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comment by Sune · 2022-09-25T20:16:38.240Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Downvoting for click-baity title and for not getting to the point. Much of the internet is optimised for catching my attention and wasting my time, and I come to lesswrong to avoid that.
Replies from: alexbeyman↑ comment by Alex Beyman (alexbeyman) · 2022-09-25T23:22:38.137Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
A variety of medications are available today for treating attention deficits.
Replies from: Sune↑ comment by Sune · 2022-09-26T05:34:27.377Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Sorry for being a bit harsh and overly to the point in my first comment.
You are obviously a good writer. This is clearly not a case of someone who cannot figure out how to structure a post: it was a post optimised for grabbing and holding attention, which is what (too) many sites optimise for, sometimes to optime ad revenue, but sometimes (like this case) for no good reason at all.
In particular this sentence made it clear to me that you knew what you were doing, and I felt almost mocked for still paying attention to you:
By now, after balking at the seemingly absurd title, I have you rubbing your chin somewhat.
As I said, you are a good writer and you have something to say. If you structure your posts in a way that optimises for giving value to the reader instead of for grabbing attention, Im looking forward to seening more post from you.
Replies from: alexbeyman↑ comment by Alex Beyman (alexbeyman) · 2022-09-26T05:50:29.053Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Not to worry, I'm secure in my talents, as a tradpubbed author of ten years. If by this time I could not write well, I would choose a different pursuit. I appreciate your good intentions but my ego is uninjured and not in need of coddling. It is a hardened mass of scar tissue as a consequence of growing up autistic in a less sensitive time.
This article in fact was originally posted on a monetized platform, which is why it's in that style you dislike. You certainly have a nose for it. I didn't know to tailor it to this community's preferences as I have only just begun posting here and as yet I'm unfamiliar with those preferences.
I will take your feedback into account. Failure is nothing but a lesson, and a typical outcome of any first attempt at something, in a new environment. Subsequent posts will be more refined, and tailored to this audience, as I get to know it better.
comment by gjm · 2022-09-25T21:10:58.578Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
You say that, subject to your various qualifications, futurists have never been wrong.
I think this is because you are defining things in a way that makes it impossible ever to determine that they have been wrong, no matter how wrong they have been.
If a futurist predicts that one day we will do X (a thing many people want and will likely to continue to want, and which is not obviously physically impossible), and no one has ever been able to do X, you can say either "well, looks like X was not physically possible after all" or "we're just not there yet; give it time".
Futurists have predicted (I remark that from the examples you give, it's clear that this includes "science fiction authors have written about", "movie-makers have made movies involving", etc.) many things that have not happened and that we have no reason to think will ever happen: faster-than-light travel, time travel, antigravity, and the like.
These particular ones are probably physically impossible, but that's not, contrary to what you say, the only way for a much-wanted thing never to happen: some things might be physically possible but always remain too difficult for us. It's hard to know whether any given thing is in that category. You are claiming that nothing lives there, but so far as I can see your only evidence is that things futurists predicted and we later did, we did in fact do. But in fact we have no idea whether the human race will actually ever be capable of simulating the world with enough fidelity for millions of people to live in a simulation and not notice, or of making atomic assemblers that can make literally anything, or of transporting people across multiple light years' distance in cryogenic suspension, or of making moon-sized weapons that can blow up planets, or ... etc., etc., etc.
It doesn't seem to me that you have established that resurrecting the dead (even those who have not e.g. been cryopreserved, which may or may not suffice to make it possible but sure seems like it might make it easier) is physically possible. (It might be that no measuments it's physically possible for us to take give enough precision about their past state to do it.) You certainly haven't established that it will ever be technologically feasible.
(To be clear, for all I know it might be. All I'm saying is that handwaving about how we have rocket ships and space stations, which ultimately is what your argument comes down to, doesn't prove that it will be.)
Replies from: alexbeyman↑ comment by Alex Beyman (alexbeyman) · 2022-09-25T21:43:37.728Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I understand how the title gives that impression. But if you read the article, you see the stipulations are in fact very reasonable: That the predictions are made by someone with a STEM background, such that they understand what physics permits, and that we cannot know what the aesthetic styling or use cases will be.
