Cryonics

[ciphergoth]

I'm considering signing up with the Cryonics Institute. Are you signed up? I'd be interested to hear your reasons why or why not. It does of course sound crazy, but when you press past that initial reaction to find out why it's crazy, I haven't heard a really satisfactory argument yet, and I'm interested to hear what people think. There are many reasons it might not work, but are there reasons to think it's really unlikely to work? How likely does recovery need to be for it to be worth it?

Comments

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Do you mind if I ask Sandberg to comment on your remarks?

[djm4]

Not at all. I was aware this post was public, and I did explicitly suggest you seek more expert opinion. Don't expect me to have any good rebuttals; I've reached about the limit of my knowledge on the subject, which is OK for engaging with what's written in that PDF, but probably inadequate for detailed discussion of the techniques.

[djm4]

Did he/she ever reply?

You seem to be still treating the PDF as a serious roadmap. I'd characterise it as a 'map of the swamp, with several of the circling alligators marked with an "X"', which I suppose is a roadmap of sorts, but not one that's going to show you the way home.

I'm not sure if you simply don't find my objections credible (fair enough, given the source; my blog reply is hardly a peer-reviewed paper) or whether you have a rebuttal of them.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I haven't asked yet; I'm trying to work towards getting the whole discussion into a more tractable form broken into component parts on my blog, rather than pointing him to a 200-comment LiveJournal thread! When I do, may I copy in what you write here?

[djm4]

Yes, certainly.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Done: http://blog.ciphergoth.org/blog/2010/02/20/david-matthewman-whole-brain-emulation-roadmap/

though I haven't pointed Sandberg to it yet.

Thanks again!