Don’t Freeze Your Head

Alcor is a company which cryonically freezes people for a future afterlife and charges $150,000 to  freeze your whole body, but they offer a discounted $80,000 for just the head. My advice: go for the full monty.

Here’s why. Listen to this Radiolab podcast from our friends at WNYC. Mind-blowing stuff. The body is essential in the determination of emotional self. Feelings of fear, love, anger and everything else that makes us human stems from the direct observation its own physiological responses.

Forget the brain-in-a-vat and remember that there is no ghost in the machine.

Phantom limbs are real and (according to the broadcast) paraplegics feel less. The body is critical in how the brain works, contesting the alluring idea of uploading your consciousness in some sort of Kurzweilian fantasty.