Chemical weapons are indiscriminate. Did the children in the video deserve to be gassed for the actions of rebels?

Answering this question is a basic litmus test of humanity.

Yes, they are. But as always, it's the dose that makes the poison. You can die from drinking too much water, breathing an atmosphere that's too rich in oxygen, or consuming too much sucrose. Of course, you can also suffer ill effects short of death with lower doses and can suffer no harm at all with even lower doses.

The real question is whether or not fructose is regularly consumed at levels that cause negative health effects. Evidence says that it is.

I won't say all credibility if you actually read the argument, but I would accuse the GP of hyperbole and of overly dramatic presentation.

If you're religious, it's complicated. Most likely the old you died, the soul went to whatever it earned in life, and the new bodies are just new people with new souls (if cloned/manufactured people even have souls; point of doctrinal conflict), burdened with memories of another person. Just in the same way someone who has taken brain damage hasn't lost their soul (at least as far as my faith states), though they are notably a different person. To be fair, religion hasn't really caught up to brain science despite over a century of knowing that much of what we used to call demonic possession is just damage to the meat; there's a reason a lot of people of faith fear its consequences.

If you're not religious, then "you" are just information, and both of you are "you." At least in so much as you are the same person you've always been despite the fact that each new experience changes you. Consciousness is just a byproduct of your brain structure and the experiences that built it. It's the whole "ship of Theseus" problem. How much can you replace before you're no longer the same person?

Besides, you talk about "that duplicate," but aren't you both duplicates at that point? There is no "real" you anymore, and arguable there never was -- just a lack of copies to illustrate the fact. To ascribe some essential nature beyond that point is to speak of souls, or irrational sentiment at least.

Sometimes, I wish my own beliefs were as simple as a purely materialistic explanation would give, but choosing a truth based on what you wish it to be is the opposite of reason. Which is a funny thing for someone who believes in God to say, I suppose. Well, I suppose I have to be rational in my irrationality. :-)

I have it. A good book, though I did not know it was a series and now must investigate / buy. Thanks for the recommendation.

As an aside, if you like tabletop RPGs, I recommend Eclipse Phase, which borrows heavily from the same concept, with the same use of "sleeving" into new bodies and cortical backups as a major element of the setting. Altered Carbon is one of the books that inspired the setting and its terminology.

If you want "control" without caring about safety, then you're just a danger to yourself and others.

Whatever, it's not like anyone is forcing you to take a driverless car. The people designing them know they have to drive on a road with all the usual inattentive roadhogs around them. Frankly, you should be happy since they'll make everyone around you less of a threat, so you can reap the benefits even if you refuse to aid with your own money.

Of course, it's funny/sad that if this was just about control and self-determination that you felt the need to slander engineers as a huge safety threat compared to drivers and paint them as some huge threat you can never trust. And now we've moved on to deflection phase and pretending that was never what was talked about. Some people are just incapable of admitting that they were wrong.

Every time I see these kinds of "debate" tactics used in politics and even in trivial discussions like this, I feel a little bit of my faith in humanity die.

Bah. Sufficiently advanced technology, and all. Nothing about cryonics is impossible like FTL travel, just difficult -- possibly impractically so -- but I don't think we're at nearly at the level to know for sure about that, yet. The best thing about cryonics is that you can just keep waiting until it is known.

It's a sign of incremental progress. What seems miraculous today will seem mundane tomorrow.

Getting shot in the heart only has about a 70-80% mortality rating currently, and getting shot elsewhere is down to about 5% on average. Compare to what things were like only 150 years ago; we don't even have to saw anyone's limbs off to save people from gangrene anymore. What would surgeons of that time period think of what we can claim to do today? Would they be as incredulous of our powers to fight disease and repair broken bodies as we would be of a proposed future culture's ability to repair (or simply sidestep the issue of) cellular damage?

