Nah, I don't think you think theological thoughts, but I do admit I have that opinion of some other people. Theological thoughts are strangely attractive to minds :/ . That's how we got religion in first place. Can't be too careful about recreating religion.
With the hash functions, there seems to be a very strong disparity - a definition of a hash can fit in 1 page, but our entire might can not solve it. And that's with us trying to use fewer iterations.
Here we are speaking of a hash, definition of which is trillions times larger, and which introduces random thermal noise. Complexity theory is not only tool... there's also the Lyapunov's exponent considerations; it may well be that too big range of minds are compatible with the dataset, even though the dataset has enough data - if the thermal noise got hashed in. Then there's can be future ethical considerations against any form of brute force process that creates minds only to destroy them.
On whenever it is worth a try, for me the strategic considerations apply - if I am to deem something like this worth a try, I will end up buying snake oil. Also, the money, for most of us, can be spent on living better life now.
Paul Christiano recently suggested that we can use neuroimaging to form a complete mathematical characterization of a human brain, which a sufficiently powerful superintelligence would be able to reconstruct into a working mind, and the neuroimaging part is already possible today, or close to being possible.
Paul was using this idea as part of an FAI design proposal, but I'm highlighting it here since it seems to have independent value as an alternative or supplement to cryonics. That is, instead of (or in addition to) trying to get your body to be frozen and then preserved in liquid nitrogen after you die, you periodically take neuroimaging scans of your brain and save them to multiple backup locations (1010 bits is only about 1 gigabyte), in the hope that a friendly AI or posthuman will eventually use the scans to reconstruct your mind.
Are there any neuroimaging experts around who can tell us how feasible this really is, and how much such a scan might cost, now or in the near future?
ETA: Given the presence of thermal noise and the fact that a set of neuroimaging data may contain redundant or irrelevant information, 1010 bits ought to be regarded as just a rough lower bound on how much data needs to be collected and stored. Thanks to commenters who pointed this out.