
The False Science of Cryonics: What the nervous system of the roundworm tells us - ClintEhrlich
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/541311/the-false-science-of-cryonics/
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tgflynn
I actually agree with much of what is said in this article but I don't see how
it amounts to an argument against cryonics.

While there's no proof that freezing preserves sufficient information to
reconstruct a mind/brain there's also no proof that it doesn't. In fact I
don't think there's any proof that cremation doesn't preserve enough
information to reconstruct a mind/brain (as far as I know the 2nd law of
thermodynamics basically says that the universe as a whole never loses
information). Nonetheless it seems obvious that reconstruction from a
cryonically preserved brain would be easier/more probable than from a cremated
one.

As for the question of whether a reconstructed brain would be "you", I'm not
sure of that either but here's the way I look at it. I know that "I" occurred
once, therefore my existence is mathematically possible. Since I have no
reason to think that reality is bounded in space or time (sure this universe
might be finite but how do we know another one won't arise in the future ?) it
seems reasonable to think that "I" might occur again, since an event of any
non-zero probability should occur given infinite time. I don't know how or
when this might happen because I don't know what the set of sufficient causal
factors for my existence is. Nonetheless it doesn't seem completely
unreasonable to think that reconstructing a functional version of my brain
that preserves all or most of the information it contained at the moment of my
death would have a higher probability of providing those sufficient causal
factors as any other event I can easily imagine.

Hence I don't see anything inherently irrational about the practice of
cryonics for those who would like to increase the probability that their
existence will be preserved or recovered after death.

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ClintEhrlich
I posted this article, not because I think it was well done, but rather
because it exemplifies how even academics within closely related fields are
maddeningly ignorant about cryonics.

For example, as far as I can tell, the author conflates the concepts of
uploading, cryopreservation, and reanimation. The fact that we don't currently
have the ability to scan preserved brains with enough precision to capture all
of the relevant data does not in any way mean that the data is lost during
crypreservation. And even if making an external copy of the data stored within
the cryopreserved brain is infeasible, it does not follow that reanimation of
the brain itself will be impossible.

One of the frustrating aspects of being a cryonics advocate is that even very
smart people do not seem to easily grok the idea that cryonics is intended as
a bridge to future technology, so the shortcomings in the modern state of the
art are of little relevance. And no serious cryonicists think that success is
guaranteed. Cryonics is basically an experiment, and all we know is that
everyone in the control group is definitely not coming back. So I'd rather
take my chances with the experimental group.

The discussion of "copies" and identities is particularly unpersuasive. First,
reanimation may not involve a copy in any meaningful sense, if the original
biological substrate is simply repaired. Second, intuitions about
consciousness and identity are notoriously fallible.

In a sense, this is the ultimate manifestation of the product of induction:
Our sense of "self" is an illusion reified by our daily experience of a
singular self. But when technology allows us to be duplicated, perhaps the
idea of branching versions of ourselves will feel more intuitive.

The pattern theory of mind is really the only defensible position once you
realize that over the course of your life, there is almost complete turnover
in terms of the specific atoms that compose you. And on a deeper level, we
know that particles are fungible: an electron is an electron is an electron.
Unless they are concealing little miniature souls inside, the only reasonable
conclusion is that consciousness and identity are properties that emerge from
the relative positions of the interchangeable subatomic components.

