Could you keep a human cryonically stored for cosmologically significant periods of time?

[Gordon Fecyk]

Oh hell. (Is linking to RationalWiki a forum violation? If so, let me know so I can edit this post.)

I like the last engineering problem listed: "Once you've fixed the body's cells and the brain paths, you have a recovered corpse. Your next task is to resurrect the dead."

[Green Baron]

"Pseudoscience" goes in the right direction :-)

 

[Chakat Firepaw]

19 hours ago, RCgothic said:

Three:

I'm counting getting to an indefinitely stable state as part of successful freezing.

[RuBisCO]

On 7/2/2017 at 3:41 AM, Green Baron said:

 

Oh, and current consensus is that the universe has no end or zero K is so far in the future that it is not imaginable, probably only reached asymptotically. So forget this.

Yeah, some animals can survive a short freeze (- a few degrees celsius for a week or so) by controlling the water in the body cells and producing freeze protectants and means to repair the cellular damage. Metabolism doesn't stop completely, the age but slowly. Fish die when water temp drops below -2°C. Some insects can do longer and lower by applying the means above.

Freezing a human to ice completely means killing it and partly means amputation. It is meat afterwards, body tissues are damaged beyond repair, which is bad. First find a means to get the water out of the body without killing the poor thing.

Transforming a highly adaptive brain into a steady state machine ? How scary, we don't do this to our computers any more :-) Computer, like all things technology, don't last that long, 99% don't even last 10 years. You can't do away so hand wavy with 100 my. These time scales weather away mountain ranges, change continental arrangements and bury geology under layers of sediments.

No material stuff on earth, natural or artificial, lasts even a few hundred years without a change through radiation, oxidation or simply molecular /chemical decay. No energy source lasts more than tens of years at most without being attended or exchanged.

A few minerals last very long in space without much of a change, but i don't think anybody will end up as a piece of olivine ... :-) Still even they change chemically under radiation and through isotopic decay, an effect that can be used for dating.

 

You misunderstand transhumanism. Converting a neural network into neural network is not an impossible task, more so such a machine would not be off, but actively maintaining its self, traveling the universe Carl Sagan style.

18 hours ago, cubinator said:

Reproducing nanites would evolve over 100 My to do unintended things, I think.

Depends on their rate of mutation, if their rate of mutation is say 1/100,000,000 that of regular life then 100,000,000 years is just 1 year of evolutionary time to them. Ideally we could make machines that have a much lower rate of mutation than life normally does.

[kerbiloid]

(May sound too violent for some persons.)

Spoiler

Once we bought a pack of frozen fish for the cat: hand-sized plaice or so.
I'm aware of bears and hamsters natural hibernation at +2°, biological fluids staying liquid near -4° which allow some lifeforms stay alive being frozen into a river ice.

All fishes were really deep frozen as a several kilogram ice stone. (Afaik usually they froze them at -28° or so).
We held them it in a freezer, under -8° or so.

We were absolutely sure they are dead, and we didn't unstick them one by one because they were one piece of ice. 
We were just chipping off fragments of the fishstone with a knife, warming them in a deep bowl of hot water and feeding to the pussycat.

When the fishstone fragments were chipped off, they were solid inside, the kitchen was in frozen solid yellow crumbs, not liquid drops. 
(Until the unbroomed crumbs began melting).

The chipped fragments were not intact fishes. 
They were parts of fishes frozen together, some of them more or less intact.

So, I'm absolutely sure that these fishes were absolutely solid (or more accurate - amorphous as glass), there was nothing liquid, and they were frozen for long time.
No "natural anti-freeze" or "warm inside", just a hard frozen fishstone.

But when they appeared in the warm water and got soft, they began moving (of course, by reflex _{as if an alive fish does something in another way}).

They were curving as if they were trying to swim. 
OK, we can presume their inner batteries were discharging causing the muscle activity.

But they were definitely trying to take a proper vertical position.
This unlikely can be just galvanisation of a corpse. This is a work of brain, even if it is a fish brain. Because muscles have no idea about "vertical".

The cat was very intrigued, too, and was hunting every time if happened nearby.
The fishes looked absolutely stupid (even for fishes) and didn't tried to evade, but they definitely were trying to get vertical and swim when being hit from aside.

