Who Speaks for the Frozen Brains?

Tim Cavanaugh | February 25, 2004

New at Reason: Does it take a village to freeze a cranium? The Arizona legislature wants to make sure all cryogenically preserved human heads are properly regulated by gravediggers. Sound confusing? Ridiculous? Does it make your brain cold just thinking about it? Let Ron Bailey thaw your mind.

Comments

garym|2.25.04 @ 1:10AM|#

Grammatical quibble on the article's headline: You can't decapitate a head. Well, they could in the case of that unfortunate child who had a second head on her head, but let's not talk about that.

|2.25.04 @ 1:44AM|#

Thank you garym.

It would be:
"Consumer protection for disembodied heads."

|2.25.04 @ 2:11AM|#

"The cryonics community has traditionally had a strong overlap with libertarians in the US. It'll be interested to see how this plays out in libertarian circles."

I need a new battery for my sarcasm-detector. Is this true? If so, we got some real nut-cases in our ranks. Oh fuck, who am I trying to kid? We are all insane (except for joe).

Just my 2 cents: I'm of the mindless "populists". Death is death. To deny death as inevitable is to deny one of the very basic truths of existence. Therefor you are a FUCKING LOON!!

dragoon|2.25.04 @ 3:27AM|#

Yes, Mr. Nice Guy, death is death, heavier-than-air flight is impossible, and aether is an important area of research.

Considering you've got so many people in the libertarian community who think taxes can be done away with, does it really surprise you that the other part of the "inevitables" is a favorite target as well? In time, they'll have to come up with new ones. Entropy, maybe, though the damned 2nd law's been violated in experiments, so I've got hope for that one to be smashed too.

|2.25.04 @ 3:29AM|#

The real issue for 2004 is, should it be legal to marry a frozen head?

|2.25.04 @ 4:34AM|#

Well, you don't want BALCO injecting Ted Williams' head with steroids now, do you?

|2.25.04 @ 4:37AM|#

The second law has never been violated.

It's gone to the Neverland Ranch a few times, but it's never actually been violated.

Seriously, though, it would be more accurate to say that the second law of thermodynamics only has a limited range of applicability. We can get into a semantic debate over whether that's the same as a violation, but the important point is that the second law is only meaningful and useful if its applicability is clearly stated. Otherwise it's just plain wrong.

The second law of thermodynamics only applies to equilibrium systems. There have been non-equilibrium experiments that might look like violations of the second law, but the second law doesn't apply to non-equilibrium systems, and nobody has ever claimed otherwise. (Well, no reputable person.)

That about exhausts my knowledge of second law "violations." For more info, talk to somebody else.

|2.25.04 @ 5:29AM|#

thoreau, I thought we were talking about frozen heads and not nitpicking the finer points of thermodynamics.

|2.25.04 @ 5:33AM|#

Sorry. Somebody mentioned violations of the second law, and I decided to have some fun with "It hasn't been violated, it just went to the Neverland Ranch" and then it all sort of spun out of control...

|2.25.04 @ 6:11AM|#

The bad news for the cryonics community is that Republicans, who control the AZ legislature, are now beyond a doubt the Party most willing to use the power of government to enforce their views on individual behavior, religion and morality.

The Ted Williams family quarrel is just a smoke screen and an excuse. There is no doubt that their objections to Alcor come in large part the fundamentalist religious perspective that permeates the party. For them, cryonics ranks right up there with cloning, stem cells, birth control and gay nuptials. It is a violation of their view of "gawd's plan". They will not say so, but it is true. The question for Alcor and its allies is how to fight this.

And, yes, it is a libertarian issue.

Reason|2.25.04 @ 11:34AM|#

Once you're done with the thawing, feel free to help the cryonics community fight this ridiculous legislation.

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/000025.php

Once upon a time, the US was a place in which you could go out and just do the stuff you wanted to do with your own body - not to mention start up and manage your own business ventures. Nowadays anyone with money can buy legislation and stir up the ignorant to shut down potentially competing businesses or behavior they don't like.

The cryonics community has traditionally had a strong overlap with libertarians in the US. It'll be interested to see how this plays out in libertarian circles.

Reason
Founder, Longevity Meme

|2.25.04 @ 11:38AM|#

They do have some nutty bills in the Arizona legislature. The latest one is a proposal to ban statewide the sale of cold beer and wine.

Yeah, I always like an nice warm beer when it's 115 F. in the shade, really hits the spot.

|2.25.04 @ 11:55AM|#

Is there any current research on how to read the memories from a frozen head? Wouldn't a few frozen heads have to be used up in testing? Can animals be used for this purpose? If not, will they pick Ted William's head or some other poor (unknown) slob's head?

