“Does preservation make sense before we know how to revive?” by Aurelia

My name is Aurelia Song and I hope to make whole-body, human, end-of-life preservation for future revival a new global tradition. I care about it so much I've dedicated my life to it.[1] The biggest objection I get to end-of-life preservation goes like this: "We can't revive today, so we can't prove that preservation works. Therefore preservation probably doesn't work. We shouldn't bother with preservation until we can revive." I call this the immediate revival objection. I respect the immediate revival objection. If your standard of evidence is full recovery, then you don't need any knowledge of how people or mental processes work on the inside to evaluate preservation; you can just observe that they survive a round trip. I think requiring revival, now, is reasonable a priori—it's analogous to how I feel when people talk about new kinds of quantum computers: I'll believe it when they're actually doing something useful. However, in my opinion the logic of the immediate revival objection is too conservative when it comes to end-of-life preservation. Instead, I think that as a scientific community, we've known enough to preserve people for at least 30 years. I think we can and should start preserving people [...] ---Outline:(01:36) The San Diego Frozen Zoo(05:30) Preserving People(06:42) What does neuroscience say about how the brain encodes information structurally?(07:31) Conversations with neuroscientists(09:27) What's inside your head?(09:40) The large-scale: white matter and grey matter(12:28) What does the brain look like at a microscopic level?(14:21) What about energy use?(15:49) Synapses seem important!(16:55) Synapses change when memories change(18:36) Here's what synapses look like at a molecular level(20:36) Synapses are durable(21:13) Synapses are the physical basis of learning and memory(21:55) What do neuroscience review papers and textbooks say?(28:46) What does chemical fixation do?(29:36) What does glutaraldehyde actually do?(30:34) Why do I believe that proteins are preserved?(30:39) Immunohistochemistry(32:03) Bulk protein measurements(33:48) Why do I believe microscopic anatomy is preserved?(36:44) Deep Hypothermic Circulatory Arrest teaches us that we don't need to preserve dynamic activity(38:54) Biological attractors mean information is stored redundantly(42:47) Information theory ties it all together(45:39) Behavioral distinctness is a sufficient measure of difference when it comes to preserving people(48:16) Conclusion: let's preserve today, with confidence The original text contained 20 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: June 15th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BAmPQWsmvBmwdwgWd/does-preservation-make-sense-before-we-know-how-to-revive --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.