http://www.cryonicsfactsheet.co.uk/

Someone sent this to my email, today, they found it on the "Anti-Cult" site.

News flash!

Cryonics has nothing to hide. There is no scam. Only in the minds of idiots who haven't bothered to research the topic but are desperate to think of an excuse not to take it seriously because it threatens their former way of thinking about life and death.

Such people need to get over it -- and themselves. Cryonics is legit, it has perfectly decent chance of working, and it is here to stay.

I believe they are simply working a disparaging anti-cryonics angle. No different to any other hatemonger, racist, anti-Semitic, anti-gay, anti this or that group out there. Funny thing is, there is a request for a guarantee, which is a bit ironic when the word scam is mentioned. Guess "Jill" is an amateur - disparaging - anti-cryonics - anonymous - non-person Watch out for those non-people, such as the bogeyman and the scary thing that lives under your bed

Actually now that I think about it I've met "Jill" before, and he's actually a pretty funny, likable guy.

Here's a longer article he wrote a while back in response to http://blog.ciphergoth.org/blog/>ciphergoth's challenge to critics to write something that was halfway literate.

http://laymanfuture.blogspot.com/2010/08/death-in-21st-century-con-of-cryonic.html

Well, for whatever it's worth, I found out his full name is <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8194854.stm">Richie Arnold, a chef from Assembly House pub in North London</a>. And yeah, I don't think he's intending to be a jerk at all. It's like he's typing words whilst wearing a blindfold, and it just happens to turn out anti-cryonics.

Well anyways, I thought it was much more thrilling when I accidentally figured out who FD is a few months ago :)

Looks like "Jill's" transgender attempt to remain anonymous didn't last very long.

Luke writes: "Cryonics has nothing to hide. There is no scam. Only in the minds of idiots who haven't bothered to research the topic but are desperate to think of an excuse not to take it seriously because it threatens their former way of thinking about life and death.

When companies charging $60K - $150K send laymen, with no medical experience whatsoever, on the pretense of preserving brains, so that the owners of the brains may arise again in the future, it's a scam, plain and simple.

Your reasons for being against cryonics for yourself are well-documented. Unless you're now endorsing this website? It doesn't seem like you. The content is internally inconsistent. It both criticizes cryonics for not offering any guarantees and slams them for false promises. Not only that, but it seems to be making very blanket statements about cryonics. Even if that is not the intent, I doubt the average person who comes across that site can make the distinction.

...to the way I feel about most cryonics activities, which I feel are plagued with fraudulent and unethical activities. I haven't read the entire site, but right there, on their home page, they admit the concept of cryonics is of scientific merit.

Luke immediately responds with the usual "they're idiots" approach, stating "cryonics has nothing to hide." I don't know who Luke is referring to, by "cryonics," but I believe some of the organizations have plenty to hide.

As for the "average person," I very much doubt that the average person can read Alcor's and/or SA's web sites and distinguish their "surgeons" and "perfusionists" and "medical procedures" with the real thing, so I'm not going to object to the new site balancing the scale. When Alcor and SA "come clean," in regard to their capabilities, I'll get right onto insisting on the same accuracy from their opponents.

So you believe in matching inaccuracy for inaccuracy? Misleading readers with generalizations is permissible as long as the other guy is doing it?

...what it was...a tongue-in-cheek reply to your comment regarding laymen not being able to distinguish fact, from fiction, on the UK critics' site. It's going to be tough to criticize the critics for doing the same thing the cryonics organizations have been doing, for decades. I was being sarcastic.

My criticism of Luke's response is that I think the "they're idiots and we have nothing to hide" reaction only makes people supporting cryonics appear more "cultish." (BTW...If "Jill" comes here, to debate the issue, will Luke be allowed to call him/her an "idiot"?)

For me, it's no longer possible to discuss "cryonics" as a valid idea, without acknowledging that most of the activities in the field have been/are questionable, at best, (and I'm sure you're all aware that has been true for a very long time, now). I think the vast majority of cryonics activities has been "smoke and mirrors," thus far...an almost absolute charade, mostly carried out by people who have not demonstrated any more intelligence than Luke is willing to give "Jill" and friends credit for.

