Science shows that the brain and the rest of the nervous system stops at death. How that relates to the notion of consciousness is still pretty much unknown, and many neuroscientists will tell you that. We haven't yet found an organ or process in the brain responsible for the conscious mind that we can say stops at death.
no matter how many neuroscientists I ask, none of them will tell me which part of the brain contains the soul. the orange site actually has a good sneer for this:
You don't need to know which part of the brain corresponds to a conscious mind when they entire brain is dead.
a lot of the rest of the thread is the most braindead right-libertarian version of Pascal’s Wager I’ve ever seen:
Ultimately, it's their personal choice, with their money, and even if they spend $100,000 on paying for it, or more, it doesn't mean they didn't leave other assets or things for their descendants.
By making a moral claim for why YOU decide that spending that money isn't justified, you're going down one very arrogant and ultimately silly road of making the same claim to so many other things people spend money and effort they've worked hard for on specific personal preferences, be they material or otherwise.
Maybe you buying a $700,000 house vs. a $600,000 house is just as idiotic then? Do you really need the extra floor space or bathrooms?
Where would you draw a line? Should other once-implausible life enhancement therapies that are now widely used and accepted also be forsaken? How about organ transplants? Gene therapy? highly expensive cancer treatments that all have extended life beyond what was previously "natural" for many people? Often these also start first as speculative ideas, then experiments, then just options for the rich, but later become much more widely available.
and therefore the only rational course of action is to put $100,000 straight into the pockets of grifters. how dare I make any value judgments at all about cryonicists based on their extreme distaste for the scientific method, consistent history of failure, and use of extremely exploitative marketing?
I mean, are they grifters? That's an assumption, and probably one I would make too -- but on the off chance that someone does figure this out one day, do you really need all of that money if you're dead?
I'm non-religious, so death for me is...poof...lights out, nothing ever again. But...IF they could bring me back to life hundreds of years in the future? And I had the money to spend on that 0.000001% chance that it might happen? I'd fuckin' do it. At the worst it doesn't happen. If somewhere in between and it's not successful but someone is legitimately trying, I'd at least be advancing the future of science.
I'm not falling for Freezerburn's Wager a third time