The nanotech required is so far outside of current science that trying to predict what it can do is a hard problem at best
I wanted to pick on this in particular, because you seem to be saying “there’s no overwhelming evidence either way, so I can believe whatever I want”. But really, advanced molecular nanotechnology does have evidence in favor of its eventual achievement:
You can’t claim to be doing good-quality futurism if you don’t assign some probability to current trends continuing, and it is especially bad to say “you can’t prove that X will happen, therefore I’m allowed to believe that it definitely won’t happen”.
Rather, you should assign a probability to the events in question occurring.
Which means that there is a probability of cryonics working, and most people say it’s around 10%.
Sam,
I wanted to pick on this in particular, because you seem to be saying “there’s no overwhelming evidence either way, so I can believe whatever I want”. But really, advanced molecular nanotechnology does have evidence in favor of its eventual achievement:
For example, progress in self-assembly with DNA nanotechnology (http://www.physorg.com/news9322.html), primitive nanomachines that locomote (http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v2/n2/abs/nnano.2006.210.html), etc. These are small steps that we are seeing today, yes.
You can’t claim to be doing good-quality futurism if you don’t assign some probability to current trends continuing, and it is especially bad to say “you can’t prove that X will happen, therefore I’m allowed to believe that it definitely won’t happen”.
Rather, you should assign a probability to the events in question occurring.
Which means that there is a probability of cryonics working, and most people say it’s around 10%.