Building a brain from scratch to match an dead, probably aged, and possibly damage brain sounds nightmarishly difficult. But we've tackled seemingly impossible challenges before. We've put people in space, written messages with single atoms for pixels, created matter not found in nature, and edited living beings to produce drugs for our benefit. I'm not going to write off humanity's ability to pull it off, especially when it will benefit the people who do invent it just as much as the previous ages' dead. After all, the ability to revive the dead will require the ability to rejuvenate or preserve the living first. The corpsicles will just be fringe beneficiaries along for the ride.

I can't remember a single launch title in the past two generations that made me want to buy the system when it came out. Launch titles are always "me too" games, ports, and sequels that can be churned out quickly with a handful of "in house" quirky games as exceptions, especially nowadays since video game budgets have gotten out of control. I haven't seen an awesome launch title since the 16-bit generation (e.g. Super Mario World).

Usually the good games come over the year after.

Medical advancements in our own lifetimes, much less our grandparents' and great-grandparents' have been just short of miraculous already.

Just look at how gunshot fatalities have been decreasing over the past couple of decades despite the fact that the gunshot attack rate has gone up by half. 25 years ago, all we could do for a heart attack victim was to give them something for the pain and some lidocane, and now with advances in clot removers and stints, we've dropped heart attack fatalities by 40%. The stuff we can do with genomics, stems cells, and personalized medicine were once the things of science fiction. HIV is now an expensive nuisance rather than the killer of a whole subculture. We have surgical robots that allow us to go in through little holes rather than than slice a person open like a turkey. We've gone from EEG to fMRI, and we're pushing towards resolving the brain to the neuron level.

We have even more impressive tech coming down the pipeline. The human connectome project, studies into the human microbiome, cancer screening by saliva or smell, cloning and 3d printing of replacement organs, spinal nerve regrowth agents, etc. At least two of those are directly relevant to future restoration: mapping the brain and reconstructing tissues. It may be quite a while before we can construct a new brain to order (if it is ever possible), but I don't want to outright call it impossible based on the myopic lens of what is possible today.

As for the other two problems, the latter is the major sociological issue I mentioned, but I'm sure someone will want to reanimate people at least as a curiosity. And if something goes wrong with the storage center, then you're no worse off than you were without it (i.e, you're still dead, and you couldn't take the money with you anyway).

That's the point of our contention really. After all, 6 million people make mistakes each year in America, and that kills 30,000-40,000 of us each year. I figure there's no way that lawmakers will let driverless cars reach the public until they can do far better than that, but I find that a pretty low bar.

Then we'll see. I'm sure there will be people who want to stick to manual drive forever, just like there are people who insist on stick shifts despite automatics having caught up quite well. Just because you don't want it doesn't mean that no one will. Hell, just see how hard it is to find an automatic compared to a manual these days. (Hint, many cars including top end sports cars don't even have manual as an option.) There will always be Luddites and people who over-estimate their own competence behind the wheel.

We'll see who is right with time. Assuming one of us isn't killed by one of those other drivers on the road, that is.

How so? The basic premise of preserving the brain for later medical advances is sound; it's the implementation details and social impacts that make it difficult.

It's not generally a credible way to start a discussion by telling the reader to assume that everyone agrees with you; the briefest of glances at the comment section reveals many equally highly moderated posts by people who do not. Most of the quickly posted, top level responses were in this category, but in most articles that's where you just find the people who didn't think about it too much before getting in their word. (Not that I'm immune to that one, I'll admit.)

P.S. Yes, I know I shouldn't have said "frozen." Freezing implies ice formation, which means destruction of the cell structure. A large part of cryonics is avoiding that while still preserving the tissues against decay. I was speaking off the cuff and forgot to be more precise. I know someone's going to rag me for it anyway.

The religious answer is generally that there is some essential component of you (i.e. a soul) that persists after death and enjoys some sort of continued existence after death, most commonly with an element or reward or punishment for how you lived in life. It isn't "you" that dies when your flesh does.

