence. Obtaining a few good electron micrographs from the brain can co-exist with poor preservation in other areas. Good viability (even whole-brain tests like EEG) can co-exist with regional compromise of viability. It is not possible to present a complete connectome for each experimental or clinical case at this point in time. In that sense research aimed at complete long-term functional survival (like the CryoDAO CryoRat project) still remains an important benchmark.

The book ends with a chapter about mind uploading. One misconception about cryonics is that people seek it as a means to mind uploading, or that reviving the person in a computer is the aim of cryonics. In fact, the late Robert Ettinger became a vocal critic of mind uploading in his final years. He offered a lot of arguments for his skepticism but his main concern was that questions about the feasibility of mind uploading are ultimately empirical questions which cannot be settled by deductive reasoning and dogmatic claims about the nature of the mind or consciousness. One of the amusing aspects of the debate about mind uploading is that proponents and skeptics both accuse the other of not being consistent materialists. Interestingly enough, Seung makes an observation relevant to this debate when he writes how the idea that “information is the new soul” is implied in the mind uploading project.

Despite some misgivings about how Seung presents and conceptualizes cryonics, I am unaware of another book that offers such a clear exposition of the relationship between brain and identity that informs human cryopreservation (and chemopreservation). The most rewarding thing for me was a stronger recognition that the idea of the connectome is not just a premise but opens the door to multiple fruitful research programs aimed at personal survival.

About the Author: Sebastian Seung is Professor of Computational Neuroscience and Physics at MIT and Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He has made important advances in artificial intelligence and neuroscience. His research has been published in leading scientific journals and also featured in the New York Times, Technology Review, and the Economist. (From the dust jacket.)

Dr. Seung was also a speaker at the Alcor-40 conference in October 2012

[This slightly revised and expanded review originally appeared in Venturist News and Views, June-July 2012, 6-7 and Cryonics, September-October 2012]

The Biostasis Summit is back this year as part of Vitalist Bay 2026, a four-day longevity festival at Lighthaven Campus in Berkeley, CA. Full day of cryonics/biostasis programming on Sunday, May 17.

The day features org leaders from Alcor, Tomorrow Bio, CryoPets, Sparks Brain Preservation, and Nectome making the case for what the field should prioritize through 2031 and defending those priorities in front of peers and the broader audience.

A science panel with Greg Fahy, Aschwin de Wolf, Ralf Spindler, Nick Llewellyn, and Andy McKenzie covers where biostasis research stands today and where it's headed.

The afternoon includes a science deep dive, lightning talks (including a CryoDAO Whole-Body Cryopreservation project update), organization deep dive working sessions, a talk from Ralph Merkle, and a Cryosphere fireside chat.

Schedule:

10:00 - 10:20 | State of the Endeavor — Max More
10:20 - 11:10 | The Cryonics Organizations & Their Visions — James Arrowood, Emil Kendziorra, Kai Micah Mills, Jordan Sparks, Jessica Radley
11:10 - 11:55 | Biostasis Science: Where It's At and Where It's Headed by 2030 — Greg Fahy, Aschwin de Wolf, Ralf Spindler, Nick Llewellyn, Andy McKenzie
2:00 - 2:45 | Science Deep Dive
2:45 - 3:30 | Lightning Talks — Aschwin de Wolf, Rudi Hoffman, Carrie Radomski, Mark Woodward, and others!
4:00 - 4:45 | Cryonics Organization Deep Dive
5:00 - 5:30 | Ralph Merkle
5:30 - 6:00 | Cryosphere Fireside Chat

Use code CRYOSPHERE-70 for 70% off tickets at vitalistbay.com

“If they could get a corpse to sit up on an operating table, they would jubilantly exclaim, “It’s alive!” And so would we. Who cares that human beings evolved from slimy materials? We can live with that, or most of us can.” Thomas Ligotti

The persistence of pessimism

When I sent out an email message soliciting contributions on the topic of philosophical pessimism and antinatalism one person declined with the reasonable response that such positions are only taken seriously by a handful of obscure philosophers. Humans have evolved to procreate and seek happiness. What is the point?

The reason why I have not been inclined to so easily dismiss the recent renaissance of philosophical pessimism is because negative and tragic views about life are woven throughout human history and culture. Most dominant religions have little positive to say about the state of humanity (after the fall) and the prospects for a life devoid of suffering on earth. Despite its relative epistemological sophistication, even Buddhism presents a picture of the universe as a source of suffering. Much can be said about pessimism, but not that its influence is outside the mainstream.

Even the antinatalist position that it is better never to have been, and that we have a moral obligation not to procreate, is not completely obscure. Who has not had the experience of talking to someone who wonders why anyone would want to bring children into this world? In fact, modern culture persists in linking intellectualism to pessimism. This perhaps should not be surprising because, as a general rule, excessive thinking comes at the expense of sensual experience. Perhaps another reason why many intellectuals are biased towards pessimism is because it provides them the opportunity to rescue us with their ideas.

Philosophical aversion to pessimism can be found among the finest thinkers in the history of philosophy, though. There is David Hume, the great empiricist thinker, and an amiable and optimistic person. Then there is Friedrich Nietzsche, who, despite a life of disease and isolation, recognized that pessimism is not an objective feature of the universe but the expression of a weak and oversensitive mind. The twentieth century witnessed a strong renaissance of the empiricism of David Hume in the form of logical positivism. These philosophers rightly abstained from putting forward a “philosophy of life,” but optimism about science and humanity’s potential is clear in their foundational writings. It is also interesting to note that the most recent forceful responses to pessimism have not come from professional philosophers but from libertarian-leaning economists who present data to prove that by many measures life is getting better all the time.

In my opinion, the most obvious question that can be raised about philosophical pessimism is whether its supporting claims are factual descriptions of reality or just expressions of temperament. Another interesting question is whether philosophical pessimism necessarily obliges us to the antinatalist position. In seeking answers to these questions we turn to the literature of contemporary antinatalism.

Jim Crawford’s Confessions of an Antinatalist is a highly readable autobiographical exposition of antinatalism. Thomas Ligotti’s book The Conspiracy Against the Human Race is more ambitious in scope and contains a wealth of historical information on pessimism, discussions of modern science, and, not surprisingly, a review of the theme of pessimism in horror literature. David Benatar’s Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence is the most rigorous exposition of antinatalism to date. This book covers a lot of ground and I will confine myself to some of its main topics only.

The harm of coming into existence

In its purest form antinatalism may not be compelling but the framework that informs this position rests on a couple of reasonable premises: (1) we do not impose a harm (or withhold a benefit) by not bringing someone into this world; (2) we do impose a harm by bringing someone into the world when this person’s life will be (very) bad. Jim Crawford believes that these premises are evident. The question is then about how to determine that a person’s life is (or will be) bad, and how much consideration the interests of parents should be given.

One of the most problematic aspects about the work of Crawford and other antinatalists is that they have little patience for the argument that life is better than they think it is. In some passages it is hard to distinguish the antinatalist from the paternalist. If people think that life is much better than Crawford makes it out to be, the standard rejoinder is that these people suffer from a form of false consciousness (pessimists frequently use words like “truly” and “really”). In some passages this (quasi-Marxist) attitude borders on intolerance. A prime example can be found in Crawford’s discussion of childhood. For many people growing up was a period of great happiness and discovery. Crawford’s agitated dismissal of such accounts introduces an element of illiberalism in what is otherwise a humanistic endeavor. It is in these passages that antinatalism turns into bitter ideology.

The way the term “bias” is employed is problematic. It is used as if there is an objective perspective that can reached were it not for misleading evolutionary biases coming between the person and the universe. At times the author appears to be saying that if evolution did not select in favor of those wanting to survive we would not want to survive. This is not particularly helpful. Some of these “biases” do not cover up anything but just make us happier.

Let us assume that there is an objective, material reality that can be known through the use of reason and empirical observation. This does not mean that there is one “correct” fit between an organism and the world. A person who is manically depressed perceives the world in a different matter than a person who is not. How we are “wired” and respond to our environment is not a matter of “correct” or “incorrect.” Thinking otherwise would be hard to reconcile with an evolutionary outlook in which life is just the outcome of random interactions of organic molecules.

