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I would; death sucks. At the very least, people should always be able to choose to live for another day.
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A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
101–110 of 363 posts
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've read in a Amazon review that it is recommended to start with Consider Phlebas , then The Player of Games and finally Use of Weapons (as a first start into the Culture, that is). I've bought them three myself and will read them in this order.
I will too, thank you.
I'd actually consider starting with one of the latter two. Consider Phlebas is great still, but distinctly less mind blowing than PoG or UoW..
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#103Another person that might be cryopreserved [1], but probably won't be, much like the 150,000 who passed in the last day or so [2]. Many sorts of terminal case can actually lead to better quality cryopreservation under present legal restrictions [3], in comparison to the drawn out and uncertain end of aging, precisely because they are more rapid and certain in time. (Or might be plastinated [4] in the alternate histor…
Whole galaxies die, what to say about us poor humans, please do not offend basic physics with this "other option" thing, if there is a single certain thing in the whole universe it is the certainty of change and, as a consequence, death. We might extend lifespan greatly, it is a different thing altogether, it is worth discussing, it might even be a good thing, I don't know, but clinging to a dream of immortality will…
This is the most truthful and insightful comment on this thread. Thank you.
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#104[deleted]
It isn't that they die - it is that they die before they can realize many of their dreams, before they can change the world in the way they have been working towards, before they're done.
We hate cancer because it takes from us those who wish to give so much without consideration. An indiscriminate killer that wastes our treasures away before our eyes, leaving us with only memories, partially realized dreams and the rage of "why now, when there was so much more good to be done?!"
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm...except that cryopreservation is still, as of this point, a complete crock of shit. Trying to find a necromancer would be more productive. As an ex-biologist, I can assure you that horrible cellular damage is being committed to these "preserved" people. I used to flash-freeze all sorts of cells, ranging from bacteria (e. coli) to animal (IMCD3 and MDCK kidney) to human (Human Embryonic Kidney, Primary cortical a…
>Hmm...except that cryopreservation is still, as of this point, a complete crock of shit. Trying to find a necromancer would be more productive. No, that's not very rational. Cryopreservation may have low chances of success, but it's like a billion billion billion times better than just dying (which has zero chance of success). Nobody is claiming that cryopreservation is very probable, but it's a lot better than noth…
> No, that's not very rational. Cryopreservation may have low chances of success, but it's like a billion billion billion times better than just dying (which has zero chance of success). Nobody is claiming that cryopreservation is very probable, but it's a lot better than nothing.
That's basically Pascal Bet (if there's God you get infinite payoff, if there's no God you get finite negative payoff (wasted time caused by being believer), so to maximize payoff you should believe in God). The problem is - there are very many possible gods, many of them incompatibile with each other. You should consider the bet with ALL gods as possible options, not just some god versus no god.
Same with the cryogenic. You should consider the possibility that freezing you with our poor technology can make you unrecoverable, while some other technology could allow you to be saved eventually.
Also I'm sorry for Mr Banks, I love his books about Culture.
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
I will too, thank you.
I'd actually consider starting with one of the latter two. Consider Phlebas is great still, but distinctly less mind blowing than PoG or UoW..
Aha, well, Player of Games it is, then! Especially since, like ceejayoz said, they don't really depend on each other. Thanks for the recommendation.
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#107I am very upset about that... In my opinion he's the best living science fiction author... but not for long, I guess... :-( I've read most of his books (all of his SF books). The Culture is an amazing universe, but the rest of his works are also outstanding.
What do you recommend as a first book to read?
(edit: never mind, sibling thread has it covered: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5485695 )
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cell damage inflicted by the cryo process is readily acknowledged by its proponents. They argue that the neurological damage is not so large that the original brain can't be reconstructed either by scanning it while still frozen or by repairing it with nano-bots. Much like data from a wiped hard drive can still be recovered by digital forensics. As for the problem of outer layers freezing faster than inner layers…
That's complete nonsense. Nanobots cannot repair angstrom-scale freeze damages. You approach the classical limit, where protons are more wave than particle. And what's a brain antifreeze? Even biocompatible antifreeze proteins found in arctic oceans have a thermal threshold of 269K, which is no where near cryogenic temperature.
Angstrom-scale fidelity may not be necessary for preserving memories/personality/identity. The antifreeze they use is neurotoxic, which is a known problem.
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cell damage inflicted by the cryo process is readily acknowledged by its proponents. They argue that the neurological damage is not so large that the original brain can't be reconstructed either by scanning it while still frozen or by repairing it with nano-bots. Much like data from a wiped hard drive can still be recovered by digital forensics. As for the problem of outer layers freezing faster than inner layers…
They don't! If someone could freeze at least a small insect brain after it "learned something", unfreeze it and prove that it retained what it learned, I might have at least a grain of faith in this. Even getting an insect ganglia out on a feeder plate with electrodes, training it to respond in a way to a certain sequence of input electrical impulses and proving that after thawing and reanimation it still preserves t…
So your argument is that until it's "proven" that we can cryopreserve and then restore brains, the probability of success is zero? If you agree that the probability is non-zero, then you agree with the cryopreservation advocates. In addition, if you agree that it's non-zero, you must agree that it's better than doing nothing (which clearly has a zero chance of revival).
Cryopreservation advocates do not claim that the process is proven to be work, they claim that the chance may be small, but it's non-zero.
>"Nature"/"The universe"/"God" is NOT on our side on this path, so there's no room for optimistic thinking, we can only rely on cold (literally) hard science and math!
I don't even know where you're going with this discourse. If you're a utilitarian rationalist you can estimate the chance of success for cryopreservation and revival. It's quite easy to show that if the probability is non-zero, then it's beneficial to make such a bet, as the possible positive utility can be huge if the cryopreservation is succesful.
If you think that probability estimates are "not science" and therefore "irrational", you don't know what you're talking about. If you think that current scientific evidence shows that the chance of revival is zero, then you're clearly wrong (and that would contradict your own claims, as zero chance would mean there's no need to make any new experiments).
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cell damage inflicted by the cryo process is readily acknowledged by its proponents. They argue that the neurological damage is not so large that the original brain can't be reconstructed either by scanning it while still frozen or by repairing it with nano-bots. Much like data from a wiped hard drive can still be recovered by digital forensics. As for the problem of outer layers freezing faster than inner layers…
> ... is not so large that the original brain can't be reconstructed either by scanning it while still frozen or by repairing it with nano-bots. You might as well argue that nano-bots will be able to reanimate a body that has decomposed, and save money on all the freezing equipment. Perhaps that will be the case if given enough time, but we seem to be a long way away from that technology. The business model seems to…
>You might as well argue that nano-bots will be able to reanimate a body that has decomposed, and save money on all the freezing equipment. Perhaps that will be the case if given enough time, but we seem to be a long way away from that technology.
No, you might not as well argue that. If you think you can, then please argue how you can retrive information from a completely decomposed brain. On the other hand, it's pretty reasonable to assume that a cryopreserved brain preserves a lot of the information in the brain.