gwern comments on Plastination is maturing and needs funding, says Hanson - Less Wrong

70 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 June 2012 08:00PM

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Comment author: gwern 26 June 2012 03:47:37AM 6 points [-]

Is this an actual argument that people who take cryonics seriously seem to be making regularly though?

It's common enough that if you go to one of the Reddit pages for Hanson's post, you'll find someone objecting to plastination over cryonics on the grounds that uploads are about all that one can do with such a brain. Well, yes.

I'll admit, I personally find the anti-upload area in cryonics to be absurd - seriously, you're into cryonics, whose entire rationale is information-theoretic, and you're objecting to uploads? But I have no hard statistics on, say, how many signed up Alcor or CI members are anti-uploading besides Ettinger.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 26 June 2012 04:05:03AM 0 points [-]

you're into cryonics, whose entire rationale is information-theoretic

I don't think this is the case. Self-identification with your own body can be a strong part of this. I for example personally have a deep emotional connection to my body to the point where I'm much more inclined to do something that has a chance of keeping my brain intact in roughly the same form than an uploaded scan.

Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 26 June 2012 03:56:21AM 0 points [-]

Was asking about DanielLC's alternative "neurons/chips" argument, though I'm still not quite sure what its exact content is. Most of the anti-uploading arguments I've seen look like they're either explicitly or implicitly on the "different atoms" grounds. Don't recall many that argue for a fundamental unworkability based on some more sophisticated isomorphism failure.