One argument that remains available to the pessimist would be that the probability of creating a miserable life is too high to warrant procreation. But it is at this point that the “transhumanist” can enter the debate and claim that our expected quality of life is no longer just the outcome of a “random” evolutionary process but can be brought under rational control. We should endeavor to make happy children.

In my opinion, the short response to empirical pessimism can take the following form. Pleasure and pain are both part of existence. For some sentient beings pleasure outweighs pain, for other sentient beings pain outweighs pleasure. A moral agent cannot add up, subtract, or divide these elements for life as a whole to produce an objective quality-of-existence function. The antinatalist runs into the same problems as all the utilitarians and welfare economists who have tried to define a social utility function as a guide for public policy. As Thomas Ligotti notes in his book, “…the reason for the eternal stalemate between optimists and pessimists, is that no possible formula can be established to measure proportions and types of hurt and happiness in the world. If such a formula could be established, then either pessimists or optimists would have to give in to their adversaries.” I think that the best response available to the antinatalist would be to follow David Benatar’s example and present a strictly formal argument, or simply argue that in case of doubt, we should abstain from procreation.

Escape strategies

After spending the bulk of his book persuading the reader that life is suffering, Crawford discusses what he calls “Escape Strategies.” In his treatment of Buddhism as an escape strategy he could simply have made the obvious internal critique that desire may be sufficient, but not necessary for suffering. Crawford’s treatment of Christianity is scathing, which may indicate regret because the author himself was a Christian for awhile. Why have children if there is the prospect of eternal damnation? I think that a Christian can respond by saying that following Scripture is more important than applying human morality to God’s creation.

The last escape strategy that Crawford reviews is hope, which turns into a discussion of futurism and transhumanism. The argument that many of those pursuing life extension will not be around to benefit from it is too simplistic. Unless the brain is completely destroyed at death, the neuro-anatomical basis of identity can be preserved at cryogenic temperatures for a very long time. No delusional expectations about the future are required. People in cryostasis have time. But then the author delivers a critique that I think deserves serious treatment by transhumanists (discussions about “friendly AI” do not exhaust this topic by any means). In a nutshell, we should not expect that technological progress will necessarily produce moral progress. And even if it will, accidents happen. Technologies that can be designed to produce great joy can be used to create great suffering as well. If humanity can manufacture hell without God, the case for pessimism and antinatalism may be strengthened.

There is one area of agreement between antinatalism and transhumanism that has not been widely recognized to date and that is a shared suspicion of evolution. Whereas transhumanists tend to emphasize the imperfections and suboptimal outcomes of evolution, antinatalists are deeply disturbed by it because it selects for the one thing that they associate with suffering: life and procreation.

Interestingly enough, the anticipation of dark future technologies may present a (subconscious) obstacle for many people considering cryonics. Hundreds of millions of people believe in the craziest things like astrology and psychoanalysis, but only a handful of people (around 5000) have made biostasis arrangements. This lack of interest can hardly be attributed to ignorance, and perhaps the most persuasive answer may be hidden in Crawford’s book. Cryonics basically forces people to deal with the question whether they would like to be “born again” in a far and unknown future. As a general rule, the answer seems to be “no.” Antinatalists may find additional ammunition for their position in studying the reasons for the low sign-up rate for cryonics.

Mahayana antinatalism

Antinatalists should expect a lot of obvious questions such as “are most people not glad to be alive?” or “why not kill yourself?” I fear that Crawford’s answer to the question “why not kill yourself?” risks undermining the orthodox antinatalist project. If empathic sensibility can make an enlightened antinatalist want to stick around, it is arguable that antinatalists should make an effort to remain alive in an effort to reduce the amount of (future) suffering in the universe. Antinatalists then become life extensionists. To use conventional Buddhist terminology, perhaps at some point there will be a Theravada version of antinatalism (focused primarily on non-procreation) and a Mahayana version of antinatalism (concerned with the elimination of the suffering of all sentient beings).

David Benatar runs into a similar problem when he ponders the question whether bringing new people into the world could be justified to reduce the suffering of the last remaining people. It seems to me that how an antinatalist deals with such practical moral issues depends on how the ethics of antinatalism is conceived. Do we have a “right” not to come into existence or is the objective of antinatalism to juggle with small and great suffering towards the ultimate end of its complete abolition?

If antinatalism is conceived as a strictly individualistic endeavor, concerns about the suffering of all humans can be easily dismissed. But in that case antinatalism would just collapse into individualist pessimism. Who cares about suffering, as long as it is not me! This is not the kind of sentiment that is generally found in antinatalist writings. I do not think that the question whether there might be moral reasons to remain alive, and, yes, bring into being forms of life that are benevolent but ruthless towards suffering, can be easily dismissed.

At one point Crawford observes that secular and smart people are having fewer children. This does not look good for the inevitable triumph of antinatalism. Under such scenarios antinatalism produces dysgenics, and if one believes that stupidity and evil go hand in hand, increased suffering for more people.

It is not unlikely that, in practice, antinatalism leads to more suffering because it will only be adopted by sympathetic human beings such as Crawford. The antinatalist cannot argue that the amount of suffering in the universe cannot be increased nor decreased. The whole point of antinatalism after all is that suffering can and should be decreased. But how to go about this may be more complicated than it appears. A sober assessment of the practical implications of antinatalism may require revision of the antinatalist position itself.

Confessions of an Antinatalist is a fine and humane book, but in the end it is also a book of the converted written for the already converted. Thomas Sowell has noted that in economics there are no solutions but only trade-offs. I would not be surprised if antinatalists will come to a similar conclusion at some point.

Suffering without meaning

Thomas Ligotti is a contemporary horror writer whose fiction work is marked by cosmic nihilism, alienation, and the fragile nature of reality. As a great admirer of the works of Ligotti I have been reluctant to comment on his non-fiction. Fortunately, unlike many other artists, Ligotti has little interest in “critical theory” or political lecturing. His book The Conspiracy Against the Human Race concerns the bleak fate of humanity in a deterministic and indifferent universe.

The book starts off with an introduction by obscurantist philosopher Ray Brassier, whose work would certainly qualify for the description that Ligotti gives to Schopenhauer’s oeuvre (“too overwrought in the proving to be anything more than another intellectual labyrinth for specialists in perplexity”).

Reading Ligotti’s account of why humans reject truly bleak views about life it would be interesting to see how antinatalists respond to the existence of orthodox Calvinism. Accepting a universe without free will that is ruled by an omnipotent God who has decreed that the majority of people will suffer in hell for His self-glorification seems a lot more terrifying to me. Nonetheless, hundres of millions of people have accepted this theological perspective. The existence of Reformed theology lays to rest the view that humans have an intrinsic desire to avoid doctrines that are too terrible too contemplate.

When Ligotti discusses the work of antinatalist Peter Wessel Zapfe once more we find the view that there is an objective predicament of mankind that is hidden by false consciousness. It is remarkable to see the similarities between those who argue that we do not want look our “oppression” straight in the face and those who argue that we avoid coming to terms with the horror of existence. What is often lacking here is the recognition that there is also a wealth of literature about human suffering that supports the idea that we would be happier if we did look nature straight in the face. No nonsense about “moral responsibility,” “sin,” “duty,” “the greater good” etc. Marquis de Sade, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Max Stirner are representatives of this school of thought.

What is intriguing about Ligotti’s book is that it reads like a rather delicate balancing act. On one hand, we have the detached observer (my personal favorite) who is bemused at the show business of both the optimists and pessimists. On the other hand, it is unmistakable that Ligotti feels affinity with the philosophers of cosmic horror and pessimism. His fiction does not leave much room for any other conclusion. But The Conspiracy Against the Human Race contains more than a few (unintended) suggestions for a more ironic and quietist view of life.

