Regarding cryonics not working: this depends on your definition of ‘working’. Let me describe the problem succinctly.
Assume at some future date you can build a ‘brain box’. This is a machine, using some combination of hardware and dedicated circuitry, that is capable of modeling any human brain that nature could build. It likely does this by simulating each synapse as a floating voltage, modulated by various coefficients (floating point weights) when an incoming pulse arrives.
Well, you can choose randomly the weights, and assuming you also attach a simulated or robotic human body (a body with sufficient fidelity), and train the robot or simualated body with an appropriate environment, the ‘being’ inside the box will eventually achieve sentience and develop skills humans are capable of developing.
But you don’t have to choose the weights at random. If you obtain just 1 bit of information from a frozen brain sample, you can use that bit to bias your random rolls, reducing the possibility space from “any brain possible within the laws of nature” to “a subset of that space”.
If you have an entire frozen brain, with whatever damage cryonics has done to it, and you first slice and scan it with electronic microscopes, you still get a lot more bits than just 1. You will be able to instantiate a brain that has at least some of the characteristics of the original. Will they have clear and coherent memories (as coherent as humans have...)? Depends on the quality of the sample, obviously.
But regardless of damage you can bring each cryonics patient ‘back’, limited by the remaining information. This is actually no different than caring for a patient with a neurodegenerative disease, except that the brain box will not have any flaws in it’s circuitry and once instantiated, the being occupying it will be able to redevelop any skills and abilities they are missing.
Now, yes, trying to ‘repair’ a once living brain to live again as a meat-system is probably unrealistic without technology we cannot really describe the boundaries of. (as in, we can posit that the laws of physics do let you do this if you could make nanoscale waldos and put all the pieces back together again, but we can’t really say with any confidence how feasible this is)
1) Materialism is correct 2) Identity encoded in structure 3) Favorable conditions for suspension 4) Suspension preserves enough information 5) Mishap-free storage 6) Cryonics organization survives 7) Sufficient social stability 8) Cryonics is continuously legal 9) Nanotechnology is physically possible 10) Nanotechnology is perfected 11) Nanotechnology is non-catastrophic 12) Cryonic revival is “cheap enough” 13) Cryonic revival is permitted 14) The social problem
Depending on your probabilities for these variables, the estimation of the overall probability that cryonics will work overall will vary.
Even 0.2% seems quite optimistic to me. Without going into detail, anything from 3-8 seems like it could be 10% or lower and 12-14 seem nearly impossible to estimate. I wouldn’t be surprised to find my personal estimate below one in a million.
Yeah. For your interest, here are the calculations from Alcor:
Steve Harris, MD:
1) Materialism is correct: 0.95-0.99 2) Identity encoded in structure: 0.95-0.99 3) Favorable conditions for suspension: 0.75-0.95 4) Suspension preserves enough information: 0.50-0.90 5) Mishap-free storage: 0.95-0.99 6) Cryonics organization survives: 0.20-0.60 7) Sufficient social stability: 0.70-0.90 8) Cryonics is continuously legal: 0.70-0.90 9) Nanotechnology is physically possible: 0.90-0.98 10) Nanotechnology is perfected: 0.95-0.98 11) Nanotechnology is non-catastrophic: 0.20-0.50 12) Cryonic revival is “cheap enough”: 0.85-0.95 13) Cryonic revival is permitted: 0.50-0.80 The social problem is non-catastrophic: 0.008-0.18 Technologically, will cryonics work? 0.29-0.81 Overall, will it work? 0.002-0.15
That is, a 0.2-15% probability that cyronics works overall.
Mike Perry, PhD:
Note: his calculation lumps 7 of the 13 parameters as ‘the social problem’ which he calls condition n.
1) Materialism is correct 1.00-1.00 2) Identity encoded in structure: 1.00-1.00 3) Favorable conditions for suspension: 0.75-0.95 4) Suspension preserves enough information: 0.50-0.90 5) Mishap-free storage: 0.90-0.99 6) Cryonics organization survives: n-n 7) Sufficient social stability n-n 8) Cryonics is continuously legal n-n 9) Nanotechnology is physically possible 1-1 10) Nanotechnology is perfected n-n 11) Nanotechnology is non-catastrophic n-n 12) Cryonic revival is “cheap enough” n-n 13) Cryonic revival is permitted n-n The social problem is non-catastrophic: 0.39-0.86 Technologically, will it work? 0.34-0.89 Overall, will it work? 0.13-0.77
That is, a 13-77% probability that cyronics works overall.
Given stories I’ve heard about cryonics orgs, I’d put 10-50% on 5. Given my impression of neuroscience, I’d put 4 at 25-75%.
Given that I’m more pessimistic in general, I’d put an addition 2x penalty on my skepticism of their other guesses.
That puts me around 0.01%-20% spread, or one in ten thousand lower bound, which is better than I expected. If I was convinced that a cryo org was actually a responsible business that would be enough for me to try to make it happen.
Yes—it’s hard to perform the calculations and end up with a high probability that cryonics works.
I think cryonics overall is much less feasible than many Less Wrongers tend to assume. Overall, I think anti-aging has a much higher chance of working to keep us alive much longer than cryonics does.
Regarding cryonics not working: this depends on your definition of ‘working’. Let me describe the problem succinctly.