>"It's clear that this includes "science fiction authors have written about", "movie-makers have made movies involving", etc.) many things that have not happened and that we have no reason to think will ever happen"
This falls outside the first stipulation then. It isn't sleight of hand or in any way unreasonable to stipulate that the one making the prediction should know what they're talking about
>"(It might be that no measuments it's physically possible for us to take give enough precision about their past state to do it.) You certainly haven't established that it will ever be technologically feasible."
If we are not spirits but a configuration of matter, and if we can assemble matter with precision, there is every reason to believe we could create people this way. What you're disputing is whether we'll have the ability to forensically retrieve the information necessary to recreate the specific people we might wish to.
I supplied two possible methods in this article, one of which assumes simulationism and the other instruments of detection and mapping not yet in existence. I would like to propose a third: Mapping someone's atomic, or subatomic configuration while still living. Then they could not only be reconstituted as they were at the time of the scan, the scan itself could be back propagated in software to an earlier age if desired.
I put it to you that this makes it reasonable to expect some form of technological resurrection, and what's in question is exactly how capable it will be. It may well be that I cannot persuade you, but I began posting here to be challenged anyway, not showered with agreement
↑ comment by gjm · 2022-09-25T23:15:18.783Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Contra the implication in your first paragraph here, I did not say what I said on the basis of your title alone. I did read the article.
People with a solid understanding of physics have predicted (again, in the sense you are evidently using since you give examples from science fiction) things that have turned out to (probably, on the basis of today's understanding) not be physically possible. For instance, James Blish and Ken MacLeod have both written books with antigravity of some sort in them, and both have science degrees.
Whether we can "assemble matter with precision" in the sense you rely on is in fact entirely unclear. But I agree that the bigger difficulties with resurrecting people probably lie in figuring out what configuration of matter we would want to assemble.
An approach that assumes simulationism is obviously hopeless. I don't mean that simulationism is necessarily wrong, but literally anything is possible if you assume simulationism. (Is it possible to have a magic wand that makes things levitate when you wave it at them and say "Wingardium Leviosa"? Sure: the entity running the simulation could make that happen if they wanted to.)
Your "forensic" proposal is not at all clearly physically possible. The laws of physics are (so far as we currently know) time-reversible, but we don't and can't have access to the entire quantum state of the universe, and the things we observe need not be time-reversible: information can be lost to us. And many phenomena in physics exhibit "sensitivity to initial conditions" such that even an error as small as, say, the Planck length in the position of a particle can pretty quickly turn into something extremely visible macroscopically.
I agree that if you have access to someone's body then there's a good chance that (in principle, at least) it's possible to scan it in enough detail for later reconstruction. But you were claiming a lot more than that.
Replies from: alexbeyman↑ comment by Alex Beyman (alexbeyman) · 2022-09-25T23:17:32.326Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
These are good points. Can we agree a more accurate title would be "Futurists with STEM knowledge have a much better prediction track record than is generally attributed to futurists on the whole"? Though considerably longer and less eye catching.
UAPs seem to perform something superficially indistinguishable from antigravity btw, whatever they are. Depending of course on whether the US government's increasingly official, open affirmation of this phenomenon persuades you of its authenticity. If there exists an alternate means to do the same kinds of things we wanted antigravity for in the first place, the impossibility of antigravity specifically seems like a moot point.
↑ comment by gjm · 2022-09-25T23:19:41.753Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It would be a more accurate title, but it would then have even less to do with the bulk of the actual article, which is not about futurists' track records but about the prospects for resurrecting the dead.
Replies from: alexbeyman↑ comment by Alex Beyman (alexbeyman) · 2022-09-25T23:24:02.101Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The former is necessary to establish the credibility of the latter imo
Replies from: gjm↑ comment by gjm · 2022-09-26T01:06:00.313Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Possibly necessary, but not sufficient.
In any case, suppose you wanted to expand on your remarks about UAPs. You might begin by arguing that the US military is generally trustworthy, wouldn't ever release doctored footage to spread misinformation, is full of people capable of finding good "normal" explanations for things when they exist, etc.; then you might review some examples of UAP reports, possible explanations for them, and why you find some more credible than others; and finally you might put together the foregoing analysis to reach the conclusion: "We are being pranked by aliens". (Note: my guess is that that is not in fact your position.)
