I’m not sure that demanding particular proof is such a bad thing. Often when I disagree with someone I find it helpful to ask them for a list of things that would convinced them. If it is something that we don’t expect to see (such as the time-camera) then one can explain why that’s a bad standard. More often, in cases like evolution, what people demand is something directly contradicted by the hypothesis (a dog giving birth to a cat seems to be a common one). So even if specific demands for particular pieces of evidence are bad, they are useful to ask for since they give one a better idea of how much background knowledge the person in question has and whether a conversation is at all useful.
Also, regarding cryonics, I don’t think that we are that far off from demonstrated revival of vitrified mammals. I would not be surprised if we successfully revived a small mammal such as a mouse in the next 20 years. However, I think that the problem of information retrieval is larger than you make it out to be. While active patterns are clearly not necessary (stronger evidence than dogs albeit not in controlled circumstances has occurred with people who have been rescued from very cold circumstances such as having fallen through ponds or the like), it seems likely that vitrification could alter activation thresholds for neurons and easily do so in a random enough fashion to be effectively non-recoverable. We should be able to test weak versions of this claim now (say by vitrifying a small patch of neurons and then seeing how they behave after revival) but I’m not aware of any work in that direction. Of course, such a test would only apply to revival with current technology. But if that could keep neurons well enough on a small scale, it would be good evidence that we could do it for a whole-brain with better tech.
I’m not sure that demanding particular proof is such a bad thing. Often when I disagree with someone I find it helpful to ask them for a list of things that would convinced them. If it is something that we don’t expect to see (such as the time-camera) then one can explain why that’s a bad standard. More often, in cases like evolution, what people demand is something directly contradicted by the hypothesis (a dog giving birth to a cat seems to be a common one). So even if specific demands for particular pieces of evidence are bad, they are useful to ask for since they give one a better idea of how much background knowledge the person in question has and whether a conversation is at all useful.
Also, regarding cryonics, I don’t think that we are that far off from demonstrated revival of vitrified mammals. I would not be surprised if we successfully revived a small mammal such as a mouse in the next 20 years. However, I think that the problem of information retrieval is larger than you make it out to be. While active patterns are clearly not necessary (stronger evidence than dogs albeit not in controlled circumstances has occurred with people who have been rescued from very cold circumstances such as having fallen through ponds or the like), it seems likely that vitrification could alter activation thresholds for neurons and easily do so in a random enough fashion to be effectively non-recoverable. We should be able to test weak versions of this claim now (say by vitrifying a small patch of neurons and then seeing how they behave after revival) but I’m not aware of any work in that direction. Of course, such a test would only apply to revival with current technology. But if that could keep neurons well enough on a small scale, it would be good evidence that we could do it for a whole-brain with better tech.
I don’t think the post is saying anything against asking for someone’s evidence.