X-Message-Number: 5308
Date:  Thu, 30 Nov 95 12:10:21 
From: mike <>
Subject: Revival of cryonics patients

Brad Templeton, #5302, writes, regarding the possible posthumans that the 
human race might develop into:

>... the worry is that since we know almost nothing of the motives of
>these transcendent intelligences, if they rule the world (and how can they
>not rule it, unless they don't care to) we have no idea if they would care
>to revive cryo-suspended normal intelligences.

My feeling is that, while there is much about "transcendent 
intelligence" that we can't anticipate, we can have "some idea" about 
the interests that even advanced beings might have. They would 
presumably be interested in survival. (Otherwise they won't exist 
very long, so the world should come to be dominated by those that 
*do* want to survive--a simple form of natural selection.) They
would be interested in *some* form
of activity, and arguably not something simple such as mere existence 
in a static state of pleasure, without much thought. Instead one can 
speculate that some nontrivial processing of information will be 
involved. The "nontrivial processing" could take many forms, not all 
of which might involve information from the past, 
yet I submit that information about historical events will be 
important too.

One source of historical information is the memories and experiences 
of other beings, some of which should be captured in the minds of 
cryonics patients. This then is one possible reason that posthumans 
will take an interest in such individuals. If this were the only 
reason, it could be argued that posthumans might simply retrieve the 
information and abandon the patients--so that no revivals would take 
place. But I see another reason, which is to answer the (to me 
fascinating) question of, given a particular human mind as a starting 
point and reasonable conditions for advancement, what sort of 
advanced intelligence would develop? One way to answer that question, 
in the case of a cryonics patient, would be simply to revive that 
patient and send them on their way--presumably with some preselection 
of conditions, etc. Although there might be other ways of obtaining an 
answer without really "running the person" I think the best way would
be to let the person develop and see what transpires--and I feel confident
that at least some posthumans would agree.

Apparently much of the worry over revival results from the fear that 
posthumans will be so far beyond our level they will have "no 
interest" in the beings we are. I highly doubt this however; that is, 
while they may be advanced, I doubt they 
will have no interest. People are interested in beings less 
intelligent than themselves, e.g. dogs and cats, some of which have 
been frozen by cryonicists with eventual revival in mind. This raises 
another possibility--that posthumans would want to revive us as their 
pets or "children." Well, it would be revival at least, and such a life 
might not seem at all bad. On the other hand, I'm hoping for the 
possibility of unlimited advancement, and optimistic that I'll have 
the chance. It may even be abetted if I start out as someone's 
"child"--which is how I started the first time anyway.

Mike Perry  


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