Hard determinism and the illusion of the self

I have a hard time relating to Ligotti’s discussion about determinism and pessimism. Hard determinism (or “hard imcompatibilism”) is just a part of the “scientific worldview” and it is not obvious to me why it should be a source of despair. Ligotti then discusses the existence of the “self.” I am inclined to think there is an important difference between free will and the self. Modern science can make sense of the world and human action without assuming free will. I am not convinced that this is possible if the concept of the self is rejected. Unlike free will, the recognition of a “self” comes at a later stage in evolution. It has been argued that our ancestors could not clearly distinguish the self from its surroundings and thus were not able to discover the laws of physics and use it to their benefit. The philosopher Hans Reichenbach developed a pragmatic case for the existence of the external world and the self in his seminal work Experience And Prediction: An Analysis of the Foundations And the Structure of Knowledge.

Why would anything that neuroscientists discover about the self and how it is constructed be a source of dread? If you believe that life is the result of random meetings of organic molecules, it stands to reason that the physical basis of consciousness and the self reflects such a process. Why would accepting such ideas make one a “heroic pessimist?” Why the pessimism at all? Ligotti even agrees. “One would think that neuroscientists and geneticists would have as much reason to head for the cliffs because little by little they have been finding that much of our thought and behavior is attributable to neural wiring and heredity rather than to personal control over the individuals we are, or think we are. But they do not feel suicide to be mandatory just because their laboratory experiments are informing them that human nature may be nothing but puppet nature. Not the slightest tingle of uncanniness or horror runs up and down their spines, only the thrill of discovery. Most of them reproduce and do not believe there is anything questionable in doing so.”

Ligotti also discussed transhumanism, but not in much depth. As a transhumanism skeptic myself, I found little to object to but it seems that Ligotti’s real target is what is called Singularitarianism. This part in the book seems something of a missed opportunity because there is substantial overlap between Ligotti’s fiction and themes that are discussed by transhumanist writers.

When Ligotti reviews near-death experiences and ego-death, the common-sense neurological explanations that were invoked in discussions of free will and the self are largely absent (a notable exception is his discussion of the possibility that a brain tumor can cause an “enlightened” state). For many critical-care physicians and neuroscientists it is a given that many people suffer (regional) cerebral ischemia during the dying process. These periods of transient oxygen deprivation can produce long term damage and a “re-wiring” of the brain, which can explain the new perspectives these people adopt. From a physicalist perspective, death of the ego is (partial) death of the brain.

In Ligotti’s book the reason for pessimism is multi-factorial. It includes the lack of meaning in an indifferent universe, the reality of hard determinism, and the illusion of the self. The works of Benatar and Crawford are more restricted in scope and mostly focus on more mundane suffering. Ligotti’s philosophical horror is much richer, but I wonder how much of it will resonate with people who embrace a scientific view of the universe.

There is a lot in Ligotti’s fine book that I have not discussed such as the extensive treatment of pessimism in horror fiction, loads of interesting philosophical and scientific references, plus illuminating discussions of obscure authors such as Peter Wessel Zappfe and Philipp Mainlander. As such, it can also be considered as an indispensable reference for philosophical pessimism and cosmic horror.

Empiricism and non-existence

David Benatar is a rigorous philosopher. His work can be situated in the analytic tradition and he makes an honest attempt to anticipate objections to his own views. When he argues for positions using mainly logical arguments he is quite persuasive. A being that does not exist can neither be harmed nor benefited. I cannot see how this argument (or tautology?) can be successfully refuted. But when Benatar attempts to argue that the quality of life of most people is much worse than they think it is, multiple challenges arise. I do not think this is the result of Benatar’s poor reasoning but the fields that he relies on – evolution, social psychology, happiness research and the study of cognitive biases – are notorious for allowing cherry picking. Ultimately Benatar also cannot escape the charge that he pays excessive attention to theories that claim that we think we are happier than we really are.

And, like Crawford, Benatar cannot completely escape the charge of illiberalism. One possible response to the charge of illiberalism is to object that it is those who procreate who are illiberal by “forcing” their optimism on the unborn. But since it is nonsense to talk about a non-existing person objecting to something, the only meaningful empirical determination if someone is being harmed is to consult the person who has come into existence unless one can predict the future with great confidence.

Benatar is on more agreeable ground when he simply derives his antinatalism from uncertainty; “some know that their baby will be among the unfortunate. Nobody knows, however, that their baby will be one of the allegedly lucky few.” It may never be completely possible to predict the future with complete certainty but with the rise of technologies such as prenatal tests and genetic engineering it should be possible to make more evidence-based decisions about the quality of a future person’s life.

Benatar believes that even if his empirical argument about the poor quality of our lives fails, his formal argument from asymmetry is still left standing. He thinks that even if there is one single painful pinprick in an otherwise good life, we still harm that person by bringing him into existence. I think that Benatar is “proving” too much here. We can agree that anyone who conceives a child cannot escape the prospect that this person will experience some harm. But from this it does not follow that the person is harmed in a meaningful moral sense without considering the expected overall quality of that life. Perhaps Benatar would respond that I have not understood his argument, and I will admit that I have a difficult time understanding why the possibility that a person’s pleasures are expected to outweigh the pains do not alter his argument. I think that both bringing into existence a life that is invariably good and a life that is generally good can be morally defended on the grounds that there will not be any post-natal moral objections from the person involved.

Of course, we are not morally obliged to do so, because we will not deprive the unborn of such a good life if we don’t have children. But since most parents have a positive interest in having children, in practice this tips the scales in favor of some (but not all!) procreation. One problem I can see with my argument is that it might permit the creation of a life form that would experience great suffering but with an unalterable survival instinct and no cognitive possibility of moral blame or regret. Some antinatalists might even claim that this is a rather accurate description of the human race as it exists today!

As an empiricist, I generally give the benefit of doubt to empirical observations when they appear to conflict with logical reasoning. I think that this preference itself can be justified on historic and pragmatic grounds. The claim that coming into existence is always a harm is not consistent with the reports of all those who have come into existence. That seems to be a non-trivial epistemological roadblock for antinatalism.

When Benatar discusses the moral duty not to have children he runs into the obvious problem of how the interests of the parents should be weighed against the interests of the child. One does not need to be an ethical egoist to believe that the interests of the parents count for something. In this case the question returns to how bad the life of most people is and, as discussed, this is a rather vulnerable part of antinatalism. Benatar attempts to answer the obvious objection that most people who have been born do not regret this or blame their parents. But when I read his thoughts on “indoctrination” I only see further evidence of the anti-liberalism in antinatalist writings.

In fairness to Benatar (who seems to identify himself as a liberal of some sorts), he does defend the legal right to procreation because he admits that there can be reasonable disagreement about his views. I think this point is particularly important for antinatalism since reasonable objections often come from the very people whose lives Benatar characterizes as very bad. Ultimately, though, one could argue that saying that something constitutes a great harm but allowing people the “right” to do so is incoherent, or at least a strange perspective on things.

Benatar highlights the importance of making a distinction between the decision to bring someone into existence and the decision to continue life. Even if we commit to the idea that it is better never to have been we can still have reasons for wanting to continue life. As a matter of fact, Benatar entertains the argument that the prospect of death itself is one of the reasons why existence is bad. Those who follow Epicurus believe that death cannot be experienced and thus cannot be a bad thing for the person. This is an extremely difficult argument to refute, but Benatar’s discussion of this topic is quite illuminating because he points out that those who hold this position may also have to commit to the view that death can never be good for a person. One only needs to imagine a person whose life is one of continuous suffering to see that this is not a plausible argument.

Benatar is less hostile to religion than Crawford and Ligotti but I do not think he can successfully escape the objection that antinatalism requires an atheist perspective. It cannot permit arguments that the “harm” of coming into existence serves a greater good which cannot be evaluated by human standards of morality. One does not have to be a scripturalist to note that Benatar is only concerned with the fate of humans and not with the interests of God. Antinatalism may not just require atheism, its conceptual framework has explicit anti-religious implications because it considers one of the defining acts of a supernatural being - the creation of sentient lifeforms - as morally suspect.

