I’ve had success explaining cryonics to people by using the “reconstruct” (succinct term, thank you!) spectrum—on one end, maybe reconstruction is easy, and we’ll all get to live forever. On the other end, maybe it’s impossible, and you simply cannot spend more than a few days de-animated before being lost forever. In the future, there will be scientists who do research and experiments and actually determine where on the spectrum the technology actually is. Cryonics is just a particular corpse preservation method that prepares for reconstruction being difficult.
More succinctly, cryonics is trying to reach the future, and this hypothetical objection is trying to avoid the future.
I asked because it seemed that, if a fear of bad future is a reason not to try harder to reach the future, it should also be a reason to try harder avoid the future, and I was curious to examine this fear of the future.
I’ve had success explaining cryonics to people by using the “reconstruct” (succinct term, thank you!) spectrum—on one end, maybe reconstruction is easy, and we’ll all get to live forever. On the other end, maybe it’s impossible, and you simply cannot spend more than a few days de-animated before being lost forever. In the future, there will be scientists who do research and experiments and actually determine where on the spectrum the technology actually is. Cryonics is just a particular corpse preservation method that prepares for reconstruction being difficult.
More succinctly, cryonics is trying to reach the future, and this hypothetical objection is trying to avoid the future.
I asked because it seemed that, if a fear of bad future is a reason not to try harder to reach the future, it should also be a reason to try harder avoid the future, and I was curious to examine this fear of the future.