The basic idea of getting cryonics is that it offers a chance of massively extended lifespan, because there is a chance that it preserves one’s identity. That’s the first-run approximation, with additional considerations arising from making this reasoning a bit more rigorous, e.g. that cryonics is competitive against other interventions, that the chance is not metaphysically tiny, etc.
One thing we might make more rigorous is what we mean by ‘preservation’. Well, preservation refers to reliably being able to retrieve the person from the hopefully-preserved state, which requires that the hopefully-preserved state cannot have arisen from many non-matching states undergoing the process.
The process that squares positive numbers preserves perfectly (is an injection), because you can always in theory tell me the original number if I give you its square. The process that squares real numbers preserves imperfectly but respectably since, for any positive output, that output could have come from two numbers (e.g. 1^2=1=(-1)^2). Moreover, if we only cared about the magnitude (modulus, i.e. ignoring the sign) of the input, even squaring over real numbers would perfectly preserve what we cared about.
Similarly, there is a chance that the hopefully-preserved states generated by cryonics do/will be generated only by the original identity, or possibly some acceptably close identities. That we do not currently know if it is possible to retrieve acceptably close identities from hopefully-preserved states—or even if we did, how one would do so—does not necessarily make the probability that it is possible to do so in principle low enough that cryonics can be laughed off.
A monkey might be bamboozled by the sequence of square numbers written in Arabic numerals, but that would not prove that the rule could not be deduced in principle, or that information had been lost for human purposes. Similarly we might currently be unable to reverse vitrification or look under a microscope and retrieve the identity, but it is unfair to demand this level of proof, and it is annoying and frustrating in the same way as logical rudeness (even if technically it is not logically rude) when every few months another person smugly spouts this type of argument as a ‘refutation’ of cryonics and writes cryonicists off, and then gets upvoted handsomely. (Hence Eliezer losing patience and outright declaring that people who don’t seem to (effectively) understand this point about mappings don’t have a clue.)
Formalisations of these concepts arise in more obviously mathematical contexts like the study of functions and information theory, but it feels like neither of those should be necessary background for a smart person to understand the basic idea. But in all honesty, I think the inferential gap for someone who has not explicitly considered at least the idea of injections before is big enough that often people apply the absurdity heuristic or become scared to do something unconventional before the time it takes to cross that inferential gap.
I think there’s a good chance that there are neurodegenerative conditions that are currently irreversible but which many more would think worth working on than cryonics, simply because they associate cryonics with ‘computer nerd failure mode’ or apply the absurdity heuristic or because attacking neurodegenrative conditions is Endorsed by Experts whereas cryonics is not or because RationalWiki will laugh at them. Possible partial explanation: social anxiety that mockery will ensure for trying something not explicitly endorsed by an Expert consensus (which is a realistic fear, given how many people basically laugh at cryonicists or superficially write it off as ‘bullshit’). And yes, in this mad world, social anxiety really might be the decisive factor for actual humans in whether to pursue an intervention that could possibly grant them orders of magnitude more lifespan.
The basic idea of getting cryonics is that it offers a chance of massively extended lifespan, because there is a chance that it preserves one’s identity. That’s the first-run approximation, with additional considerations arising from making this reasoning a bit more rigorous, e.g. that cryonics is competitive against other interventions, that the chance is not metaphysically tiny, etc.
One thing we might make more rigorous is what we mean by ‘preservation’. Well, preservation refers to reliably being able to retrieve the person from the hopefully-preserved state, which requires that the hopefully-preserved state cannot have arisen from many non-matching states undergoing the process.
The process that squares positive numbers preserves perfectly (is an injection), because you can always in theory tell me the original number if I give you its square. The process that squares real numbers preserves imperfectly but respectably since, for any positive output, that output could have come from two numbers (e.g. 1^2=1=(-1)^2). Moreover, if we only cared about the magnitude (modulus, i.e. ignoring the sign) of the input, even squaring over real numbers would perfectly preserve what we cared about.
Similarly, there is a chance that the hopefully-preserved states generated by cryonics do/will be generated only by the original identity, or possibly some acceptably close identities. That we do not currently know if it is possible to retrieve acceptably close identities from hopefully-preserved states—or even if we did, how one would do so—does not necessarily make the probability that it is possible to do so in principle low enough that cryonics can be laughed off.
A monkey might be bamboozled by the sequence of square numbers written in Arabic numerals, but that would not prove that the rule could not be deduced in principle, or that information had been lost for human purposes. Similarly we might currently be unable to reverse vitrification or look under a microscope and retrieve the identity, but it is unfair to demand this level of proof, and it is annoying and frustrating in the same way as logical rudeness (even if technically it is not logically rude) when every few months another person smugly spouts this type of argument as a ‘refutation’ of cryonics and writes cryonicists off, and then gets upvoted handsomely. (Hence Eliezer losing patience and outright declaring that people who don’t seem to (effectively) understand this point about mappings don’t have a clue.)
Formalisations of these concepts arise in more obviously mathematical contexts like the study of functions and information theory, but it feels like neither of those should be necessary background for a smart person to understand the basic idea. But in all honesty, I think the inferential gap for someone who has not explicitly considered at least the idea of injections before is big enough that often people apply the absurdity heuristic or become scared to do something unconventional before the time it takes to cross that inferential gap.
I think there’s a good chance that there are neurodegenerative conditions that are currently irreversible but which many more would think worth working on than cryonics, simply because they associate cryonics with ‘computer nerd failure mode’ or apply the absurdity heuristic or because attacking neurodegenrative conditions is Endorsed by Experts whereas cryonics is not or because RationalWiki will laugh at them. Possible partial explanation: social anxiety that mockery will ensure for trying something not explicitly endorsed by an Expert consensus (which is a realistic fear, given how many people basically laugh at cryonicists or superficially write it off as ‘bullshit’). And yes, in this mad world, social anxiety really might be the decisive factor for actual humans in whether to pursue an intervention that could possibly grant them orders of magnitude more lifespan.