I posted this article, not because I think it was well done, but rather because it exemplifies how even academics within closely related fields are maddeningly

I posted this article, not because I think it was well done, but rather because it exemplifies how even academics within closely related fields are maddeningly ignorant about cryonics. For example, as far as I can tell, the author conflates the concepts of uploading, cryopreservation, and reanimation. The fact that we don't currently have the ability to scan preserved brains with enough precision to capture all of the relevant data does not in any way mean that the data is lost during crypreservation. And even if making an external copy of the data stored within the cryopreserved brain is infeasible, it does not follow that reanimation of the brain itself will be impossible. One of the frustrating aspects of being a cryonics advocate is that even very smart people do not seem to easily grok the idea that cryonics is intended as a bridge to future technology, so the shortcomings in the modern state of the art are of little relevance. And no serious cryonicists think that success is guaranteed. Cryonics is basically an experiment, and all we know is that everyone in the control group is definitely not coming back. So I'd rather take my chances with the experimental group. The discussion of "copies" and identities is particularly unpersuasive. First, reanimation may not involve a copy in any meaningful sense, if the original biological substrate is simply repaired. Second, intuitions about consciousness and identity are notoriously fallible. In a sense, this is the ultimate manifestation of the product of induction: Our sense of "self" is an illusion reified by our daily experience of a singular self. But when technology allows us to be duplicated, perhaps the idea of branching versions of ourselves will feel more intuitive. The pattern theory of mind is really the only defensible position once you realize that over the course of your life, there is almost complete turnover in terms of the specific atoms that compose you. And on a deeper level, we know that particles are fungible: an electron is an electron is an electron. Unless they are concealing little miniature souls inside, the only reasonable conclusion is that consciousness and identity are properties that emerge from the relative positions of the interchangeable subatomic components.