The scientific answer is that death is merely a broad word for a set of bodily failures that lead to the breakdown and dissolution of the biological machinery that sustains your consciousness and/or metabolism. As science advances, we roll back those defects and in some cases cure them.

Many wounds that were inevitably fatal are imminently curable now. Gut wounds used to ensure a horrible death due to sepsis. Antibiotics stopped that. Heart wounds used to ensure bleeding to death. Blood transplants and open-heart surgery stopped that. We are now at the point that we have to base death on the cessation and decay of the brain.

Soon, we may have to refine that to a question of information loss. If we can freeze the brain before any irreversible damage is done to it, then we may later be able to restore it or copy the information (i.e "you") off of it to another medium. And given advances in repairing the body, even "irreversible" may be subject to redefinition over time. The nice thing is that once your brain is frozen, we have all the time in the world to figure out how to undo whatever did you in.

And once restored in a new body, what reason is there to expect that you can't be periodically backed up in case of the worst? If you can die and still live, then are you not immortal for all practical purposes?

But this is, of course, all highly unproven technology. Scientific or not, it's still essentially a leap of faith. However, if you don't have a religious reason to believe that you will live on in some other fashion after death, and you've got the money to spare for it then it seems like a much fairer wager than Pascal's.

On what do you base that ridiculous assertion of cheating and no experience as the absolute best we can expect of engineers?

I'm the only one of us who has actually provided statistics, and I like them just fine. If you've got actual statistics that engineering faults are a much bigger threat than driver error, then bring it on. I'm beginning to think you don't actually understand what statistics is, if you think 10 examples of random, events qualify. (And none of them even relate to cars or auto-pilot systems!)

All you've done is present your gut feelings, wild unsupported accusations that engineers can't be trusted and probably cheat, and a handful of historical engineering disasters. A top 10 list of worst disasters says nothing about the frequency of engineering disasters, unlike the CDC mortality data I presented. Ignoring statistics in favor of anecdotes is the sort of failure that leads people to worry more about terrorism than their own dietary decisions, when the latter is a far more serious threat to their life.

Really, you've done nothing but say that you trust yourself as a driver and then trash anyone who might offer a safer alternative (e.g. engineers) with nothing but irrational fear-mongering and attacks, free of supporting facts. If that's all you've got, then your argument is simply invalid.

Trust is relative. You can't trust humans to drive perfectly nor to design & build perfectly.

The question is, which do you trust more? Personally, I trust licensed professionals with 4+ years of education and with their career on the line more than the public whose main qualification is being over 16 and completing a single, less than 1 hour, highly controlled test.

If you trust drivers more than engineers, you're simply a fool. The statistics trump your 10 anecdotes.

Could you cite those statistics for death caused not by human error?

Because, according to the CDC, 35,000+ people died of auto accidents in 2010, compared to only just under 17,000 for all "other" non-transport, non-firearm, non-poisoning, non-fall, non-fire/smoke, non-drowning deaths. And that was a GOOD year for automotive deaths -- one of the lowest in decades. For all the national panic over September 11th, we lose well over 10x that number of people every year thanks to auto accidents. More people die every year from car accidents than from firearms, fire, and poison combined.

That's just the fatalities! Only about 8% of crashes result in fatalities thanks to nearly miraculous advances in modern medicine. There are about 6 million crashes per year and about 2.3 million people sent to the hospital as a result. That's about a $70 billion drain on the economy every year. 44% of people with spinal cord injuries obtained them from a car accident.

Getting in a car is the single most dangerous thing you do every day.

While engineering may be no guarantee of perfect safety, but it's practically a guarantee of lowered risks. Human error was the sole cause of 57% of all accidents and a contributing factor in over 90% Mechanical error alone was only 2.4%. The top three contributing factors to accidents are driver inattention, alcohol, and speed. A driverless system (that obeys traffic laws) eliminates all three.

To make the argument that driverless cars would be less safe than humans is a joke, especially when it's such a low bar to reach.