I agree with Mark's assessment of too much being invested in the whole "nanotech will repair everything, in the future," scenario. I think Mark struck the nail on the head, with this: As Michael Shermer has argued, "Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons."http://www.network54.com/Forum/291677/message/1283225443/How+about+something+tangible+to+show+for+all+the+hoopla-

A world without Molecular Nanotech (evidently in the process of being renamed "Zettatech" since "Nanotech" somehow has come to mean anything and everything in chemistry and materials science these days) ever becoming possible, is actually a worst-case scenario. It is a contingency to be taken seriously and planned against, but hardly particularly likely.

That it hasn't happened already is only a relevant argument if you have reason to think it would have happened already were it possible. Given what we now know, I sincerely doubt our current resources are up to the job of creating zettatech, much less those of the last 25 years. Not only that, but MNT has not been allocated anywhere near the massive funding amounts that have been allocated to other less dramatically useful technological possibilities like fusion, so we really don't have the incentive to doubt it that we have to doubt useful fusion power plants.

Perhaps in reality it requires another 10 doublings of our computer processing power as an absolute minimum criteria for MNT to be even remotely realistic. Why should that make a difference? Another 15 years is no big obstacle. Nor would another 15 years after that, really. Cryonics has been around for a long time already, and will be around for a long time into the future.

A world where neural tissue cannot recover after best-case-scenario vitrification damage, via highly advanced biotech alone (sans zettatech) is also a worst-case scenario. From what we know, you should be able to do quite a bit with stem cells and other purely biological innovations. You should also be able to prevent quite a bit of damage in a best-case vitrification scenario, as of today.

Obviously the point at which mature biotech alone is (or isn't) enough is affected by how good the best-case is -- which is in turn a moving target. As it should be. In fact, we can and should endeavor to keep it moving by allocating more funding to research in stabilization and vitrification methods.

For all we know perhaps the absolute minimum criteria to survive by biotech rejuvenation alone is actually another 10 years away. But again, so what? The optimal course of action remains the same regardless if we want to save the most human lives. Simply preserve everyone in the best manner clinically possible, and keep researching ways to make it better. It's a simple concept which works in a wide variety of future scenarios.

A world where scanning and uploading is not possible due to it turning out that simulating something the size of a brain is too complex, is another worst-case scenario, distinct from the first two. It's even less plausible, given that we are already scanning and crudely simulating rat brains.

The certainty many contemporary bloggers seem to have regarding the simultaneous and eternal failure of all three technologies -- despite advances being made daily in all three fields -- is just mind-boggling to me. They seem to have the mindset that a failure of any one of the technologies to materialize would render cryonics a failure. In reality, any two of the three could fail and cryonics could still be a success and save billions of people.

When you think something has a lower chance of occurring when in fact more things have to go wrong for it to fail to occur, it's called the Conjunction Fallacy

Most people are prone to this. Here is an example:

Linda is a college graduate who majored in accounting. Which is the most plausible statement we can make about her?

* Linda is a bank teller.
* Linda is active in the feminist movement.
* Linda is a bank teller who is active in the feminist movement.

Most people tend to think the third is the most plausible, because it sounds more like a story someone would actually tell. Our brains are wired to pay more attention when there is more detail present. But in fact the laws of logic tell us that it is less plausible. The other two scenarios are inclusive of the third -- it's absurd for the third to exceed the other two.

Predictions about the future are typically full of this kind of mistake. A detailed prediction about when and where, how much, etc. sounds so much more compelling than a vague set of general, inclusive possibilities. We just aren't wired to pay as much attention when things are general and all-inclusive.

But the fact is that this makes them more probable and therefore more worth paying attention to when discussing the future.

on their home page, they admit the concept of cryonics is of scientific merit.

Here is the relevant quote:
One thing we want to make clear is that this Website is not against the concept of Cryonics which may have some scientific merit one day

What I take this to mean (and Jill, correct me if I'm wrong) is that she is saying that if cryonics is proven by a person (or perhaps mammal) being brought back from a cryopreserved state, then it will have scientific merit. But not until then.

Of course she has worded it vaguely enough that she could mean that it could be proven to have scientific merit by high-resolution electron micrographs of brain tissue, or some other kind of reasonable assay. But what I've stated here is what folks will typically say if pressed for specific criteria.

However, cryonics is just when you preserve someone with existing technology as an attempt to get them access to future advancements. It's not itself a hypothesized future technology. A future technology that suspends metabolism reversibly and demonstrably would be referred to as suspended animation (or perhaps something more catchy) but not cryonics. It certainly is not what we mean by cryonics today, and (obviously) does not exist yet.

I don't know who Luke is referring to, by "cryonics," but I believe some of the organizations have plenty to hide.

"Who?" Cryonics is a general idea. In saying "cryonics has nothing to hide" I was indulging a metaphor. An idea can't have something to hide by definition, given that it's not a sentient being.

I suppose an idea can obscure reality, or be rendered less plausible by more knowledge of reality. However the reverse seems the case with cryonics, as the people who actually understand it tend to be the advocates.

As for the "average person," I very much doubt that the average person can read Alcor's and/or SA's web sites and distinguish their "surgeons" and "perfusionists" and "medical procedures" with the real thing, so I'm not going to object to the new site balancing the scale. When Alcor and SA "come clean," in regard to their capabilities, I'll get right onto insisting on the same accuracy from their opponents.

Imagine Alcor, SA, CI, ACS, and KrioRus are all deliberate scams that only exist to make money off of desperate rich people. And they only hire cheap laymen because it saves them a bit of money. Does it follow from this that cryonics itself is a bad idea?

When companies charging $60K - $150K send laymen, with no medical experience whatsoever, on the pretense of preserving brains, so that the owners of the brains may arise again in the future, it's a scam, plain and simple.

As an argument as to "why cryonics is a scam" this has the intellectual depth of a kiddie pool. It conflates organizations with ideas and depicts cryonics as containing at least two nonsensical philosophical elements; that people will "arise" from the grave in some spooky manner on their own (as opposed to their damage being a hard engineering problem that living people will have to solve), and the dualistic notion that "owners" (i.e. individuals) are distinct entities from their brains somehow.

If Melody wants to be taken seriously as a critic of cryonics organizations and their specific business practices, she needs to start displaying a better understanding of cryonics itself as an abstract idea, instead of parodying it. If she really doesn't take cryonics itself seriously, it is not clear what her motive for criticizing cryonics organizations would be.

Try looking past the rhetoric when you see the words "I feel" and other deviations. Sentences such as this may as well read: I hope it to be true, I wish it to be true, and I want it to be true. You can have a belief in something, such as a religious person believing in a god, without the necessity to prove god exists. You can also say you think something is true without proof.

From my vantage point, all these public prayers and chanting of fraud, sometimes referred to as spam, hasn't managed to turn led into gold. And I think it is safe to say that the magical wand being used here is broken, with the lack of criminal and fraud related charges against cryonics. So this begs the question, where are the authorities, the arrests, the convictions, and the much-anticipated TV episode of American Greed?

Yawn

Apparently, no one cares much about what gets done to dead bodies in the name of scientific research, and the donors have given up that right.

Can you point to any police reports for which the authorities are neglecting? Are you aware of any evidence that a crime has been committed? If so, why haven't you filed a police report?

least of all, the cryonics members paying for the services!

Obviously you don't care, so why do you post here? I'm a member who cares, and I also racked up some credit card debt to pay for my father's suspension. I did it for the same reason you would likely pull a loved one from a swimming pool and perform CPR, even if you knew the odds were stacked against revival. Your reflexive action in this type of situation is similar to mine, but I have more tools at my disposal and I don't give up so easy.

My efforts may be futile in the end, but at least I can look back on life and say I tried. Anyone here can be a quitter, which helps to explain why some people exceed in life when others fail, and this may also explain why some people lead and others claim to be related to those who lead. I can trace my lineage back to the 1400's and speak of Mary, Queen of Scots, or even speak of a Great Grandfather who fought at Appomattox during Lee's surrender, but I choose to be my own person and stand on my own feet.

At the end of the day, we are all related.

Thanks for all your attention

!Jill is a art project of mine (a fake AI) who "feels" strongly about cryonics (And Techno music).

Luke has met me before and hes right i am a funny likeable guy who also runs a funny likeable club
I came across Cryonics UK through a event I (accidently) helped promote through my meetup site London Futurists.
We are a group that met up in a pub and discussed futuristic predictions and Transhumanism from a skeptical/laymans point of view.
I started posting events which were held by the Extrabrittania (UK Transhumanists) as they held good events on AI research and and other worthwhile
events. I got really fed up with dealing with the "cultish mentality" and after some long protracted arguments - i left hoping the site would die as I wasn't paying for it - but of course stupid me left the door open to The Extrabrittannia lot to pay for my website and take over the mailing lists.

When I realised this happenned i rushed back to try and rescue it - but I know i lost the "game" and it was no longer really my website (despite creating it - godamn metup rules should of pressed delete!) but figured that if I am at leats still involved some pragmatism can still be maintained...


Any how i'm getting off the subject a little so..

My assistant organiser (a Devout Transhumansist) posted a event promoting a meeting by this David Styles Character and then Ben Best! - Needless to say the more sensible members and myself attempeted to reason (albiet agressivly) with him see here: [www.meetup.com]

The whole thing made me very angry - Cryonics seems to be now a pre-requisite for a Futurist/Transhumanist movement which is a Load of Bullshit - I come form the school of Sagan, Clarke and Learys brand of futurism not this kurzweil vinge machine worship sect! There is a really unhealthly cultishness about the whole thing, theres a guy called Roko Mijik (AI scientist and mathmetician apparently) who in a meeting about "how to rationally think about the future" wrecked the whole thing by presenting the Lesswrong agenda of longevity escape velocity and cryonics. - see here: [www.meetup.com]

Some of the videos of these "sales-presentations" are available here: [www.youtube.com]
If you can stomach sitting through them I think you may also notice some blatent use of NLP techniques too!

Any how I decided i got nothing to lose by taking matters in my own hands and making the website cryonics factsheet and use some of the marketing tequniques that these snake oil cryonic salesmen are using against themselves.

I take this quote: "Those nipping at cryonics always stop after a while. Either they get tired of it or they die.
Robert Ettinger" - as a Challenge, i got loads of energy im a young guy and i am not gonna stop nipping till im taking chunks.

Cryonics is starting to be mass-marketed over in the UK now and sadly as you can see its got potential to be be enough to make the scammers quite rich indeed. I did contact Watchdog about Cryonics UK but i don;t think they took it seriously, as for getting media involved i think this is a good idea but i don't know how to start that (or do I - i did do a good job with flashmobs).

Don;t like what i am doing - Hard lines buddy - I don't like what your doing! So any attempts to discredit me will do you know good. So What, you think i want hide behind the identity of a sexy japanese sexbot - who doesnt to be part of the sexbot scene it is a worthier goal than ripping off people by offering a "miracle" for money.

I'm not coming back for long arguments - cryonics makes me angry - i got my sources and more scams will be posted by !jill and then the average person can see the truth in what cryonics not some peusdoscientific sales routine.

Why are there only websites made by cryonics companys? well not anymore...

You're welcome to stay and discuss your point of view, just please try to keep the discourse civil. Your hard line aggressive tone isn't particularly appropriate here, and won't be tolerated beyond this initial post. That, of course, goes for all sides. Let's try to keep the discussion focused on the pros and cons of cryonics, and steer clear of name-calling.

You're currently on filtered status, !Jill, so any posts from you will need to be approved first. You also won't be able to post live links. That status may change, if you're willing to have an open dialogue, but it doesn't sound like you're open to that just yet.

"Don;t like what i am doing - Hard lines buddy - I don't like what your doing!"

Well, what don't you like about it? You are welcome to debate it honestly first for a while, then put up a site slamming it when you've given us a fair chance to defend it.

As is always true here on CF, the opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily represent the opinion of others, which includes my employer or even my former employer, etc.

The mass marketing of cryonics in the UK sounds a bit dubious, and no one has been particularly effective at selling cryonics. Most likely this activity is simply the press taking an interest in the subject and hoping to get some ratings out of it, as in, making a quick pound or two for their TV station. Of this media attention, the UK will be lucky to get a couple new cryonicists on any given year. Half of those who do get signed up and become full-fledged members, could very well quit, or have their membership canceled because their payments lapsed beyond the grace period.

Yes, you can see there is a local effort in the UK to raise money, but the interest on the part of those members is to strengthen their local capability. At some point, maybe those donations will be large enough for them to start their own cryonics facility with membership services and long-term storage of patients. This would help them avoid the necessity to rely upon the very limited support from cryonics companies outside of their own country.

