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Why vitrifixation offers a credible path to halting death
When people ask why I’ve signed up for cryonics, I offer them a few carefully curated arguments.
One of my favorites is a simple thought experiment: Imagine you know you’ll die tomorrow. But your doctor offers you an alternative - instead of death, you can be put into a drug-induced coma for one week, after which there’s a 99 percent chance you’ll wake up healthy, cured of whatever was about to kill you.
My inquisitors usually laugh: “Well, of course I’d take that option. Who wouldn’t?”
Yes, I know, it’s a sinister trap.
And sure, the ifs and buts come quickly after, but in principle, they’ve already answered their own question.
And that’s exactly the kind of mental reset Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston is pushing for in the brilliant book The Future Loves You - How and Why We Should Abolish Death.
He argues that vitrifixation already offers a scientifically credible way to lock in the connectome’s architecture, holding it intact for as long as necessary until future technologies - whether biological, robotic, or digital - can reanimate or emulate it.
It takes the core intuition behind that thought experiment - that most people, when faced with the choice, would choose the chance to go on living - and extends it into a full-blown scientific, philosophical, and economic case for brain preservation.
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