Claim: If cryopreserved humans make it to the future, and the species survives, on any positive growth path, revival will be possible - if the preservation is good enough.
I hear a lot of doubts about cryo revival, but none have ever made sense to me. Scanning and brain simulation or reprinting the brain with a new body are are just straightforwardly feasible. So, there are only a few objections left.
- Philosophical: It isn’t revival because it’s a new person. This is sophistry if we’re analyzing the tech. You are welcome to believe it, but this is a question about what’s feasible not about what it means.
- No revival because something important is missing. This neatly divides into:
2a) The important thing is physical, and could be preserved. This is a preservation tech failure.
2b) The important thing is physical, and no tech can preserve it. This is the tiniest bit plausible to me, but it means believing that cooling tech will never be sufficient, and given that people recover from minutes of brain death and how little happens at absolute zero it’s hard to believe there isn’t some way to flash freeze in minutes. You also have to believe there will never be scanning tech that does a full scan in minutes.
2c) The important thing is metaphysical. Most objections I see are covertly in this category. Ultimately they boil down to some form of soul, whether religiously motivated, or by gesticulating while muttering the incantation “quantum”, or just sighing and saying there is more to a brain. As a materialist I don’t buy these.
Are there any other objections? Again, I’m ignoring here the many valid questions about whether the corpsicle & humanity survive - that’s obviously uncertain. As well as whether the future will bother with revival.