My feelings are mixed on this. The community seems pretty naive, but hopefully naive.
One scenario that seems likely to me is that the frozen folk are mostly considered too boring to revive. Even luminaries like Merkle—what could he offer? By the time technology is available to scan brains for historical information, such information will have already been scanned from the minds of still living, much smarter, people who are standing on the shoulders of those who stood on the shoulders of Merkle. The value of the historical information might result in a research grant for a data dump, which data is then forensically analyzed in a lab using modern techniques (but not revival).
Or in another scenario, the revival takes place, but only in a lab, and only during work hours, and only in between the other research projects.
Or in another scenario, the revival is not a single event, but rather the mind of the individual is replicated and placed into a million schools as a read-only appliance that sits in a corner of an AV room on a cart. Once a year, the cart is wheeled into a fifth grade classroom and children get to probe it with a few questions from the standard rubric, then it gets wheeled back into its place. Or if you prefer, instead of a physical cart, it could be on a web service. Your brain, accessed via a REST architecture, but why do they keep asking only the same 10 questions?
In another scenario, Islamic government has arrived and they decide you need to be punished for the sins of western civilization.
In another scenario, the entities who wake you up are not interested in learning anything from you other than your darkest, most embarrassing personal secrets. These become your new public identity, and your former accomplishments are forgotten. As a result, when you are revived, your only opportunity for participation in life is as the butt of many jokes. You’re still alive, and you are thankful for that, but your second life is a big step down.
In another scenario, the reanimation / revival process is more painful than anything that can be imagined.
It seems to me the range of potential bad scenarios is wide, and this is rarely mentioned by the freezer-folk. The better scenarios, ranging from something like Woody Allen’s “Bananas” as a lower bound and getting better from there, seem unlikely.
My feelings are mixed on this. The community seems pretty naive, but hopefully naive.
One scenario that seems likely to me is that the frozen folk are mostly considered too boring to revive. Even luminaries like Merkle—what could he offer? By the time technology is available to scan brains for historical information, such information will have already been scanned from the minds of still living, much smarter, people who are standing on the shoulders of those who stood on the shoulders of Merkle. The value of the historical information might result in a research grant for a data dump, which data is then forensically analyzed in a lab using modern techniques (but not revival).
Or in another scenario, the revival takes place, but only in a lab, and only during work hours, and only in between the other research projects.
Or in another scenario, the revival is not a single event, but rather the mind of the individual is replicated and placed into a million schools as a read-only appliance that sits in a corner of an AV room on a cart. Once a year, the cart is wheeled into a fifth grade classroom and children get to probe it with a few questions from the standard rubric, then it gets wheeled back into its place. Or if you prefer, instead of a physical cart, it could be on a web service. Your brain, accessed via a REST architecture, but why do they keep asking only the same 10 questions?
In another scenario, Islamic government has arrived and they decide you need to be punished for the sins of western civilization.
In another scenario, the entities who wake you up are not interested in learning anything from you other than your darkest, most embarrassing personal secrets. These become your new public identity, and your former accomplishments are forgotten. As a result, when you are revived, your only opportunity for participation in life is as the butt of many jokes. You’re still alive, and you are thankful for that, but your second life is a big step down.
In another scenario, the reanimation / revival process is more painful than anything that can be imagined.
It seems to me the range of potential bad scenarios is wide, and this is rarely mentioned by the freezer-folk. The better scenarios, ranging from something like Woody Allen’s “Bananas” as a lower bound and getting better from there, seem unlikely.