cryonics

Jose Cordeiro on Longevity and Cryonics Summit: The World Will Be A Better Place Tomorrow

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Jose Cordeiro, MBA, Ph.D., is an amazing person with endless supplies of energy and optimism. In fact, I have never met a more involved and proactive person than Dr. Cordeiro because he is literally always traveling across the world and is directly involved in a variety of cutting-edge fields and projects from Japan and Korea, spanning all over Europe and all the way to South America and Silicon Valley. I honestly have no idea how Jose Cordeiro is able to sustain his restless schedule but it is very clear that he absolutely loves what he does and is incredibly passionate about making the world a better place. So, following his generous invitation to attend the Longevity and Cryonics Summit in Madrid I could not pass such a rare opportunity to interview Dr. Cordeiro in-person. Hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

During our 45 min conversation with Jose Cordeiro, we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: why he is a futurist, transhumanist, singularitarian, and energularian; living in the best time to live and always travelling; escaping one dictatorship after another and becoming a citizen of the world; the biggest issues of our time; what is a kaka and why talking and even humanity might be the kaka’s of the future; the Longevity and Cryonics Summit in Madrid and the upcoming RAAD Festival in San Diego; the story of Spain from non-plus-ultra to plus-ultra; the religious complications of life extension and cryonics; immortality, amortality and receiving death-threats; Jose Cordeiro’s upcoming book The Death of Death; his seminal meetings with Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov; why the world will be a better place tomorrow…

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation or become a patron on Patreon.

Who is Jose Cordeiro?

José Cordeiro, MBA, Ph.D., is a world citizen in our small planet in a big unknown universe. He was born in Latin America, from European parents, was educated in Europe and North America, and has worked extensively in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. He has studied, visited and worked in over 130 countries in 5 continents.

Mr. Jose Cordeiro studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, USA, where he received his Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) and Master of Science (M.Sc.) degrees in Mechanical Engineering, with a minor in Economics and Languages. His thesis consisted of a dynamic modeling for NASA’s “Freedom” Space Station (the “International” Space Station of today). He later studied International Economics and Comparative Politics at Georgetown University in Washington, USA, and then obtained his Masters of Business Administration (MBA) at the InstitutEuropéen d’Administration des Affaires (INSEAD) in Fontainebleau, France, where he majored in Finance and Globalization. During his studies, Mr. Jose Cordeiro worked with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in Vienna, Austria, and with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC, USA. He started his doctoral degree at MIT, which he continued later in Tokyo, Japan, and finally received his Ph.D. at Universidad Simón Bolívar (USB) in Caracas, Venezuela. He is a lifetime member of the Sigma Xi (ΣΞ, Scientific Research) and Tau Beta Pi (ТΒΠ, Engineering) Honor Societies in North America, is also an honorary member of the Venezuelan Engineers College (CIV), and his name has been included in the Marquis Edition of Who’s Who in the World.

At present, Jose Cordeiro is chair of the Venezuelan Node of the Millennium Project, Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE – JETRO) in Tokyo, Japan, and Founding Faculty and Energy Advisor at Singularity University (SU) in NASA Ames Research Park, Silicon Valley, California, USA.

Mr. Jose Cordeiro is founder and president emeritus of the World Future Society Venezuela Chapter (Sociedad Mundial del Futuro Venezuela); director of the Single Global Currency Association (SGCA) and the Lifeboat Foundation; co-founder of the Venezuelan Transhumanist Association and of the Internet Society (ISOC, Venezuela Chapter); board advisor to the Brain Preservation Foundation (BPF) and Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN); member of the Academic Committee of the Center for the Dissemination of Economic Knowledge (CEDICE), the Foresight Education and Research Network (FERN), the World Future Society (WFS) and the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF); expert member of the TechCast Project and ShapingTomorrow; former director of the World Transhumanist Association (WTA, now Humanity+), the Extropy Institute (ExI), the Club of Rome (Venezuela Chapter, where he was active in promoting classical liberal ideas and the idea of “World Opportunitique” beyond “World Problematique” and “World Resolutique”) and of the Association of Venezuelan Exporters (AVEX), where he participated in the original negotiations of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). He has also been an advisor to the Venezuelan Business Association (AVE) and other companies and international organizations.

