I’ll continue to doubt the practicality of cryonics until they freeze a rat and restore it 5 years later to a state where they can tell that it remembers stimuli it was taught before freezing. If that state is a virtual rat running on silicon, that will be interesting too.
...and this is a weakly continualist concern that patternists should also agree with even if they disagree with the strong form (“a copy forked off from me is no longer me from that point forward and destroying the original doesn’t solve this problem”).
But this weak continualism is enough to throw some cold water on declaring premature victory in cryonic revival: the lives of humans have worth not only to others but to themselves, and just how close exactly is “close enough” and how to tell the difference are very central to whether lives are being saved or taken away.
...and this is a weakly continualist concern that patternists should also agree with even if they disagree with the strong form (“a copy forked off from me is no longer me from that point forward and destroying the original doesn’t solve this problem”).
But this weak continualism is enough to throw some cold water on declaring premature victory in cryonic revival: the lives of humans have worth not only to others but to themselves, and just how close exactly is “close enough” and how to tell the difference are very central to whether lives are being saved or taken away.