I understood a pretty important element in the cryonics argument is assuming that you stick to things that are feasible given our current understanding of physics, though not necessarily given our current level of technology. Conflating technology and physics here will turn the arguments into hash, so it’s kinda important to keep them separate. It’s generally assumed that the future superintelligences will obey laws of physics that will be pretty much what we understand them to be now, although they may apply them to invent technologies we have no idea about. “Things will have to continue working with the same laws of physics they’re working with now” seems different to me from “any random magical stuff can happen because Singularity”, which you seem to be going for here.
I’m not sure if “just don’t break the laws of physics” is strong enough though. Few people think it very feasible that there would be any way to reconstruct a human body locked in a box and burnt to ash, but go abstract enough with the physics and it’s all just a bunch of particles running on neat and reversible trajectories, and maybe some sort of Laplace’s demon contraption could track enough of them and trace them back far enough to get the human persona information back. (Or does this run into Heisenberg uncertainty?)
The “possible physically but not technologically” seems like a rather tricky type of reasoning. Imagine trying to explain that you should be able to build a nuclear reactor or a moon rocket to someone who has never heard of physics, in 1920 when you don’t have the tech to do either yet. But it seems like the key to this argument, and I rarely see people engaging with it. The counterarguments seem to be mostly about either the technology not being there or philosophical arguments about the continuity of the self.
Imagine trying to explain that you should be able to build a nuclear reactor or a moon rocket to someone who has never heard of physics, in 1920 when you don’t have the tech to do either yet.
“As the Soviet geologists got to know the Lykov family, they realized that they had underestimated their abilities and intelligence. Each family member had a distinct personality; Old Karp was usually delighted by the latest innovations that the scientists brought up from their camp, and though he steadfastly refused to believe that man had set foot on the moon, he adapted swiftly to the idea of satellites. The Lykovs had noticed them as early as the 1950s, when “the stars began to go quickly across the sky,” and Karp himself conceived a theory to explain this: “People have thought something up and are sending out fires that are very like stars.”
Note that what I posit as the apparent argument makes no contentions about continuity of self—let’s assume minds can in fact be copied around like MP3s.
Yes, I’m annoyed when people pull out a hypothetical magic-equivalent superintelligence that will make everything all better as an argument so solid that the burden of proof is to disprove it: “we don’t know what such a being could do (or, indeed, anything else about it), therefore you must prove that such a hypothetical being could not do (whatever magic-equivalent is needed at that point).” They don’t know how to get there from here, but they’re trying really hard, therefore this hypothetical being should be assumed?
“we don’t know what such a being could do (or, indeed, anything else about it), therefore you must prove that such a hypothetical being could not do (whatever magic-equivalent is needed at that point).”
I just said we’re assuming we know it can’t break the laws of physics.
We can tell that if you blow up someone with antimatter, putting them back together would have to involve breaking the speed of light unless you start out controlling the entire surrounding light cone before the person was blown up. If the person was vitrified, there isn’t a similar obvious violation of laws of physics involved in putting them back together.
So it seems like cryonics after death gives you a better chance at being eventually reanimated than antimatter burial after death. With regular burial definitely leaning towards the antimatter option, the causal stuff that needs to be traced back to get you together gets spread too wide. Yet people still argue as if cryonics should be treated just the same as regular burial as long as there’s no demonstrable technology that shows it working for humans.
I’m not sure why it’s a dealbreaker to assume that the technology side will advance into something we can’t fully anticipate. Today’s technology is probably extremely weird from the viewpoint of someone from 1900, but barring the quantum mechanical bits, it’s still based on the laws of physics a physicists from 1900 would be quite familiar with.
Today’s technology is probably extremely weird from the viewpoint of someone from 1900, but barring the quantum mechanical bits, it’s still based on the laws of physics a physicists from 1900 would be quite familiar with.
The GPS depends on relativity. And “barring the quantum mechanical bits” is a hell of an overwhelming exception. (But make that “a physicist from 1930″ and I will agree.)
I understood a pretty important element in the cryonics argument is assuming that you stick to things that are feasible given our current understanding of physics, though not necessarily given our current level of technology. Conflating technology and physics here will turn the arguments into hash, so it’s kinda important to keep them separate. It’s generally assumed that the future superintelligences will obey laws of physics that will be pretty much what we understand them to be now, although they may apply them to invent technologies we have no idea about. “Things will have to continue working with the same laws of physics they’re working with now” seems different to me from “any random magical stuff can happen because Singularity”, which you seem to be going for here.
I’m not sure if “just don’t break the laws of physics” is strong enough though. Few people think it very feasible that there would be any way to reconstruct a human body locked in a box and burnt to ash, but go abstract enough with the physics and it’s all just a bunch of particles running on neat and reversible trajectories, and maybe some sort of Laplace’s demon contraption could track enough of them and trace them back far enough to get the human persona information back. (Or does this run into Heisenberg uncertainty?)
The “possible physically but not technologically” seems like a rather tricky type of reasoning. Imagine trying to explain that you should be able to build a nuclear reactor or a moon rocket to someone who has never heard of physics, in 1920 when you don’t have the tech to do either yet. But it seems like the key to this argument, and I rarely see people engaging with it. The counterarguments seem to be mostly about either the technology not being there or philosophical arguments about the continuity of the self.
H. G. Wells did it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_in_the_Air http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Men_In_The_Moon
Also, people can sometimes do it themselves:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/For-40-Years-This-Russian-Family-Was-Cut-Off-From-Human-Contact-Unaware-of-World-War-II-188843001.html
Relevant quote:
Note that what I posit as the apparent argument makes no contentions about continuity of self—let’s assume minds can in fact be copied around like MP3s.
Yes, I’m annoyed when people pull out a hypothetical magic-equivalent superintelligence that will make everything all better as an argument so solid that the burden of proof is to disprove it: “we don’t know what such a being could do (or, indeed, anything else about it), therefore you must prove that such a hypothetical being could not do (whatever magic-equivalent is needed at that point).” They don’t know how to get there from here, but they’re trying really hard, therefore this hypothetical being should be assumed?
I just said we’re assuming we know it can’t break the laws of physics.
We can tell that if you blow up someone with antimatter, putting them back together would have to involve breaking the speed of light unless you start out controlling the entire surrounding light cone before the person was blown up. If the person was vitrified, there isn’t a similar obvious violation of laws of physics involved in putting them back together.
So it seems like cryonics after death gives you a better chance at being eventually reanimated than antimatter burial after death. With regular burial definitely leaning towards the antimatter option, the causal stuff that needs to be traced back to get you together gets spread too wide. Yet people still argue as if cryonics should be treated just the same as regular burial as long as there’s no demonstrable technology that shows it working for humans.
I’m not sure why it’s a dealbreaker to assume that the technology side will advance into something we can’t fully anticipate. Today’s technology is probably extremely weird from the viewpoint of someone from 1900, but barring the quantum mechanical bits, it’s still based on the laws of physics a physicists from 1900 would be quite familiar with.
The GPS depends on relativity. And “barring the quantum mechanical bits” is a hell of an overwhelming exception. (But make that “a physicist from 1930″ and I will agree.)