Perhaps Benatar cannot see any positive value in human suffering because his information about Creation is incomplete. Theodicies that reconcile the existence of God and the existence of Evil are not difficult to generate. As Plotinus has observed, “We are like people ignorant of painting who complain that the colours are not beautiful everywhere in the picture: but the Artist has laid on the appropriate tint to every spot.”

Meta-ethics and evolution

I am not aware that there has been much discussion of the meta-ethics that underpins the antinatalist argument. It seems to be taken for granted that the objective of moral discourse is to minimize suffering from an impartial perspective (and even then it can be questioned whether this supports antinatalism). But such a perspective of morality can be questioned. A Hobbesian might argue that the objective of morality is to facilitate mutual advantageous interaction. In such a contractarian enterprise there is little room for the interests of the unborn because they are no part of the “state of nature” and no deal needs to be struck with them. A Humean approach to morals would emphasis the spontaneous generation of conventions without appealing to objective standards of “good” or “harm.”

Furthermore, there is no god-given definition of harm. If harm is defined too narrowly, a lot of suffering will be permitted. If harm is defined to broadly the term because vacuous. One of the problems in Benatar’s argument from asymmetry is that that it fails to do justice to the perspective of the person who is being “harmed.” This problem is not eliminated by substituting logic for empirical investigation. Actually, it would be legitimate to ask whether Benatar is a rationalist who settles an empirical matter with purely logical arguments.

Mathematician and immortalist philosopher Mike Perry has observed, “Benatar’s thinking is not conducive to reproductive fitness.” Antinatalists will just remove themselves from the gene-pool by declining to procreate.

A potential response available to the antinatalist is that this scenario itself does not mean that the moral recommendations of antinatalism are incorrect. But should antinatalist arguments not incorporate arguments about its feasibility? Ought implies can and if antinatalism is not compatible with the most rudimentary notions of evolution, can it qualify as a credible moral theory? Should, as transhumanist David Pearce has suggested, the desire to eliminate suffering not be channeled in more realistic and productive directions? One provocative response to this argument that, to my knowledge, no antinatalist has produced yet is not to forgo antinatalism but to advocate coercive antinatalism and murder for the long-term greater good.

If we look at all these elements together, there is a non-trivial challenge here. Antinatalists start from arbitrary (meta) ethical premises, push logical arguments to extremes, cherry pick the scientific literature. Antinatalism is selected against by evolution, may produce dysgenics in practice, and is actively hostile towards the dominant religions. A philosophy that is neither favored by evolution nor religion has little going for it in the struggle for ideas.

Is antinatalism even possible as a practical program? Unless all organic life is terminated, complex sentient lifeforms will just re-appear to the scene again and the whole show will start again. “Non-existence is hard to do.” In reality, I think this is the biggest show-topper. Like most special plans for the world, antinatalism requires a degree of control that we may not have, cannot maintain, or (paradoxically) lose when we succeed.

Antinatalists and life extensionists

One could think that cryonicists and life extensionists should be repulsed by antinatalism. I think such a view would be mistaken. All the antinatalist authors discussed here are motivated by empathy for the suffering of all sentient life. We should also welcome the analytical and physicalist perspectives that underpin their writings. Too much (Continental) philosophy is simply an insult to the intellect and a waste of time. If a case should be made for pessimism it needs be stated in a form that is amenable to reasoned debate and empirical investigation.

Of more specific interest to life extensionists is the plausible prospect that our abilities to decrease suffering will (necessarily?) be matched by our abilities to increase suffering too. This is a possibility that should be studied in great detail by advocates of molecular nanotechnology, strong AI, and substrate-independent minds.

It is no secret that cryonicists (or any kind of biostasis advocates) are underperforming in terms of reproduction. But as Howard V. Hendrix discusses in the article “Dual Immortality, No Kids: The Dink Link between Birthlessness and Deathlessness in Science Fiction,” this may not be a coincidence. If biological immortality becomes a credible option, having children as a substitute for personal survival will lose much of its appeal.

Most rewarding for cryonicists is the unique perspective that antinatalists can bring to the debate concerning why so few people have made cryonics arrangements. The hostility of many people towards cryonics cannot be explained if people categorically believe that meaningful resuscitation (revival) is impossible. It is the prospect that cryonics may actually work that induces severe anxiety. If the antinatalists are correct in their assessment that coming into existence is always a harm, the unpopularity of cryonics might be indirect evidence for their position.

Talking with antinatalists

Is antinatalism distinctly subversive? Most antinatalists waste little time reminding their readers how controversial their ideas are. They think that they have uncovered the greatest taboo of all time. As an empirical matter, this is doubtful. Antinatalist ideas can be freely discussed in modern (Western) countries, something that cannot be said about a number of other controversial ideas. Antinatalists are also quick to point out that their pessimism should not be dismissed as an expression of weakness and depression. But then the antinatalists commit a similar error by too easily viewing optimism as a defense mechanism or a form of bias. But is it completely unreasonable to look for the neurophysiologic and genetic basis of pessimism and optimism? The uncompromising naturalism in the work of the antinatalists supports such an inquiry.

Jim Crawford: Confessions of an Antinatalist (Nine Banded Books 2010)

Thomas Ligotti: The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror (Hippocampus Press 2010)

David Benatar: Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence (Oxford University Press 2006)

This article is a revised and expanded version of an article originally published in Cryonics, 2nd Quarter, 2010.

Thanks to Dr. Michael Perry for discussing some of the topics in this review and proofreading an earlier version of this document.

The primary purpose of the medication protocol is to reduce or eliminate injury from cerebral ischemia. Ischemia is interruption of the delivery of adequate amounts of both oxygen and nutrients to the brain. The better we protect the brain from ischemic injury, the better the patient’s chances of future revival. This introduction will familiarize the reader with the different classes of medications we use, and some of the issues associated with administering them.

While these stabilization medications protocols have traditionally been formulated for the use of cryonics, it cannot be emphasized enough that any non-elective (out-of-hospital) biostasis procedure that entails a delay between circulatory arrest and start of procedures (such as “chemopreservation”) can benefit from pharmaceutical stabilization.

The effects of ischemia and interrupted blood flow affect both cryoprotectant and chemical fixative perfusion.

Although virtually all the medications ultimately are given to help mitigate the effects of circulatory arrest, many of them are pharmaceuticals with other uses in mainstream medicine. Therefore, EMT’s, paramedics and nurses may be familiar with many of them. The most important differences are the number used, the different context and rationale of use, and (sometimes) different dosages.

Anesthetics

Although the human brain accounts for only 2% of total body mass it accounts for about 20-25% of total oxygen consumption. Therefore, the first priority is to reduce cerebral oxygen consumption to make the brain more tolerant to the limited blood flow (mechenical) chest compressions produce. This can be achieved by inducing deep anesthesia. Because we prefer to use medications that are not scheduled drugs and which also confer anti-ischemic benefits, the current anesthetic of choice is propofol. Naturally, this medication should be given just before, or immediately after, starting CPS. The choice of propofol is a typical example of the sort of trade off that sometimes needs to be made in human cryopreservation. Propofol produces transient hypotension which is undesirable in the context of trying to restore optimal cerebral blood flow. This effect can be mitigated by the administration of vasopressive medications like phenylephrine (see below).

Antithrombotics

The formation of blood clots during after circulatory arrest cases is problematic for a variety of reasons. It may frustrate our attempt to provide adequate CPS, cause incomplete or sub-optimal blood washout, and complicate perfusion of the cryoprotectant solution. For this reason, heparin has been a core stabilization medication since the start of doing standby, stabilization, and transport (SST).

Recent experimental research within the research community (most notably at Advanced Neural Biosciences) has identified sodium citrate as the most potent anti-coagulant - with additional anti-ischemic benefits due to its chelating of calcium (a driver of ischemic injury).

Because anticoagulant agents like heparin and sodium citrate only prevent blood clotting, after termination of mechanical CPS, a fibrinolytic, streptokinase, is added to the washout solution to dissolve existing blood clots.

