I think that it is plausible that cryonics patients will be revived by the year 3000. That's now a falsifiable prediction.
Yes, it is, and drdoug addresses that very point in his paragraph starting 'well, I suppose they are in theory verifiable'. I won't repeat the argument here; go back and re-read that paragraph.
(2) Here's two more unfalsifiable predictions:
Both of your predictions in (2) involve concepts that we're relatively familiar with, and think we have a handle on probabilities of.
On the other hand:
- we will invent a form of microscopy that can scan brains in a way that allows us to reconstruct them with the 'consciousness' of the person intact - we will invent a form of nanotechnology that will allow us to repair the tissue damage to vitrified patients
are far less so. As I say in the thread below, the route to that technology navigates Ant Country. Evidence, and time, will change our confidence, but we have precious little of it now. Neither prediction breaks the currently-known laws of physics in a 'Jupiter turning into a rubber duck' way, but neither of them involves something we know has happened in the past and may well happen again in a 'Conservatives governing Britain' way.
You can believe in either of those statements if you like. But looking for people to debunk either of those claims is futile; no reputable scientist is going to try to debunk a claim like those on the knowledge we have today. And deciding that claims like that must be plausible simply because no one has debunked them would be deluding yourself.
(I don't, as it happens, think cryonics as a whole requires either of those claims to be true to work in some form. There are other conceivable ways of storing consciousness, and vitrification without tissue damage could be possible in the future. But the PDF seemed to make those specific claims so it's those I'm addressing.)
I have a whole reply brewing about the wisdom or otherwise of saying, as that PDF does: 'we can make scientific predictions about things we've never seen like the Earth's core or future climate change, so we can also make scientific predictions about things we've never seen like a brain scanner that can scan consciousness and nanites that can fix tissue damage from vitrification.' But I also have a garage full of my dad's stuff to move, and in any case, you can probably guess how that post might go.
no subject
Yes, it is, and
(2) Here's two more unfalsifiable predictions:
Both of your predictions in (2) involve concepts that we're relatively familiar with, and think we have a handle on probabilities of.
On the other hand:
- we will invent a form of microscopy that can scan brains in a way that allows us to reconstruct them with the 'consciousness' of the person intact
- we will invent a form of nanotechnology that will allow us to repair the tissue damage to vitrified patients
are far less so. As I say in the thread below, the route to that technology navigates Ant Country. Evidence, and time, will change our confidence, but we have precious little of it now. Neither prediction breaks the currently-known laws of physics in a 'Jupiter turning into a rubber duck' way, but neither of them involves something we know has happened in the past and may well happen again in a 'Conservatives governing Britain' way.
You can believe in either of those statements if you like. But looking for people to debunk either of those claims is futile; no reputable scientist is going to try to debunk a claim like those on the knowledge we have today. And deciding that claims like that must be plausible simply because no one has debunked them would be deluding yourself.
(I don't, as it happens, think cryonics as a whole requires either of those claims to be true to work in some form. There are other conceivable ways of storing consciousness, and vitrification without tissue damage could be possible in the future. But the PDF seemed to make those specific claims so it's those I'm addressing.)
I have a whole reply brewing about the wisdom or otherwise of saying, as that PDF does: 'we can make scientific predictions about things we've never seen like the Earth's core or future climate change, so we can also make scientific predictions about things we've never seen like a brain scanner that can scan consciousness and nanites that can fix tissue damage from vitrification.' But I also have a garage full of my dad's stuff to move, and in any case, you can probably guess how that post might go.