Frozen in Time: Pushing the Limitations of Death

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Cryonics_at_a_CrossroadsCreativity and curiosity can drive people to do amazing things, even when the rest of the world sees it as crazy. The curiosity of a young boy and a passion for science allowed for the invention of the phonograph and later the light bulb. At the young age of 16 or 17, President and CEO of ALCOR, Max More became very interested in the idea of life extension. He allowed that young curiosity and desire to know more manifest into a reality.

ALCOR is a life extension foundation that is technology-oriented and focuses on cryonics. ALCOR Life Extension Foundation opened its doors at a time when the idea of quality brain preservation was viewed by most scientists as a far off, and potentially impossible, dream. ALCOR became the first organization to demonstrate the absolute preservation of the structure of the brain. In this video, President and CEO of ALCOR, Max More gives a tour of the property and sheds some light on important aspects of the preservation process. He not only describes the steps it takes to eventually store the body, but also the importance of caring for the body from the moment the patient is declared dead. The goal for the organization is to use cryonics to benefit patients undergoing transplants and prolong our lifespan. The amount of patients being cryopreserved has significantly increased. According to ALCOR’s website, “As of April 30, 2016, ALCOR has 136 patients and 1,066 members.”

One patient preserved at ALCOR is futurist and author, FM-2030. Known as the father of transhumanism, FM-2030 has changed the way some see the future and death. He developed his views on transhumanism in the 1960s and evolved them over the next thirty-something years. “So long as we are mortal, we are not free”, he proclaimed in his book, Countdown to Immortality. An unwavering optimist, FM-2030 strongly believed and encouraged the idea of overcoming death and embracing immortality. His ideas and predictions have since come true, with more people adapting to using cell phones and other sources of technology.

FM-2030 was placed in cryonic suspension on July 8th, 2000. Thus far, he hasn’t been able to see the impact and difference he has made in the futuristic community. However, with the growth and advancements in cryonics, there is hope that FM-2030 will emerge from ALCOR and see his impact someday.

About the Author:

Johnny-BostonJohnny Boston is a filmmaker and creative director who grew up in Europe and is now living on the East Coast. Johnny is currently working on a film inspired by his friend, futurist FM-2030. The Ken Hayworth video above is the first release in a multi-part series. To see more of Boston’s videos please check out the Galactic Public Archives’ channel on YouTube.

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Frozen Faith: Cryonics and The Quest to Cheat Death [Video]

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cryonicsMotherboard recently did a 20 min video on cryonics and I thought I’d repost it so that we can all check it out and ponder not only the issue of cryonics itself but also the way it is often represented in popular media.

Synopsis: What if we could use technology to cheat death? It’s an idea that seems like science fiction, but for a small group of people known as cryonicists, the hope of one day being able to successfully freeze and re-animate a person after death remains something worth fighting for.

In Frozen Faith, Motherboard explores the world of cryonics, and meets the people who embrace the notion that one day technology will become sophisticated enough that we can actually cheat death.

Is this modernity’s antidote to death or just pseudo-science, inspired by sci-fi?

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DJ MacLennan on his Cryonics book “Frozen to Life”

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To me cryonics just makes sense. It may not be pretty but, just like open heart surgery, it is one of those things that, without any guarantees, can possibly extend your life [very] substantially. Thus, especially given the alternative, I just can’t quite make sense of the slow rate of adoption evident not only in North America but also across the world. And so I am always happy to discover new books that lay out the scientific argument for cryonics while making it easily digestible and giving it a very personal, human perspective. Since the most recent book I thoroughly enjoyed on this topic was Frozen to Life: A Personal Mortality Experiment I thought that DJ MacLennan will make an excellent guest on my podcast. I was not wrong about that.

During our 1 hour conversation with DJ MacLennan we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: why he decided to write Frozen to Life and who is it for; cryonics as a glass-state time travel; why he chose neuro- rather than full-body preservation; the costs and rate of adoption of cryonics; the culture, conservatism and geography of his home on the Isle of Skye; transhumanism and transcending limitations; the differences between Max More and James Hughes; his fear of death; the promise of chemical brain preservation; mindfulness and meditation; writing a transhumanist take on The Wizard of Oz and potentially on Grim’s Fairy Tales…

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation or become a patron on Patreon.