Vasopressors

In human cryopreservation vasopressors are used to increase blood pressure and selectively shift blood flow to the vital organs (including the brain). The current vasopressors of choice are vasopressin and phenylephrine. Because avoiding some of the side effects of these medications is not as high a priority in human cryopreservation as in conventional medicine, protocol and dosages may differ somewhat from current practice in cardiopulmonary resuscitation. It is hard to overestimate the importance of restoring adequate cerebral blood flow in the human cryopreservation patient.

Because they are rapidly metabolized, vasopressors needs to be given intermittently at short intervals, or continuously infused, instead of administering just one single bolus. Ideally, the quality of chest compressions and oxygenation of the brain are measured to validate stabilization procedures in general, and to make informed decisions about the use of vasoactive medications, in particular. One way to do this is to measure expired end tidal-CO2 (ETCO2).

Cerebroprotective Agents

In the ideal case, circulation and ventilation are restored immediately after pronouncement of medico-legal death, in conjunction with the administration of medications and induction of (surface) cooling. Although this protocol is fairly aggressive compared to that which is usually employed by paramedics in out-of-the-hospital resuscitation from cardiac arrest, it is usually inadequate to completely meet the metabolic demands of the patient. This is especially true if the patient has already experienced some ischemic injury prior to pronouncement and/or the standby team is not able to start the stabilization protocol immediately, or if the patient is febrile at the time of pronouncement.

No (or inadequate) blood flow fails to provide (enough) energy to maintain ion gradients across cell membranes, leading to depolarization. The depolarization of presynaptic membranes overactivates the neurotransmitter glutamate, causing increased calcium ion (Ca++) influx. In the absence of adequate energy production, excessive Ca++ leads to a cascade of damaging events including pathological activation of various enzymes, inflammatory mediators, generation of harmful free radicals and apoptosis (programmed cell death), producing a harmful positive feedback-loop in which one event amplifies and accelerates others.

The agents that are used in human cryopreservation to mitigate ischemia, reperfusion injury, and compromised (micro)circulation in the brain include a variety of medications and chemicals to target different parts of the damaging cascade.

Ischemia-reperfusion induced free radical generation is mitigated by a licensed antioxidant cocktail called Vital-Oxy. Vital-Oxy contains antioxidants like D-alpha tocopherol (Vitamin E), melatonin and the free radical spin trapping agent alpha Phenyl t-Butyl Nitrone (PBN). Vital-Oxy also includes the anti-inflammatory drug carprofen. In a preferred formulation, the (viscous) Vital-Oxy is diluted with magnesium sulfate solution to further enhance its neuroprotective properties.

In abbreviated versions of the protocol the low molecular weight superoxide scavenger 4-Hydroxy-Tempo (TEMPOL) is administered. The antibiotic minocycline also has neuroprotective properties (see below).

This multi-modal approach in treating cerebral ischemia has been developed and proven to be effective in recovering dogs after 17 minutes of normothermic cardiac arrest at Critical Care Research, a California-based resuscitation research company.

Buffers

Human blood normally has a pH of 7.4, which is kept in a very tight range in a healthy human being. But after a (prolonged) period of ischemia, and/or inadequate circulation and ventilation, the typical patient becomes acidotic. This is a serious concern because this condition damages cells, releases destructive enzymes, accelerates blood clotting, and induces clumping of red blood cells (agglutination). Acidosis can also reduce the effectiveness of heparin or some vasopressors like phenylephrine because the drug is effective only within a certain pH range, or acidosis degrades the drug and inactivates it.

To prevent and treat acidosis a buffer is given. The current buffer of choice in human cryopreservation is tromethamine (THAM) because it does not have some of the side effects (like cell swelling) of sodium bicarbonate. In the ideal human cryopreservation case, pH is meticulously monitored and additional buffer is administered if acidosis is observed.

Volume Expanders and Oncotic Agents

Intravenous access is not only necessary to administer medications but also to administer fluids to address electrolyte imbalances and replace volume (in the dehydrated patient). Hydroxyethyl starch (given as Hetastarch) is currently the volume expander of choice in cryonics to address reduced blood volume (hypovolemia), which often occurs as a result of dehydration during the dying phase.

Another medication employed in fluid resuscitation is mannitol. Mannitol has been proven effective in ischemia induced cerebral edema by promoting movement of fluid from the cells to the vascular space. Other advantages of mannitol are reduction of blood viscosity (improving perfusion) and its free radical scavenging properties. Some cryonics organizations use the glycerol polymer decaglycerol (also used as the Z-1000 ice blocker in the M22 vitrification solution). Decaglycerol is used to osmotically inhibit cerebral edema and often co-administered with THAM as one solution.

Both of these fluids are given in fairly large volumes (compared to most of the medications), so a basic understanding of fluid balance and electrolytes is desirable to make informed decisions for the patient.

Antibiotics

Microbial overgrowth can be an issue during long (normothermic) transport times. Minocycline is a broad spectrum bacteriostatic antibiotic that also doubles as a neuroprotectant. Minocycline is free radical scavenging molecule with desirable tissue- and brain penetration and a variety of neuroprotective properties including inhibition of metalloproteinases, inducible nitric oxide (iNOS), PARP, mitochondrial cytochrome c release and, apoptosis.

Administration of antibiotics and the use of sterile technique have sometimes been perceived as redundant and expensive for treating cryonics patients. One answer to this objection is that the guiding philosophy of stabilization is to provide a level of care and commitment at least equal to, or better than, the care the patient received before pronouncement of legal death. It’s also important to note that antibiotics and sterile technique are not only used to treat the patient, but also to protect the stabilization team members from infection.

Antacids

Antacids are used to neutralize the pH of stomach contents to prevent erosion of the stomach wall by hydrochloric acid at low temperatures - an observation that goes back to the small animal hypothermic revival experiments by cryobiologist Audrey U. Smith and colleagues. Erosion of the stomach wall can lead to contamination of the circulatory system with stomach contents and abdominal swelling during later perfusion.

A solution of aluminum hydroxide and magnesium hydroxide (previously sold as Maalox) has traditionally been used for this purpose. Unlike the other medications, antacids are directly delivered to the stomach through a gastric tube or the gastric channel of the i-Gel airway.

General Issues

The fairly large number and volume of the medications raise the obvious question of what the preferred sequence should be. The most important consideration is that the sequence should reflect medical priorities. For example, propofol is administered as the first medication to prevent (hypothetical) CPS-induced return of consciousness and reduce cerebral metabolic demand. Ideally, the administration of propofol is quickly followed by a vasoactive medication to mitigate profofol-induced hypotension. The other high-priority medication is sodium citrate to aggressively mitigate blood clotting and protect the brain against the harmful effects of calcium overload.

The second consideration is to give the small volume medications first, and the larger volume medications later, so that most of the medications can be given in the shortest period of time. Naturally, there can be a conflict between the two. When not desirable to delay the administration of a drug, a small portion of the total volume can be given rapidly and the rest can be administered (as a drip) later. Ideally, several lines are used so there is no conflict between small and large volume administration.

Although the medications currently used in human cryopreservation reflect years of research, review, and experience, it needs to be stressed that this does not completely release the biostasis technician from using medical common sense. For example, a normally hydrated infant may have different fluid (and medical) needs than a severely dehydrated large adult. A patient may have already been heavily pre-medicated with some of the medications in our protocol (heparin for example). If prompt cardiopulmonary support is not possible (for example after one hour of circulatory arrest), it may be questionable and wasteful to administer many medications to mitigate early-stage ischemic injury.

These kinds of issues stress the importance of comprehensive data collection, detailed reporting, and systematic analysis. The more we learn about the different effects of our protocol in different situations, the better we may be able to refine it to suit a particular patient’s needs. In this respect human cryopreservation is not unlike conventional medicine; one size doesn’t fit all.

This is a revised and updated version of an earlier exposition of cryonics stabilization medications from spring, 2006. An extensive review of cryonics stabilization medications can be found here.

