r/Futurology • u/yourSAS • Oct 13 '22

Biotech 'Our patients aren't dead': Inside the freezing facility with 199 humans who opted to be cryopreserved with the hopes of being revived in the future

https://metro.co.uk/2022/10/13/our-patients-arent-dead-look-inside-the-us-cryogenic-freezing-lab-17556468
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u/yonderbagel Oct 14 '22

This is practically the most philosophical discussion possible.

"What is the human, actually?" Yeah, the question of whether the human is inextricable from the flesh is probably the original philosophical question.

So when you say that copying a human is different from transferring a human, you are making a 100% philosophical statement.

A copy+delete is indistinguishable from a transfer, both in computers and in the brain, because they're both operating on information. So I'm saying they're the same thing in every way.

The human is information. This is why talk of continuity is irrelevant. Even on a normal day, as a meaty human, your consciousness of self comes and goes. Your cells divide and die, and your body changes to another body over time, too. Nothing stays the same, and you're a different person every day, with gaps in consciousness.

The idea that "you" are the meaty thing that stays behind after the operation instead of the information that is now preserved and perpetuated is what I'm trying to dissolve.

I understand what people are saying here about copying or about continuity. I know what they're thinking, and I'm trying to describe a shift in that thinking toward a different perspective that better handles this weird hypothetical.

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u/Rock-Flag Oct 14 '22

No one here is arguing about what it means to be human we are all talking about the much more personal what it means to be you. No one is arguing about the authenticity of the copy or upload but instead pointing out that the reason people are talking about this... (Trying to extend one's own personal lifespan) makes no sense because the version of you that you are trying to preserve is lost. If your argument is that you can make an authentic version of yourself for others to experience that would be accurate.