Assume at some future date you can build a ‘brain box’. This is a machine, using some combination of hardware and dedicated circuitry, that is capable of modeling any human brain that nature could build. It likely does this by simulating each synapse as a floating voltage, modulated by various coefficients (floating point weights) when an incoming pulse arrives.
Well, you can choose randomly the weights, and assuming you also attach a simulated or robotic human body (a body with sufficient fidelity), and train the robot or simualated body with an appropriate environment, the ‘being’ inside the box will eventually achieve sentience and develop skills humans are capable of developing.
But you don’t have to choose the weights at random. If you obtain just 1 bit of information from a frozen brain sample, you can use that bit to bias your random rolls, reducing the possibility space from “any brain possible within the laws of nature” to “a subset of that space”.
If you have an entire frozen brain, with whatever damage cryonics has done to it, and you first slice and scan it with electronic microscopes, you still get a lot more bits than just 1. You will be able to instantiate a brain that has at least some of the characteristics of the original. Will they have clear and coherent memories (as coherent as humans have...)? Depends on the quality of the sample, obviously.
But regardless of damage you can bring each cryonics patient ‘back’, limited by the remaining information. This is actually no different than caring for a patient with a neurodegenerative disease, except that the brain box will not have any flaws in it’s circuitry and once instantiated, the being occupying it will be able to redevelop any skills and abilities they are missing.
Now, yes, trying to ‘repair’ a once living brain to live again as a meat-system is probably unrealistic without technology we cannot really describe the boundaries of. (as in, we can posit that the laws of physics do let you do this if you could make nanoscale waldos and put all the pieces back together again, but we can’t really say with any confidence how feasible this is)
Hi Gerald,
In the original article, I linked to Alcor’s calculation of the probability that cryonics works. It ranges from 0.2-77% and this calculation is based on the 14 variables below:
1) Materialism is correct
2) Identity encoded in structure
3) Favorable conditions for suspension
4) Suspension preserves enough information
5) Mishap-free storage
6) Cryonics organization survives
7) Sufficient social stability
8) Cryonics is continuously legal
9) Nanotechnology is physically possible
10) Nanotechnology is perfected
11) Nanotechnology is non-catastrophic
12) Cryonic revival is “cheap enough”
13) Cryonic revival is permitted
14) The social problem
Depending on your probabilities for these variables, the estimation of the overall probability that cryonics will work overall will vary.
Even 0.2% seems quite optimistic to me. Without going into detail, anything from 3-8 seems like it could be 10% or lower and 12-14 seem nearly impossible to estimate. I wouldn’t be surprised to find my personal estimate below one in a million.
Yeah. For your interest, here are the calculations from Alcor:
Steve Harris, MD:
1) Materialism is correct: 0.95-0.99
2) Identity encoded in structure: 0.95-0.99
3) Favorable conditions for suspension: 0.75-0.95
4) Suspension preserves enough information: 0.50-0.90
5) Mishap-free storage: 0.95-0.99
6) Cryonics organization survives: 0.20-0.60
7) Sufficient social stability: 0.70-0.90
8) Cryonics is continuously legal: 0.70-0.90
9) Nanotechnology is physically possible: 0.90-0.98
10) Nanotechnology is perfected: 0.95-0.98
11) Nanotechnology is non-catastrophic: 0.20-0.50
12) Cryonic revival is “cheap enough”: 0.85-0.95
13) Cryonic revival is permitted: 0.50-0.80
The social problem is non-catastrophic: 0.008-0.18
Technologically, will cryonics work? 0.29-0.81
Overall, will it work? 0.002-0.15
That is, a 0.2-15% probability that cyronics works overall.
Mike Perry, PhD:
Note: his calculation lumps 7 of the 13 parameters as ‘the social problem’ which he calls condition n.
1) Materialism is correct 1.00-1.00
2) Identity encoded in structure: 1.00-1.00
3) Favorable conditions for suspension: 0.75-0.95
4) Suspension preserves enough information: 0.50-0.90
5) Mishap-free storage: 0.90-0.99
6) Cryonics organization survives: n-n
7) Sufficient social stability n-n
8) Cryonics is continuously legal n-n
9) Nanotechnology is physically possible 1-1
10) Nanotechnology is perfected n-n
11) Nanotechnology is non-catastrophic n-n
12) Cryonic revival is “cheap enough” n-n
13) Cryonic revival is permitted n-n
The social problem is non-catastrophic: 0.39-0.86
Technologically, will it work? 0.34-0.89
Overall, will it work? 0.13-0.77
That is, a 13-77% probability that cyronics works overall.
Yeah I think my main disagreements are 4 and 5.
Given stories I’ve heard about cryonics orgs, I’d put 10-50% on 5. Given my impression of neuroscience, I’d put 4 at 25-75%.
Given that I’m more pessimistic in general, I’d put an addition 2x penalty on my skepticism of their other guesses.
That puts me around 0.01%-20% spread, or one in ten thousand lower bound, which is better than I expected. If I was convinced that a cryo org was actually a responsible business that would be enough for me to try to make it happen.
Yes—it’s hard to perform the calculations and end up with a high probability that cryonics works.
I think cryonics overall is much less feasible than many Less Wrongers tend to assume. Overall, I think anti-aging has a much higher chance of working to keep us alive much longer than cryonics does.