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jhuffman comments on That Magical Click - Less Wrong
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Okay, fair enough. But asserting that cryonics won't work without detailed prior knowledge of its infeasibility and without even being willing to investigate it puts you in a terrible epistemic position. You still haven't argued for your ostensible point.
(I wrote another reply, but then deleted it as it was premised on a falsehood.)
My ostensible point again: cryonics doesn't prevent dying. I really need to present an argument for this?
Or I need to present an argument for my point that I'm only afraid of dying, and not of being dead?
Well here it is: I can die. I can't be dead - because at that point there is no I. So while right now I can fear the void, it won't be a problem once I am dead. Note that insertion of cryonics does not change any of these facts. I'll still be afraid of dying, I'll still die, I will no longer exist. Whether I'm in a frozen can or my ashes are scattered in the ocean there will be an identical amount of neural computation. So I won't exist and I won't have any problems, either way.
I'm pretty sure your terminology is causing a lot of needless confusion here. I think people are reading "cryonics doesn't prevent dying" as "cryonics does not prevent death", which is the usual way of speaking. If someone says, "Sam's dying; do something!" they don't so much want you to stop Sam from feeling like he's dying, but rather they want you to make it so that Sam does not die.
However, you seem to be talking about death in the following, and people's replies might be better directed towards this:
Yes. I think the standard counterargument is linked to on the wiki; 'death' is a moving target, and it seems like "information-theoretic death" is a good candidate for what "death" will mean when the technology settles out.
But the dying process does not change. The philosophical or even clinical definition of "dead" has no bearing on the emotional experience of dying.
I take it you have a do not resuscitate medical tag then? You wouldn't want some EMTs to restart your heart after you had the "emotional experience of dying."
I've never said I wouldn't want to be revived before I expire. I've only said I wouldn't expect to be and so it would be of no comfort to me.
Probably, it would be pretty terrible both dying and being revived. Afterward, I'd be glad I was revived.
I can see where you are headed with this about the value of preferences now for things happening later.
I see. I think you're being unclear, though I'm not sure it's your fault. I'll reply to your earlier post.
(Original poster thinks of himself as a persistent billiard ball of identity, when neural processing stops, the billiard ball winks out of existence. This winking-out is death. If anyone wants to explain the ontological falsity of the billiard-balls theory to the original poster at less length than working all the way up to here, they can go ahead and try.)
Uhm, no. I would subscribe to more of an information view of identity. In other words, if my information state encoded in my brain could be uploaded to a computer and executed in a mind simulator it would have my identity as much as the meat guy writing this right now.
Actually I have no idea what identity is or how many of me there are; I'm the guy who Can't Get Over Dust Theory.
I don't have doubts about cryonics at that level. If the technology works, the technology works and I would wake up as me as I ever was. That isn't where I'm "going wrong".
I do think that identity is lost when information is irretrievably lost. And I think that has likely happened or will happen to everyone being suspended right now.