It's all nice to say "sometime in the distant future..." but even the most unusual technologies such as teleportation and gravity manipulation have some experimentation going on now. Is the same true for frozen memory retrieval?

Also, instead of frozen heads, can we call the "Topsicles"?

Warren|2.25.04 @ 12:10PM|#

Yes, the state should keep it's dirty hands out of regulating cryogenics.
But I can't shed any tears over the woes of a bunch of snake oil hucksters. There are bigger issues to get worked up over. Like the existing regulations already in force over the funeral industry. I'm much more concerned about the fleecing of widows and orphans with overpriced caskets and the like, than weather gullible people can get their brains turned to mush by having them frozen after they're dead.

|2.25.04 @ 12:15PM|#

Re Ted Williams,

Alas, it's too late for
"The Splendid Sno-Cone"

|2.25.04 @ 12:18PM|#

Hey, "don't like this feeling", you're missing the point. You have to freeze your brain AFTER you die, or when you're fixin to die, NOT BEFORE you die. When you're brain gets cold like that it's very hard to avoid typos, much less write in complete sentences without the word fuck.

|2.25.04 @ 12:23PM|#

This reminds me of proposals to license palm readers and fortune tellers. The only difference is that cryogenics has *some* basis in fact.

Dirk Deppey|2.25.04 @ 12:35PM|#

As a native Arizonan, allow me to explain: for the last century or so, my home state has been in an intense competition with Nevada for the title of Most Cantankerous State in the Union. Its legislature reflects this: their actions fly in the face of logic as often as they do the face of conventional wisdom, though not always both at once.

The ensuing results often seems like it came from some sort of political randomizing machine. This is not always a bad thing; Arizona, for example, refuses to get with the program where Daylight Savings Time is concerned, a concept that always struck me as arbitrary and delusional to begin with. It's also a state where Heinlein-esque "rugged individualism" still clings to a cranky dominance in the public bazaar. One of my favorite memories from growing up was a sign by the door of my local Smitty's grocery store in Phoenix's Sunnyslope neighborhood, which read "please check your guns with the courtesy desk." This sign was dead serious. I always loved what that said about my childhood home.

That said, what the state gains from its idiosyncratic philosophy it corespondingly loses in coherence. All too frequently there's no way to divine what's going through an Arizona legislator's inscrutible mind short of a glass of barium and a CAT scan. Put it this way: this is the state that gave the nation Barry Goldwater, John McCain, Evan Meacham and J.D. Hayworth. Only in Arizona could this not be seen as a contradiction.

Ernie Longmire|2.25.04 @ 12:56PM|#

Dirk -- you don't have time for Journalista anymore but here you are posting on Hit & Run? I'm telling!

xlifex|2.25.04 @ 12:57PM|#

"But I can't shed any tears over the woes of a bunch of snake oil hucksters"

The ignorance about cryonics in this comment is simply breathtaking. Why not learn something about the subject before writing populist nonsense like this:

Cryonics Myths:
http://www.alcor.org/cryomyths.html

The Cryobiological Case For Cryonics:
http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/caseforcryonics.html

Cryonics Portal:
http://www.xlifex.net/

|2.25.04 @ 12:57PM|#

100 quatloons on the newcomers!

|2.26.04 @ 5:09AM|#

It could be a unique way of giving head...

Mark S.|2.26.04 @ 6:41AM|#

Brain and Brain! What is Brain?!

|2.26.04 @ 10:32AM|#

Okay, I'm actually intriqued. Can someone tell me, assuming that it can be ever done, why would future folk want to thaw out and revive a head/body? What is the incentive?

|2.26.04 @ 11:12AM|#

Incentives for thawing heads:

Historical research

Mining of nerve tissue/stem cells

Putting brains into the working bodies of criminals who have lost their brains due to criminal prosecution (this one is Larry Niven's idea)

Humanitarian concern

A "let's see what happens if..." kind of attitude

PhD projects for future biologists

Dog food

|2.26.04 @ 12:26PM|#

All I know about cryonics I learned from the book Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition. So, I don't have a big problem with cryonics per se, but didn't Alcor lose someone's head back in the 80's? And there was some question about whether she was dead yet before they cut it off?

But more importantly, whose idea was it to locate an industry based on freezing things for centuries in Arizona? Isn't that just asking for trouble?

|2.27.04 @ 9:09AM|#

Mark S: LOL! Great way to bring out the geeks. Does anyone know what THAC0 means? :)