“Those Who Make History,” published by Raelifin/Aurelia and circulated on LessWrong, makes an intriguing argument for cryopreservation. The article bypasses the argument for resotoration almost entirely, and instead argues that cryonics is socially necessary as a historical archive.
Like time capsules, the Herculaneum scrolls and the Antikythera mechanism (an ancient Greek astonomical proto-computer), the article posits that civilization routinely preserves things it cannot yet fully interpret, trusting future technology to recover their information.
The authors presents high-quality brain preservation as the next expansion of humanity’s archival responsibility—from saving ancient texts, artifects, bones and genomes, to saving individual brains, minds and memories. Whether your brain is restored to consciousness or not, your brain, all by itself, is a priceless artifact for future historians and scientists, and for that reason should be cryopreserved.
The essay was “curated and popular” on LessWrong, making it one of the month’s more surprising and visible pro-preservation arguments.
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