NancyLebovitz comments on But There's Still A Chance, Right? - Less Wrong
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I know I'll probably trigger a flamewar...
But I actually don't think cryonics is worth the cost. You could be using that money to cure diseases in the Third World, or investing in technology, or even friendly-AI research if that's your major concern, and you almost certainly will achieve more good according to what I assume is your own utility function (as long as it doesn't value a 1/1 billion chance of you being revived as exactly you over say the lives of 10,000 African children). Also, transhumans will presumably judge the same way, and decide that it's not worth it to research reviving you when they could be working on a Dyson Sphere or something.
Frankly, from what we know about cognitive science, most of the really useful information about your personality is going to disappear upon freezing anyway. You are a PROCESS, not a STATE; as such, freezing you will destroy you, unless we've somehow kept track of all the motions in your brain that would need to be restarted. (Assuming that Penrose is wrong and the important motions are not appreciably quantum. If quantum effects matter for consciousness, we're really screwed, because of the Uncertainty Principle and the no-cloning theorem.) Preserving a human consciousness is like trying to freeze a hurricane.
TLDR with some rhetoric: I've seen too many frozen strawberries to believe in cryonics.
My impression is that there could be a short-term loss from cryonics-- something like having a mild concussion-- but that the vast majority of your memories would survive. Am I missing something?