AngryParsley comments on That Magical Click - Less Wrong

58 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 January 2010 04:35PM

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Comment author: erniebornheimer 20 January 2010 09:44:36PM 12 points [-]

At the risk of revealing my stupidity...

In my experience, people who don't compartmentalize tend to be cranks.

Because the world appears to contradict itself, most people act as if it does. Evolution has created many, many algorithms and hacks to help us navigate the physical and social worlds, to survive, and to reproduce. Even if we know the world doesn't really contradict itself, most of us don't have good enough meta-judgement about how to resolve the apparent inconsistencies (and don't care).

Most people who try to make all their beliefs fit with all their other beliefs, end up forcing some of the puzzle pieces into wrong-shaped holes. Their favorite part of their mental map of the world is locally consistent, but the farther-out parts are now WAY off, thus the crank-ism.

And that's just the physical world. When we get to human values, some of them REALLY ARE in conflict with others, so not only is it impossible to try to force them all to agree, but we shouldn't try (too hard). Value systems are not axiomatic. Violence to important parts of our value system can have repercussions even worse than violence to parts of our world view.

FWIW, I'm not interested in cryonics. I think it's not possible, but even if it were, I think I would not bother. Introspecting now, I'm not sure I can explain why. But it seems that natural death seems like a good point to say "enough is enough." In other words, letting what's been given be enough. And I am guessing that something similar will keep most of us uninterested in cryonics forever.

Now that I think of it, I see interest in cryonics as a kind of crankish pastime. It takes the mostly correct idea "life is good, death is bad" to such an extreme that it does violence to other valuable parts of our humanity (sorry, but I can't be more specific).

To try to head off some objections:

  • I would certainly never dream of curtailing anyone else's freedom to be cryo-preserved, and I recognize I might change my mind (I just don't think it's likely, nor worth much thought).
  • Yes, I recognize how wonderful medical science is, but I see a qualitative difference between living longer and living forever.
  • No, I don't think I will change my mind about this as my own death approaches (but I'll probably find out). Nor do I think I would change my mind if/when the death of a loved one becomes a reality.

I offer this comment, not in an attempt to change anyone's mind, but to go a little way to answer the question "Why are some people not interested in cryonics?"

Thanks!

Comment author: AngryParsley 20 January 2010 10:19:10PM *  10 points [-]

You seem to have two objections to cryonics:

  1. Cryonics won't work.

  2. Life extension is bad.

#1 is better addressed by the giant amount of information already written on the subject.

For #2 I'd like to quote a bit of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom:

Everyone who had serious philosophical conundra on that subject just, you know, died, a generation before. The Bitchun Society didn't need to convert its detractors, just outlive them.

Even if you don't think life extension technologies are a good thing, it's only a matter of time before almost everyone thinks they are. Whatever part of "humanity" you value more than life will be gone forever.

ETA: Actually, there is an out: if you build FAI or some sort of world government and it enforces 20th century life spans on people. I can't say natural life spans because our lives were much shorter before modern sanitation and medicine.

Comment author: Zack_M_Davis 21 January 2010 11:54:38PM 7 points [-]

Even if you don't think life extension technologies are a good thing, it's only a matter of time before almost everyone thinks they are. Whatever part of "humanity" you value more than life will be gone forever.

Doesn't this argument imply that we should self-modify to become monomaniacal fitness-maximizers, devoting every quantum of effort towards the goal of tiling the universe with copies of ourselves? Hey, if you don't, someone else will! Natural selection marches on; it's only a matter of time.

Comment author: pdf23ds 22 January 2010 08:52:03AM *  5 points [-]

I find the likelihood of someone eventually doing this successfully to be very scary. And more generally, the likelihood of natural selection continuing post-AGI, leading to more Hansonian/Malthusian futures.

Comment author: pdf23ds 21 January 2010 09:00:25AM 7 points [-]

For #2, there's also Nick Bostrom's Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant.