Which are you signed up for, or which are you planning to sign up for? There are certain benefits to either choice, Neuropreservation or Full Body preservation, or so it seems. If you feel strongly about one way or the other, please state why.

All of meee why not take allll of meee. Frank songs aside, whole body is my option once it becomes available to me.

At this point, I'm planning to sign up for neruo. When the technology advances to the point that I feel secure in having a full body without sacrificing brain preservation, I'll probably go with that, on the off chance that those with neuros have to wait behind those with full bodies to be revived, due to the need to grow a new body.

I haven't signed up yet, mainly due to financial reasons. And on a side note, I have major philosophical problems with the idea of cryonics for me personally (but not for anyone else; it's mainly a solipsistic concern, so everyone else, please sign up!). But once I can reasonably afford it, I figure my signing up will not only ensure my own physical continuance, it will also help support the movement and and in some small way help cryonics be available to more people, which I strongly believe in.

I've signed up with the Cryonics Institute for Whole Body Suspension, because it's currently the only option they offer, and I liked their prices better than Alcor's.

Emotionally, I have no problem with the Neuro-option though, as I was once considering strongly to sign up for it with Alcor, some years ago, before I discovered CI.

OK, Jay.. I am signed up as a head only. Total cost is about $600/yr, which includes a life insurance policy premium and an annual Alcor membership. This comes to less than $50/mth for the world's best human brain back-up program... in case of accidental power outage.

The mind is what important. The body is nothing more than a box that maintains it...

-Infernity

True, but it would be a shame if there were no means to recreate that box in the future. Futurama glass jars abound....

hmm cable or backing up my brain...?

[lol]

Do you have your insurance with Rudi Hoffman or someone else, Bruce?

I purchased insurance online a few years back (before I knew Rudi).

While this is true to some degree, there are many phenotypic elements that we know are developmental rather than genetic in origin. It's truely a shame that neurosuspension gives a better result at this time. I want to know what prevents a combination of the best of both types from being offered?

I'll toss this out here until someone more knowledgeable comes along and sets me straight.

In order to achieve the best possibly results for brain preservation, the brain must be cooled as rapidly and uniformly as possible, and the perfusion of the cryonic preservative must be as rapid and even as possible, within certain reasonable bounds.

With the neuro-preservation, all the attention goes into the head. With the whole body preservation, it's much more difficult to vitrify the entire body, as it takes much longer (due to size, limited blood flow to various tissues/organs, etc.). With blood/cryoprotectant circulating through the whole body, it'd be difficult for the brain to get too far ahead of the body, in terms of temperature, unless two separate blood flows were maintained (which the body wasn't really designed for: there's only one aorta).

There is a hybrid approach, where the brain is vitrified but the body is at best partially vitrified, and mostly just frozen (but still better than a straight freezing). However, I'm not sure if this process reduces even slightly the effectiveness of the neuro-preservation. If not, I may opt for this procedure. If there is a slight drop in effectiveness for the brain preservation, I'll stick with neuro for now (though probably get a life insurance policy big enough to cover a full body option at a later time, if the cost difference is small enough).

Of course I don't forget that the experience you have, and memory in your brain would not be the same if you had no body..But still, the brain is what I'd save.

-Infernity

Just speculating, but couldn't you instead preserve the brain and body separately and thereby avoid these technical difficulties (if cost isn't a factor).

Anyway, I agree with Infernity. Who cares about their body? Surely, even if one did care, the fidelity wouldn't as much of an issue as it is with the brain/mind. Body preservation is an aesthetic thing rather than an identity thing - this discussion will probably seem quite silly to future beings. However, if one is really set on maintaining a particular physical appearance in the future, then the cheaper option would be to extensively measure and photograph the body at various points in its life trajectory for the purpose of future recreation.

Personally, I am looking forward to upgrades, but I might still go with the good ol 2000 Don from time to time.

