As a thought experiment, if you knew for certain that in a hundred years an individual who was long dead was brought back to life, and you had to guess whether the recently deceased was a cryogenic patient from 2018 or a mummified Emperor from antiquity - would you be ambivalent about the choices? If not, then you don't really think they're equally good paths to extra life.
Your thought experiment got me thinking (which I guess is the point lol!):
Imagine you knew for certain that in a couple hundred years individuals could be brought back to life at great expense, AND that it was at least 1/100th as feasible for mummified remains as it was for cryopreservation.
Who do think scientists would put more effort into bringing back? Another 'Joe Blogs' from 2018, or a mummified Emperor from antiquity?
Thought experiments of this kind are dissimilar to say Einstein fantasizing about elevators in that they do not yield insight over and beyond that which is already readily apparent. So rather than a thought experiment you should stick to real experiments and the experimental proof derived from there.
As it sits today the mummy and the frozen patient are both dead as a doornail and nothing in present day science will bring them back.
Keep in mind that if you want to play this game your best bet would be someone that's been freshly dead for about 20 minutes or so rather than the two cases you use to illustrate your point, and as long as that's not close to feasible the bet cryogenic people are making is really no different than believers sending their fortune to the church after death in order to be guaranteed a seat at the table in the afterlife.
Religion masquerading as science is more disgusting to me than mere religion, at least the latter are somewhat transparent about it all being fairy tales and fiction.
> Thought experiments of this kind are dissimilar to say Einstein fantasizing about elevators in that they do not yield insight over and beyond that which is already readily apparent.
They do. That's why you don't want to partake in them, because it's pretty obvious that you would say cryo-preserved brain has more chance of being restored. And of course you would judge cryo-restoration to be more probable than a seat in the afterlife.
But since this seems to be emotional topic for you, you just shut out your reasoning and yell "it all has 0 probability" (it doesn't, as another poster explained).
> They do. That's why you don't want to partake in them [...]
No, this thought experiment does not yield new insights. This conversation went roughly as follows:
jacquesm: "I assume that action A is impossible as far as we know, therefore the probabilities of A1 respectively A2 happening are both 0."
ALittleLight: "Assumimg A were not impossible, would A1 or A2 be more probable?"
(where A="restoring a dead brain", A1="restoring a mummified dead brain", and A2="restoring a cryonically frozen dead brain")
This thought experiment cannot bring any insights, because the assumptions of the two posters are mutually exclusive.
> But since this seems to be emotional topic for you, you just shut out your reasoning and yell "it all has 0 probability" (it doesn't, as another poster explained).
My point is actually that the poster I was responding to does not believe it is impossible to restore a cryogenic patient. If that person did believe it is impossible then they would be ambivalent about guessing which person was restored to life (the cryogenic patient or the mummified Emperor from antiquity).
You're correct that thought experiment I posed cannot offer analytic insight - it doesn't tell us anything about the mechanism for restoring life to frozen people or allow us to update our beliefs as to the likelihood of this being possible. The thought experiment does offer an introspective insight into beliefs that you already hold though - specifically that you believe there is a non-zero possibility of cryogenic enabled resurrection occurring.
Let's work through the thought experiment with my answer (M) and the answer of an imaginary interlocutor (I).
Experiment: In 100 years someone long dead is restored to life. Is this person a mummy or a cryogenics patient?
I: Could be either with equal probability. I believe that both are impossible and therefore I'm ambivalent about the choice.
M: I'd guess the cryogenic patient. While I think the odds of both are low, the odds of the cryogenic patient are better in my estimation. Because I believe that the odds of the cryogenics patient are greater than the odds of the mummy, I logically cannot believe that both are zero.
In other words, if you aren't ambivalent about the choice, you cannot logically hold the belief that both are impossible. If you are ambivalent, then you are free to think that both are impossible. Because I suspect you have an intuitive reluctance to claim ambivalence, I doubt you really think that the odds of cryogenic resurrection are zero.
