I am not proposing any specific path. I agree with the importance of not forgetting cryonics #2.
Original post mentions "bring someone back from low-damage cryo-preservation" and I tried to add a disambiguation that first "someone" would probably have to be a primate, not human (for various reasons).
Common sense suggests that probably "a mammal", "a large mammal" and a "primate" could be turning points: until we reach each one, anything beyond that point (like predicting practical applications for humans) is too uncertain to predict.
I think that treating them as prediction-crushing points is safe, because it seems very likely that to revive a large mammal one would need all the knowledge learned from revivial of a small mammal and some more.
I am not sure what should be threshold for true preservation; probably something like long time (hours? days? duration of 10000 normal heartbeats?) without any blood circulation.
Ok, sounds like you are modeling this a bit different from me, probably because I have had relatively more exposure to cryonics ideas. Cryonics (#1) involves perfusion with high concentrations of cryoprotectant to prevent ice formation, and cooling to either -135 C or cooler. Liquid nitrogen is cheap and abundant, so its boiling point is preferable (-196 C) for long term storage. As much as feasible, damage is avoided, but we can't avoid enough that we can possibly bring people back. So to me cryonics #2 is mainly just an extension of cryonics #1, only the...
I've been considering lately whether it would perhaps be best to develop and promote terminology that splits cryonics into two distinct concepts for easier consumption:
1) old-style cryonics, cryopreserving people at the cost of nontrivial damage that can't yet be reversed, and
2) the tech goal of being able to demonstrably bring someone back from a (very low-damage) cryopreserved state.
"Real cryonics" vs "sci-fi cryonics", if you will.
As I reckon it, trying to achieve cryonics definition #2 in your lifetime is no more incredible on the surface than trying to defeat aging or engineer self-improving AI in a similar timeframe. Actually in some ways it seems easier. Yet it gets so much less press. Even cryonics advocates seem rarely prone to enthuse about it.
Is it possible that cryonics #1, as a feature of the collective mental map, is actually in the way of cryonics #2? Should I be worried, for example, that promoting cryonics #1 actually costs 100,000 lives per day over some stretch of future time because it is preventing people from noticing cryonics #2 and actually taking action on it?
Many people I talk to who are new to the topic seem to have some hazy preexisting idea of cryonics #2 that gets mangled up with cryonics #1. Perhaps they would grow into enthusiasts with attention spans for the subject matter if encouraged to pursue this simple-to-grasp concept in its own right, instead of trying to forcibly retrain into more advanced concepts.