Who is D.J. MacLennan?

D.J. MacLennan was born in 1971, in a now-demolished schoolhouse on the almost-drowned ‘island’ of Benbecula, in the Western Isles of Scotland.

He signed up with Alcor in 2007, so that he can be cryopreserved upon his death.

He lives with his wife, Sarah, in a modern house on the coast of the Isle of Skye, in the Highlands of Scotland. Foraging for seafood on the shore in front of his house, sea-swimming, mindfulness meditation and perhaps just the odd dram of malt whisky, act as his antidotes for his tendency to become tangled in recursive coils of words in the depths of his non-existent self.

 

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Cryonics: A Glass-state Time Travel

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Frozen to LifeWhat if we gave people a way to escape absolute death at the end of their biologically-allotted lifespans? Wouldn’t many of them jump at it? Of course, and they do, and have been for some time now. Religionists believe that the metaverse (or whatever they wish to call the whole macro-everything, including all the ‘spiritual’ bits) is neatly ordered to deliver them into immortality, just in time. There’s no mechanism for this. It just happens.

That’s an amazing technology – no mechanism, no physical processes, no messy cause and effect to worry about. Religionists, however, don’t consider this a technology. It’s beyond technology and little human tinkerings like that. Something else does the miraculous transmutation from decay-prone physical stuff to eternal ethereal stuff – something evidently a lot smarter than we are.

The religionist route is an unfounded one, to say the very least.

So, what might work if you want to avoid absolute death? First, you need to accept your existence as a host of atoms in particular configurations. Second, you need to think about ways to arrest biological decay, which is just the chemical reactions that happen when the specific set of constraints we call life no longer apply. As Brian Wowk discusses in his essay Medical Time Travel, the Arrhenius equation shows us that chemical reactions stop when temperature drops low enough (-196 °C, just below the boiling point of nitrogen, will suffice for our purposes). Done correctly, with the right concentration of antifreeze-type cryoprotectants, your ‘dead’ brain and its surrounding tissues will undergo ‘glass-state’ vitrification after suspension in liquid nitrogen. Third, armed with this information, you need to act. It’s unlikely that anybody else is going to set up the circumstances for your eventual glass-state transition, so it’s down to you.

In information-theoretic terms, immortality is already possible. It just isn’t much fun, because you can’t be conscious of anything. Bad and extant, good and gone, you hang on the precipice tip of an unclosed infinity symbol. With your molecular interactions halted, nothing happens. Time yawns, and down its craw you silently fall. Nobody knows how to resurrect a person from this immortal abeyance. Some have theories, some even incipient skills and tools, but no one yet knows how to trigger the temporal gag reflex that will cough you out and close the sigil.

But think on it. Think on the potential. The glass-state time-traveler is indeterminate, undissipated, untruncated. Her death was not information-theoretic death. She is orders of magnitude less dead than the conventionally-erased many.

Skepticism about her possible revival amounts to this: because we cannot imagine how she might be revived, we cannot imagine how she might be revived. Might it take nanobots, substrate-independence tech, scanning neuromorphic arrays, advanced connectomic inference, molecular assemblers? Who knows? Perhaps all of these, perhaps none. No matter. She has the luxury of time. Only if abandoned and allowed to decay (or if our race extinguishes itself before the necessary technology arises) will her problem become terminally insurmountable.

This potential solution to the problem of absolute death defies established human conventions of death and corpse-disposal. It triggers ‘cognitive dissonance’ and repugnance reactions. Scientist Leon Kass finds ‘wisdom’ in the human repugnance response. On cryonics, I neither feel it nor find it wise. Post-mortem cryoprotective abeyance is a logical choice. Nevertheless, the heavy blinders of repugnance and convention still screen this from most.  And we ‘cryonicists’ do it to ourselves; we are far from immune to the emotional and existential (for a few, even ‘spiritual’) turmoil our mortal decision may cause.

