Cryonics 2.0: Implicit Transhumanism, Anti-Aging, and the ‘Rise of Rationalism’

Implicit Transhumanism, Anti-Aging, and the ‘Rise of Rationalism’

Abstract

How has cryonics been affected by futuristic developments in AI and anti-aging medicine? Cryonics is the practice of perfusing human bodies with antifreeze solutions (cryoprotectants) and storing them at ultralow temperatures in the hopes of future revival. Cryonicists (those who practice or sign up for cryonics) hope for revival by a variety of biological and digital methods, ranging from rewarming, healing, and rejuvenating the body, to adding digital and biological enhancements, to recreating the person or consciousness in digital form. Cryonics was until very recently a very fringe phenomenon (Romain 2010), only lately the topic of ethnographic manuscripts (Bernstein 2019; Farman 2020; Torsnes 2023). But it has been mainstreamed not only by advances in AI, but by the study of aging, as well as other cultural developments. Along with this mainstreaming and the growth in the number of cryonicists, there have been changes in how cryonicists learn about cryonics, how they self-identify, and how they present cryonics to others. Despite AI’s role in mainstreaming transhumanist ideas, such as consciousness outside the biological body, ‘beyond the carbon barrier’ (Farman 2019), my ethnographic and survey data show that cryonics is popularizing along two alternative routes: through a surging interest in anti-aging research and treatment, and through ‘the Rise of Rationalism’ and Rationalist-adjacent movements like Effective Altruism and Longtermism. Cryonics 2.0 is the name that members of the Human Futures research team have given to this new context for cryonics (cf. Eriksen 2021, 2023), wherein many cryonicists shed the explicit language of immortalism and transhumanism in favour of longevity and Rationalist discourses.