From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sat Jul 15 2000 - 06:39:14 MDT
Robert, the Samuri of Darkness, wades in, his blades poised
for action....
I would agree that The Pharoh situation is dicey, especially
since I think they remove the brain in little pieces and
stick it in a nearby urn someplace. Egyption gods were
apparently better at reanimation than we aspire to...
On the other hand the prehistoric man who got caught in the
glacier in Switzerland might have been doable...
On Sat, 15 Jul 2000, Eirikur Hallgrimsson wrote:
> a) We can't meet the pharoah's expectations. This isn't the Egyptian
> afterlife. Y2K is not going to be a fun place for anyone who was
> suspended back then. There is no environment for them to be
> comfortable in, and it's probably infeasible to create one that is
> more than trivially large (we could clearly decorate an apartment
> appropriately).
There is more than enough material in the solar system to give
all of the Pharohs that ever lived realms equal to that they
formerly commanded. If we wait ~100 years before performing
the reanimation I'm moderately confident we could give them
each a pre-built "real" physical realm, likely it would have
to be be a very large an O'Neal type colony or on a terraformed
Mars. If you reanimate him virtually (as an upload) then there
is no problem giving him "paradise" at all.
> b) We can't really communicate with our time-traveller very well.
> [snip] Culturally there is going to be a huge gap.
If we reanimate *anyone* after the Singularity, there is going
to be a huge gap, unless we go to the trouble of creating a
virtual world (or colony) for late 20th/early-21st century life.
Presumably the people undergoing cryonic suspension realize this
and specify clauses to handle this in their reanimation directions.
Now, of course there are potentially interesting moral issues
because we would be reanimating the Pharoh into an afterlife
that is clearly contrived to suit his expectations and that
was not one of his expectations (that Gods create afterlife
universes to match the expectatiosn of those entering the
afterlife). But at the same time, if you are being reanimated
and your expectations are being met, do you care who is pulling
the strings? Probably not.
> What I meant to write about was a model suggesting that
> suspendees might be left suspended indefinitely (forever) because of
> irrelevance (too ancient/different to be interesting) and
> acculturation (too unfair to wake them into the modern world).
> Like mummies in a museum.
I imagine that there are specificiations in some cryonics contracts
that would prevent reanimation. The first that comes to mind is
"Only [or Never] reanimate as an upload in a virtual world."
> My expectation is that the oncoming singularity compresses history
> such that the changes from Kufu's time (2,500 BCE) to ours may
> actually look small compared to what our modern suspendees will face.
Post-singularity without a transition reality environment, you
are probably quite right.
> I'm not presently able to imagine how improved technologies will
> address this.
I think I've suggested some solutions. If you aren't aware
of the capacities we can expect to command, then you should
read Anders paper on Jupiter Brains or my papers on Matrioshka
Brains and planetary disassembly.
> The suspendees may uploaded instead of physically reanimaged,
> then modified (note that this essentially has to be without
> fully informed consent) so as to be able to function in the
> social world of the future.
There are lots of people on the list more familiar with cryonics
than myself. Perhaps some of them could comment in more detail
on the reanimation clauses they have discussed or specified themselves.
> Strange stuff. It wouldn't be a singularity if we could see the
> other side.
Good quote!
Robert
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