First off, if you can’t be very nearly 100% sure of failure, you should do cryonics anyway—as long as your expected value of survival is greater than cost times probability. If you are still only 99% sure cryonics would fail, you should still be willing to bet up to $50,000 on it if your life is worth $5 million.
Second off, your argument seems to include damage and suspension under the same umbrella. Suspension as a problem for personhood doesn’t make much sense, unless you are willing to admit to there being a real a risk that people who undergo extreme hypothermia also actually reanimate as a different person.
Third, repair scenarios as a risk to personhood make sense only if you apply the same criteria to stroke, dementia, and trauma victims who would benefit from similar extreme advances in brain repair technology.
As a first approximation to the true ontology of personhood, I’m going to talk about three degees of persistence. First, persistence of your current stream of consciousness. Second, continuous existence in time of your physical or ontological self even through interruptions to consciousness. Finally, creation of a new self which is a duplicate or approximation to an earlier self which was destroyed.
I consider it very likely that the self—whatever that is—exists continuously throughout any interval of uninterrupted consciousness. I consider it unlikely but remotely possible that sleep, and total unconsciousness in other forms, is death to this self, and that each time we awake we are literally a new conscious being, fooled into thinking that the experiences of its predecessors also happened to it because it has their memories. I consider it far more likely that the self—whatever that is—lasts a lifetime, and corresponds to some form of brain activity which persists continuously even in deep sleep or coma, but which will certainly be terminated or at least interrupted by something as radical as cryopreservation. I consider it unlikely but remotely possible that some form of reanimation from current techniques of cryopreservation constitutes second-tier persistence—an interruption to consciousness but not an interruption to basic identity—but I think it far more likely that reanimation from such a condition will require the creation of something that by physical criteria is a new self.
I’m not totally against seeking third-tier persistence but that’s not what I would mean by immortalism.
Are you positing that actual information or structure would be lost if your brain dropped below a certain temperature and hence ceased all molecular and electrical activity for a time? I’m not sure what kind of empirical results you are expecting to see that differ from the empirical results I would expect to see.
“Information loss” is not the issue. The issue is whether creation of a copy of you counts as survival, and whether cryonics can produce anything but a copy.
In the absence of any empirically different prediction between the hypothesis that you survived versus a mere copy of you survived, how do we decide who wins the argument either way? Aren’t we just debating angels dancing on the head of a pin here?
In the absence of any empirically different prediction between the hypothesis that you survived versus a mere copy of you survived, how do we decide who wins the argument either way?
We can start by asking, what are you? And once we have an answer, we can see whether the entity on the other side of a resurrection process is you or not.
No. In fact, I rather resent the fact that those other entities that feel like me actually have the nerve to claim to be me. I encountered one of them recently and gave him a piece of my mind. But it didn’t seem to make any difference.
Returning to the original discussion: Do you actually have an opinion or a point of view about it? If you were killed, and then resurrected from a backup, did you survive? If it were possible, would you consider making a personal backup a priority, for the elemental reason of personal survival? Do you consider cryonic suspension to be something more than a way of making a backup copy of a dead person?
I am unsure about the efficacy of cryonics (or uploading). Assuming revival can work reliably (something I am doubtful of), I would estimate about a 30% chance that you are correct (different person) and 70% chance that cryonics enthusiasts are correct (Same person. Woohoo! Immortality!)
Here is a thought experiment you might find interesting though. Imagine “transporter” technology a la Star Trek which works like this: A person who wishes to be transported from Earth to Ganymede is sedated and non-destructively scanned in a laboratory on Earth and then the information is sent (at lightspeed) to the replicator on Ganymede. There, a new body is constructed, and an electric shock is given to start the heart. Finally, since the sedatives in the blood-stream were replicated as well, the copy on Ganymede is awakened and given a quick medical exam. Assuming all looks well, a signal indicating successful transmission is sent back to Earth. Upon receipt of the message on Earth, the original body is now considered redundant—no longer needed as backup in case of malfunction—so it is killed by lethal injection and cremated.