‘Cryonauts’ are simply mute, liminal dwellers on an unknown threshold. Not living, not dead; not formerly crazy – nor necessarily selfish, altruistic, or pioneering. Just – for the love of hope and reason – not irretrievably lost.

 

About the Author:

D.J. MacLennanD.J. MacLennan is a futurist author who lives on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. He wrote two chapters of the recently-published cryonics anthology The Prospect of Immortality – Fifty Years Later. His new book Frozen to Life: A Personal Mortality Experiment is due for release at the end of August 2015.

 

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Cryonicist David Ettinger: Take Steps and Be Prepared!

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David EttingerDuring my recent visit to the Cryonics Institute I had the chance to do a video tour of CI and learn more about its vitrification procedures and membership policies. I also had the unique opportunity to interview David Ettinger, whose father Robert Ettinger is the “father of cryonics” because he pretty much started the field with his seminal book The Prospect of Immortality. I was also happy to interview David for my podcast because we had not only an informative but also a very frank and deeply personal interview about his own story and motivation.

During our 1 hour discussion with David Ettinger, we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: what is CI, how and why he got involved in it; how his father – Robert Ettinger, came up with the idea of cryonics; my wife’s journey to embracing the idea and my evil plan to sign up the rest of our family; the definition of cryonics and the process of vitrification; why people are often cryo-convinced but unfortunately not cryo-committed; prices and procedures for joining the Cryonics Institute as well as options for people outside of the US; the slow pace of progress in cryo-biology and related research; betting on life vs betting on death; volunteering and the CI business model; David’s take on transhumanism and the technological singularity…

My favorite quotes that I will take away from this interview with David Ettinger are:

Being frozen is a horible thing, it’s just that the alternative is even worse.

[…]

If you’re counting on something other than cryonics extending your life, you are not covering your bets.

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation, or become a patron on Patreon.

 

Who is David Ettinger?

ETTINGER, DAVID - high resolution pictureDavid Ettinger is an attorney, a founding member of the Cryonics Institute and the son of Robert Ettinger, the founder of the cryonics movement. David has served as CI’s attorney since 1977, and has been an advocate and spokesperson on cryonics issues since he was 15 years old (when he did his first television interview on the subject).

In his “day job”, David is an antitrust lawyer who has litigated a wide range of major cases in more than 30 states. Among his achievements, David may be the only lawyer in the United States who has won antitrust merger cases on behalf of both plaintiffs and defendants.

Andy Zawacki Gives Us A Tour of the Cryonics Institute

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Chief Operations Officer Andy Zawacki guides us through a tour of the Cryonics Institute (CI) facility as well as the whole process of cryo-preservation – from the moment that legal death is declared to the moment patients are placed in long term storage.

If you want to help me produce more high quality videos like this please make a donation.

 

What is the Cryonics Institute?

Cryonics InstituteThe Cryonics Institute is a non-profit, membership-based organization founded in 1976 by Robert Ettinger, “The Father of Cryonics.” CI’s goal from the beginning has been to offer the best available Cryonics services to the public at an affordable cost. Since our founding, CI has been a leading force in the cryonics movement, advancing research, education and public awareness. CI hosts an active and engaged community of more than 1,100 members world-wide.

 

Who is Andy Zawacki?

CI Director Andy Zawacki is also the Chief Operations Officer and secretary of the Cryonics Institute. Some of his responsibilities at CI are processing membership sign-ups, preparing documents for members, membership database entries, facility & patient maintenance, preparing cryostats for service and patient suspensions.

Andy Zawacki has been working for the Cryonics Institute since 1985. The largest cryostat was built by Andy with the help of his brother-in-law. It incorporates features much superior to our original models, and holds fourteen whole-body patients.

When speaking of his commitment to CI, Andy says “I am both a funded suspension member and an employee of CI which gives me incentive to want to help CI to prosper from both a personal and professional point. I have already served one term on the CI board and I am deeply involved with the day to day operations and member relations at CI. My daily involvement and contact with our membership puts me in a unique position to spot things that others may not, which I believe adds value to CI’s board of directors.”

