I’m not an expert on cryonics, but it seems obvious to me that simulating the body (to the level of detail needed to support cognition) is orders of magnitude easier than simulating the brain. Do you think a more substantial response than this is needed?
I think his objection is more about what body in particular is being simulated. As two examples, I’ve been doing martial arts for years, and massage for decades. I’m not sure how much of my somatic ability and characteristics is completely within my brain, and how much is in my peripheral nervous system, muscles, etc.
I don’t know of any conclusive studies showing one way or the other whether Alcoring my entire body is worth twice as much as just doing my head.
One question worth thinking about is how much you value your specific martial arts and massage experience, vs. some other experience in a similar space.
That is, if you lost all of that stuff upon being rebooted, but I installed off-the-shelf martial arts and massage modules that were not quite identical, how much would you care?
By way of comparison—I would care a lot if this were done for, say, my memories of or feelings about my marriage, my birth family, my social circle, my abstract thoughts about life, my stroke and recovery. If you told me that on reboot you’d replace those with some standard package of family relations, social history, etc., I’d look for another vendor… though, admittedly, I’d still choose that over simple oblivion.
I would care significantly less, though still quite a bit, if it were done for my memories of work or school. A standard memory package set to “successful computer industy knowledge worker, mediocre MIT student, smartest kid in a suburban high school, etc.” is something I would tolerate, though still be sort of twitchy about… probably more due to chagrin at being forced to face my non-special-snowflakeness than anything else.
But if you replaced my memories of living in this body with a standard package configured for “male, average health, marginally below-average fitness, male pattern baldness onset mid-20s, etc.” I doubt I would even notice the difference.
I’m not an expert on cryonics, but it seems obvious to me that simulating the body (to the level of detail needed to support cognition) is orders of magnitude easier than simulating the brain. Do you think a more substantial response than this is needed?
I think his objection is more about what body in particular is being simulated. As two examples, I’ve been doing martial arts for years, and massage for decades. I’m not sure how much of my somatic ability and characteristics is completely within my brain, and how much is in my peripheral nervous system, muscles, etc.
I don’t know of any conclusive studies showing one way or the other whether Alcoring my entire body is worth twice as much as just doing my head.
One question worth thinking about is how much you value your specific martial arts and massage experience, vs. some other experience in a similar space.
That is, if you lost all of that stuff upon being rebooted, but I installed off-the-shelf martial arts and massage modules that were not quite identical, how much would you care?
By way of comparison—I would care a lot if this were done for, say, my memories of or feelings about my marriage, my birth family, my social circle, my abstract thoughts about life, my stroke and recovery. If you told me that on reboot you’d replace those with some standard package of family relations, social history, etc., I’d look for another vendor… though, admittedly, I’d still choose that over simple oblivion.
I would care significantly less, though still quite a bit, if it were done for my memories of work or school. A standard memory package set to “successful computer industy knowledge worker, mediocre MIT student, smartest kid in a suburban high school, etc.” is something I would tolerate, though still be sort of twitchy about… probably more due to chagrin at being forced to face my non-special-snowflakeness than anything else.
But if you replaced my memories of living in this body with a standard package configured for “male, average health, marginally below-average fitness, male pattern baldness onset mid-20s, etc.” I doubt I would even notice the difference.