It depends on how much I trust the judgment that so-and-so is a bad person. Obviously, most of us won’t trust the judgment of a 16th century coffin scribbler much, if for no other reason than because this person doesn’t share our values. Even if they wrote “this person is bad because he committed murder” and “this person is bad because he’s a Jew”, that would only let me discard the judgments that obviously have mismatches with my values, but not let me discard the judgments with more subtle mismatches (such as whether he thinks it’s murder for a peasant to use self-defense against a lord).
If we’re discussing society-wide policy on resurrections, then I need to decide how I trust the judgment of the people in society who do resurrections as well as the judgment of the people who inscribed the coffins. I wouldn’t trust those people’s judgment except in extreme cases, like for someone who committed a serious violent crime and was convicted of it through a reasonably fair process.
In the case of people who couldn’t be convicted, either because they died before trial, or because they are a world leader who could not be put on trial, I think I would require some process that ensures that this doesn’t randomly get applied to anyone who is disliked. Otherwise, saying you can’t resurrect Hitler opens the door to saying “Israel is committing genocide on the Palestinians, resurrecting any dead Israeli leader is like resurrecting Hitler”.
If I’m interpreting correctly Lumifer’s intention with the thought experiment, then we shouldn’t expect future societies to pay any attention to our judgment of who was a good person and who wasn’t. By freezing ourselves we’d be basically jumping into the terrifying unknown.
Given the choice between resurrecting Hitler and resurrecting and random cryonically person, who would you choose? There may be compelling reasons to choose Hitler-maybe we are in need of some information which Hitler knew-but the probability that the random person was more bad than Hitler is extremely low, a proposition I can make in the absence of a rigid definition of badness.
Nevertheless, this is an edge case-I would need a very compelling case about preservation of resources to even consider the question of who we should save, much less advocate preserving one person over another.
The Enterprise crew revived Khan without knowing he had been a war criminal in the past. The historical records on that war were incomplete and could have given them no warning of who they were reviving.
The historical records on that war were incomplete
Historical records on nearly any war are incomplete. War crimes of the winning side are seldomly documented well.
Why do you think the having been a war criminal in the past is good evidence that an individual would cause harm? It’s very unlikely that an individual who get’s revived is in a position to get a lot of political power.
It depends on how much I trust the judgment that so-and-so is a bad person. Obviously, most of us won’t trust the judgment of a 16th century coffin scribbler much, if for no other reason than because this person doesn’t share our values. Even if they wrote “this person is bad because he committed murder” and “this person is bad because he’s a Jew”, that would only let me discard the judgments that obviously have mismatches with my values, but not let me discard the judgments with more subtle mismatches (such as whether he thinks it’s murder for a peasant to use self-defense against a lord).
If we’re discussing society-wide policy on resurrections, then I need to decide how I trust the judgment of the people in society who do resurrections as well as the judgment of the people who inscribed the coffins. I wouldn’t trust those people’s judgment except in extreme cases, like for someone who committed a serious violent crime and was convicted of it through a reasonably fair process.
In the case of people who couldn’t be convicted, either because they died before trial, or because they are a world leader who could not be put on trial, I think I would require some process that ensures that this doesn’t randomly get applied to anyone who is disliked. Otherwise, saying you can’t resurrect Hitler opens the door to saying “Israel is committing genocide on the Palestinians, resurrecting any dead Israeli leader is like resurrecting Hitler”.
If I’m interpreting correctly Lumifer’s intention with the thought experiment, then we shouldn’t expect future societies to pay any attention to our judgment of who was a good person and who wasn’t. By freezing ourselves we’d be basically jumping into the terrifying unknown.
Given the choice between resurrecting Hitler and resurrecting and random cryonically person, who would you choose? There may be compelling reasons to choose Hitler-maybe we are in need of some information which Hitler knew-but the probability that the random person was more bad than Hitler is extremely low, a proposition I can make in the absence of a rigid definition of badness. Nevertheless, this is an edge case-I would need a very compelling case about preservation of resources to even consider the question of who we should save, much less advocate preserving one person over another.
I think any society advanced enough to do cryonical revival won’t have to do random resurrections. They can analyse the bodies.
Information can be lost across generations. I know this is fictional evidence, but the “unfreezing Khan” scenario is a possibility.
I don’t know excatly to what “unfreezing Khan” scenario refers.
A body itself has to hold information to be revived.
The Enterprise crew revived Khan without knowing he had been a war criminal in the past. The historical records on that war were incomplete and could have given them no warning of who they were reviving.
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Historical records on nearly any war are incomplete. War crimes of the winning side are seldomly documented well.
Why do you think the having been a war criminal in the past is good evidence that an individual would cause harm? It’s very unlikely that an individual who get’s revived is in a position to get a lot of political power.