All of bekkerd's Comments + Replies

The character "Dragon" from the Worm web-serial convinced me that I would let an AI out of a box.

0gjm8y
How?

I live in South Africa. We don't, as far as I know, have a cryonics facility comparable to, say, Alcor.

What are my options apart from "emigrate and live next to a cryonics facility"?

Also, I'm not sure if I'm misremembering, but I think it was Eliezer that said cryonics isn't really a viable option without an AI powerful enough to reverse the inevitable damage. Here's my second question, with said AI powerful enough to reverse the damage and recreate you, why would cryonics be a necessary step? Wouldn't alternative solutions also be viable? For ex... (read more)

8D_Alex8y
You could start a cryonics facility in South Africa.
1Andy_McKenzie8y
With regard to your first question, you could also A) plan to move to a hospice near a facility when you are near to death and/or B) arrange for standby to transfer you after legal death. Of course, there are many trade-offs involved with either. In my estimation, the most useful thing would be for you to get engaged in a local community and try to push forward on basic research and logistical issues involved, although obviously that is not an easy task. With regard to your second question, as with everything in cryonics, this has been endlessly discussed. See a good article by Mike Dawrin on the topic here: http://chronopause.com/chronopause.com/index.php/2011/08/11/the-kurzwild-man-in-the-night/index.html [http://chronopause.com/chronopause.com/index.php/2011/08/11/the-kurzwild-man-in-the-night/index.html]
8Richard_Kennaway8y
Cryonics is an ambulance ride through an earthquake zone to the nearest revival facility, The distance is measured in years rather than miles, and the earthquake is the chances of history. The better the preservation, the lower the technology required to revive you, and the sooner you will reach a facility that can do it. A "powerful enough" AI isn't magic: it cannot recover information that no longer exists. We currently don't know what must be preserved and what is redundant, beyond just "keep the brain, the rest of the body can probably be discarded, but we'll freeze it as well at extra cost if you want." On a present-day level, the feted accomplishments of Deep Learning suggest to me that setting such algorithms to munch over a person's highly documented life might be enough to enable a more or less plausible simulation of them after death. Plausible enough at least to be offered as a comfort to the bereaved. A market opportunity! Also, fuel for a debate on whether these simulations are people.

[1] String theory textbooks provide a possible anti-example.

I can assure you that the maths in a string theory textbook will still be essentially correct.

Thanks for this. That talk was an informative read.