The typical cryonics case, in my view, is heavily subsidized. Taking a look at the full history of cryonics, you will realize that starting a cryonics company is a great way to loose money. This is a lesson some of the early founders learned, which is why they went out and started other businesses, and have taken some of that hard earned money and donated it to cryonics.

This is not to say a scammer won't come out of the woodwork at some point, but there really isn't much of a market for cryonics. A true scammer will likely find greener pastures elsewhere that will give them a much greater payout; otherwise, they would be better off getting a real job that is in line with market forces.

On the other hand, there are family members of cryonicists who have attempted to defraud their "loved" ones of cryonics arrangements, and profiteers who use some form of sensationalism to make a buck off of cryonics. People such as this put themselves at great risk for getting sued. Not a fiscally smart move if you ask me. These are the real scammers whom I believe should ultimately be judged harshly by historians due to the fact of the current state of the law not fully appreciating the ultimate consequence of such actions. Why? Maybe we should answer a question with a question. How much is a human life worth in money? How much money does it take to sellout the life of another human being, including ones' family? In this day and age we can readily see it first hand, and you know what? It doesn't take much.

I've been involved with cryonics now for 15 years, and despite helping to shift attitudes in support of cryonics, I can only be certain of one person whom I truly recruited to take a literal interest in becoming a member - my father who is now a patient at Alcor. The recruitment of my father took a year or two of reasoning, in friendly debates, before he changed his mind. I think this type of situation of familiar relations and new recruitment is also true for many of those who are members or patients today, rather than simple publicity from the media.

I consider myself a transhumanist, but I don't think cryonics is necessarily a prerequisite for the future of the transhumanist movement. Cryonics is a form of insurance or a limited safety net to help carry us to the point where cryonics is no longer needed. At some point cryonics will become obsolete and I look forward to that day. I highly doubt these events will transpire in my natural lifetime and probably not for most any of you out there who are currently reading this today. We were simply born too soon, and even though we may not make it, we can at least try to fulfill this dream for others. If by chance any of us alive today do make it out the other end, we are well positioned in the historical timeline to appreciate this momentous achievement.

I'm not aware of, nor have I ever heard anyone in cryonics offering a "miracle" of any type. Can you provide a source for this claim? Even if any particular patient who is currently in long-term storage today manages to survive cryopreservation with their memories intact, I wouldn't classify this as a miracle. I would classify this development as an important milestone in the history of human development and evolution, but most certainly, not a miracle.

In regards to the scam examples listed on the website, please note Alcor has a robust track record for winning legal cases. This is not to say Alcor has not lost or lost in the lower courts, but it is helpful to wait until the appeals process comes to a close before attempting to cast final judgment on who is the winner.

In conclusion, most anyone can come up with a list of criticisms, some of those criticisms may even have support amongst those who are actively involved in the business. On the other hand, there is a fair amount of negative information being circulated that is either exaggerated or is a complete fabrication. And even though litigation may take care of the initial issue for seeking justice where it is appropriate and desirable, rumors and speculations will persist. Despite the rumors and speculations that are commonly displayed here in creative fashion through an expression of hopes, fears, and belief; they do not constitute fact as some bloggers may try to impress on others.

"Jesus, you poor Dad - couldn't you just take no for an answer instead of pummelling him for at least a year with your crackpot cryonics fantasy? You actually made your Own FAther Sign on the dotted line to have his head/body frozen? What a f#@%*&g sicko his own dad..... tears my heart out!"

My father was a pro science and technology kind of guy. He believed cryonics would work someday; although, he questioned whether or not he wanted to come back to this world for a variety of reasons. So, this opened an opportunity to resolve these types of societal and personal issues (in theory) at some point in the future.

After going through all the issues he listed for not wanting to come back, and resolving them in principle, did he come to the point of taking a serious interest in cryonics. Once we worked our way to the point where his reasons for not getting signed up were no longer valid - I tossed out a friendly joke and said - think of it as Groundhog Day, if you don't like what you see, I'll put you back in the tank until the world has sufficiently changed and you are ready. We both had a good laugh over the joke, and this was the point where he came around and said he was interested in becoming a member.