So, imagine that you wake up from sedation and notice that you are in Ganymede’s weak gravitational field. Great! a successful trip.
Now imagine that you wake up from sedation and notice that you are still feeling Earth’s gravity. What happened? Was there some kind of transmission failure and you will have to be scanned again if you still want to get to Ganymede? Or was the communication problem in the message from Ganymede to Earth? Did Earth have to request retransmission of the success signal? Uh oh, here comes a doctor with a needle. Is that norepinephrine or cyanide? Or another dose of sedative because they don’t know yet and don’t want you to be stressed out.
In my story, I can well imagine that the copy on Ganymede believes he truly is the same person that walked into the transporter station a couple hours ago and paid the fare. And I can also imagine that the original on Earth knows that he is the real McCoy and that he is likely to die very soon.
And I guess that I think that they are both right. Would I make use of that method of travel? I might, if I really needed to get to Ganymede in a hurry.
I think you are correct that there is a time-direction asymmetry. But … “intuitions” … “work” vs “break down”?
I’m not sure we have intuitions, or, if we do, that mine are the same as Mitchell’s are the same as yours. And I don’t know what criterion we can use to criticise those intuitions.
My opinions regarding “looking backward” are informed by experiences with reconstructing a thread of personal-continuity narrative after sleep, concussion, and high fever. It seems reasonable to assume that memory is the key to our post-hoc reconstruction of the illusion of continuity.
I’m not sure what evidence biases our guesses in the forward-looking direction. I do seem to recall a kind of instinctive terror that I felt as a child at the prospect of undergoing anesthesia for the first time. I was also very afraid the first time I jumped out of an airplane (while in the army). But I swallowed my fear, things seem to have turned out all right, and I had less fear the second time around. I’m guessing the same kinds of things might apply to how I would feel about being “improved” or “rehosted” as an uploaded entity.
First off, if you can’t be very nearly 100% sure of failure, you should do cryonics anyway—as long as your expected value of survival is greater than cost times probability. If you are still only 99% sure cryonics would fail, you should still be willing to bet up to $50,000 on it if your life is worth $5 million.
Second off, your argument seems to include damage and suspension under the same umbrella. Suspension as a problem for personhood doesn’t make much sense, unless you are willing to admit to there being a real a risk that people who undergo extreme hypothermia also actually reanimate as a different person.
Third, repair scenarios as a risk to personhood make sense only if you apply the same criteria to stroke, dementia, and trauma victims who would benefit from similar extreme advances in brain repair technology.
As a first approximation to the true ontology of personhood, I’m going to talk about three degees of persistence. First, persistence of your current stream of consciousness. Second, continuous existence in time of your physical or ontological self even through interruptions to consciousness. Finally, creation of a new self which is a duplicate or approximation to an earlier self which was destroyed.
I consider it very likely that the self—whatever that is—exists continuously throughout any interval of uninterrupted consciousness. I consider it unlikely but remotely possible that sleep, and total unconsciousness in other forms, is death to this self, and that each time we awake we are literally a new conscious being, fooled into thinking that the experiences of its predecessors also happened to it because it has their memories. I consider it far more likely that the self—whatever that is—lasts a lifetime, and corresponds to some form of brain activity which persists continuously even in deep sleep or coma, but which will certainly be terminated or at least interrupted by something as radical as cryopreservation. I consider it unlikely but remotely possible that some form of reanimation from current techniques of cryopreservation constitutes second-tier persistence—an interruption to consciousness but not an interruption to basic identity—but I think it far more likely that reanimation from such a condition will require the creation of something that by physical criteria is a new self.
I’m not totally against seeking third-tier persistence but that’s not what I would mean by immortalism.
Are you positing that actual information or structure would be lost if your brain dropped below a certain temperature and hence ceased all molecular and electrical activity for a time? I’m not sure what kind of empirical results you are expecting to see that differ from the empirical results I would expect to see.
