Even if the probability of being revived is sub-1%, it is worth every penny since the consequence is immortality
By that logic, one should pay to have prayers said for one’s soul.
One could make a Drake’s-Equation-style estimate of that “sub-1%” probability, but the dominant term is this: what are the odds that evolution, with no selection pressure whatsoever, has designed the brain so that that none of its contents are stored in a volatile way? Why write everything to disk if the computer never gets turned off?
Without hard evidence that the brain does that, I don’t see any reason to rate the probability of revival significantly higher than zero. That’s without even getting into whether it’s really practical to extract what information there is.
Maybe there is such evidence and I just haven’t seen it. I repeat: can anyone point me to some?
Well, there’s the fact that people have lots of seizures, which as far as we can tell are very chaotic patterns of electrical activity that scramble all information contained in ongoing oscillatory patterns. (Note the failure of spike sorting algorithms upon recruitment of neurons into seizure activity. http://m.brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/07/17/brain.awv208.abstract)
Not only that, but TMS (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulation—effectively introducing large random currents in large chunks of brain tissue) doesn’t seem to produce any long term effects as long as you don’t start actually causing tissue damage through hydrolysis.
On the molecular side, we know that our core personality is resilient to temporary flooding of the brain with a large array of different transmitter analogs, antagonists, and other chemicals. (All of the drugs that people do) Many of these chemicals are synthetic ones that we didn’t co-evolve with.
I think it’s very reasonable to suspect that most of the important information that composes the individual is stored in genetic regulatory networks, and in the connectome. Chemical gradients aren’t very information dense, and while we might a priori expect there to be a lot of information in ephemeral electrical activity, I think seizures and TMS are both good demonstrations that this information can at least be restarted given the structure of the network.
Final thing to consider: there’s much more individual variation at the level of anatomy than there is at the level of electrophysiological properties. There are a relatively small number of morphological categories of neurons (100s), that are fairly stereotyped across humans. But brain anatomy varies enormously from subject to subject. (Take into account that as a Cognitive neuroscientist, I’m probably biased in this regard)
There’s still some missing pieces, like working memory CAN’T be stored in the connectome because plasticity mechanisms and genetic mechanisms aren’t fast enough.
At the very least though, I think there’s a lot of hope. After all, the connectome and genetic information can be well preserved even with plasticization and slicing. My money’s on those being the critical pieces of information.
The value of immortality does not seem infinite to me. Merely very large. The odds that magic or religion will save you seem vastly tiny. Sufficiently tiny that they are bad uses of time and energy even if the benefits are potentially very large.
If you’re looking for rationalizations for not giving into Pascal’s Wager here, a better one might be “If I wanted to maximize my chance at immortality, paying 100$ for prayers is less effective than investing 100$ into cryonics.”
You can only “invest $100” in cryonics by buying an insurance policy with a $100 premium that covers a very short period, where the chance of immortality is the probability that cryonics works multipled by the probability that you will die during the exact period covered by the premium before you have to pay a second premium. Because the chance that you will die during the period is non-zero, the return on the investment is also non-zero. However, the overhead for this investment is huge (and bear in mind that overhead includes such things as “everyone thinks you’re crazy for making a single payment that only returns anything if you die within the week.”)
Furthermore, what does it even mean to say “this instance of Pascal’s Mugging maximizes my return, over several instances of Pascal’s mugging”? If it’s an instance of Pascal’s mugging, the return is useless information and maximizing it is meaningless.
I don’t think it takes an degree in nano-tech or cutting edge medicine to be more confident in the power of future technology than in the power of praying for souls. Even if it is granted that there aren’t great reasons for supposing cryonic preservation is viable, it is a huge and unwarranted leap to say that is as intellectually vacuous as the ideas of prayers affecting souls.
Even if the probability of being revived is sub-1%, it is worth every penny since the consequence is immortality
By that logic, one should pay to have prayers said for one’s soul.
One could make a Drake’s-Equation-style estimate of that “sub-1%” probability, but the dominant term is this: what are the odds that evolution, with no selection pressure whatsoever, has designed the brain so that that none of its contents are stored in a volatile way? Why write everything to disk if the computer never gets turned off?
Without hard evidence that the brain does that, I don’t see any reason to rate the probability of revival significantly higher than zero. That’s without even getting into whether it’s really practical to extract what information there is.
Maybe there is such evidence and I just haven’t seen it. I repeat: can anyone point me to some?
Well, there’s the fact that people have lots of seizures, which as far as we can tell are very chaotic patterns of electrical activity that scramble all information contained in ongoing oscillatory patterns. (Note the failure of spike sorting algorithms upon recruitment of neurons into seizure activity. http://m.brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/07/17/brain.awv208.abstract) Not only that, but TMS (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulation—effectively introducing large random currents in large chunks of brain tissue) doesn’t seem to produce any long term effects as long as you don’t start actually causing tissue damage through hydrolysis.
On the molecular side, we know that our core personality is resilient to temporary flooding of the brain with a large array of different transmitter analogs, antagonists, and other chemicals. (All of the drugs that people do) Many of these chemicals are synthetic ones that we didn’t co-evolve with.
I think it’s very reasonable to suspect that most of the important information that composes the individual is stored in genetic regulatory networks, and in the connectome. Chemical gradients aren’t very information dense, and while we might a priori expect there to be a lot of information in ephemeral electrical activity, I think seizures and TMS are both good demonstrations that this information can at least be restarted given the structure of the network.
Final thing to consider: there’s much more individual variation at the level of anatomy than there is at the level of electrophysiological properties. There are a relatively small number of morphological categories of neurons (100s), that are fairly stereotyped across humans. But brain anatomy varies enormously from subject to subject. (Take into account that as a Cognitive neuroscientist, I’m probably biased in this regard)
There’s still some missing pieces, like working memory CAN’T be stored in the connectome because plasticity mechanisms and genetic mechanisms aren’t fast enough.
At the very least though, I think there’s a lot of hope. After all, the connectome and genetic information can be well preserved even with plasticization and slicing. My money’s on those being the critical pieces of information.
The value of immortality does not seem infinite to me. Merely very large. The odds that magic or religion will save you seem vastly tiny. Sufficiently tiny that they are bad uses of time and energy even if the benefits are potentially very large.
If you’re looking for rationalizations for not giving into Pascal’s Wager here, a better one might be “If I wanted to maximize my chance at immortality, paying 100$ for prayers is less effective than investing 100$ into cryonics.”
You can only “invest $100” in cryonics by buying an insurance policy with a $100 premium that covers a very short period, where the chance of immortality is the probability that cryonics works multipled by the probability that you will die during the exact period covered by the premium before you have to pay a second premium. Because the chance that you will die during the period is non-zero, the return on the investment is also non-zero. However, the overhead for this investment is huge (and bear in mind that overhead includes such things as “everyone thinks you’re crazy for making a single payment that only returns anything if you die within the week.”)
Furthermore, what does it even mean to say “this instance of Pascal’s Mugging maximizes my return, over several instances of Pascal’s mugging”? If it’s an instance of Pascal’s mugging, the return is useless information and maximizing it is meaningless.
Ah, desert-dryness of speech: capable of making even immortality sound boring and unappealing!
I don’t think it takes an degree in nano-tech or cutting edge medicine to be more confident in the power of future technology than in the power of praying for souls. Even if it is granted that there aren’t great reasons for supposing cryonic preservation is viable, it is a huge and unwarranted leap to say that is as intellectually vacuous as the ideas of prayers affecting souls.