Since most of these would, if successful, result in an imperfect copy of yourself, rather than extending your own consciousness, you could include “have children.” If you really want a perfect copy, rather than a genome enriched by a partner, then human cloning is closer to feasible than cryopreservation of adults. Cryopreservation of embryos actually works. I wonder if there would be a market for a service that promises to keep embryos frozen until life human expectancy reaches 110, say, then bring the embryo to life by whatever methods they are using then, sharing some of the trust fund with the foster parents.
If your main requirement for cryonics is identity continuity, then this does not qualify. Children rarely think of themselves as identical to their parents. Maybe if there was a way to transfer parent’s memory, feelings and experiences to their children. But this appears to be as hard a problem as uploading.
It is non-trivial and subject to definitional quibbles (which are in all likelihood subjective in the first place) what “identity continuity” translates to. To what extent is “thinking themselves as identical” a consideration? You could program some barebone consciousness to think of itself as most any person, regardless of other memory engram congruities. One could upload your sleeping body and fork off myriad copies, all of which would share a continuous identity with you, in some sense. The very act of uploading itself, while taken as identity preserving around here (and imo rightly so) is a Ship of Theseus implementation, with no single “right” solution.
We, of course, take the engineering approach. But that only gives us “if it does the same thing (functionally indistinguishable, same blackbox behavior, passed a variant of the Turing test (which is just functional indistinguishability tested under resource constraints)) then meh, it’s probably a good enough fit for our purposes”. That approach doesn’t provide us with any error thresholds for what’s “close-enough” and what’s not, for which criteria are necessary, let alone sufficient. Back to the murky waters of the swamp-of-deceptively-clear-sounding-natural-language-definitions.
I don’t think it’s far fetched that “children are identity continuous to parents” would be included/derivable under many “sensible” thresholds.
It is non-trivial and subject to definitional quibbles (which are in all likelihood subjective in the first place) what “identity continuity” translates to.
My minimal definition of identity continuity is instrumental, individual and bidirectional: both the identity donor and the identity recipient must agree that they have the same identity as the entity on the other end. This definition avoids the argument of the type “I don’t think that if all my atoms are replaced, I will be the same person” and “If I take a general anaesthetic which slows down my mental processes to a halt, then I’m dead, and whoever wakes up from it is not me”. I have no problem agreeing with people like that that cryo suspension would not preserve their identity, as long as they don’t insist that it would not preserve mine. Moreover, for some people this definition is much more relaxed than mine, they might count a few photographs and fond memories as a partial identity preservation:
I don’t think it’s far fetched that “children are identity continuous to parents” would be included/derivable under many “sensible” thresholds.
...As long as people don’t insist on it being a universal threshold, I don’t mind. If you agree that your identity is carried on by your children and they also agree that it is, good for you. Wouldn’t work for me, but then I’m not them.
Do you actually use this definition for moral purposes‽ If so, it would seem that psyhcotropics drugs / brainwashing would be a much easier method of “identity preservation” than all this messy business of freezing people or storing full brain states or whatever. Indeed, you could live indefinitely with nothing but a colony ship of gullible uninquisitive people who have been taught really weird philosophy, and some self-inflicted brain damage. Am I misunderstanding you?
Edit: Or more concretely, just start a brainwash-y cult with some “We are all one consciousness” woowoo and then immerse yourself in it / smash yourself in the head with a brick until you believe your own doctrine. Heck, I’d be surprised if this hasn’t been done already. Those New Age gurus really are extending their lifespans!
Since most of these would, if successful, result in an imperfect copy of yourself, rather than extending your own consciousness, you could include “have children.” If you really want a perfect copy, rather than a genome enriched by a partner, then human cloning is closer to feasible than cryopreservation of adults. Cryopreservation of embryos actually works. I wonder if there would be a market for a service that promises to keep embryos frozen until life human expectancy reaches 110, say, then bring the embryo to life by whatever methods they are using then, sharing some of the trust fund with the foster parents.
If your main requirement for cryonics is identity continuity, then this does not qualify. Children rarely think of themselves as identical to their parents. Maybe if there was a way to transfer parent’s memory, feelings and experiences to their children. But this appears to be as hard a problem as uploading.
It is non-trivial and subject to definitional quibbles (which are in all likelihood subjective in the first place) what “identity continuity” translates to. To what extent is “thinking themselves as identical” a consideration? You could program some barebone consciousness to think of itself as most any person, regardless of other memory engram congruities. One could upload your sleeping body and fork off myriad copies, all of which would share a continuous identity with you, in some sense. The very act of uploading itself, while taken as identity preserving around here (and imo rightly so) is a Ship of Theseus implementation, with no single “right” solution.
We, of course, take the engineering approach. But that only gives us “if it does the same thing (functionally indistinguishable, same blackbox behavior, passed a variant of the Turing test (which is just functional indistinguishability tested under resource constraints)) then meh, it’s probably a good enough fit for our purposes”. That approach doesn’t provide us with any error thresholds for what’s “close-enough” and what’s not, for which criteria are necessary, let alone sufficient. Back to the murky waters of the swamp-of-deceptively-clear-sounding-natural-language-definitions.
I don’t think it’s far fetched that “children are identity continuous to parents” would be included/derivable under many “sensible” thresholds.
My minimal definition of identity continuity is instrumental, individual and bidirectional: both the identity donor and the identity recipient must agree that they have the same identity as the entity on the other end. This definition avoids the argument of the type “I don’t think that if all my atoms are replaced, I will be the same person” and “If I take a general anaesthetic which slows down my mental processes to a halt, then I’m dead, and whoever wakes up from it is not me”. I have no problem agreeing with people like that that cryo suspension would not preserve their identity, as long as they don’t insist that it would not preserve mine. Moreover, for some people this definition is much more relaxed than mine, they might count a few photographs and fond memories as a partial identity preservation:
...As long as people don’t insist on it being a universal threshold, I don’t mind. If you agree that your identity is carried on by your children and they also agree that it is, good for you. Wouldn’t work for me, but then I’m not them.
Do you actually use this definition for moral purposes‽ If so, it would seem that psyhcotropics drugs / brainwashing would be a much easier method of “identity preservation” than all this messy business of freezing people or storing full brain states or whatever. Indeed, you could live indefinitely with nothing but a colony ship of gullible uninquisitive people who have been taught really weird philosophy, and some self-inflicted brain damage. Am I misunderstanding you?
Edit: Or more concretely, just start a brainwash-y cult with some “We are all one consciousness” woowoo and then immerse yourself in it / smash yourself in the head with a brick until you believe your own doctrine. Heck, I’d be surprised if this hasn’t been done already. Those New Age gurus really are extending their lifespans!