Would you think a good title for that article would be "The US military is generally trustworthy"? I think that would be a bad title. If I read that article with that title I would think something like "This person chose a deliberately misleading title, probably because he knew that a title stating the actual thesis of the article would put people off. In future, if I read things he writes, I should expect rhetorical tricks and manipulation rather than straightforwardness."
Maybe that's unfair? I don't think I really endorse the principle that the only honest way to title an article that argues for a particular thesis is for the title to be a brief statement of that thesis. But I do think that that's the default thing to do with the title, and that if you do something else there should probably be a specific good reason, and if the only reason is "I think people won't take me seriously if they know my actual opinion going in" then I think that's a bad reason.
(Also, for what it's worth, I don't think the proposition that it may one day be possible to something-like-resurrect at least some of the dead is in fact one that would get you regarded as a crackpot around here, even though I am not at all convinced that you have made a good case for the particular version of that proposition your article argues for.)
Replies from: alexbeyman↑ comment by Alex Beyman (alexbeyman) · 2022-09-26T01:35:23.357Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
>"You might begin by arguing that the US military is generally trustworthy, wouldn't ever release doctored footage to spread misinformation"
When the government denied UAPs, the response was "it's not officially real, the authorities have not verified it". Now the government says it is real, and the response has shifted to "you trust the authorities??"
>"Would you think a good title for that article would be "The US military is generally trustworthy"? I think that would be a bad title"
See above. It's always lose/lose with goalpost movers. This does make me wonder where you stand on vaccines, though. Trust government on vaccines, but not UAPs? I am 3x vaccinated, FWIW
>"then you might review some examples of UAP reports, possible explanations for them, and why you find some more credible than others"
I pay taxes so that this government agency can do that for me, much as I also do not pave the roads myself.
>"Maybe that's unfair? I don't think I really endorse the principle that the only honest way to title an article that argues for a particular thesis is for the title to be a brief statement of that thesis. But I do think that that's the default thing to do with the title, and that if you do something else there should probably be a specific good reason, and if the only reason is "I think people won't take me seriously if they know my actual opinion going in" then I think that's a bad reason."
My reason is that I am hungry. I like to eat hot food and sleep indoors. Under capitalism, this requires money. This article was originally written for Medium.com, a monetized blogging platform. It did not occur to me when copying it here that the cultures of these two sites might differ in a way that would change the reception of my writing based on the title, as I am new here.
>"(Also, for what it's worth, I don't think the proposition that it may one day be possible to something-like-resurrect at least some of the dead is in fact one that would get you regarded as a crackpot around here, even though I am not at all convinced that you have made a good case for the particular version of that proposition your article argues for.)"
That's fine, I came here to argue recreationally, agreement defeats that aim.
↑ comment by gjm · 2022-09-26T11:16:37.959Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
You seem to have completely misunderstood the point of my UAP example, which was to point out something about titles, and not any of the other things you seem to have taken it to be. In particular:
- I was not at all trying to argue for or against any particular view of what UAPs have what sort of explanation.
- I was not at all making any claim about what an article about UAPs would contain, beyond (1) "I can imagine an article that covers roughly these points" and (2) "if so, I think X would be a poor title".
- I was not at all making any claim about what one should and shouldn't trust any given bit of the government about.
- I was not at all making any comment on the relative merits of trying to decide how to explain any particular UAP versus letting AOIMSG do it, though I'm a little puzzled by your comment since so far as I know the number of UAP-analyses AOIMSG has released so far is zero.
Yes, different places with different people and different incentives have different cultures. Maybe clickbait and misdirection are necessary when using Medium as a tool for extracting money from advertisers or readers. They will not go down well here.
Another thing that may not go down well here is if your goal in argument is recreation rather than truth-seeking. You've said several times that you came here looking for disagreement, but I don't see any sign that any of that disagreement has caused you to reconsider anything even slightly.