It's like zombi fishes, just they didn't want brains (though, who knows...).

I'm sure there couldn't be any biological processes inside the deep-frozen fishes (except rotting, but that's on bacteria, not on fishes).
And I find very unlikely that any electrical impulses could circulate there without liquid electrolytes.
In fact they should be just frozen corpses with electrical activity on the level of death moment. -28°..-8°, not just -2..2° of natural hibernation.
They would just finish dying and float, not swim and get vertical.
These fishes make me think that primitive models of mind storage like "electricity circulates through the neuron loops" do not properly describe anything.

 

Edited July 4, 2017 by kerbiloid

[Green Baron]

2 hours ago, RuBisCO said:

You misunderstand transhumanism. Converting a neural network into neural network is not an impossible task, more so such a machine would not be off, but actively maintaining its self, traveling the universe Carl Sagan style.

Depends on their rate of mutation, if their rate of mutation is say 1/100,000,000 that of regular life then 100,000,000 years is just 1 year of evolutionary time to them. Ideally we could make machines that have a much lower rate of mutation than life normally does.

Oh, i perfectly understand transhumanism. It describes seasonal wanderings of semi-sessile groups. Edit, no that's translated transhumance :-). Was hijacked lately for the marginal science belief in of augmenting humans. There is no AI for example, only programs that do what the programmers told them. Reality imposes limits scifi does not have. But i admit that i am less professional in scifi ...

Real machines don't mutate and replicate, they can only be programmed to do something. And they must be maintained. Anorganic material isn't even suitable for a self stabilized process of evolution. And even if, an evolution does not follow a cause (to keep a body alive), it just takes place. If you program it to follow a cause it will fail when conditions aren't favourable any more. An evolutionary process has a different fabric than nanites crawling out of a scifi book cover :-)

Again, scifi is ok, but reality imposes limitations that will most probably never allow fantastic concepts that are nice to read and watch. We cannot make such machines.

And we cannot freeze an animal body without badly damaging or killing it.

Edited July 4, 2017 by Green Baron

[NSEP]

I always thought ice crystals piercing through nearly all my cell membranes is going to most definitely kill me.

Is this actually a real problem or is it Paranoia?

[kerbiloid]

27 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

programs that do what the programmers told them

Very optimistic view on what programs do...

18 minutes ago, NSEP said:

I always thought ice crystals piercing through nearly all my cell membranes is going to most definitely kill me.

They hope that if quickly freeze the whole body at once, it will become one large crystal at once, without local ice needles growing here and there and piercing the cells.
Also they hope that if keep the iceman at cryogenic temperature, stochastic process of defects appearance will be enough slow to preserve the body for centuries.
Their third hope is that nobody of descendants will be dying to return the bequest to a suddenly appeared granny. So, probably they will not be unhappy too much if something with the cryochamber goes wrong. (That's only a subjective assumption, of course.)

Edited July 4, 2017 by kerbiloid

[Green Baron]

57 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Very optimistic view on what programs do...

 

*lol*

Learning c++. Just trying to find the causes for a segfault in my "program" ...

 

[Vanamonde]

10 hours ago, NSEP said:

I always thought ice crystals piercing through nearly all my cell membranes is going to most definitely kill me.

Is this actually a real problem or is it Paranoia?

This is one of the major problems which would need to be overcome before freezing and reviving people could be possible. Some animals deal with it by having natural chemicals in their cells which prevent the water from forming crystals when it freezes, but nobody has any real idea how to make that work for people, too. 

[WestAir]

Would a human that is biologically cured of aging (I.E., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality ) be able to fullfill the OPs initial request without the need for cryogenics? What's the upper limit here to an immortal organisms lifespan?

[Bill Phil]

1 hour ago, WestAir said:

Would a human that is biologically cured of aging (I.E., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality ) be able to fullfill the OPs initial request without the need for cryogenics? What's the upper limit here to an immortal organisms lifespan?

Well there's a likelihood on a per year basis for death by accident...

[YNM]

7 hours ago, WestAir said:

Would a human that is biologically cured of aging (I.E., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality ) be able to fullfill the OPs initial request without the need for cryogenics? What's the upper limit here to an immortal organisms lifespan?

