This is fantastic and each entry is in good format to be converted to SRS (eg, Anki) cards, either backwards or forwards.

I live in South Africa. We don't, as far as I know, have a cryonics facility comparable to, say, Alcor.

What are my options apart from "emigrate and live next to a cryonics facility"?

Also, I'm not sure if I'm misremembering, but I think it was Eliezer that said cryonics isn't really a viable option without an AI powerful enough to reverse the inevitable damage. Here's my second question, with said AI powerful enough to reverse the damage and recreate you, why would cryonics be a necessary step? Wouldn't alternative solutions also be viable? For example, brain scans while alive and then something like the Visible Human Project (body sliced into cross sections) coupled with a copy of your genome. This could perhaps also be supplemented by a daily journal. Surely a powerful enough AI would be able to recreate the human that created those writings using the information provided?

Is it a completely stupid idea?

For example, brain scans while alive and then something like the Visible Human Project (body sliced into cross sections) coupled with a copy of your genome. This could perhaps also be supplemented by a daily journal. Surely a powerful enough AI would be able to recreate the human that created those writings using the information provided?

Cryonics is an ambulance ride through an earthquake zone to the nearest revival facility, The distance is measured in years rather than miles, and the earthquake is the chances of history. The better the preservation, the lower the technology required to revive you, and the sooner you will reach a facility that can do it.

A "powerful enough" AI isn't magic: it cannot recover information that no longer exists. We currently don't know what must be preserved and what is redundant, beyond just "keep the brain, the rest of the body can probably be discarded, but we'll freeze it as well at extra cost if you want."

On a present-day level, the feted accomplishments of Deep Learning suggest to me that setting such algorithms to munch over a person's highly documented life might be enough to enable a more or less plausible simulation of them after death. Plausible enough at least to be offered as a comfort to the bereaved. A market opportunity! Also, fuel for a debate on whether these simulations are people.

Great post, but IMO not that compelling of a title. Maybe add like ", or, Why God Mode is Super Lame."

I think differential technological development - prioritising some areas over others - is the current approach. It achirves the same result but has a higher chance of working.

That we want to stop AI research. We don’t. Current AI research is very far from the risky areas and abilities. And it’s risk aware AI researchers that are most likely to figure out how to make safe AI.

Is it really the case that nobody interested in AI risk/safety wants to stop or slow down progress in AI research? It seemed to me there was perhaps at least substantial minority that wanted to do this, to buy time.

Thanks for this post -- very interesting.

One question:

In general, medical researchers should not be doing statistics. That is a job for the tech industry.

Are you claiming that the tech industry is better at stats, or could be better at stats, if it were somehow decentralized? If the former, what's your evidence?

I've always been afraid of dying: every lurch of a plane in turbulence gets my palms sweaty; every nearly-avoided mishap I encounter while driving makes me vow to drive even less than I currently do. I won't even consider going on a cruise until I learn to swim.

Cryonics or not, if you die in a plane crash, car crash or ship sinking you will not come back.

What are the advantages to the hybrid approach as compared to traditional cryonics? Histological preservation? Thermal cracking? Toxicity?

it first uses a method traditionally associated with "plastination" (glutaraldehyde perfusion), and then uses a method traditionally associated with cryonics, i.e. perfusion with a cryoprotective agent and then low temperature storage and, presumably, vitrification, which means that damage from ice crystal formation should be avoided and the brain should turn a glass state.

Is this related to the new SafeSpeed process used in http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/m8g/link_persistence_of_longterm_memory_in_vitrified/ ?