What do you need to know about this direction? How are things with cryonics in Russia and why there is still not a single patient who survived his defrosting?
Let's figure it out.
"Being cryonically frozen is the second most terrible thing that can happen to you"Cryonics is an immortalist project with a catch. In ideal conditions, abstracted from the specifics of relevance, I would say that the emergence and existence of such a project is very good. But our conditions are far from ideal, and it is better to realize in advance a number of significant obstacles, which for some reason are stubbornly ignored by leading immortal cryologists. There are not many comprehensive cryonics-related materials on the web, but this comprehensive article on RationalWiki can be recommended to almost everyone . It describes the most comprehensive range of challenges and technical barriers that cryonicists need to work around.
Nick Bostrom, artificial intelligence researcher
But in this part I am still going to expand on the fundamental, in my opinion, problem of cryonics, and one of the ways to solve it.
Let's start from afar. The main problem that cryonics should solve is not the settler problem of reserving consciousness through continuous synchronization with a computer, but the problem of preserving the integrity of memory and the equivalence of a person before and after cryopreservation. Integrity and equivalence are fundamental criteria here: there is no point in restoring disabled people with 70% of preserved brain functions or with an abundance of false / disappeared memories.
Recently, cryonicists have often speculated on the news with a promising headline: “ Neural connections have learned to preserve when frozen”. The news is being presented as a significant breakthrough in long-term memory preservation. Let's read the main thing from the article:
« 21 Century Medicine „- “»…
… « , , . , , . , »…
… « , . , , » — , Brain Preservation Foundation»…
It can be agreed that maintaining the configuration of the neural network (brain connectome) is a significant condition for recovery. But the article's localizers, for some reason, decided not to translate all of John Smart's interviews . Let's do it for them:
…«Kenneth Hayworth, president of the Brain Preservation Foundation, <…> emphasises that the defrosted rabbit brain was not functional. «That was never the point,» he says. “The point was to demonstrate that the structure of the delicate synaptic circuitry of the brain could be preserved over indefinite time spans»…In short, the active ingredient in the cryoprotectant used by the researchers, glutaral, is toxic to living cells. This means that, for all its accuracy in preserving the topology of the connectome, the method does not allow restoring brain activity - and this was not even the goal of the researchers.
… «One limitation of the technique is that the glutaraldehyde used to chemically fix the brain is a deadly chemical, says Joao Pedro Magalhaes at the University of Liverpool, UK, who coordinates the UK Cryonics and Cryopreservation Research Network. This means reviving a brain preserved in this way may not be possible, although some scientists believe nanotechnology may help overcome this hurdle, he says»…
Their goal was to fix the connectionome, that is, the exact strength of the connections between all neurons. The fact is that the researchers proceed from the idea that memory is stored precisely in the configuration of the neural network - in the connectome - and does not depend on the dynamics of the electrochemical activity of the brain. That is, if you enter the brain into a state of complete “ electromotive silence ” and then return it to normal (exactly how, for now, let’s lower it), the personality’s memory will remain intact. However, this view is notgenerally accepted in the scientific community. Passive, "service" electrochemical processes supporting this memory can also be of fundamental importance for long-term memory.
According to the logic of cryonicists, if the brain is “electrically turned off” and then turned on again, the apparent behavior of the individual should not change. Naturally, at the moment this has never happened - even in a strong coma, the brain retains its electrochemical activity. Many people also tend to say that a person before and after sleep are completely different personalities, that we seem to "die" in a dream. This is an involuntary speculation on unproven hypotheses that people use to show that they would easily agree to die and hand over the reins of control of "themselves" to their digital copy; also this speculation is useful for cryonics if cryopreservation is taken as a kind of sleep. Of course, without experimental evidence, we can all reason only logically, relying on already known facts.
The fact that brain activity is continuous throughout life, even in sleep and coma, means that a person's personality is continuous. You may not be aware of certain changes, but they always happen. In a dream, memories are consolidated, the topology of the connectome is rebuilt and refined. Coma - The brain controls the body's homeostasis. And what happens to a person's personality during dying? During the freezing process, this crucial moment is not controlled in any way . One of the solutions to revitalizing cryopreserved patients is to simulate a virtual connection by analyzing slices of a frozen brain, but will this be a connection for someone who lived, or someone who died and probably lost part of his consciousness and his memory?
Cryonicists today "perfectly capture" what is alreadyhappened to the brain: depolarization of neurons, disruption of the ion gradient, autolysis, cell apoptosis, biodegradation - these processes take effect almost immediately after the cessation of blood flow to the brain (developing for several hours in approximately the sequence given). The synapses are damaged - and aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation perfectly preserves the damaged synapses. And the damaged synapses are identical to the damaged personality.
Just imagine that the medicine of the future has found a way to unfreeze the brain without damage. It is known that the brain was not frozen immediately, but the extent of the brain damage is unknown. Without any reference values, nanorobots of the medicine of the future will be able to restore the brain either "on a whim" or based on data from a typical living brain.
For example, if the sequence of “activation” of the memory-storing regions is important for the restoration of memory, then, when restoring the brain blindly, you can start from the wrong area. Electrochemical activity will also restart on a whim or according to typical metrics. The result of this may be that the end result is a completely new personality.