That'd invoke the question of death by accident (hmm... force majeur if you may say). And the feeling of "living" forever vs. "alive" forever...

 

Boredom aside, given that mass extinction are usually caused by force majeur, I don't quite think you can really make it. At one point, everything will just go horribly wrong (though ofc you'll call it a significant event. which it's not going to be compared to the whole universe.)

Edited July 6, 2017 by YNM

[YNM]

On 7/4/2017 at 1:02 PM, kerbiloid said:

(May sound too violent for some persons.)

  Hide contents

Once we bought a pack of frozen fish for the cat: hand-sized plaice or so.
I'm aware of bears and hamsters natural hibernation at +2°, biological fluids staying liquid near -4° which allow some lifeforms stay alive being frozen into a river ice.

All fishes were really deep frozen as a several kilogram ice stone. (Afaik usually they froze them at -28° or so).
We held them it in a freezer, under -8° or so.

We were absolutely sure they are dead, and we didn't unstick them one by one because they were one piece of ice. 
We were just chipping off fragments of the fishstone with a knife, warming them in a deep bowl of hot water and feeding to the pussycat.

When the fishstone fragments were chipped off, they were solid inside, the kitchen was in frozen solid yellow crumbs, not liquid drops. 
(Until the unbroomed crumbs began melting).

The chipped fragments were not intact fishes. 
They were parts of fishes frozen together, some of them more or less intact.

So, I'm absolutely sure that these fishes were absolutely solid (or more accurate - amorphous as glass), there was nothing liquid, and they were frozen for long time.
No "natural anti-freeze" or "warm inside", just a hard frozen fishstone.

But when they appeared in the warm water and got soft, they began moving (of course, by reflex _{as if an alive fish does something in another way}).

They were curving as if they were trying to swim. 
OK, we can presume their inner batteries were discharging causing the muscle activity.

But they were definitely trying to take a proper vertical position.
This unlikely can be just galvanisation of a corpse. This is a work of brain, even if it is a fish brain. Because muscles have no idea about "vertical".

The cat was very intrigued, too, and was hunting every time if happened nearby.
The fishes looked absolutely stupid (even for fishes) and didn't tried to evade, but they definitely were trying to get vertical and swim when being hit from aside.

It's like zombi fishes, just they didn't want brains (though, who knows...).

I'm sure there couldn't be any biological processes inside the deep-frozen fishes (except rotting, but that's on bacteria, not on fishes).
And I find very unlikely that any electrical impulses could circulate there without liquid electrolytes.
In fact they should be just frozen corpses with electrical activity on the level of death moment. -28°..-8°, not just -2..2° of natural hibernation.
They would just finish dying and float, not swim and get vertical.
These fishes make me think that primitive models of mind storage like "electricity circulates through the neuron loops" do not properly describe anything.

 

I've seen freshly cut meat blocks wiggling when a fly lands on it several hours after it was slaughtered. It was quite strong. Considering you were undoing plaice, which is quite a hardy species I presume, it's possible that they really are residual movements and such. Catfish are also very hard to be killed - you can buy them fresh with a good knock on the head (which usually render the brain and such broken) and even a few hours after they'll swim after contacted with water. They could still be moving when marinated or something.

Edited July 7, 2017 by YNM

[kerbiloid]

As I specially mentioned, I was wondered not with muscle contractions, but with the attempts to establish proper body position: vertical. This is a brain job, not just battery discharging or so.

[RuBisCO]

On 7/4/2017 at 2:23 AM, Green Baron said:

Oh, i perfectly understand transhumanism. It describes seasonal wanderings of semi-sessile groups. Edit, no that's translated transhumance :-). Was hijacked lately for the marginal science belief in of augmenting humans. There is no AI for example, only programs that do what the programmers told them. Reality imposes limits scifi does not have. But i admit that i am less professional in scifi ...

Real machines don't mutate and replicate, they can only be programmed to do something. And they must be maintained. Anorganic material isn't even suitable for a self stabilized process of evolution. And even if, an evolution does not follow a cause (to keep a body alive), it just takes place. If you program it to follow a cause it will fail when conditions aren't favourable any more. An evolutionary process has a different fabric than nanites crawling out of a scifi book cover :-)

Again, scifi is ok, but reality imposes limitations that will most probably never allow fantastic concepts that are nice to read and watch. We cannot make such machines.

