In order for cryonics to work in principle, they will already have to know how to fix whatever you died of, whether it be cancer or a heart attack or being crushed in a car accident. How much more difficult do you estimate it would be to fix the problem of vitrification (fixing vitrification damage and preventing de-vitrfication damage) than fix the cause of your death?
First, I estimate it will be orders of magnitude harder to fix that damage than to fix the cause of death. Fixing cancer or many other diseases would likely be a matter of intervening with drugs or genes. Fixing damage from freezing or vitrifying is usually held to require advanced nanotechnology.
Second, I think that there will be continued motivation for work to progress on all those things (cancer, heart attacks, etc.), and so the technology for fixing them will continue to improve. But the technology for fixing the damage is not likely to continue to improve, because (warm) people won’t have a need for it.
Good. I agree with you that fixing vitrifying damage could require advanced nanotechnology and that fixing causes of the death might not.
However, I’d like to linger a moment longer on the latter. Suppose someone has died of cancer and been vitrified in a ‘good’ way that is easy to undo. Presumably, gene therapy and drugs would work to cure their cancer if they were well. However, they’ve died. What was the cause of death? To what extent is it likely that cells been damaged? Can we anticipate what might be required to make them feel well again?
Also, you didn’t comment on whether you thought a delay was more likely than no revival at all for persons inconveniently vitrified.
Let me build on this. You say (and I agree) that fixing the damage caused by vitrification is much harder than fixing most causes of death. Thus, by the time that devitrification is possible, very few new people will be vitrified (only people who want a one-way trip to the future).
This leads me to 2 conclusions:
1) Most revivals will be of people who were frozen prior to the invention of the revivification technology. Therefore, if anyone is revived, it is because people want to revive people from the past.
2) The supply of people frozen with a given technology (who are willing to be revived, as opposed to the “one-way trip” bodies) will pretty much only decrease.
Assuming people continue to want revive people from the past, they will quickly run out of the easy revivals. If they still want to revive more people, they will have strong incentives to develop new revivification technologies.
That’s a reasonable scenario. As time goes on, though, you run into a lot more what-ifs. At some point, the technology will be advanced enough that they can extract whatever information they want from your brain without reviving you.
I think it would be really interesting to talk to Hitler. But I wouldn’t do this by reviving Hitler and setting him loose. I’d keep him contained, and turn him off afterwards. Is the difference between yourself and Hitler large compared to the difference between yourself and a future post-Singularity AI possessing advanced nanotechnology?
First, I estimate it will be orders of magnitude harder to fix that damage than to fix the cause of death. Fixing cancer or many other diseases would likely be a matter of intervening with drugs or genes. Fixing damage from freezing or vitrifying is usually held to require advanced nanotechnology.
Second, I think that there will be continued motivation for work to progress on all those things (cancer, heart attacks, etc.), and so the technology for fixing them will continue to improve. But the technology for fixing the damage is not likely to continue to improve, because (warm) people won’t have a need for it.
Good. I agree with you that fixing vitrifying damage could require advanced nanotechnology and that fixing causes of the death might not.
However, I’d like to linger a moment longer on the latter. Suppose someone has died of cancer and been vitrified in a ‘good’ way that is easy to undo. Presumably, gene therapy and drugs would work to cure their cancer if they were well. However, they’ve died. What was the cause of death? To what extent is it likely that cells been damaged? Can we anticipate what might be required to make them feel well again?
Also, you didn’t comment on whether you thought a delay was more likely than no revival at all for persons inconveniently vitrified.
Let me build on this. You say (and I agree) that fixing the damage caused by vitrification is much harder than fixing most causes of death. Thus, by the time that devitrification is possible, very few new people will be vitrified (only people who want a one-way trip to the future).
This leads me to 2 conclusions: 1) Most revivals will be of people who were frozen prior to the invention of the revivification technology. Therefore, if anyone is revived, it is because people want to revive people from the past. 2) The supply of people frozen with a given technology (who are willing to be revived, as opposed to the “one-way trip” bodies) will pretty much only decrease.
Assuming people continue to want revive people from the past, they will quickly run out of the easy revivals. If they still want to revive more people, they will have strong incentives to develop new revivification technologies.
That’s a reasonable scenario. As time goes on, though, you run into a lot more what-ifs. At some point, the technology will be advanced enough that they can extract whatever information they want from your brain without reviving you.
I think it would be really interesting to talk to Hitler. But I wouldn’t do this by reviving Hitler and setting him loose. I’d keep him contained, and turn him off afterwards. Is the difference between yourself and Hitler large compared to the difference between yourself and a future post-Singularity AI possessing advanced nanotechnology?