Erik, in the event that RLE is already here—there will be no future stream of “paying customers” as they will surely avail themselves of RLE, that’s what I meant. Therefore this market, at least, won’t be driving innovation in the “how to revive a frozen brain” problem.
Fair point about how our own recording of information might look to future generations, however the many Methuselahs issue remains. It may be that my imagination is lacking or it may be that cryonics advocates are biased to overweight any indicators that cryonics might succeed but I can’t see that the puported desire of future (social science) academics to defrost and revive a few cryonic customers (a handful is all you’d need) would be sufficient pressure to encourage (actual science) academics to solve a tricky (says my limited imagination) problem which would have no significant widespread benefit. I also stand by the notion that wills and foundations are different from (capricious) individuals.
Patrick, I think this is where people don’t really adjust their intuitions properly about MW. It’s not just that there’s a branching off world for every major world event, or even every major personal event—it’s an infinite or as near as makes no difference branching taking place all the time. You still have to live in your world. Your suggestion makes the same sense as saying that someone with an incurable illness ought to be hopeful when he falls asleep because he might wake up in a world where a cure for that illness has been discovered over night.
Erik, in the event that RLE is already here—there will be no future stream of “paying customers” as they will surely avail themselves of RLE, that’s what I meant. Therefore this market, at least, won’t be driving innovation in the “how to revive a frozen brain” problem.
Fair point about how our own recording of information might look to future generations, however the many Methuselahs issue remains. It may be that my imagination is lacking or it may be that cryonics advocates are biased to overweight any indicators that cryonics might succeed but I can’t see that the puported desire of future (social science) academics to defrost and revive a few cryonic customers (a handful is all you’d need) would be sufficient pressure to encourage (actual science) academics to solve a tricky (says my limited imagination) problem which would have no significant widespread benefit. I also stand by the notion that wills and foundations are different from (capricious) individuals.
Patrick, I think this is where people don’t really adjust their intuitions properly about MW. It’s not just that there’s a branching off world for every major world event, or even every major personal event—it’s an infinite or as near as makes no difference branching taking place all the time. You still have to live in your world. Your suggestion makes the same sense as saying that someone with an incurable illness ought to be hopeful when he falls asleep because he might wake up in a world where a cure for that illness has been discovered over night.