And we cannot freeze an animal body without badly damaging or killing it.

Yeah, no your wrong

Everything mutates, all data corrupts over time is only a matter of rate of mutation. As for this false dichotomy of "program to do" verse AI, no that is totally incorrect. We learn via a neural network in which neural connections are varied at random, pathways that produce a desired outcome are strengthened, pathways that don't are downgraded and eliminated, a process of evolution scaled down from individual organism to synapse strength. Mind you we also learn though conventional evolved neural componants, we evolved to mimic, to learn language and process data in symbols, etc.

All of this can and is being emulated! Consider the latest competition between the worlds champion Go player and AlphaGO AI. AlphaGo was not programed to play Go, rather it consists of a simulated neural network, that was shown thousands of go games, then played its self thousands of times with different variants, the winning variants were bred together and mutated and repeated, evolving AlphaGo to levels where it crushes the human players. 

So in conclusion: yes machines can mutate (we are machines at a fundamental level in fact) yes machines can evolve (at the very least en silico) and machines can learn as we do with neural networks.

[Green Baron]

2 hours ago, RuBisCO said:

Everything mutates, all data corrupts over time is only a matter of rate of mutation.

That is not mutation, that's simple decay. Something goes kaputt over time when not maintained and the entity ceases to function. Different thing. Mutation is a small change in the plan to form a slightly different organism over generations. Selection then judges whether that little change is a little more fit (can reproduce more easily) than the other generation.

Quote

As for this false dichotomy of "program to do" verse AI, no that is totally incorrect. We learn via a neural network in which neural connections are varied at random, pathways that produce a desired outcome are strengthened, pathways that don't are downgraded and eliminated, a process of evolution scaled down from individual organism to synapse strength.

A neural network does not copy the brain, it is a technological concept that tries to model parts of the pathways as observed in a brain, but it is much more basic and simple. A brain can change the paths and learn completely new things, a program, as complex as it may be, can't. Also, evolution works over the generations and not inside a single organism, that is called modification (well, it is of course part of an evolutionary process) and allows a single organism to adapt to training, learning, food intake, etc.

Quote

All of this can and is being emulated! Consider the latest competition between the worlds champion Go player and AlphaGO AI. AlphaGo was not programed to play Go, rather it consists of a simulated neural network, that was shown thousands of go games, then played its self thousands of times with different variants, the winning variants were bred together and mutated and repeated, evolving AlphaGo to levels where it crushes the human players. 

A good example, while the go program can only play go (i had similar discussions 20 years ago with chess), the human player can step away and play chess, or write a program, or write a poem, or paint a picture, or write things in a computer game forum, or cook and enjoy a good meal with friends. Things a computer can't and is not to be seen that it can some time soon. The respective company calls this "AI" because of the same reasons IBM once called their deep blue thought program "AI", but it is not. Or the I in AI is defined very conveniently :-)

Quote

So in conclusion: yes machines can mutate (we are machines at a fundamental level in fact) yes machines can evolve (at the very least en silico) and machines can learn as we do with neural networks.

No, machines can't mutate :-) because they cannot replicate and submit their "genetic" code to little arbitrary changes (variations in this context)) that can be sorted out via the "fitness" criteria through the (changing) environment (selection). Any changes a program would simulate would follow a pattern and that's not evolution then any more.

As to the machine learning, maybe in a few decades we have computers that can simulate the activity of a human brain (does someone know how that really works ?), but, like every simulation, they'd have to prove that switching 100 billion neurons really leads to something "intelligent". I doubt so, until proven wrong.

:-)

Edited July 8, 2017 by Green Baron
m -> b

[RuBisCO]

3 hours ago, Green Baron said:

That is not mutation, that's simple decay. Something goes kaputt over time when not maintained and the entity ceases to function. Different thing. Mutation is a small change in the plan to form a slightly different organism over generations. Selection then judges whether that little change is a little more fit (can reproduce more easily) than the other generation.

When we have a program on a computer, errors do occur as we copy that program, generally these leads to the program not working at all, but in theory a error that leads to a new operation as possible. In fact there are evolving programs that have specific sections of code that random numbers are throw into to produce mutations, the mutants that work better are selected for, breed and repeat.

