Interesting. I'm extremely skeptical that an individual preserved that way could ever be revived. One has all the ice crystal formation problems that modern cryonics have solved and also is keeping the person at a much higher temperature so one will have a lot more chemical activity.
Maybe some of the organizations that practice actual cryonics should send representatives to try to recruit people?
Despite the creepy symbolism I find it rather unlikely that a real superintelligence would raise the dead. If it did, though, the difference between cryonic preservation and cremation seems negligible to me. (This might sound absurd for many obvious reasons but that I'm willing to say it anyway should be evidence. After all, I probably would have thought it absurd too, and yet I now think it's totally non-absurd. Therefore there's probably a non-obvious consideration, or a set of disjunctive and non-obvious considerations, that counters the initial absurdity.) A few ice crystals is a lot less of a problem than cremation, so as a result of my cached reasoning about the implications of superintelligence I guess I'm wary of your extreme skepticism.
Does this idea of resurrection-through-inference have a commonly used name? Have you written up your thoughts on it in any more detail elsewhere, or is there something you'd recommend I read?
I don't know of a commonly used name. I haven't written up anything elsewhere and I haven't seen anything else written up. I've heard some totally awesome thinking on the subject but it's not and won't be online. Someday some of the relevant thoughts might be inferred from some aspects of some proposed versions of some future decision theories, but most people don't pay much attention to most aspects of most decision theories. For now the best argument for its plausibility might be "It's an effing superintelligence.". I admit that's not entirely convincing. In the interim maybe some arguments about how like we can get more information per bit these days with quantum than we thought we could and this might continue for awhile longer, or something, would be convincing, especially if someone posits that "fundamental" limits of computation are actually fundamental or something.
Of note is that debates about personal identity eventually enter into the equation, but there's still a lot of debate to be had before reaching that point. Many worlds also makes some of the identity debate less relevant because you have to argue about the superintelligence getting the distribution of low-level psychological details wrong and not the presence or absence of individual details. And that process itself happens across many branches. Thinking discretely about continuous things---like thinking timefully about timeless things---is sometimes wrong, and often not even wrong.
Resurrection through inference showed up in Accelerando, although Stross points out that the bits of knowledge obtainable about even prominent historical personages are far fewer than those describing a human mind; so the resimulations are just approximations.
I'm not familiar with the original passage, but the assertion "the bits of knowledge obtainable about even prominent historical personages are far fewer than those describing a human mind" is questionable. If macroscopic decoherence is very reversible then it's false, among other possible counters. Either way "so the resimulations are just approximations" could still be rather misleading considering many commonsense definitions of "approximation". (I do not assume that khafra endorses Stross's observations or that Stross made quite those observations, only that Stross made approximately those observations.)
If macroscopic decoherence is very reversible
That's a very big if. Decoherence is often defined in terms of effective irreversability.
If a system's dynamics are considered in isolation, then it's theoretically irreversible, yes.
I'm pretty sure I don't... Wikipedia: "Viewed in isolation, the system's dynamics are non-unitary (although the combined system plus environment evolves in a unitary fashion). Thus the dynamics of the system alone, treated in isolation from the environment, are irreversible. As with any coupling, entanglements are generated between the system and environment, which have the effect of sharing quantum information with—or transferring it to—the surroundings."
If you draw a notional, boundary around a system that is embedded in an environment and consider it in isolation, then you introduce an asymmetry due to the information lost crossing the boundary.
The system+environment evolves in a unitary fashion, but you can't do anything to reverse the universe.
The only hope of reversing is a system is if it actually is isolated...inot interacting with with an environment.
(relevance to quantum computing)
The environment can be larger than whatever system you drew a notional boundary around and still smaller than the universe, so not being able to reverse the universe isn't a problem. Here, I'll make it explicit: imagine it turns out that your "environment" is actually a Laplacian monstrosity! You're just a subsystem. All concerns about irreversibility are thenceforth questionable.
Em-dashes (minus-sign hyphen, 43-17, American-Indian, 43 - 17 ,) -- in Markup -- are possible? This is a test. Double space.
Edit: Dammit. Also testing edit feature. After this will test retract feature.
Edit 2: Retract feature tested. Testing edit feature on retracted comment. Idea: Edited text should be .75 out of 1 on greyscale. Text edited twice should be .5, thrice .25, and then you're done and should be done, why would you need to edit it that many times anyway? This would only apply to editing/addition of words and characters, not spacing or emphasis.
Edit 3: Apparently you can edit text before or after retraction. Not sure if this is a feature or a bug.
This might depend strongly on what constitutes a superintelligence and simply put how much data the superintelligence has about an individual. For example, if someone died in 1800, reviving/reconstructing/bringing-back-life/etc. them would be difficult for a superintelligence due to a probable lack of data about the individual. As one progresses to modern times and one has more information about people (and video captures and the like) some form of reconstruction becomes more plausible.
However, since most cryonics proponents do not seem to be counting on a benevolent superpower but rather envision a revival of their physical, preserved, body using advanced technology, and are more likely to self-identify wiith such an entity rather than more abstracted entities, the distinction seems relevant. I suspect that you would agree for instance that without such a superintelligence repair of a body subject to proper cryonic preservation will require much less technology than preserving a body in dry ice with no steps taken to prevent ice crystal formation. Finally, if one is confident that such superintelligences will exist, then this makes all forms of cryonics essentially moot.
This is mentioned in a Cryonic FAQ:
VIII-D. Is cryonics illegal anywhere ?
The Canadian Province of British Columbia (BC) is the only state or province in North America with an anti-cryonics law. Section 14 of Bill 3 (2004) of the Cremation, Interment and Funeral Services Act of BC forbids the marketing of cryonics, but BC citizens are not prohibited from making arrangements with cryonics organizations outside of BC. And BC funeral directors are not prohibited from shipping cryonics patients to cryonics organizations outside of BC according to a clarification notice on the website of the British Columbia Business Practices & Consumer Protection Authority. (For more information about British Columbia's anti-cryonics law, see my article British Columbia's Anti-Cryonics Law.)
In France an April 1968 decree by Jean-Marcel Jeanneney, the Minister of Health, prohibited the practice of cryonics.
Cryonics was declared illegal in the city of Nederland, Colorado, but the remains of the grandfather of Norwegian cryonicist Trygve Bauge is still stored there on dry ice − actually celebrated in an annual winter festival (see Frozen Dead Guy Days.)
Wacky.
A quick google for more information about cryonics' illegality in Nederland, Colorado came up with this page that has "The Frozen Dead Guy Day Story":
http://www.nederlandchamber.org/events_fdgd-story.html
Even if cryonics is illegal there they seem to be fine promoting all the Frozen Dead Guy days (I assume for tourism and related things):
http://www.dailycamera.com/boulder-county-news/ci_18282009?source=most_viewed
I'd imagine the efficacy is halfway between proper cryonics and embalming and burying; the more interesting part may be the festival. Nederland is a small town 20 miles from Boulder, CO. I doubt the festival attendees are cryonics advocates, but they don't seem prone to the negative associations corpsicles often raise. Perhaps it's just because Boulder, Colorado is full of weirdos, but I wonder if there are more exploitable effects in play.