Don’t mind Mitchell. He believes consciousness to be some kind of magic.
Remind me again how it works, then?
“Information loss” is not the issue. The issue is whether creation of a copy of you counts as survival, and whether cryonics can produce anything but a copy.
In the absence of any empirically different prediction between the hypothesis that you survived versus a mere copy of you survived, how do we decide who wins the argument either way? Aren’t we just debating angels dancing on the head of a pin here?
We can start by asking, what are you? And once we have an answer, we can see whether the entity on the other side of a resurrection process is you or not.
What is it like, to be a copy?
Do you consider every entity anywhere in reality that feels like you, to be you?
No. In fact, I rather resent the fact that those other entities that feel like me actually have the nerve to claim to be me. I encountered one of them recently and gave him a piece of my mind. But it didn’t seem to make any difference.
Which piece … never mind.
Returning to the original discussion: Do you actually have an opinion or a point of view about it? If you were killed, and then resurrected from a backup, did you survive? If it were possible, would you consider making a personal backup a priority, for the elemental reason of personal survival? Do you consider cryonic suspension to be something more than a way of making a backup copy of a dead person?
I am unsure about the efficacy of cryonics (or uploading). Assuming revival can work reliably (something I am doubtful of), I would estimate about a 30% chance that you are correct (different person) and 70% chance that cryonics enthusiasts are correct (Same person. Woohoo! Immortality!)
Here is a thought experiment you might find interesting though. Imagine “transporter” technology a la Star Trek which works like this: A person who wishes to be transported from Earth to Ganymede is sedated and non-destructively scanned in a laboratory on Earth and then the information is sent (at lightspeed) to the replicator on Ganymede. There, a new body is constructed, and an electric shock is given to start the heart. Finally, since the sedatives in the blood-stream were replicated as well, the copy on Ganymede is awakened and given a quick medical exam. Assuming all looks well, a signal indicating successful transmission is sent back to Earth. Upon receipt of the message on Earth, the original body is now considered redundant—no longer needed as backup in case of malfunction—so it is killed by lethal injection and cremated.
So, imagine that you wake up from sedation and notice that you are in Ganymede’s weak gravitational field. Great! a successful trip.
Now imagine that you wake up from sedation and notice that you are still feeling Earth’s gravity. What happened? Was there some kind of transmission failure and you will have to be scanned again if you still want to get to Ganymede? Or was the communication problem in the message from Ganymede to Earth? Did Earth have to request retransmission of the success signal? Uh oh, here comes a doctor with a needle. Is that norepinephrine or cyanide? Or another dose of sedative because they don’t know yet and don’t want you to be stressed out.
In my story, I can well imagine that the copy on Ganymede believes he truly is the same person that walked into the transporter station a couple hours ago and paid the fare. And I can also imagine that the original on Earth knows that he is the real McCoy and that he is likely to die very soon.
And I guess that I think that they are both right. Would I make use of that method of travel? I might, if I really needed to get to Ganymede in a hurry.
So, more briefly, intuitions about personal identity work when looking backwards in time but sometimes break down when looking forwards in time.
I think you are correct that there is a time-direction asymmetry. But … “intuitions” … “work” vs “break down”?
I’m not sure we have intuitions, or, if we do, that mine are the same as Mitchell’s are the same as yours. And I don’t know what criterion we can use to criticise those intuitions.
My opinions regarding “looking backward” are informed by experiences with reconstructing a thread of personal-continuity narrative after sleep, concussion, and high fever. It seems reasonable to assume that memory is the key to our post-hoc reconstruction of the illusion of continuity.
I’m not sure what evidence biases our guesses in the forward-looking direction. I do seem to recall a kind of instinctive terror that I felt as a child at the prospect of undergoing anesthesia for the first time. I was also very afraid the first time I jumped out of an airplane (while in the army). But I swallowed my fear, things seem to have turned out all right, and I had less fear the second time around. I’m guessing the same kinds of things might apply to how I would feel about being “improved” or “rehosted” as an uploaded entity.