A neural network does not copy the brain, it is a technological concept that tries to model parts of the pathways as observed in a brain, but it is much more basic and simple. A brain can change the paths and learn completely new things, a program, as complex as it may be, can't. Also, evolution works over the generations and not inside a single organism, that is called modification (well, it is of course part of an evolutionary process) and allows a single organism to adapt to training, learning, food intake, etc

You are complete hung up on this terminology. a neural network and change its pathways and learn completely new things, it is not a program. The nature of how it learns it identical to how organism learn and can even have thousands of separate networks learn, compete against each other, kill off the losers, breed the winners and repeat for generations, in virtual space, in just hours.

Take some time to learn about neuromorphics:

A good example, while the go program can only play go (i had similar discussions 20 years ago with chess), the human player can step away and play chess, or write a program, or write a poem, or paint a picture, or write things in a computer game forum, or cook and enjoy a good meal with friends. Things a computer can't and is not to be seen that it can some time soon. The respective company calls this "AI" because of the same reasons IBM once called their deep blue thought program "AI", but it is not. Or the I in AI is defined very conveniently :-)

That because the AlphaGo program is a simulation of a few million neurons (less then a frogs brain) and it was raise or breed to do nothing but play Go. What will happens when we take hardware neural networks of over 80 billion neurons and 80 billion x >10,000 synapses and dendrites firing at the speed of electricity and not at the speed of ionic gradient waves (firing speed will be at the millions of Hz verse our neurons that top out at 1000 hz), we take that and raise it up to like a child?   

No, machines can't mutate :-) because they cannot replicate and submit their "genetic" code to little arbitrary changes (variations in this context)) that can be sorted out via the "fitness" criteria through the (changing) environment (selection). Any changes a program would simulate would follow a pattern and that's not evolution then any more.

No that is exactly what evolving programs do.

As to the machine learning, maybe in a few decades we have computers that can simulate the activity of a human brain (does someone know how that really works ?), but, like every simulation, they'd have to prove that switching 100 billion neurons really leads to something "intelligent". I doubt so, until proven wrong.

We have gone from 256 artificial neurons on a chip 5 years ago to 16 million today, we will be at over a trillion neurons by the end of the next decade. 

 

 

[Green Baron]

We are talking about different things, i think. You are talking about a simulation program that runs in a machines memory and processors for a limited time, at most the uptime of the machine, i was talking about machines that could "evolve" for millions of years to repair the damage of a frozen body (had those scifi nannites thing in mind or robots that build other robots).

Genetic algorithms are quite old, but they are only simulations, they are not real as the chemistry in an animals body or the principles of evolution that form organisms. They may have become more complex in the past and will do so in the future, but the stay virtual. Machines in reality do not evolve, the program inside might within the constraints of the programmers, but on power or functional fail the fun is over. Current computers with such programs last a few weeks, months at most and are then used for something else.

[RuBisCO]

6 hours ago, Green Baron said:

We are talking about different things, i think. You are talking about a simulation program that runs in a machines memory and processors for a limited time, at most the uptime of the machine, i was talking about machines that could "evolve" for millions of years to repair the damage of a frozen body (had those scifi nannites thing in mind or robots that build other robots).

Genetic algorithms are quite old, but they are only simulations, they are not real as the chemistry in an animals body or the principles of evolution that form organisms. They may have become more complex in the past and will do so in the future, but the stay virtual. Machines in reality do not evolve, the program inside might within the constraints of the programmers, but on power or functional fail the fun is over. Current computers with such programs last a few weeks, months at most and are then used for something else.

Well yes evolving programs are software, but I'm also talking about HARDWARE artificial neurons on a silicon chip undertaking the same kind of operations as our brains electrically, such as to achieve Strong AI, that can self repair and maintain a civilization of immortal sentients for billions of years, and thus forgoing the need for frozen corpsicles.  

[DAL59]

On 7/1/2017 at 4:31 PM, Souper said:

What would it take to freeze a human for upwards of 100 million years (enough time for the universe's structure to noticeably change) and still be able to revive them afterwards?

 

Could i get to see the end of the universe? Pretty please?

