141–150 of 172 posts
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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?
There can be only one.
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no worries. The human emulator uses just 1% of a 2050 EC2 mini compute instance.
The occasional stuttering is actually due to GC pauses.
I'd be a little bit afraid of being in an emulator written in C++ that makes heavy use of Boost, though.
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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…
> Making predictions is the main way to test out theories. Only if you can then test those predictions otherwise they're kinda useless beyond philosophical reasons. > 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 shoul…
Because resources are always constrained. The only difference is the level of constraint. Consider slightly modified choice: between "extending lives of 1M modern people + revival of 0.1M medieval people" vs "extending lives of 1.1M modern people".
Or another choice: "Revival of 1M medieval people" vs "producing 1M clones of modern people".
Curiosity about history would make sure that some medieval people would be revived. May be a thousand total. After that resources would be redirected toward cloning best performing modern version of people.
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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?
If the Star Trek transporter is shown to work (it has transported healthy monkeys so far, and did nothing weird with flies), I would totally step on it. I would feel uneasy of course, but no more so than if I stepped into a rocket.
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What exactly would you be able to verify? That some dead brains are frozen at the moment?
Well, yes. That would invalidate the whole idea of "they're not even interested in actually preserving anyone". 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).
It would be like a relic[1].
I'd add some testaments to it with untestable claims.
You know, the usual.
The main difference between Cryonics and more established religions is that Cryonics is an unproven sect. Major religions survived and polished their traditions for hundreds or thousands of years.
Cryonics movement is younger than Scientology[2]
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Well, yes. That would invalidate the whole idea of "they're not even interested in actually preserving anyone". 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).
If I run a scientific scam, keeping dead brains frozen for the show is an obvious thing to do. It would be like a relic[1]. I'd add some testaments to it with untestable claims. You know, the usual. The main difference between Cryonics and more established religions is that Cryonics is an unproven sect. Major religions survived and polished their traditions for hundreds or thousands of years. Cryonics movement is you…
Remember, this is a company that enters into a contract with you, if they don't do as they claim, they are hugely financially liable. They've been around for longer than many other companies, do you think they would have been able to hide massive fraud for all this time?
AFAIK, we're not talking about some "faith-healer" off in a corner somewhere, we're talking about an actually company, with facilities, doctors, etc. I imagine with open books as well, though I'm not sure.
Let me ask it the other way around - what would it take, theoretically, to convince you that it's not a scam? At least not in the way you are claiming (which is that they're not really preserving brains/bodies)?
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If I run a scientific scam, keeping dead brains frozen for the show is an obvious thing to do. It would be like a relic[1]. I'd add some testaments to it with untestable claims. You know, the usual. The main difference between Cryonics and more established religions is that Cryonics is an unproven sect. Major religions survived and polished their traditions for hundreds or thousands of years. Cryonics movement is you…
Are you suggesting there is literally no way to check these things? Remember, this is a company that enters into a contract with you, if they don't do as they claim, they are hugely financially liable. They've been around for longer than many other companies, do you think they would have been able to hide massive fraud for all this time? AFAIK, we're not talking about some "faith-healer" off in a corner somewhere, we…
I think there is some way to check, but why would anybody do it? Let's imagine that you work for Alcor as a technician and you find out that due to some refrigerator malfunction, dead bodies temporary unthawed.
Would you publicly report the incident or would keep silently collect your salary?
> if they don't do as they claim,
They claim to keep dead bodies frozen.
> they are hugely financially liable
Liable to what exactly?
> do you think they would have been able to hide massive fraud for all this time?
Of course.
Consider Bernie Madoff's Ponzy scheme. Alcor Life has much smaller revenue in comparison.
> convince you that it's not a scam?
Successful revival.
Do you know any technology that worked without successful tests of that technology?
E.g. they create microprocessor and claim that it works inside, but never tested it. What are the chances that this untested microprocessor would work?