Thus, in order to increase the chances of recovery of cryopatients, it is necessary torather than ex post facto, use neuroinformation technologies to obtain reference values that future medicine could use as a comparative basis for defrosting and restoring. In simple terms, we need metrics that verify whether a person thawed for behavior, emotional response, the neural code and other characteristics even irrelevant to the same , who was to freeze. But since cryonicists adhere to the connectomic model of memory and consciousness and believethat personality is fixed almost exclusively in the structure of a neural network, a preliminary assessment of a person's personality is considered redundant by them. In addition to this, modern legislation does not allow people to be cryopreserved before the fact of legal death is established, so too much time may pass between the actual and legal deaths, and the workers of the cryo company simply cannot afford to waste time on analyzes, because the account is already running for minutes. Ideally, cryopreservation should take place while still alive.
To check if the recovery was successful, if this is the person, which was frozen, it is absolutely necessary to have a universal decoding language, the data of which would be obtained both before death and cryopreservation, and after thawing. It is extremely important that reference brain data are obtained during life. Such a universal language is offered, for example, by Settleritics and all that widest layer of technologies and sciences that lies behind it. What could have been done is to film the Wiener-Volterrabrain pattern. If a person suddenly dies without having time to move, store the pattern together with the brain. Then the medicine of the future would receive a very important reference for how this particular brain behaves. Therefore, cryonics advocates now have to study and support not only methods of maintaining the topology of the connectome, but also methods of modeling, synchronization and transfer of neuroinformation.
Pure cryonics - cryonics in isolation from settleretics - should be the last hope for those who did not manage to transfer consciousness fully, but not the main one, as for many today. Settleratics and the entire layer of the disciplines behind it are the main prerequisites for the success of this last hope.
And what about Kriorus?
Speaking about the only cryocompany on the territory of Russia, created under the leadership of the Russian Transhumanist Movement, we can say that cryopatients under its care will not be restored not because of the limitations of cryopreservation technologies, but due to the irresponsibility and low level of ethics of the founders of Cryorus themselves. Much has already been said about RTD problems ( 1 , 2 ), so I will not dwell on this here. Tellingly, such contradictory people became the first to found a real, albeit also contradictory, immortalist project in Russia.
In all the intricacies of the history of RTD and Kriorus, we are interested in several key stories.
The first story is the conflict between Danila Medvedev and Valeria Udalova.
Valeria Udalova is the CEO of Kriorus. They created this project together with Medvedev from the very beginning, being in romantic, partnership and friendly relations.
The conflict between the partners broke out on the basis of Medvedev's adultery. Personal confrontation gradually developed into an internal corporate scandal. After Danila's attempts to remove Valeria from the post of the CEO of Cryorus, formally for reasons of inappropriate spending of funds, the latter arbitrarily moved the bodies and brains (!) Of most of the cryopatients to another storage facility, to no one other than her closest supporters, without giving any addresses. Literally, the division of cryopatients began, followed by a period of "legal threats", which continues to this day.
The second story is about the economy.
There have been many accusations against RTD of organizing dubious, semi-fraudulent projects ( 1 , 2 ). One of the victims, YouTube blogger Grandson Yelkin, even recorded a special video exposing Medvedev and Udalova. From the disclosure, it becomes clear that they conducted a scam ICO of their own crypto-token. It was stated that they raised $ 14 million in the ICO, but the tokens never appeared on the exchanges. Now they can be bought on Telegram for 2 cents or less.
From siteof the crypto project, you can also understand that it would be much more convenient for Cryorus to settle in Switzerland and, probably, Medvedev's team will relocate there, because this is a country with permitted euthanasia and fairly wealthy citizens. In a word, Kriorus can disappear from the territory of the Russian Federation, leaving all its problems here. Whether they will be able, in the event of relocation, to transport patients, given the long-term “carve-up” of the latter, is an open question.
The combination of these factors is an unobvious aspect of the extremely low probability of success in cryonics. Simply put, it is a human factor. Lack of a real economic basis (Cryorus, according to reports up to 2018 - practically non-profitcompany; in recent years, official reports have not been published at all) makes cryonicists look for dubious ways to earn money, deceive their supporters and even each other. Essentially, cryonicists are already trading in castles in the air - but Danila Medvedev and the company have surpassed even that by trading crypto tokens for owning parts of these castles in the air. I sincerely hope that the information about the collected $ 14 million is just a manifestation of a good mine in a bad game and in fact nothing was collected; otherwise, it can also be called the strongest reputational damage to the entire immortalist community. Immortalists have come to be perceived as freaks at best, frauds at worst.
Why do we understand all this, as if reading the personal correspondence of warring relatives? One of the reasons is to dispel the illusions of “parties” and “Movements”, if someone else has them.
Danila Medvedev and Valeria Udalova are the type of transhumanists who madly want to enter the posthuman elite, becoming the current elite. But their personal morality is not posthuman, it is inhuman. I highly doubt that with this level of internal ethics, this company will jealously defend its patients as long as it takes.
It is not worth taking sides here, it is worth saying that people who have undertaken the responsibility for a lot of money to do everything to revive their patients must build such a system of their internal interactions so that nothing could interfere with their main task. The Cryorus team did not succeed.
Taking into account the listed technical gaps and the crisis of trust in people, who are actually guarantors of the safety of your body, one may doubt that cryonics, as a separate technological branch of life extension, has any serious role in the future.