Robert Ettinger, the “father of cryonics,” was cryopreserved on July 23, 2011. While Ettinger’s book Man into Superman (1972) is considered an important contribution to transhumanism, he increasingly came to recognize that most people do not desire a hard break with the past and resist radical transformation. During the last years of his life he became a vocal critic of “mind uploading” as a means of personal survival and spent a considerable amount of time refining his arguments why mind uploading is not likely to work. This document organizes excerpts from his last book Youniverse and mailing list messages on the topic of substrate-independent minds. In the afterword, I make a brief attempt to place his contributions in a broader philosophical context.

The title of this document refers to a message that Robert Ettinger sent to the Cryonics Institute mailing list on July 21, 2011. In response to the claim that the human mind is a machine, and that the function of any machine can be duplicated by a machine built of another material, Ettinger asked, “Can you build a locomotive out of helium?”

Mind Uploading

“A large and burgeoning group of scientists, including some of the brightest, believe that—in principle—computers will fairly soon be able to think in the fullest sense of the word. They will be living, conscious entities with feelings and subjective experiences.

“A corollary—many believe—is that your persona could be uploaded into a computer and you could then live an incomparably bigger and better life as a simulation or emulation.

“I think the uploading thesis is probably wrong, although (as usual) it’s too soon to be sure. But the issue is a significant part of modern philosophy, and potentially has enormous practical importance.

“…I am among the radicals in the expectations for AI. But intelligence is not life. It is by no means proven that life as we know it with subjective experience can exist on an arbitrary substrate, such as silicon.” (Youniverse)

Information

“One extreme school of thought holds that information and its processing constitute everything that is important. In particular, you are essentially just a collection of information, including a program for processing that information. Your ‘hardware’—the nervous tissue that embodies and handles the information—is only secondary.

“My conclusion will be that it is not necessarily possible—even in principle—for consciousness to exist on an inorganic substrate, and in fact that it is unlikely.

“Sometimes the doubters are accused of dualism—the increasingly discredited belief that the living and inanimate worlds, or the material and the spiritual worlds, are separate.

“This certainly is not true of me or of many others who question the information paradigm. I am a thoroughgoing materialist and reductionist. I will not feel in the least dehumanized if it turns out the information paradigm is right…I have strong doubts, but they are based entirely on the evidence, or lack thereof.

“The most radical of the ‘strong AI’ people believe that all thinking is information processing, and all information processing is thinking; and they appear to believe that consciousness is just an expression of complexity in thinking.

“People who talk this way must be admired for boldness and strength of conviction, but I think not for clarity of thought.

“The point is, all physical phenomena, all interactions, involve information processing in some sense. But that isn’t all they do. A computer, or a person with pencil and paper, could figure out—describe or predict—what the atoms do, and that would be an analog of the information processing part of the phenomenon; but only the actual, physical atoms can form an oxygen molecule. And to anthropomorphize or analogize ‘feelings’ and ‘thoughts’ into these phenomena is simply unjustified. It amounts to declaring, by fiat, that thinking and feeling are inherent in information processing; but saying so doesn’t make it so.” (Youniverse)

Turing Tests and Zombies

“Alan Turing was a brilliant mathematician and computer pioneer. He played an extraordinary part in winning World War II through his work in cryptography for British Intelligence. He also showed many of the potential capabilities of general computers. But one of the works for which he is most famous is badly flawed or has been badly misused—the ‘Turing test’ for intelligence / consciousness.

“Again, I am a firm materialist and reductionist: I readily concede the possibility that a machine could (conceivably) have life and consciousness. But I deny that we can assume that (inorganic) machines have this potential; and with still more help from Turing I think I can make the case persuasive.

“‘Uploaders’ or ‘upmorphists’ or patternists generally maintain that our identity resides in our information content. Their most extreme position is patently absurd—that ‘we’ literally persist, in some degree, if any of the information about us is preserved, even our writings or biographical data. (Shades of Woody Allen! ‘I don’t want to live on in my works; I want to live on in my apartment.’) Anyone who believes this needs more help than I can provide.

“Turing ingeniously showed that a strip of paper tape marked in squares, with zeroes or ones marked on the squares according to certain rules, along with a simple mechanism for moving the tape and making or erasing marks, could be a universal information processor—i.e., it could accomplish any information processing task that any digital computer (serial or parallel) could do, given enough time. It could even produce any result that a quantum computer might, albeit at a teeny-tiny fraction of the speed.

“You certainly can’t claim that a paper tape (even when it is moving) is alive or conscious! Yet that tape, in theory, could produce any response that a person could to a particular stimulus—if by ‘response’ we mean a signal sent to the outside world, suitably coded. It could converse with perfect fidelity to an individual’s character, and over a teletype could fool that person’s husband or wife.

“My original objection to the uploading assumption was simply that we don’t know anything about consciousness or feeling, hence it is premature to assume that it can exist other than where we know it exists, viz., in organic brains. It is entirely possible that meat machines (as opposed to machines of silicon or metal etc.) have some unique quality that allows the emergence of feeling and consciousness. Until we can isolate and define the mechanisms of feeling—of the subjective condition—we must reserve judgment as to the possibility of inorganic people. (Youniverse)

“Uploaders tend to put faith in the Turing Test for human intelligence, and to believe that zombies cannot exist. Let’s take a quick look.

“Communicating (say) by email, a testor tries to determine whether the testee is a human or a computer program. Passing the test supposedly proves the testee is human or equivalent. But the test is clearly worthless, since it produces both false positives and false negatives. As much as 50 years ago Eliza, a program pretending to be a psychiatrist, fooled many people—false positives. And of course a child or a retarded person could perform below par and produce a false negative. The Turing test is baloney.

“In similar vein, uploaders tend to believe that something which outwardly behaves like a person must be a person. They reject the possibility of zombies, systems that by their actions appear to be sentient but are not. Yet it is often easy to fool people, and, as already noted, programs have fooled people even though no one claims the programs were alive.” (Cryonics Institute Mailing List, September 9, 2010).”

Imperfect Simulations

“..any simulation created in the foreseeable future will be imperfect, because it will necessarily reflect current theories of physics, and these are known to be incomplete and almost certainly in error to some extent or in some domains. Whether this would necessarily result in material deviations of the simulation from the course of nature, and in particular whether it would preclude feeling, we don’t yet know. But we do know that the simulation would be wrong, which in itself is enough to justify withholding judgment on the possibility of living computers.” (Youniverse)

Analog Failures

“The uploading thesis depends on the assumption that any organic process in the brain can be duplicated by analog in some other medium but this not only isn’t obvious; it’s nonsense.

“For example, suppose a certain process depends on magnetism, and all you have to work with are the mechanical forces transmitted by rigid bodies. Can you make an electric motor out of tinker toys? Can you build a synchrotron out of wooden boards and nails? Uploaders think a computer (of the electronic variety) can be a person: how about a Babbage mechanical computer made of rods and gears? Presumably, any kind of information processing and storage can be done by a collection of rods and gears but could rods and gears conceivably be conscious? I doubt it; not all media are created equal. So it is entirely possible that organic brains have potentialities not realizable anywhere else in the universe.” (Youniverse)

“Just ask yourself what consciousness is—what physical condition or process constitutes consciousness. You don’t know, hence you cannot know that a simulation fills the bill.” (Cryonics Institute Mailing List, September 16, 2010)

Petitio Principii

“It seems to me that all the computer-metaphor people… keep making the same error over and over again—assuming as a premise the very hypothesis they are trying to establish. When the premise is the same as the conclusion, naturally the conclusion follows from the premise. They refer repeatedly to ‘all computational devices’ etc., implying that the brain is just that—another computational device—when in fact that is precisely what is at issue: Is the brain possibly something more than a computational device? The computer metaphor is plausible (and I am not in the least uncomfortable with it) but plausibility isn’t proof.” (Youniverse)

The Map is not the Territory

“Adherents of the ‘information paradigm,’ I believe, are deceived in part by glibness about ‘information’ and hasty ways of looking at it.

“Apprently it needs to be said again and again: a description of a thing or a process—no matter how accurate and how nearly complete—is not the same as the thing or the process itself. To assume that isomorphism is enough is just that—an assumption, not self-evidently permissible.

