byrnema comments on Abnormal Cryonics - Less Wrong

56 Post author: Will_Newsome 26 May 2010 07:43AM

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Comment author: Vladimir_M 26 May 2010 11:44:41PM *  15 points [-]

I haven't yet read and thought enough about this topic to form a very solid opinion, but I have two remarks nevertheless.

First, as some previous commenters have pointed out, most of the discussions of cryonics fail to fully appreciate the problem of weirdness signals. For people whose lives don't revolve around communities that are supportive of such undertakings, the cost of signaled weirdness can easily be far larger than the monetary price. Of course, you can argue that this is because the public opinion on the topic is irrational and deluded, but the point is that given the present state of public opinion, which is impossible to change by individual action, it is individually rational to take this cost into account. (Whether the benefits ultimately overshadow this cost is a different question.)

Second, it is my impression that many cryonics advocates -- and in particular, many of those whose comments I've read on Overcoming Bias and here -- make unjustified assertions about supposedly rational ways to decide the question of what entities one should identify oneself with. According to them, signing up for cryonics increases the chances that at some distant time in the future, in which you'll otherwise probably be dead and gone, some entity will exist with which it is rational to identify to the point where you consider it, for the purposes of your present decisions, to be the same as your "normal" self that you expect to be alive tomorrow.

This is commonly supported by arguing that your thawed and revived or uploaded brain decades from now is not a fundamentally different entity from you in any way that wouldn't also apply to your present brain when it wakes up tomorrow. I actually find these arguments plausible, but the trouble is that they, in my view, prove too much. What I find to be the logical conclusion of these arguments is that the notion of personal identity is fundamentally a mere subjective feeling, where no objective or rational procedure can be used to determine the right answer. Therefore, if we accept these arguments, there is no reason at all to berate as irrational people who don't feel any identification with these entities that cryonics would (hopefully) make it possible to summon into existence in the future.

In particular, I personally can't bring myself to feel any identification whatsoever with some computer program that runs a simulation of my brain, no matter how accurate, and no matter how closely isomorphic its data structures might be to the state of my brain at any point in time. And believe me, I have studied all the arguments for the contrary position I could find here and elsewhere very carefully, and giving my utmost to eliminate any prejudice. (I am more ambivalent about my hypothetical thawed and nanotechnologically revived corpse.) Therefore, in at least some cases, I'm sure that people reject cryonics not because they're too biased to assess the arguments in favor of it, but because they honestly feel no identification with the future entities that it aims to produce -- and I don't see how this different subjective preference can be considered "irrational" in any way.

That said, I am fully aware that these and other anti-cryonics arguments are often used as mere rationalizations for people's strong instinctive reactions triggered by the weirdness/yuckiness heuristics. Still, they seem valid to me.

Comment author: byrnema 27 May 2010 05:05:31PM 3 points [-]

I actually find these arguments plausible, but the trouble is that they, in my view, prove too much.

Well said.

Therefore, in at least some cases, I'm sure that people reject cryonics not because they're too biased to assess the arguments in favor of it, but because they honestly feel no identification with the future entities that it aims to produce -- and I don't see how this different subjective preference can be considered "irrational" in any way.

I think this is true. Cryonics being the "correct choice" doesn't just depend on correct calculations and estimates (probability of a singularity, probability of revival, etc) and a high enough sanity waterline (not dismissing opportunities out of hand because they seem strange). Whether cryonics is the correct choice also depends upon your preferences. This fact seems to be largely missing from the discussion about cryonics. Perhaps because advocates can't imagine people not valuing life extension in this way.

In particular, I personally can't bring myself to feel any identification whatsoever with some computer program that runs a simulation of my brain, no matter how accurate, and no matter how closely isomorphic its data structures might be to the state of my brain at any point in time.

I wouldn't pay 5 cents for a duplicate of me to exist. (Not for the sole sake of her existence, that is. If this duplicate could interact with me, or interact with my family immediately after my death, that would be a different story as I could delegate personal responsibilities to her.)