Poll: Would you vote to resurrect people from the past if it's expensive and funded by tax dollars?

Ṁ77

Ṁ102

resolved Jun 6

Resolved as

63%

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Suppose it's expensive. If society doesn't spend the money on resurrecting people, it could (in theory) be spent on any number of other things. The people are normal people. Maybe it includes a few famous people or distant ancestors, but assume the proposal is to resurrect a large number of generally normal people, not to resurrect a few specific people only. Vote by commenting with YES or NO in your comment (please put it at the start of your comment). You may respond multiple times; only your last response will be counted. This market resolves to the % of people responding with YES out of YES + NO. Related: https://manifold.markets/MartinRandall/poll-would-you-resurrect-a-stranger May 29, 7:53pm: Also assume that the technology to do so has already been successfully developed and tested.

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I count 5 YES and 3 NO votes, so resolution is 5/8 = 62.5%. (Also I didn't cast a vote myself but it would have been YES)

YES. Caveat is that it would have to be comparibly expensive with other forms of healthcare, since that's what it is; just a novel treatment for previously uncurable deanimation. If the NHS could fund a cancer treatment for 10 years of life for someone, or a reanimation for 10 years of life for someone, for the same cost, then if either is cost-effective then both are.

Yes. But also there will always be a shitty american political party fighting really hard against it :D

bought Ṁ10 of YES

YES. Basically on logical decision theory grounds.

NO. Thanks for the hypothetical, I took a while for my decision to settle. I would worry a fair bit about how a large influx of people from the past would influence the culture in bad ways. And I worry about how well they could adapt and find ways to contribute on net. Would they consume a lot of resources in education and other services? These are standard economic concerns about immigration, but I think they're more valid when people are immigrating across both time and space.

YES

@Undox It's interesting that you see it that way - I think that might be the common viewpoint now when most people see this as a fantasy/scifi hypothetical, but if it were a real, practical matter then I suspect that view would shift. To me, once this is a practical technology, it becomes like: these people lived and had their lives cut off temporarily, but now we can let their lives resume, and this is generally a good thing much like any other life-saving medical intervention. I think that if such technology existed, we may just see dead but resurrectable people as similar to people in a long coma. I think the difference is just whether we believed they were alive or dead in the past, but we may see the definition of "death" changed to those that are impossible to resurrect - similar to past redefinitions of the boundary between life and death - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_death on how the point of death used to be defined as cessation of blood circulation and breathing, but CPR changed that by allowing people to be resuscitated after minutes of clinical death. I'd argue that in a hypothetical world where resurrection had started to be used in practice, it would become seen more as a new form of resuscitation. @Undox and @Austin on cost - I was deliberately vague to match @MartinRandall's question, but I agree that it matters. Let's say the cost per person resurrected is similar to some of the examples of other ways you could spend the money he listed on his question: "having a biological child, or creating a clone of yourself." (Although the question didn't specify it was a similar cost, maybe that is a reasonable starting point for this hypothetical.) So, perhaps the amounts are similar to other large, normal expenses in life - having a child in the US costs roughly $200k on average from 0 to 18 years of age.

predicted NO

@jack this is a persuasive argument if we are talking about resurrecting people who died last week in a car accident. Although with that technology, they would have probably been 'saved' at the time.

@Undox I agree that it is less likely to appeal to our intuitions on longer time scales. And also that longer time scales introduce more problems, e.g. difficulty of a person readjusting to living in a very different future world. But consider that e.g. that many people in persistent vegetative states are kept alive for years or even decades.

bought Ṁ2 of NO

YES, though "expensive" is covering a lot of ambiguity here. I'm a strong believer that there's a price for everything, and moreover knowing what that price is is important. Statistical value of a life is, what, $1m to $10m? (Basically, the value the US uses to determine whether a particular policy is worth the number of lives saved?) If so, and also assuming that the resurrected then live normal lives, I'd support govt spending on 100k to 1m on resurrections

NO: There are a few points. One is ethical i.e. resurrecting people is a bit like "black mirror" running people as programs in a box or whatever. The person exists just for the amusement or a kind of lab experiment. Another is the cost - if it is expensive by government standards the money could almost definitely be put towards a better use. Final worry would be biohazards. What old diseases might they bring back with them that we are not ready for. And vice versa, could they survive in our macrobiome.

@Undox > The person exists just for the amusement or a kind of lab experiment. What if I just want people to resurrect for the sake of their living and experiencing life? Not for my own amusement, but the same way I want people generally to keep living.