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Mulciber comments on This Didn't Have To Happen - Less Wrong
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This sounds possible but not at all obvious. It seems to me that so far, interest in historical people and compassion for the mentally inferior have if anything increased over time. This certainly doesn't mean they'll continue to do so out into the far future, but it does mean I'd need some really good reasons to support expecting them to.
So I can envision future persons wanting to meet some people from the past for historical reasons as you say. But I'm not sure we'd bring back thousands of Homo Habilis if we had the chance. One or two might be interesting- but what would we do with thousands?
"Future persons" are not a monolithic agent; all it takes is one agent able and willing to revive you, maybe the cryonics organization. And as Mulciber said, compassion is a likely motivation as well.
Thousands would still only be one per ~million citizens. Cryonauts would be at least as rare.
That depends on on what the population is in the far far future and the future popularity of cryonics. The farther into the future we're talking about the more uncertainty we should have about these things. I was never claiming that it is particularly likely the preserved would be unwanted, just that such uncertainties give reason to be concerned with progress in cryobiology.
Frankly, I think that future societies will be so resources-rich that they'll revive everyone because the small increase in entertainment thus provided will easily pay for the costs. However, if that's not so, there's an advantage to being one of the rare early preservees over the common later ones you suppose might arise; we would have better novelty value, and we'd remember things from further back.
Don't think of hedonic entertainment, think of the subjectively objective right thing to do.
I don't know. After I met my hundredth white, male, transhumanist who died circa 2050 I'd probably go back to whatever I was doing before I started reviving people. I imagine if we're so resource rich there will be somewhat better forms of entertainment.
But yeah, If I sign up I'm definitely hoping people in the future are obsessed with stories from the past and will pay me quite a bit for them... since I really won't have any other marketable skills.