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sheldon comments on That Magical Click - Less Wrong
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<i>if you wake up in the Future, it's probably going to be a nicer place to live than the Present.</i>
How do we know this? How can we possibly think it's possible to know this? I can think of at least three scenarios that seem much more likely than this sunny view that things will just keep progressing while you're dead and when you wake up you'll slip right into a nicer society:
1) We run out of cheap energy and hence cheap food; tensions rise; most of the world turns into what Haiti looks like now.
2) Somebody sets off a nuclear weapon, leading to worldwide retaliation.
3) Humans do keep progressing . . . and evolving, and when you wake up, you'll be in the same position as an ape in today's society. Society is indeed nicer today for us than if we were apes, but it's not necessarily nicer for the actual ape.
It seems unlikely that people would be revived in those scenarios, especially in 1 and 2. As for 3, biological evolution takes a long long time, and even then it's likely the future humans would provide a decent environment for us if they revive us. Unlike apes, we and future humans will both be capable to communicate and engage in abstract thought, so I don't think that analogy works.
Yep. As far as I can tell a world where people can be and are being revived is almost certainly one I want to live in.
Exactly, and that's really well stated. By being cryo-preserved, you're self-selecting for worlds where there is a high likelihood that
(a) contracts are honored (your resources are being used to revive you, as you intended),
(b) human lives, even very different humans from long ago, are respected (otherwise why go to all the trouble of dethawing),
(c) there is advanced neurotechnology sufficient to bring people back, and humanity is still around and has learned to live with it,
and (d) society is rationalist enough not to prohibit cryonics out of fear of zombies or something.
It's not perfect, but it's a good filter.
Excellent observation!
This is the single consideration in the cryonics debate that I remain unconvinced of.
It seems very easy for me to imagine lots of futures that others might find worthwhile, that I would find very unpleasant. Off the top of my head: what if society is more regimented? What if one is expected to be very patriotic? What if it is a very collectivist culture? What if I still have to submit to hierarchies of one kind or another, for one reason or another? ... ...
Are there good reasons to believe that human life in the future will be enjoyable to me? Can I do better than beginning with a bottom line that says "The future will be pleasant", and inventing justifications for why that's more likely than not?
Evolution by natural selection is indeed too slow to be a problem, but self-modification via technological means could mean rapid change for humanity.
It might still not be a problem since it's doubtful that a smarter civilization would totally lose the capability to communicate with humans v1.0 (knowing they have a bunch of frozen people around, they'd at least keep a file somewhere about the 21st century, or scan a bunch of brains to learn what they need to know).
And if they could improve themselves, there's a good chance that they'll also be able to improve the revived people so that they can fit in the new society, or at least accomodate comfortably humans 1.0 who don't want to be modified (who knows how a smarter than human friendly intelligence with highly advanced technology would deal with that problem? All we can guess is that the solution would probably be pretty effective).
Upload evolution could be very fast (due to clock speedup, fast copying, ability to test and revert mutations, &c.).
Things are by and large much better for animals in captivity than wild animals. I suspect this extends to apes, though others may have better domain-specific knowledge.
Better how? Easier and longer lived in many cases but I think you can make a plausible case that they are not very happy.
I'm not sure wild animals are all that happy either though!