Obviously my opinions on vaccines have precisely nothing to do with your article about resurrecting the dead, which is what this discussion was about before you 100% misunderstood an analogy I made. But, since you ask: I think vaccination is one of humanity's greatest and most important inventions; I think the vast majority of concern about serious vaccine side-effects is grossly misplaced, and in many cases deliberately and dishonestly fostered by people who are happy to cause harm for financial or political gain; I think it's likely that the COVID-19 vaccination programmes saved millions of lives; I think the error bars for these vaccines are much higher than for many others because they were developed and tested in a hurry, for a rapidly-mutating disease that hasn't been around for long; it seems as if the benefits of booster doses may be fairly short-lived (and it's not completely clear that they aren't sometimes negative) and not reduce infectiousness very much; I have had three doses and will probably take a fourth when it is offered to me later this year; it might depend on whether I can get the bivalent version whIch I expect to be more beneficial and less likely sometimes-negative.
comment by jacob_cannell · 2022-09-25T20:49:12.023Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Resurrection requires only future fulfillment of the simulation argument, for if that is future true, then we are sims now.
Replies from: alexbeyman↑ comment by Alex Beyman (alexbeyman) · 2022-09-25T21:43:58.574Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Indeed, and the article makes this exact argument towards the end: "In the event that we’re in a simulation already, many of the barriers facing the scanning of an entire universe (or at least a solar system, accounting for miniscule external gravitational influences) are solved. That information already exists in the simulation back end."
You might've finished reading before you replied
↑ comment by jacob_cannell · 2022-09-25T22:03:31.162Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
You might have led with that, because honestly I didn't predict that's where the essay would end up once you spent so many words talking about reversing entropy and what not. If all it takes is the sim argument, then the rest is just unnecessary.
Replies from: alexbeyman↑ comment by Alex Beyman (alexbeyman) · 2022-09-25T22:14:51.564Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
No, it isn't unnecessary as multiple potential methods of retrieving the necessary information exist, and I wanted to cover them when I felt it was appropriate. Are you behaving reasonably? Is it my responsibility to anticipate what you're likely to assume about the contents of an article before you read it? Or could you have simply finished reading before responding? I intend no hostility, though I confess I do feel frustrated.
Replies from: jacob_cannell, hairyfigment↑ comment by jacob_cannell · 2022-09-25T22:21:23.607Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I was merely explaining why I missed the part you quoted, to give you some feedback as an author. I also largely agree with the top comment [LW(p) · GW(p)]. Due to very limited time I tend to skim or skip meandering/bloviating text. I think this article would benefit from sections, TLDR, and summary.
Replies from: alexbeyman↑ comment by Alex Beyman (alexbeyman) · 2022-09-25T23:26:33.516Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Point taken re: formatting. But what you consider meandering, to me, is laying contextual groundwork to build the conclusion on. I cannot control for impatience.
↑ comment by hairyfigment · 2022-09-26T03:18:29.246Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I read it and didn't know what to make of it, since you sketch out some of the reasons why we obviously don't live in a simulation. One man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens.
Creating a universe like our own would be a crime unprecedented in history. If I thought you could do it, I'm not saying I'd do whatever it took to prevent you - but if someone else killed you for it, and if I were inexplicably placed on the jury, I'd prevent a conviction. Hopefully enough other beings think the same way - and again, you present an argument that they would - to rule out the possibility of such an abomination.
Replies from: alexbeyman↑ comment by Alex Beyman (alexbeyman) · 2022-09-26T03:37:21.415Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Horror movies are quite a popular genre, despite depicting awful, bleak scenarios. Imagine if the only genre of film was romcom. Imagine if no sour or bitter foods existed and every restaurant sold only desserts. I am of the mind that there is much to appreciate about life as a human, even as there is also much to hate. I am not here only to be happy, as such a life would be banal and an incomplete representation of the human experience. Rollercoasters are more enjoyable than funiculars because they have both ups and downs.
comment by shminux · 2022-09-26T00:01:21.922Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Brevity and clarity are not your strong suit, are they?
Replies from: alexbeyman↑ comment by Alex Beyman (alexbeyman) · 2022-09-26T00:13:31.441Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
And patience is yours?
comment by Noosphere89 (sharmake-farah) · 2022-09-25T22:15:00.085Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Weakly downvoting due to clickbait title, as said by Sune.
However, this gets at an important crux: Is the technological completion conjecture correct? It basically says that for all technologies that aren't physically impossible, that humanity or it's descendants will complete all the technologies that can be invented.