Get on a spaceship, build a laser array on the moon, get up to relavistic speeds.  

[magnemoe]

5 hours ago, DAL59 said:

Get on a spaceship, build a laser array on the moon, get up to relavistic speeds.  

And turn the interstellar hydrogen into hard radiation  
Also forget the moon if you want time dilation to be relevant, you would need an constant acceleration like an artillery shell for +100 AU. 
And the issue with radiation so you need to send something more like an battleship, think dyson cloud to power this. 

[wumpus]

On 7/3/2017 at 1:46 PM, Gordon Fecyk said:

Oh hell. (Is linking to RationalWiki a forum violation? If so, let me know so I can edit this post.)

I like the last engineering problem listed: "Once you've fixed the body's cells and the brain paths, you have a recovered corpse. Your next task is to resurrect the dead."

There's a somewhat new saying amoung EMTs “Nobody is dead until warm and dead”.  So resurrection is mainly an issue if you let the body die (legally required in the US) instead of frozen while kept alive by machines.  As far as I know the only way to tell if a patient survived heart bypass surgery (the patient is taken down to a few degrees C during the operation) is to complete the surgery, warm up the patient, and wait.

Current technology can freeze a mouse and revive it (although I have no idea of the mouse's chances), but as far as I know no cryogenics firms have even attempted research to work their way up to and through primates.  This should tell you all you need to know about human cryogenics.  If you need anymore I'd suggest following the rationalwiki link.  Until somebody has a reasonable understanding of how to freeze a primate without leaving a useless corpse, there's little reason to change the law to allow freezing while technically alive.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300957214005243

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

There's a somewhat new saying amoung EMTs “Nobody is dead until warm and dead”.  So resurrection is mainly an issue if you let the body die (legally required in the US) instead of frozen while kept alive by machines.  As far as I know the only way to tell if a patient survived heart bypass surgery (the patient is taken down to a few degrees C during the operation) is to complete the surgery, warm up the patient, and wait.

Current technology can freeze a mouse and revive it (although I have no idea of the mouse's chances), but as far as I know no cryogenics firms have even attempted research to work their way up to and through primates.  This should tell you all you need to know about human cryogenics.  If you need anymore I'd suggest following the rationalwiki link.  Until somebody has a reasonable understanding of how to freeze a primate without leaving a useless corpse, there's little reason to change the law to allow freezing while technically alive.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300957214005243

This is not related, the article is about people who heart stops while cooled. Typically drowning in 4 degree water and you can revive up to an hour later. 
Its also used in some surgery as it let you shut down the body for some time. 
Freezing is totally different, it tend to generate ice crystals who destroy cells, this is easy to test with pigs who has much of the same size as humans and you can sell the meat then you fail. 
The problem is that even freezing you to 4K will not affect atomic decay of stuff like C14 who will damage nearby molecules, nor lots of cosmic radiation. 

Easiest way to do this is probably to fix the aging bugs we have: all of them, also fix the immune system to fix cancer both will sell very well. And add pointed ears, its an statement and you are hardly an primate anymore at this stage, live very risk free and enjoy. 
You robot kills you because you always complain the egg is either to hard or soft-boiled

 

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

I as far I can tell, there's probably no physics reason that it would be impossible.

A rabbit's kidney was successfully vitrified and thawed out, and transplanted back into the rabbit in this study, although not all of the rabbits survived: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781097/

As far as I can tell the unknowns are, assuming you were completely healthy when vitrified:

1. Is there significant damage to organs from long term vitrification?
2. Can a brain be vitrified without major damage for any period of time? (it seems like ice crystal damage isn't the problem)
3. Can you be unfrozen in the distant future?

1 and 3 are both dependent on future technological advances, which are notoriously hard to predict. Even for the next 20-50 years, people disagree on whether something as impactful as superintelligent AI will exist. Similar disagreement exists, although on slightly different timescales, over nanotechnology, brain uploading, and replacement organs. Any of these would probably completely change what death even means. There's no guarantee that they could solve problems 1 and 3, much less 2, but it's definitely a possibility.

It's also worth considering that 50 years ago, people expected a completely different future (space colonized, flying cars, general AI, etc) than the one we have (internet, computing power, amazing medical advances, li-ion batteries, etc).