“Even though (for example) a computer program can in principle describe or predict the behavior of a water molecule in virtually all circumstances, a water molecule for most purposes cannot be replaced by its description or program. If you pile up 6.02 x 10²³ computers with their programs, you will not have 18 grams of water, and you will have a hard time drinking it or watering your plants.” (Youniverse)

“Eliezer Yudkowsky (and other uploaders) claim that mapping a system results in a map that effectively has the same properties as the original. Well, look again at one of my counter-examples. I write down with pencil and paper the quantum description of a hydrogen atom in its ground state. It could hardly be more obvious that the marks on paper do not constitute a hydrogen atom. And if you put side by side two papers describing two hydrogen atoms, they will not combine to form a hydrogen molecule. In principle, of course (the math is difficult) you could write down expressions corresponding to the formation of hydrogen molecules from hydrogen atoms, but you will still have just marks on paper.

Once more, a simulation is just a coded description of a thing, not the thing itself.” (Cryonics Institute Mailing List, September 18, 2010)

Identity

“The term ‘identical’ is used in different ways by different people. To some, two systems are identical if they differ only in location, e.g. two hydrogen atoms in ground state. But I have pointed out that a difference in location necessarily implies other differences as well, such as gravitational fields. Hence my position is that, if the question arises, are A and B identical, then they are not.

“If two systems differ in spatial or temporal location, then they may be identical to most observers for most purposes, but survival of one does not imply survival of the other. Suppose you, as you are now according to local observation, also exist at a great distance in space or time (either past or future), just by accident. I see no reason for the survival of B to imply the survival of A.” (Cryonics Institute Mailing List, September 16, 2010)

Afterword

Robert Ettinger presented a number of distinct arguments (no fewer than fifteen, by his own count!) against mind uploading and I cannot pretend to have presented them all in this document. I think there are a number of core positions associated with Ettinger’s argument that can be stated quite succinctly, however.

1. Whether mind uploading is possible is ultimately an empirical question and cannot be settled conclusively by analogies or thought experiments.

2. A description of a material object is not necessarily the same as the object.

3. A simulation must be erroneous because the program necessarily is based on our incomplete knowledge about physics.

4. Consciousness may be substrate-dependent.

5. A copy of a person may not constitute personal survival.

The common denominator that runs through Ettinger’s critique of substrate-independent minds is a thorough empiricism about knowledge. Ettinger does not categorically rule out the feasibility of mind uploading but takes people to task for dogmatic claims on these topics in absence of empirical corroboration.

Ettinger was particularly irritated by the claim that materialism commits a person to the acceptance of mind uploading. He could not see how a rejection of the soul excludes the view that certain materials are uniquely suitable, or even exclusively suitable, for a certain function. One might add that it is even conceivable that the mind is substrate-independent but that existing organic chemistry provides the most versatile basis for advanced consciousness and survival.

Most of the issues that Ettinger was concerned about may be resolved by the time he will be resuscitated but it is possible that some of the issues that are at stake in this debate are ultimately un-falsifiable or even pseudo-problems. For example, how could we settle the question of whether a copy is “really you?” Obviously, a copy of something will always confirm that (s)he is really him- or herself but that is of little help in resolving the question. Similarly, we may never be able to conclusively verify (or falsify) that a computer has consciousness or feelings. Is it even conceivable that new super-intelligent life forms will replace humans without being conscious or having feelings. Evolution selects for fitness, and whether this implies consciousness is an open question.

So who is right, Robert Ettinger or his critics? I think what captures Ettinger’s perspective the best is to say that if you expect an answer right now, you have not paid close attention to his argument.

This document was circulated in late 2011 as a tribute to Robert Ettinger after his cryopreservation at the Cryonics Institute.

In contemporary medicine, terminally ill patients can be declared legally dead using two different criteria: whole brain death or cardio-respiratory arrest. Although many people would agree that a human being without any functional brain activity, or even without higher brain function, has ceased to exist as a person, not many people realize that most patients who are currently declared legally dead by cardio-respiratory criteria have not yet died as a person. Or to use conventional biomedical language, although the organism has ceased to exist as a functional, integrated whole, when a patient is declared legally dead using cardio-respiratory criteria, the neuroanatomy of the person is still intact

It might seem odd that contemporary medicine allows deliberate destruction of the properties that make us uniquely human (our capacity for consciousness) unless one considers the significant challenge of keeping a brain alive in a body that has ceased to function as an integrated whole. But what if we could put the brain “on pause” until a time when medical science has become advanced enough to treat the cause of death, reverse aging, and restore the patient to health?

Metabolic Arrest

Putting the brain on pause is not as far fetched as it seems. The brain of a patient undergoing general anesthesia has ceased being conscious. But because we know that the brain that represents the person is still there in a viable body, we do not think of such a person as “temporarily dead.”

One step further than general anesthesia is hypothermic circulatory arrest. Some medical procedures, such as complicated neurosurgical interventions, require not only cessation of consciousness but also complete cessation of blood flow to the brain. In these cases the temperature of the patient is lowered to such a degree (≈16 degrees Celsius) that the brain can tolerate a period without any circulation at all. Considering the fact that parts of the human brain can become irreversibly injured after no more than five minutes without oxygen at normal body temperature, the ability of the brain to survive for at least an hour at these temperatures without any oxygen is quite remarkable.

Again, because we know that in such cases the neuroanatomical basis that represents the person is still there in a viable body, we do not think of such a person as “temporarily dead.” These examples illustrate that the medical community already recognizes and accepts the fact that a medical procedure that produces loss of consciousness, and even loss of circulation, does not constitute irreversible death.

Unfortunately, general anesthesia and hypothermic circulatory arrest cannot be used to pause the brain long enough to find a treatment for a person who has been declared legally dead by cardio-respiratory criteria. A person under general anesthesia may require tens, if not hundreds, of years of artificial circulation to keep the brain viable until medical science is able to return him to health. Leaving financial considerations aside, artificial circulation of an organ, let alone such a vulnerable organ as the brain, will produce progressive brain injury over time, and ultimately, destruction of the person.

Hypothermic circulatory arrest eliminates the need for metabolic support of the brain, but only for a limited period of time. Current research into hypothermic circulatory arrest indicates that the brain might tolerate up to 3 hours of complete circulatory arrest if the temperature is lowered close to the freezing point of water (0 degrees Celsius). This is not nearly long enough to put the brain on pause to allow the patient to reach a time where his current untreatable medical condition may be treatable. In light of these limitations, it is understandable that no serious attempts are currently being made to continue long-term care for a patient whose body has stopped functioning as an integrated organism.

But if low temperatures can extend the period that the brain can survive without circulation, much lower temperatures should be able to extend this period even further. At -196 degrees Celsius molecular activity has become so negligible that it can be said that the brain has been put on pause in the literal sense of the word. This allows the patient to be “transported” to a time when more advanced medical technologies are available, even if this would require hundreds of years. Advocates of human cryopreservation (i.e, “cryonics) argue that long-term care at cryogenic temperatures offers a rational alternative to the current practice of burial and cremation of persons no longer treatable by contemporary medicine.

Contrary to popular views of cryonics, cryonics is not about preserving dead people but about long-term care of critically ill patients. The objection that cryonics is an attempt to resuscitate dead people reflects a misunderstanding of the rationale behind cryonics. The arguments supporting human cryopreservation are not radically different than the already established arguments behind general anesthesia and hypothermic circulatory arrest; it merely introduces lower temperatures and longer care. Therefore, the difference between contemporary medicine and cryonics is quantitative, not qualitative, in nature. Likewise, the relationship between cryonics and religion is not qualitatively different than that between contemporary medicine and religion. In both cases medical technology is used to preserve life.

