Just to be clear, what I’m skeptical about is the idea that cryonics adopters are in fact generally seeking to maximize the expected value of their continued information-theoretical identity after their cells die.
I certainly agree that there’s stuff outside my brain that contributes significantly to the construct I’ll label “TheOtherDave” for convenience, including but not limited to the enteric nervous system. (Indeed, much of that stuff is outside my body as well.)
Not that this makes me a skeptic about post-mortem person reconstruction, particularly. I’m perfectly prepared to believe that something could be extracted from my properly-preserved body that would be similar enough to me for it deserve the label “TheOtherDave” about as well as I do. Ditto for my properly-preserved brain; in that I’m not at all confident that the extracranial stuff is necessary when it comes to distinguishing plausible “TheOtherDave” candidates from implausible ones.
To be honest, though, I’m not convinced that my brain is necessary either. Constructing a plausible “TheOtherDave” candidate from information outside my body (e.g, my writings and relationships and demographics and so forth) probably isn’t that much harder than doing so from information inside my body; given a system capable of doing the latter, it’s likely less than a few centuries of progress until we have a system capable of doing the former. (Actually, I’m not entirely convinced that former is harder than the latter at all.)
Just to be clear, what I’m skeptical about is the idea that cryonics adopters are in fact generally seeking to maximize the expected value of their continued information-theoretical identity after their cells die.
I certainly agree that there’s stuff outside my brain that contributes significantly to the construct I’ll label “TheOtherDave” for convenience, including but not limited to the enteric nervous system. (Indeed, much of that stuff is outside my body as well.)
Not that this makes me a skeptic about post-mortem person reconstruction, particularly. I’m perfectly prepared to believe that something could be extracted from my properly-preserved body that would be similar enough to me for it deserve the label “TheOtherDave” about as well as I do. Ditto for my properly-preserved brain; in that I’m not at all confident that the extracranial stuff is necessary when it comes to distinguishing plausible “TheOtherDave” candidates from implausible ones.
To be honest, though, I’m not convinced that my brain is necessary either. Constructing a plausible “TheOtherDave” candidate from information outside my body (e.g, my writings and relationships and demographics and so forth) probably isn’t that much harder than doing so from information inside my body; given a system capable of doing the latter, it’s likely less than a few centuries of progress until we have a system capable of doing the former. (Actually, I’m not entirely convinced that former is harder than the latter at all.)