Thoughts on cryonic preservation & revival

[lproven]

This is a rather long reply to a post from ciphergoth. The question being, is it plausible that, in future, we will be able to resurrect people from their head, cryonically frozen post-mortemI am keenly interested in the prospect of whole-brain emulation, which strikes me as potentially plausible, with reasonable probability. For one thing, I think that this

Comments

[steer]

I said this to ciphergoth and I'll say the same to you. Our knowledge of what makes consciousness is not really more advanced than when we were cavemen. We have no clue as to what is necessary for consciousness. Is emulation of a brain in software sufficient to cause consciousness? Would any material running "that algorithm" be equivalent to my consciousness (whether it be software or a vast "choose your own adventure book)? Is there some piece of physics missing which explains why consciousness resides where it does and why, as far as we know, it is only an attribute of humans and perhaps some animals.

For this reason we do not know at all what it takes to reconstruct consciousness. Perhaps, as some have speculated, a sufficiently advanced civilisation could reconstruct the consciousness of anyone who ever lived by tracking back their effects on the present. Perhaps, on the other hand, ten minutes after death, too much information is lost. Until we know actually what causes consciousness, for me, any speculation on the usefulness of cryo will be as scientific as down the pub "I reckon what they should do is" as an estimate of economics.

[reddragdiva]

I'd personally assume the rough-and-ready Turing test humans have generally used, i.e. "it's human if it fights back hard enough that we will negotiate with it better assuming it's human." This avoids requiring testing the unprovable about whether the entity in question has the right to use the word "I."

[ciphergoth]

If you're not already familiar with it, you might be interested in the approach Dennett describes as heterophenomenology.

[steer]

I'm perfectly happy to assume this -- with the standard philosophical exceptions (the problem posed by for example the hypothetical Turing test passing entity which specifically denies it has a consciousness and does not understand such questions and which can be distinguished from a human by the question "Do you believe you are conscious?" but in all other ways would pass a Turing test). Unfortunately, we also have no scientific knowledge of what it takes to pass a Turing test and whether sufficient emulation of the algorithmics of a human brain will do this or whether other elements are needed. So yes, you can move between questions which science cannot yet answer certainly.

[reddragdiva]

I'm thinking of the practical test humans have applied when they meet what appear to be other humans. They tend to treat them as "human" when the other beings manage to fight back sufficiently.

[steer]

Hmm... by this extent we should be testing robot combat drones as sufficiently sentient or in some cases garden rakes.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-simpsons/articles/sideshow-bob

However, assuming what you should consider something as "human" when it sufficiently interacts to be a reasonable intellectual challenge to outwit it in a general environment (chess machines in a restricted environment not counting), that's also a fair point but unhelpful as we have no idea whether it is possible to construct a computer of human-like abilities in this way. We have a lot of people who believe yes -- perhaps even the majority belief. Science is not democracy -- we have no proof or even evidence on that front, merely belief.