Some Thoughts on “Coming Back” By R. Michael Perry
Introduction Those of us in cryonics have hopes that future technology will bring substantial improvements in the quality of life, and possibly clarify and deepen its meaning as well. In particular, we are hoping for medical or physiological innovations that will free us from aging and diseases so that, radically lengthened, happy lives will be possible, and possibly open doors for still greater advances. Our revival from cryopreservation could take several forms. Many cryonicists envision a return to life in a biological body similar to what they had before, with aging and diseases reversed and otherwise like their previous healthy state. Another possibility would be a technologically enhanced body, part biological and part artificial, or perhaps entirely artificial. For the latter possibility it would be necessary to “upload” the personality of the patient into something that could function like a brain. An artificial brain could offer advantages ranging from clearer and faster thinking and remembering to imperviousness to such natural brain disorders as stroke or dementia. A further extension of the uploading scenario would place several or many individuals in one large, brainlike device so that a community could be sustained. A version of this scenario is elaborated in Robin Hanson’s book, The Age of Em, where many whole-brain emulations (WBEs) occupy an “em city.”1 Em cities are mainly viewed as places on Earth which must make the usual environmental concessions to persist. Managers of an em city might be concerned about such issues as power input, a power grid, pollution, or climate change. Another, and, I think, far more favorable and hopeful setting would place the em city on an orbiting platform in space, directly powered by solar energy, without the intervention of weather or the necessity to compete with a biosphere or other ecological challenges. It is in such settings that individual uploaded personalities could persist for many centuries of tranquil, happy existence, ever developing in both capabilities and sensitivities, so that something approaching ancient concepts of a blissful afterlife is achieved. If such a happy state is realized, there should be a strong incentive, for at least some of the participants, to ensure the continuance of the society which treats the individual as a worthy object of perpetuation and regards an individual’s death as unacceptable. Here we consider possible future scenarios under several headings: (1) getting there in the first place; (2) what life might www.alcor.org
be like when we do, with emphasis on the period when are still recognizably much as we are now, (3) some details relevant to maintaining em cities in space, (4) special and longer-term issues. A fictional setting is used to explore ideas of what future life might be like, which takes up several sections. Overall, there seem reasons for optimism, based in part on the abundance of resources (energy, materials) in the solar system for sustaining the future habitations that are envisioned. Historical precedents, notably the futuristic forecasting of Nikolai Fedorov, can help motivate us in our quest for a future of long-term meaning, betterment, and enjoyment. Informed speculation such as we are considering has its hazards and is not guaranteed to be close to what is really going to happen. It is worthwhile, though, to suggest possible reasons to seek such a future (through cryonics, for instance) and as a counterweight to the dystopic projections one frequently finds in fiction and elsewhere. Getting There There are widely differing opinions on what is likely to be involved in reviving cryonics patients. To illustrate, in Cryonics magazine we find these two opinions in “A Roadmap for Revival” that is now reprinted in the “Revival Updates” section of each issue: Successful revival of cryonics patients will require three distinct technologies: (1) A cure for the disease that put the patient in a critical condition prior to cryopreservation; (2) biological or mechanical cell repair technologies that can reverse any injury associated with the cryopreservation process and long-term care at low temperatures; (3) rejuvenation biotechnologies that restore the patient to good health prior to resuscitation. OR it will require some entirely new approach such as (1) mapping the ultrastructure of cryopreserved brain tissue using nanotechnology, and (2) using this information to deduce the original structure and repairing, replicating or simulating tissue or structure in some viable form so the person “comes back.”2 As it happens, Aschwin de Wolf is the author of the first opinion, the “medical approach,” focusing on revival as basically a medical problem involving a biological body like what we have today.
Cryonics / 4th Quarter 2020
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