Unusual circumstances
of death make initial preservation more likely to fail.
Cryonics companies also wouldn’t want to do anything with such cases,
to avoid reputational and legal trouble.
Other than that,
I think cryoprotectant and other such things are irrelevant,
but warm time could be crucial at unknown timescales.
Something could go wrong with storage later
(pre-singularity chaos, including of financial nature,
legal action against the cryonics company,
technical problems).
And finally doom, where future AGI doesn’t bother waking anyone up.
At least there are some years pre-singularity left.
And if it’s not doom, revival might be expensive
given how few people are suspended
(uploading is going to be cheaper).
There would need to be a research project just for this,
possibly individual research projects for each patient.
Alignment might only be partially successful
in the sense that it’s not total doom,
but AGIs still take most of the Future for themselves,
leaving relatively little to humans.
So even if it’s trivial for a superintelligence
in the sense of inevitability of success
(assuming little warm time before initial preservation,
and getting to this point through all the intervening risks),
it might still be expensive in terms of wealth
that individual humans end up holding,
creating a need to wait
until the superintelligent research necessary for revival
becomes cheap.
Finally, revival might happen with sufficient delay
after general uploading,
with cryonauts ending up in a culturally distant future,
if biological existence ends up not being affordable for humans
(otherwise some would choose to remain biological
and there will still be a slow culture that won’t change too much
by the time superintelligent research needed for revival
is cheap enough).
Unusual circumstances of death make initial preservation more likely to fail. Cryonics companies also wouldn’t want to do anything with such cases, to avoid reputational and legal trouble. Other than that, I think cryoprotectant and other such things are irrelevant, but warm time could be crucial at unknown timescales. Something could go wrong with storage later (pre-singularity chaos, including of financial nature, legal action against the cryonics company, technical problems). And finally doom, where future AGI doesn’t bother waking anyone up. At least there are some years pre-singularity left.
And if it’s not doom, revival might be expensive given how few people are suspended (uploading is going to be cheaper). There would need to be a research project just for this, possibly individual research projects for each patient. Alignment might only be partially successful in the sense that it’s not total doom, but AGIs still take most of the Future for themselves, leaving relatively little to humans. So even if it’s trivial for a superintelligence in the sense of inevitability of success (assuming little warm time before initial preservation, and getting to this point through all the intervening risks), it might still be expensive in terms of wealth that individual humans end up holding, creating a need to wait until the superintelligent research necessary for revival becomes cheap. Finally, revival might happen with sufficient delay after general uploading, with cryonauts ending up in a culturally distant future, if biological existence ends up not being affordable for humans (otherwise some would choose to remain biological and there will still be a slow culture that won’t change too much by the time superintelligent research needed for revival is cheap enough).