 

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My Video Tour of Alcor and Interview with CEO Max More

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Last month I had the privilege of visiting Max More at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. Alcor is a non-profit organization founded in 1972 and located in Scottsdale, Arizona. It is the world leader in cryonics, cryonics research, and cryonics technology. [Cryonics is the science of using ultra-cold temperature to preserve human life with the intent of restoring good health when technology becomes available to do so.]

During our visit CEO, Dr. More walked us through the Alcor facilities as well as the process starting after clinical death is proclaimed, through the cooling of the body and its vitrification, and ending in long-term storage.

Alcor 3

My selfish reason for visiting was to make sure that my big bald head fits well in the neuro-patients storage containers. Thus I was happy that Max explained the differences between neuro and whole-body preservation and showed us the cryo-tanks where 117 patients are in long-term storage.

Alcor 4

I owe very special thanks to Richard and Tatiana Sundvall for producing this video because without them it would not have happened. I am also obliged to videographer Carl Geers not only for doing a great job behind the camera but also for putting up with my mercilessly caustic sense of humor for three long days.

After our video tour of Alcor CEO Max More was kind enough to take another 25 minutes and answer some questions. During our conversation with Max we discuss: general affordability and prices for Alcor; long-distance membership and why minimizing cooling delays is critical for optimum body preservation; preserving pets; chemical brain preservation; the importance of preserving the neuron’s microtubules; the potential for X-prize-type of competition for minimizing tissue damage and improving preservation; the relationship between cryonics and transhumanism.

My favorite quote that I will take away from this interview with Max More is:

Cryonics is critical care medicine taken to the next step.

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation, or become a patron on Patreon.

 

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Ken Hayworth: Brain Preservation is the Logical Lifeboat

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Ken Hayworth is the president of the Brain Preservation Foundation and a strong proponent of chemical brain preservation.

During my Singularity 1 on 1 interview with Ken, we talk about a variety of topics such as his background in electron-microscopy and how he got interested in it; the motivation behind his work; his skepticism towards curing aging and mind uploading; his optimism for suspended animation in general and chemical brain preservation in particular; his interesting article Killed By Bad Philosophy; the procedure for chemical brain preservation and the differences to cryonics…

My favorite quotes from Hayworth is:

Brain preservation is the logical lifeboat that people have access to today.

Our grandparents had the technology to preserve the precise neural circuitry of their brains for long‐term storage. The best science of our grandparent’s era stated unequivocally that this unique patterning of neural circuitry was the seat of the self; in it was written all memories, skills, and personality. Our grandparents seemed to grasp the quickening pace of technology, and understood that full brain scanning and simulation was around the corner. Why then did grandpa and the rest of his generation reject brain preservation and mind uploading as a means of overcoming death?” And, after considering the evidence, our grandchildren will come to the sad conclusion that we were killed by our “bad philosophy” – no matter how clear the science was, we simply could not really accept the fact that we were physical machines.

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation, or become a patron on Patreon.

 

Who is Ken Hayworth?

Kenneth Hayworth is president of the Brain Preservation Foundation (BPF), an organization formed to skeptically evaluate cryonic and other potential human preservation technologies by examining how well they preserve the brain’s neural circuitry at the nanometer scale. Hayworth is also a Senior Scientist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Farm Research Campus (JFRC) in Ashburn, Virginia. At JFRC, Hayworth is currently researching ways to extend Focused Ion Beam Scanning Electron Microscopy (FIBSEM) imaging of brain tissue to encompass much larger volumes than are currently possible. Prior to moving to JFRC, Hayworth was a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University.

Hayworth is co-inventor of the Tape-to-SEM process for high-throughput volume imaging of neural circuits at the nanometer scale and he designed and built several automated machines to implement this process.

Hayworth received a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Southern California for research into how the human visual system encodes spatial relations among objects. He is a vocal advocate for brain preservation and mind uploading and, through the BPF’s Brain Preservation Prize, he has challenged scientists and medical researchers to develop a reliable, scientifically verified surgical procedure that can demonstrate long-term ultrastructure preservation across an entire human brain. Once won, Hayworth advocates for the widespread implementation of such a surgical procedure in hospitals. Several research labs are currently attempting to win this prize.

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