I don't think it matters what the current technology is, the head alone will always be much easier to preserve than the whole body. I don't think it matters if it is vitrification, or the ability to get cryoprotectants perfused as quickly, or anything else that may come in the future. The whole body just takes longer and requires more procedure than the head alone, so there will always be a slight preservation advantage (imo) to neuropreservation as opposed to whole body preservation.



Yes, I think some people have done this as well, paid for a neurosuspension and a full body suspension, and then have the body as well as the head in seperate dewars. I would think there would be certain advantages to this if someone had enough money to do so.



Also, I found it interesting that the main reason the Cryonics Institute gives for not doing "neurocryopreservation" (as they call it) is for cultural reasons.

In their own words:


I wonder how much of a detrimental effect that neuro-only preservation has on cryonics? ...And, also, how many people choose full body preservation because they think the neuro would be harder to take for their family? (having a head detached is kind of spooky culturally)

Has anyone here initially chosen one and then switched at a later point? (Either start out with a full body contract, then change your mind and change it to a neuro, or vice versa)

I will be signing up for full body with instructions for emergency conversion to neuro. My thought is rather simple - what if my body is required even as a reference for rewiring the nervous system and it's been destroyed? Taking it with me avoids these problems and I believe that vitrification of the brain that is imperfect is still enough to preserve the information.

I am undecided from the underlying assumption to the given selection here.

Frankly I see cryo as no more (or less) valid than Pascal's wager.

That said I must say that I favor neuro over whole body in principle, but that principle is probably more committed to uploading tech than cranial cryo.

For cryo to have an increased chance of success I think the whole body method improves the odds because cranial cryo depends too much on specifically advanced nanotech, and logically dependent processes that we are only hypothesizing about today.

The pragmatics of those processes are likely to turn out differently than our expectations and that influences the odds of success for the process.

That said if we have the kinds of advanced nanotech that meet the current expectations then the same tech can be applied in a number of ways to increase the odds of all the currently available methods, including living state uploading.

Will uploading protect the body I currently inhabit?

( Yes that is an implicit assumption of duality in the mind/body problem but that assumption is implicit in the choice offered in this topic for cryo tech.)

Probably not but rebuilding a broken yet relatively complete corpse and ALSO returning the *personality* (memory character) of the body are two different problems predicated on having an accurate map of the original inhabitant of the body in the first place.

That or you are placing a value in the body that implies just saving the head would not in itself be sufficient to retain. Cranial cryo depends not only on rebuilding the body from scratch (and perhaps even better than the original), it also depends on the ability to resurrect the conscious state of the body's mind before being frozen AND THEN interface old and new physiology. These actually are two different technologies, both of which are necessary to make the more limited (cranial) option possible.

Technically in the whole body option all you *might* need is the tech to repair the body to a functional state, since the support for a neurophysiology is already present. A neurophysiology, which either survived cryo (making this option possible) or the entire approach is moot without the second stage of cognitive interface development. This advanced tech amounts to a BCI interface with download ability from an advanced AI that can handle the temp file storage model during transcription into the neuro-physiological rebuild. This is because the transcription from the biological state to the encrypted state of pure information is required in the first place to make most cranial-cryo applications feasible.

That is unless the process offers a full body support structure that can provide for the thawed head, both as autonomic life support AND interactive sensory/motor controls. If so, then this tech logically depends on the same underlying principles as uploading/downloading human cognitive function.

If the up/download processing ability for advanced BCI interface becomes possible then the ability to store consciousness actively or inactively in an AI matrix would also be more reliable than depending on the original biology except as *additional* insurance. All that is really needed to rebuild the original physiology is sufficient seed tissue DNA with both mtDNA and nDNA to build from.

Once the body was built to a specific stage of development cognitive transfer could be initiated, probably in staged phases. Of course if you want an alternative from the specifics of the original body this becomes an option too.

In fact a myriad of such options becomes possible.

At the annual CI meeting last year, Robert Ettinger proposed that CI should also offer a neuro option.

Unfortunately, there was some resistance from other CI directors.

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