Will a human preserved through cryonics be successfully brought back to life by end of 2050?
104
440
2K
2051
15%
chance

The restored subject must have previously been declared legally dead. For a positive resolution, the restored subject must be awake, be able to communicate, and live for at least one month. They also must have been declared dead for at least one month. The resolution criteria of this market will not be dependent on whether the restored subject retains their personal identity/memories.

Update: 2023-02-13: A digital mind upload is not sufficient to merit a positive resolution.

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What if the person is uploaded rather than revived?

predicts NO

@ThomasKwa i would be inclined to not count uploading, though I'd be open to arguments.

predicts YES

@CarsonGale I'd guess that the thing the market is trying to capture is "if someone dies before 2050 and gets cryopreserved, what probability is there that at least one such person will one day come back to life?". In this framing, I think frozen brain -> digital mind would count just as much as frozen brain -> thawed brain

@CarsonGale if I were cryopreserved, I'd mostly be hoping to be uploaded rather than revived; it seems like current cryopreservation methods might cause irreversible cell damage, but it's unlikely that the information is destroyed. My guess is we might not bother to physically revive anyone once scanning tech is mature, and most cryonics people I know would still count uploading as success

bought Ṁ10 of NO

@ThomasKwa I think you'd somehow have to prove that it's the same consciousness, rather than a copy, for that to count. I'm not sure this is possible to prove. At least for me, my hope in being cryopreserved would be more about the actual me waking again rather than the future having someone just like me. I'm not so full of myself to believe that the future needs me, but I would really love to see the future.

@PatrickAupperle Why is your consciousness more likely to be the same if you are physically revived? When you're frozen, information processing in your brain is interrupted, far more than when you're asleep or in a coma. The only thing that remains the same is atoms in your body, and I see two strong reasons why this shouldn't matter:
1) Our current understanding of physics says that atoms are indistinguishable.
2) Most of the atoms in your brain are frequently replaced while you're alive.
There is also the philosophical possibility that this kind of indexical identity is an illusion and a copy of you really counts as you.

predicts NO

@ThomasKwa I agree with all of your points. That said, there are a few topicality details that sway me in favor of not including digital upload for positive resolution. Mainly that wording in the original question and description softly implies tangible-body restoration. "brought back to life", "restored subject must be awake", "live for at least one month". While that language could feasibly apply to a digital restoration, if another market creator wrote the question & I was betting on their market, I would assume they were not referring to digital upload in the market creation.

Apologies that the market was unclear / if you bet under that lack of clarity. I would be open to refunding you Mana that you realistically lost if that would be helpful. I've also created a companion market to bet on that includes digital upload that I'll link to in the market description.

If we could buy cryonic storage with mana then we might hope that future people will be better forecasters on average.

bought Ṁ10 of YES

Basically resolves to P(AGI pre 2050) P(we don't all die | AGI pre 2050) P( there's at least one cryopreserved person at the time we get AGI| we don't all die, AGI pre 2050).

I think given that someone is cryopreserved at the time we enter post-AGI and still have humans around, we'd very likely choose to bring them back.

So, probabilities. Metaculus says 67% for the first one. The third one is quite close to 1, as I don't see every sinfle cryopreservation facility collapsing for some reason in worlds where we survive. This would imply manifold thinks that P(we don't all die | AGI pre 2050) is around 30%, which seems too low. Buying.

predicts YES

@Nikola not to repeat my argument from this market too much, but I can see us using pre-AGI systems to bring someone back even in some of the worlds where we all die, as we'd have a few weeks or months of pretty strong systems before they kill us.

predicts NO

This market is @IsaacKing Vs the world

predicts YES

@CarsonGale And the world is losing!

predicts YES

I will note that I am undefeated in cryonics predictions. Literally a 0% failure rate.

bought Ṁ75 of NO

@IsaacKing We'll see!!

bought Ṁ90 of NO

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