131–140 of 172 posts
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I'm actually the D-9000 computer Walter was working on. I replaced him when I computed he was jeopardizing the mission with his human error.
Human computer clone would be susceptible to the same errors as original human would. Besides, why would there be only single WalterBright's clone, considering that cloning computer programs is many orders of magnitude cheaper than cloning humans?
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It's not that insane when compared to the alternative.
Yes it is. Sane people are comfortable with death. It takes a weird sort of narcissism to pursue cryonics. Dying in the jungle in pursuit of the fountain of youth or bathing in the blood of the young rightfully comes off as bonkers to healthy people.
Considering the long history of the motivation of seeking immortality in literature, and that it's not typically presented in a "hey, look at this freak, what sort of nutjob would want to be immortal, am I right?"[0] sort of way, I think your use of the words "sane" and "weird" aren't on the right track.
Narcissism... sure. But a normal sort.
Also, religions in general seem to spend a lot of time and effort on helping people overcome discomfort with death. Why? Are most people insane, then?
[0] Cautionary tales aplenty, yes, but authors don't typically expect the reader to consider this as a strange motivation, I would say. Why caution against pursuing something no sane, merely-ordinarilly-narcisistic person would pursue anyway?
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Can't you learn new knowledge?
This is such weird atomized view of a human life. Dare I say autistic. "Knowledge" and skills is not really the fucking point. You are built to serve here as part of a generation.
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> You're essentially making a bet that someone will find something useful to do with a frozen brain Something is deeply wrong with this way of thinking: it doesn't value human life at all. Here's another version. Someone comes to you seeking for help. He's dying. He could be saved by some recently devised miraculous medical procedure, which would return him to full health. The catch is, that procedure is relatively e…
False dichotomy. I don't need to place a zero value on human life to disagree with this reasoning. I only need to place a finite value on it. Obviously our society only places a finite value on human life (e.g. because people sometimes starve to death, or die for lack of medical care). Edit: > In what kind of bleak world would no one be willing to pay for a probable return to full health? This one . People die of tot…
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Oh, that one's easy. At the state of current science, we're pretty much sure that the Star Trek transporter doesn't kill the traveller. The "copy" is the original, in fact. Basically, this is because we're kinda made of particles, and the origin of the quarks you're made up of doesn't matter. As in, current physics don't even have a notion of the identity of a particle. The part where it gets weird is, if you don't d…
> pretty much sure Are you willing to risk your life on "pretty much sure" ? Especially when there's no experiment you can devise to test it?
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> The chance of successful recovery of frozen dead brain after 100 years is very close to zero (assuming that the recovery process was never tested). Kim Suozzi's “1 or 2 percent chance” is extremely optimistic forecast. While it's impossible to predict whether you'll be able to be revived it doesn't sit right with me that you, and many others, are making predictions about how future medical technology will work. Hon…
Making predictions is the main way to test out theories. > but they're frozen, who cares? That is another problem with cryonics: why would future civilization care about dead brains frozen 200 years ago? Imagine that we already have technology that can unfreeze and revive people. And we just found 100,000 frozen medieval people to unfreeze. So for the same price we can either unfreeze and revive 100,000 people or we…
> How many medieval people do you think we would unfreeze&revive given such choice?
That is a false choice; why are the resources constrained so that the choice is between reviving 100,000 people or extending the lives of 100,000 people? Arguably we should have more resources in the future than today, more professionals, etc so why can't they do two things? Have we stopped scientific research to the point where no one is concentrating on historic man or reviving past humans?
People are curious, obviously we would do it. At the very least it would be interesting science. Can we bring back people frozen 200 years ago? Who knows until we try!
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That's a little pessimistic, and doesn't sound right to me. There aren't that many companies in cryonics, but they've been around for a long time (30 years I think?). And there are things you can do to verify - e.g. visit their preservation rooms, etc. And people have done this.
What exactly would you be able to verify? That some dead brains are frozen at the moment?
You could verify other things too, but unfortunately, considering it's cryonics, there's not much you can verify except for the authenticity of the effort (e.g. you can't verify effectiveness of the effort since no one really knows).
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It's not that insane when compared to the alternative.
Yes it is. Sane people are comfortable with death. It takes a weird sort of narcissism to pursue cryonics. Dying in the jungle in pursuit of the fountain of youth or bathing in the blood of the young rightfully comes off as bonkers to healthy people.
What? Why should people be perfectly accepting of cessation of existence at ~80? People not wanting to die at 20 is perfectly normal, are you meant to get bored of life at 80 or something?
>Dying in the jungle in pursuit of the fountain of youth or bathing in the blood of the young rightfully comes off as bonkers to healthy people.
Let's rephrase that a bit to apply to money:
>Dying in the jungle in pursuit of the city of El Dorado, or killing people and selling their organs on the stock market rightfully comes off as bonkers to healthy people.
...and therefore pursuing money is clearly psychotic, and we should throw all entrepreneurs in the loonie bin?
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> Sane people are comfortable with death. Check your arrogance levels, they're way off. Sane people are actually very much afraid of death. Anyone would have a much easier time proving that it is insanity not to be afraid of death, than the opposite. > It takes a weird sort of narcissism to pursue cryonics. It takes a much nastier sort of narcissism to be judgemental about how people decide their bodies will be handl…
The poster isn't saying anyone in cryonics is bathing in blood just merely saying that pursuit of cryonic preservation as a means to extend life are one in the same, which they are right now.
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> Sane people are comfortable with death. Check your arrogance levels, they're way off. Sane people are actually very much afraid of death. Anyone would have a much easier time proving that it is insanity not to be afraid of death, than the opposite. > It takes a weird sort of narcissism to pursue cryonics. It takes a much nastier sort of narcissism to be judgemental about how people decide their bodies will be handl…
The poster isn't saying anyone in cryonics is bathing in blood just merely saying that pursuit of cryonic preservation as a means to extend life are one in the same, which they are right now.
A more neutral example would be someone who thoroughly investigates dietary health, and makes sure to eat a nutritious, healthy diet full of fresh vegetables and whatnot. Which is CLEARLY insane, /s.