The link to the technological completion conjecture is here:
comment by TAG · 2022-09-26T12:18:43.279Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Substance dualists generally insist upon the “stillbirth” or p-zombie possibilities
You don't have to be a substance dualist to believe a sim could be a zombie: there's an argument based on physicalism.
Computation isn't causation. Computation is essentially a lossy, high level description of the physical behaviour. It’s possible for qualia to depend on some aspects of the physics that isn’t captured the computational description …which means that out of two systems running the same algorithm on different hardware,one could have qualia , but the other not. The other is a kind of zombie, but not a p-zombie because of the physical difference. Moreover, it's possible,given physicalism , for qualia to depend on the real physics ,not on comoutattii a at that level of granularity.
comment by ChristianKl · 2022-09-26T14:12:51.178Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Pretty spot on I’d say, only the styling is wrong.
Building a vehicle so that it's aerodynamically efficient is more than just styling.
Replies from: alexbeyman↑ comment by Alex Beyman (alexbeyman) · 2022-09-26T19:47:16.189Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
By styling I mean aesthetic flourish, which is largely irrelevant to aerodynamics. The point I'm making is that aesthetic styling isn't predictable because it isn't governed by the physics of rocketry, where the features necessary to its function are predictable.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-09-27T11:52:35.361Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The Wernher Von Braun rocket has a very pointy head which is bad for aerodynamics, which was not obvious at the time. Even starship is more pointy than would be optimal for silly meme reasons.
All the images of the car models also have bad aerodynamics.
The styling of the solar car prototypes we have is very much driven by aerodynamics. The styling differences of Tesla's battery-driven trucks compared to previous trucks are largely driven by aerodynamics.
In the time before wind tunnels and computer simulations aerodynamics considerations were not obvious and thus the predictions didn't include them.
Our cars currently having silly side-mirrors also isn't aesthetics but just bad lawmaking.
Our cars have seats that allow the driver to have their head against the seat. That's not just aesthetics but reduces whiplash.
I'm not even a car nerd. Someone who knows a lot about cars can likely tell you a lot of additional elements that are present in today's cars but that don't exist in those images that exist for functional reasons.
comment by artifex · 2022-09-26T05:16:15.853Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
This unfortunately means that copies could never be absolutely exact as a consequence of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle
The uncertainty principle doesn’t mean what you think: to replicate a person exactly, you just need to replicate exactly the values of each classical field at each point of space occupied by the person (the world is made of fields, not particles). You probably can’t do that, but it’s not the uncertainty principle that says you can’t do that.
What the uncertainty principle says is more like this: there are no wave functions in the phase space of a quantum system evolving according to a Schrödinger equation such that the density given by the Born rule is concentrated on one value of a variable while simultaneously being concentrated on one value of another variable when the two variables are a pair of conjugate variables, because in that case for the density to be concentrated on one value of one of the variables automatically implies a combination of amplitudes for the values of the other variable with which the density is not concentrated on a single value.
The uncertainty principle is about what’s mathematically possible, rather than about what you can know. You can know what the wave function is and that’s really all there is to know. It’s just that the wave function isn’t going to have definite values simultaneously for both of a pair of conjugate variables.
Replies from: alexbeyman↑ comment by Alex Beyman (alexbeyman) · 2022-09-26T05:18:46.299Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
>"the world is made of fields, not particles"
Is this the mainstream view? It's the first time I'm hearing this. Thank you for the insights btw
↑ comment by artifex · 2022-09-26T06:39:03.082Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It’s the mainstream view, but not the only one and not necessarily quite correct. The Standard Model is a quantum field theory incorporating special relativity and the particles are thought of as being quanta of fields. Regardless of whether the particles are entirely reducible to fields, fields are clearly more important overall than particles.
Replies from: alexbeyman↑ comment by Alex Beyman (alexbeyman) · 2022-09-26T07:10:05.851Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Thank you. Can you devise an organic way to work this information into the article while keeping it approachable to an audience of mostly laypersons, who will understand what particles are but not the importance of fields?
Replies from: artifexcomment by green_leaf · 2022-09-25T19:58:19.750Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
You can't recover information after it has been eaten by entropy. Even in a deterministic universe (which ours isn't), some information leaks into you and your forensic device (and you need all of it to reconstruct it), and the limited precision of your measuring device means some information will be forever beyond your reach (and it will get there fairly quickly). It's impossible from within the universe to reconstruct anything after its information-theoretic death. It's physically impossible, not a technological challenge. Unless you're the Ellimist.
