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lsparrish comments on Optimism versus cryonics - Less Wrong
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Are you positing that actual information or structure would be lost if your brain dropped below a certain temperature and hence ceased all molecular and electrical activity for a time? I'm not sure what kind of empirical results you are expecting to see that differ from the empirical results I would expect to see.
Don't mind Mitchell. He believes consciousness to be some kind of magic.
Remind me again how it works, then?
"Information loss" is not the issue. The issue is whether creation of a copy of you counts as survival, and whether cryonics can produce anything but a copy.
In the absence of any empirically different prediction between the hypothesis that you survived versus a mere copy of you survived, how do we decide who wins the argument either way? Aren't we just debating angels dancing on the head of a pin here?
We can start by asking, what are you? And once we have an answer, we can see whether the entity on the other side of a resurrection process is you or not.
What is it like, to be a copy?
Do you consider every entity anywhere in reality that feels like you, to be you?
No. In fact, I rather resent the fact that those other entities that feel like me actually have the nerve to claim to be me. I encountered one of them recently and gave him a piece of my mind. But it didn't seem to make any difference.
Which piece ... never mind.
Returning to the original discussion: Do you actually have an opinion or a point of view about it? If you were killed, and then resurrected from a backup, did you survive? If it were possible, would you consider making a personal backup a priority, for the elemental reason of personal survival? Do you consider cryonic suspension to be something more than a way of making a backup copy of a dead person?
I am unsure about the efficacy of cryonics (or uploading). Assuming revival can work reliably (something I am doubtful of), I would estimate about a 30% chance that you are correct (different person) and 70% chance that cryonics enthusiasts are correct (Same person. Woohoo! Immortality!)
Here is a thought experiment you might find interesting though. Imagine "transporter" technology a la Star Trek which works like this: A person who wishes to be transported from Earth to Ganymede is sedated and non-destructively scanned in a laboratory on Earth and then the information is sent (at lightspeed) to the replicator on Ganymede. There, a new body is constructed, and an electric shock is given to start the heart. Finally, since the sedatives in the blood-stream were replicated as well, the copy on Ganymede is awakened and given a quick medical exam. Assuming all looks well, a signal indicating successful transmission is sent back to Earth. Upon receipt of the message on Earth, the original body is now considered redundant - no longer needed as backup in case of malfunction - so it is killed by lethal injection and cremated.
So, imagine that you wake up from sedation and notice that you are in Ganymede's weak gravitational field. Great! a successful trip.
Now imagine that you wake up from sedation and notice that you are still feeling Earth's gravity. What happened? Was there some kind of transmission failure and you will have to be scanned again if you still want to get to Ganymede? Or was the communication problem in the message from Ganymede to Earth? Did Earth have to request retransmission of the success signal? Uh oh, here comes a doctor with a needle. Is that norepinephrine or cyanide? Or another dose of sedative because they don't know yet and don't want you to be stressed out.
In my story, I can well imagine that the copy on Ganymede believes he truly is the same person that walked into the transporter station a couple hours ago and paid the fare. And I can also imagine that the original on Earth knows that he is the real McCoy and that he is likely to die very soon.
And I guess that I think that they are both right. Would I make use of that method of travel? I might, if I really needed to get to Ganymede in a hurry.
So, more briefly, intuitions about personal identity work when looking backwards in time but sometimes break down when looking forwards in time.