Depressed Metabolism

Edward O. Wilson’s Consilience

Aschwin de Wolf — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 11:12:55 PDT

Sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson believes that a major reason why the social sciences have made so little progress is that its practitioners have ignored the biological basis of human behavior. He is not impressed with arguments that purport that the complexities of human behavior cannot be reduced to more elemental physical principles as embodied...

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Buddhism and the scientific worldview

Aschwin de Wolf — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 09:45:59 PDT

On his blog The Life of Man Qua Man on Earth Mark Plus takes a critical look at Buddhism: Transhumanists who endorse Buddhism tend to annoy me. Buddhism not only has the problems John Horgan points out, but the empirical evidence doesn’t support its fans’ claims about happiness…The developed countries where Buddhism has had the...

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Ken Hayworth on straight freezing in cryonics

Mike Perry — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 11:55:37 PDT

Ken Hayworth’s idea of promoting a fixation-based alternative to brain cryopreservation is something I am highly sympathetic to overall, and I hope some progress in this direction results from the work he is doing and trying to induce others to do. That said, I wanted to comment on Hayworth’s remarks about straight freezing of brain...

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The low-hanging fruit of technological progress

Aschwin de Wolf — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 11:38:22 PDT

The website Alternative Right has an interesting article on the declining pace of technological progress: The world of 1959 is pretty much the same world we live in today technologically speaking. This is a vaguely horrifying fact which is little appreciated…Certainly, people can be forgiven for thinking we live in a time of great progress,...

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Free will versus determinism as it relates to cryonics

Ben Best — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:13:56 PDT

Excerpt from “Ben Best – A Case for Free Will AND Determinism” Determinism implies materialism — implies that consciousness is material. Cryonics is based on the premise that the preservation of the fine structure of the brain at low temperature will preserve the self — ie, that the self is entirely determined-by and contained-in the...

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How many neurons need to survive for cryonics to work?

Aschwin de Wolf — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:50:39 PDT

On this page a calculation is attempted to determine how many neurons need to survive for cryonics to work. The flaw in this approach should be obvious when the author writes : According to The Stroke Association, a stroke is a brain injury with effects which may include difficulty thinking, learning, concentrating, remembering, making decisions,...

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Chemical preservation and cryonics research

Aschwin de Wolf — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:32:42 PDT

In the 2009-4 issue of Alcor’s Cryonics magazine I review the technical and practical feasibility of chemical preservation. One of the most interesting aspects of chemopreservation is that it could play a useful role in the cryopreservation of ischemic patients. There is accumulating evidence that vitrification agents cannot prevent ice...

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The presumption of death

Aschwin de Wolf — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 12:36:44 PDT

Bertrand Russell once said that “most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.” One does not need to look any further than the many responses to Kerry Howley’s recent article about cryonics and hostile partners in New York Times Magazine to find support for Russell’s witty remark. One commenter suggested...

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Cryonics and fear of the future

Aschwin de Wolf — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 09:24:38 PDT

To people who have made cryonics arrangements the biggest mystery remains why more people have not made the same decision. The most obvious answer remains that cryonics has not been proven to “work” yet. People who give this answer usually mean that proof of human suspended animation would lead to an increase in the popularity [...]

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Hard determinism and the problem of evil

Aschwin de Wolf — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 20:31:29 PDT

In an insightful and well organized article (PDF) Nick Trakakis asks the question whether the existence of evil presents a bigger problem for theologies that do not allow any room for free will. He offers a number of theodicies that are available to the “divine determinist” and concludes that although hard determinism introduces...

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