↑ comment by jacob_cannell · 2022-09-25T20:47:45.996Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
None of that is necessary. All the future superintelligence needs to do is create many historical sims in order to fulfill the simulation argument. If it does that in our future, then we (edit: likely) already are sims now, and our resurrection is thus straightforward.
Replies from: alexbeyman, green_leaf↑ comment by Alex Beyman (alexbeyman) · 2022-09-25T21:45:07.233Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
This exact argument is already presented late in the article: "In the event that we’re in a simulation already, many of the barriers facing the scanning of an entire universe (or at least a solar system, accounting for miniscule external gravitational influences) are solved. That information already exists in the simulation back end."
You might've finished reading before you replied
↑ comment by green_leaf · 2022-09-25T21:10:42.020Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
If it does that in our future, then we already are sims now
"likely already are," right?
Replies from: jacob_cannell↑ comment by jacob_cannell · 2022-09-25T22:00:37.993Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Yeah
comment by FR_Max · 2022-09-26T19:00:24.618Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It's true change is the only constant in the universe, and yet we often act as if things will always stay the same. We get comfortable with the status quo and resist change, even when it's clearly for the better. The ability to see beyond our current moment is what allows us to progress as a species. So even though futurists may not always be correct about the details, we should all aspire to be wrong about the future in just the same way. Therefore, postmodern in art accepts exploring various styles, genres, forms and designs without bounds of limits.
comment by β-redex (GregK) · 2022-09-25T22:29:28.710Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
First, to say something positive, I like how you phrased the idea about technology just being a product of demand. (This might be obvious, but I don't think I have seen it stated like this so far. It seems like a good framing for explaining the huge disparity between the levels of technological development in different domains.)
I am skeptical of the claims about Starship and driverless cars. You are talking about them in past tense as if they have already achieved their claimed capabilities. I have no doubt that practical mars vehicles and driverless cars will be developed eventually, but I am skeptical that the hard parts of those problems have already been solved.
As for the rest of the article, I just don't understand where you want to go with the ideas. I mean if we assume the simulation hypothesis, everything (computable) becomes possible, why focus on this special case of human resurrection?
Replies from: alexbeyman↑ comment by Alex Beyman (alexbeyman) · 2022-09-25T22:40:51.824Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Because it ties in to the earlier point you mentioned about demand driving technological development. What is there more demand for than the return of departed loved ones? Simulationism was one of two means of retrieving the necessary information to reconstitute a person btw, though I have added a third, much more limited method elsewhere in these comments (mapping the atomic configuration of the still living).
>"You are talking about them in past tense as if they have already achieved their claimed capabilities. I have no doubt that practical mars vehicles and driverless cars will be developed eventually, but I am skeptical that the hard parts of those problems have already been solved."
Given the larger point of the article is that technological resurrection is a physically possible, foreseeable development, when specifically any of this is achieved will be irrelevant to people living now, if we will indeed live again. I'm reminded of the old joke, "What do we want? Time travel! When do we want it? It's irrelevant!"
↑ comment by β-redex (GregK) · 2022-09-25T23:56:08.285Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
What is there more demand for than the return of departed loved ones?
Well, as you yourself outline in the article people have basically just accepted death. How much funding is currently going into curing aging? (Which seems to be a much lower hanging fruit currently than any kind of resurrection.) Much less than should be IMO.
when specifically any of this is achieved will be irrelevant to people living now, if we will indeed live again.
Sorry, but this just seems like a generic counterargument [? · GW]. The key word here is "if".
- Reversing entropy is a very shaky idea, as other comments already outlined in more detail.
- The simulation hypothesis seems like a hotly debated topic, but there does not seem to be an accepted way to even put probabilities on it, depending on your priors you can get answers anywhere between 0 and 1.
Also taking this to its logical conclusion just seems nonsensical. If we will be resurrected later anyway, why care about anything at all right now? I think much of EY's writing on many-worlds [? · GW] can be applied here. (The idea of being resurrected in many different possible worlds seems quite similar.)