Vitrification

But does the procedure of cooling a patient to cryogenic temperatures not cause injury in itself? Most of the human body consists of water and lowering the body below the freezing point of water will produce massive ice formation. For this reason, patients who present for cryonics are protected from ice damage by using a cryoprotective agent to reduce, or even eliminate, ice formation. Modified cardiopulmonary bypass technologies are used to circulate the solution throughout the body. When enough water is replaced with the cryoprotective agent, the patient is maintained at cryogenic temperatures for long-term care. Historically the cryoprotective agents that were used in cryonics are mainstream cryoprotective agents such as DMSO and glycerol. High concentrations of glycerol or DMSO can significantly reduce ice formation, but cannot eliminate it altogether.

A better alternative to conventional cryoprotection is vitrification. Vitrification offers the prospect of cooling an organ to cryogenic temperatures without ice formation. Although vitrification of pure water requires extremely high cooling rates, these cooling rates can be greatly reduced if high concentrations of cryoprotective agents and “ice blockers” are added. Ice blockers are synthetic variants of naturally occurring anti-freeze proteins used by hibernating animals to protect themselves from freezing injury. The vitrification agent is introduced within a so-called “carrier solution” which includes molecules to prevent cell swelling, support metabolism, maintain physiological pH, and prevent oxidative damage. The vitrification agent is introduced in a gradual fashion to prevent excessive volume changes in cells. During the final stages of cryoprotectant perfusion the temperature is dropped below zero degrees Celcius to protect the cells from toxicity caused by high concentrations of the vitrification agent.

The current generation of vitrification agents can preserve the fine details (ultra-structure) of the brain without requiring impractical cooling rates. Although electrical activity has recently been demonstrated in vitrified rabbit brain slices, reversible vitrification of the whole human brain without loss of cellular viability is currently not possible. The current research objective, therefore, is to improve on these vitrification agents to allow for reproducible vitrification and recovery of organs with complete long-term viability. Such a breakthrough would not only lead to cryogenic organ banking for transplantation and research but would remove the most fundamental obstacle to true suspended animation of humans.

Brain death and cryonics

Although a vitrified patient cannot be rewarmed and restored to health with contemporary technologies, the extremely low temperatures at which a patient is maintained permit possible resuscitation of a patient in the future without any risk of deterioration during long-term care. In this sense it compares favorably to procedures such a hypothermic circulatory arrest which allow for only a few hours to treat a patient. This not only offers the option to treat patients who cannot be treated with contemporary medical technologies, it also offers the possibility to treat medical conditions where successful resuscitation is possible but higher brain function will be lost if care is resumed at normal body temperature.

A good example of this is cardiac arrest. Patients who have suffered more than 5-7 minutes of cardiac arrest can often be resuscitated, but some of the most vulnerable cells in the brain (such as hippocampal CA1 neurons) will die within days of the insult. There are currently no effective medical interventions or neuroprotective agents that will prevent such damage. As a result, today’s medicine can restore viability to such patients, but only by losing some, or most, higher brain functions.

If one believes that the objective of medical care is not just to preserve life in the sense of integrated biological function, but also to preserve the person, then one would agree that such patients might be better served by interventions that place them under long-term care in the form of cryonics. Although there is no guarantee that such patients will be restored to full functionality in the future, the near-certainty of higher brain death is an alternative that many people would prefer to avoid.

Conclusion

Cryonics does not involve the freezing of dead people. Cryonics involves placing critically ill patients that cannot be treated with contemporary medical technologies in a state of long-term low temperature care to preserve the person until a time when treatments might be available. Similar to such common medical practices as general anesthesia and hypothermic circulatory arrest, cryonics does not require a fundamental paradigm shift in how conventional medicine thinks about biology, physiology, and brain function. Although current cryopreservation methods are not reversible, under ideal circumstances the fine structure that encodes a person’s personality is likely to be preserved. Complete proof of reversible vitrification of human beings would be sufficient, but is not necessary, for acceptance of cryonics as a form of long-term critical care medicine. The current alternative is death; or for persons who are at risk of suffering extensive brain injury, loss of personhood.

For very old and fragile patients, meaningful resuscitation would require reversal of the aging process. Obviously, the objective of cryonics is not to resuscitate patients in a debilitated and compromised condition, but to rejuvenate the patient. Ongoing research in fields such as bio-gerontology, nanomedicine, and artificial intelligence inspire optimism that such treatment will be available in the future. In 2022, the nanotechnology expert Robert Freitas published an extensive book-length exposition how such revival attempts will look like, titled “Cryostasis Revival: The Recovery of Cryonics Patients through Nanomedicine.”

The fortunate thing for cryonics patients is that even if fundamental breakthroughs in these fields will be the result of long and painstaking research, the cold temperatures allow them time — a lot of time.

The First Minutes After “Death”

As currently practiced, cryonics procedures can only be started after legal death has been pronounced by a medical professional. To prevent brain injury between pronouncement of legal death and long-term care in liquid nitrogen all major cryonics organizations offer standby services to ensure that the time of circulatory arrest is minimized. In ideal circumstances the cryonics organization of which the patient is a member will deploy a standby team consisting of cryonics professionals to stabilize the patient immediately after pronouncement of legal death.

A mechanical device is used to restart blood circulation and ventilate the patient. Because the objective of this intervention is not to resuscitate but to stabilize the patient this is called cardiopulmonary support (CPS). At the same time the patient is lifted into a portable ice bath to induce hypothermia to slow metabolism. A number of medications are also given to support blood flow to the central organs, reverse and prevent blot clotting, restore physiological pH, prevent edema, and protect the brain from ischemic injury. After completion of CPS, the patient is further cooled by replacing the blood with an hypothermic organ preservation solution, similar to mainstream organ preservation solutions like Viaspan.

At the cryonics organization the patient’s blood is replaced with the vitrification agent to prevent ice formation during cooldown to liquid nitrogen temperature for long-term care. More recently, cryonics organizations have replaced transport to the cryonics organization at cold temperature (near 0 degrees Celsius) with a procedure called field cryoprotection (FCP) in which the cryoprotection part is done at a remote location (or even a vehicle) as well, followed by transport on dry ice (-78.5 Celsius) to the facility for further cooling and long-term care.

An earlier version of this article was published in 2007 for Pharmaciae Sacrum, the study association of pharmacy students in Groningen, the Netherlands.

The Greek philosopher Epicurus famously wrote:

Death is nothing to us, since when we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist.

Epicurus addressed subjective experience. We can now add a scientific corollary: reports of “death” are often premature and greatly exaggerated.

For most of history, aging and death were incomprehensible and final.
There was nothing actionable to do about it.

That has changed.

Here we do not treat death as binary, inevitable, sacred, or morally necessary.

We now have

• Demonstrated vitrification of mammalian organs

• Structural preservation of the brain

• Continued progress in cryoprotectant design

• Imaging methods that verify preservation outcomes

• Molecular strategies to characterize and repair damage at nanometer scale

• Rapid progress in AI and deep learning

• A growing experimental literature on biostasis technologies

The proposition

You are not irreversibly dead until the physical basis of your identity has been erased.

If that physical substrate can be preserved or inferred, death need not be final.

This publication explores that preservation challenge.

Topics

• Metabolic arrest and hypometabolism

• Cryoprotection and vitrification

• Cerebral ischemia and neuroprotection

• The chemistry of death

• Structural preservation of neural tissue

• Revival technologies

• Philosophy of mind

• Rejuvenation technologies

• Biostasis providers and protocols

The tone of this publication is:

• Empirically grounded

• Technically serious

• Skeptical of hype

• Skeptical of resignation

• Open to uncomfortable conclusions

If you are looking for simplistic promises, this is not the place.
If you are looking for miserabilism or dystopian fatalism, this is also not the place.

Some posts will be technical.
Some will be philosophical.
Most will live in the uncomfortable territory between.

Continuity

This publication continues the original Depressed Metabolism cryonics blog.

A growing library of historical, scientific, and technical documents is available at:
biostasis.com

Please also follow The Biostasis Standard, the Substack of my organization Biostasis Technologies.

For regional meetings in Washington and Oregon, subscribe to Biostasis Pacific Northwest.

Support

If you find my work valuable, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Paid subscribers support the research behind these writings, gain access to exclusive content, and can comment on posts.