lsparrish comments on Optimism versus cryonics - Less Wrong

34 Post author: lsparrish 25 October 2010 02:13AM

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Comment author: lsparrish 26 October 2010 03:32:56PM 2 points [-]

This argument is weird, because it implies that you are 100% willing to consider clinical death as 100% dead with no chance of being wrong. What gives you such incredible confidence in your ability to judge the situation correctly at this early stage in the game?

Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 29 October 2010 12:07:45PM -1 points [-]

This isn't confidence in present-day criteria of clinical death, it's confidence that completely freezing your brain breaks whatever form of continuity is responsible for persistence of personhood through ordinary life changes. I'm not 100% sure about it, but that is a radically pulverizing transformation compared to just about anything that a brain can live through. Making a new brain in the image of the old brain and from the pieces of the old brain doesn't change that.

Comment author: lsparrish 29 October 2010 03:40:40PM *  1 point [-]

First off, if you can't be very nearly 100% sure of failure, you should do cryonics anyway -- as long as your expected value of survival is greater than cost times probability. If you are still only 99% sure cryonics would fail, you should still be willing to bet up to $50,000 on it if your life is worth $5 million.

Second off, your argument seems to include damage and suspension under the same umbrella. Suspension as a problem for personhood doesn't make much sense, unless you are willing to admit to there being a real a risk that people who undergo extreme hypothermia also actually reanimate as a different person.

Third, repair scenarios as a risk to personhood make sense only if you apply the same criteria to stroke, dementia, and trauma victims who would benefit from similar extreme advances in brain repair technology.