Replies from: alexbeyman↑ comment by Alex Beyman (alexbeyman) · 2022-09-26T00:17:52.310Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
>"Well, as you yourself outline in the article people have basically just accepted death. How much funding is currently going into curing aging? (Which seems to be a much lower hanging fruit currently than any kind of resurrection.) Much less than should be IMO."
A good point. I'm not sure how or if this would change. My suspicion is that as the technology necessary to remake people gets closer to readiness, developed for other reasons, the public's defeatism will diminish. They dare not hope for a second life unless it's either incontrovertibly possible and soon to be realized, or they're a religious fantasist for whom credibility is an unimportant attribute of beliefs.
>"The key word here is "if".
A hypothetical the entire article is dedicated to supporting
>"If we will be resurrected later anyway, why care about anything at all right now?"
Because the resurrection cannot happen if we go extinct before the means is developed, very obviously. It requires the continued survival of humanity, and of civilization, to support continued technological development. I would say I am shocked you would ask such a question but this is not my first rodeo.
Rather than reason through ideas only far enough to identify potential problems and then stop, assuming they're show-stoppers, please continue at least one or two further steps. Make some effort to first answer your own objections before posing them to me as if I didn't think of them and as if they are impassable barriers. You needn't assume others are correct in order to steelman their arguments.
>"Also taking this to its logical conclusion just seems nonsensical."
If the reasoning goes A->B->C->D->E but you stopped at B because it seemed potentially problematic, then everything from B to E looks like an indefensible leap. This is not a problem with the reasoning, but of incomplete analysis by someone disinclined to take seriously ideas they did not personally conclude to.
Edit: It's also possible I'm guilty of this in the event you were referring to far future resurrection of all intelligent species carried out by machines not originating from Earth
↑ comment by β-redex (GregK) · 2022-09-26T02:58:47.498Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
If the reasoning goes A->B->C->D->E but you stopped at B because it seemed potentially problematic, then everything from B to E looks like an indefensible leap. This is not a problem with the reasoning [...]
It is. An argument is only as strong as its weakest link.
Sorry if it came across that way, I did not stop at the first possible objection, I am specifically questioning the parts that seem the weakest to me. (For the argument regarding bringing back past people, indeed starship and self-driving are not too relevant. Reversing entropy and simulation absolutely are.)
I don't have any issues with the idea of resurrecting people based on a sufficiently detailed scan. (You write that "There’s a lot of people today who speculate that some kind of weirdness happens in the brain that can never be reduced to physics.", but I don't think anyone (on LW at least) would seriously argue that human brains can't be simulated for some weird reason.)
The idea that we could recover past states of the universe in sufficient detail is by far the most suspicious claim, and it is central to the idea of bringing back past people, that's why I was addressing that specifically.
in the event you were referring to far future resurrection of all intelligent species carried out by machines not originating from Earth
Well you suggest in the article that our simulators would resurrect us, am I missing something?
Replies from: alexbeyman↑ comment by Alex Beyman (alexbeyman) · 2022-09-26T03:11:54.221Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
>"It is. An argument is only as strong as its weakest link."
If the conclusion hinges upon that link, sure.
>"Reversing entropy and simulation absolutely are."
You do not need to reverse entropy to remake a person. Otherwise we are reversing entropy every time we manufacture copies of something which has broken. Even the "whole universe scan" method does not actually wind back the clock, except in sim.
>"Well you suggest in the article that our simulators would resurrect us, am I missing something?"
Yes. If every intelligent species takes the attitude that "it's not my problem, someone else will take care of it" then nobody does. We cannot know for sure how many intelligent, technologically capable species exist. In the absence of confirmation, the only way we can be sure that a technological means of resurrection will be developed is if we do it. If we're not alone, nothing is lost except that we have reinvented the wheel.
>"The idea that we could recover past states of the universe in sufficient detail is by far the most suspicious claim, and it is central to the idea of bringing back past people, that's why I was addressing that specifically."
I agree actually and this is why I furnished two methods, although there's a third method which can also remake people based on scans of the still living, it's just considerably more limited than the other two. My central point being that physics permits such a technology, there exists demand for it, so it is reasonable to expect it will exist in some form. That is by itself remarkable enough, for people outside of LessWrong anyway.