My father isn't "head/body frozen," his brain has been vitrified based on the observable indications. Despite the criticisms lobbed at cryonics, where cryonics patients have been associated with frosted strawberries, ice crystals puncturing skulls, and even notions of trying to turn hamburger back into cow, I've attached evidence to support these types of claims are erroneous.

Please note my father suffered the largest amplitude crack amongst all the other patients on record. Upon hearing this news from my co-worker, I feared his brain had fractured into pieces and that his brain would have to be wrapped separately in Dacron wool for long-term storage. This was our first time at vitrifying a naked whole brain, and the visible indications associated with such a high degree of cracking were unknown to us. Fortunately, and unlike some exaggerated media claims associated with patients cracking in cryonics, his brain looks whole in LN2. This is not to say the cracks are not there; they are, but you can't see them with the naked eye without warming up the tissue.

On close inspection, you will see a number of white spots, and lightness in color in areas towards the frontal lobe, but what you are looking at is Dacron wool that stuck to his brain during the cooldown process and did not completely separate when he was transferred. Also, there is vapor hovering over the surface of the LN2, which interferes with the resolution of the picture and gives some impression of ice crystals. To the naked eye, his brain looked relatively normal.

I'm glad you have taken the necessary steps to save your father's life in the likely event that cryonics works. You are a hero. Jill is upset and doesn't know what she is saying. I hope I can bring my father around before he dies.

We challenge and threaten existing notions of death that have been around for thousands of years. But those notions exist for no reason other than sheer cultural inertia. They are barbaric, outdated, and primitive.

In my opinion, it is time to turn the page altogether on the obscene practice of allowing human brain tissue to disintegrate. Melody (or Jill) can say this makes me look like a cultist or extremist or whatever, but I'm only saying what needs to be said. We live in a sea of willful ignorance and apathy about this issue. Hardly any funding goes to damage prevention in neural cryobiology, and cryonics patients are being stored in ridiculously small batches which makes the whole process hundreds of times more expensive than it needs to be. It's just not right.

Ultimately, cryonics is a life affirming statement of technological optimism and rationality. I am tired of seeing doom and gloom, superstition, and death-acceptance getting all the attention. It's utterly reasonable to expect science to prevail over death, and in fact utterly unreasonable not to.

Congratulations to you Matthew, and to your father. I hope he sees the light of day again. If not, even so I would respect his choice over that of someone who decides they'd rather rot simply because all the other sheep are doing the same thing.

Here is what Arthur C. Clarke had to say about cryonics (he's the first quote on this page): http://alcor.org/Library/html/declarations.html

Anyways, if you don't mind, I want to quickly excerpt something you wrote at the London Futurists group (http://www.meetup.com/London-Futurists/messages/boards/thread/9368888/0#36868672): "At the end of the day I have realised that there is no way I can be like you Academic types and be rational about certain subjects. I have always been an extremist, sometimes the energy from that can be really good and creative, other times it can be be destructive. But I can't change my basic makeup I am always going to dive into anything that interests me pretty hard and gain a extreme viewpoint as a result. Also I am strongly led by my emotions and tend to act before thinking it through, again sometimes its real positive and other times i get into trouble!"


The reason why I quoted you is because I just stumbled across your recently added "The Deadly Doctor" page, featuring your description of Dr. Harris as a "Murdering Fuckstick and a complete moron who should have any medical licenses stripped." So let me go on the record by saying that I revoke my earlier defense of you. Look. I appreciate good criticism, even if it's expressed in layman fashion. But until you make some effort at good criticism, I'm afraid nobody here should give you the time of day.... in other words, you really should thank Mathew for taking the time to write that long response. All I've ever gotten from him was a video of a woman playing the piano. (It was an excellent video, but still...)

The mudslinging is just more evidence of the vacuousness of the anti-cryonics position, at least as expressed by its proponents.

Evidently they have nothing interesting to say in answer to the sincere questions cryonics arguments raise about the nature of life and death in the 21st century. Rather they find these questions make them uncomfortable and seek the nearest blunt object equivalent in order to silence the threat and make it go away.

...I usually call it a day, because I know it's not going anywhere. It's like you don't want to lower yourself to their level, but at the same time, if you're getting bludgeoned by someone, you do have to be assertive in your defense and it can be tiring. I sometimes make mistakes while being assertive, but at least I try to honestly assess my reactions and determine if I'm wrong.