Yeah, cryonicists talk a good game about how much we believe in scientific and technological progress. But the facts on the ground just don’t show that, especially because we’ve let the “nanotechnologists” string us along for nearly 30 years with their pseudo-engineering fantasies.
In fact, the dependency of cryonics literature on the N-word increasingly bothers me, for two reasons: One, if “nanotechnology” just doesn’t come into existence, it can’t serve as the magic revival mechanism; and if it can never exist because its proponents got the physics wrong, then it won’t revive anyone, ever. And two, if cryonics organizations keep invoking “nanotechnology” as part of the argument for getting cryopreserved, when people can see its absence in the real world, then that supports the perception that the providers of human cryopreservation services knowingly engage in fraud.
I’d be much more inclined to believe that nanotech advocates “got the physics wrong” if I wasn’t typing this with nanotech hands as a result of thoughts in my nanotech brain.
when people can see its absence in the real world
...You can’t swing a cat in the real world without hitting nanotech, my friend. I stumble across self-replicating nanotech every day. There are billions of nanotech factories in my immediate vicinity that are equivalent in power to ribosomes (by merit of being ribosomes). Nanotech heals my wounds and is the seat of my consciousness.
I buy that it’s a hard problem. Protean-folding is nontrivial. There’s no guarantee that we’ll ever be able to do it quickly. And yeah, self-replicating nanotech sounds like crazy sci-fi—but I type this with nanotech fingers.
Yeah, cryonicists talk a good game about how much we believe in scientific and technological progress. But the facts on the ground just don’t show that, especially because we’ve let the “nanotechnologists” string us along for nearly 30 years with their pseudo-engineering fantasies.
In fact, the dependency of cryonics literature on the N-word increasingly bothers me, for two reasons: One, if “nanotechnology” just doesn’t come into existence, it can’t serve as the magic revival mechanism; and if it can never exist because its proponents got the physics wrong, then it won’t revive anyone, ever. And two, if cryonics organizations keep invoking “nanotechnology” as part of the argument for getting cryopreserved, when people can see its absence in the real world, then that supports the perception that the providers of human cryopreservation services knowingly engage in fraud.
I’d be much more inclined to believe that nanotech advocates “got the physics wrong” if I wasn’t typing this with nanotech hands as a result of thoughts in my nanotech brain.
...You can’t swing a cat in the real world without hitting nanotech, my friend. I stumble across self-replicating nanotech every day. There are billions of nanotech factories in my immediate vicinity that are equivalent in power to ribosomes (by merit of being ribosomes). Nanotech heals my wounds and is the seat of my consciousness.
I buy that it’s a hard problem. Protean-folding is nontrivial. There’s no guarantee that we’ll ever be able to do it quickly. And yeah, self-replicating nanotech sounds like crazy sci-fi—but I type this with nanotech fingers.
It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.