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bgrah449 comments on That Magical Click - Less Wrong
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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 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!
-Longer life has never been given; it has always been taken. There is no giver.
-"Enough is enough" is sour grapes - "I probably don't have access to living forever, so it's easier to change my values to be happy with that than to want yet not attain it." But if it were a guarantee, and everyone else was doing it (as they would if it were a guarantee), then this position would be the equivalent to advocating suicide at some ridiculously young age in the current era.
I assert that the more extremely the idea "life is good, death is bad" is held, the more benefit other valuable parts of our humanity are rendered. I can't be more specific.
I'm not quite convinced of the merits of investing in cryonics at this point, though "enough is enough" does not strike me as a particularly salient argument either.
In terms of weighing the utility to me based on some nebulous personal function: Cryonics has an opportunity cost in terms of direct expenses and additionally in terms of my social interactions with other people. Both of these seem to be nominal, though the perhaps $300 or so dollars a year could add quite a bit of utility to my current life as I live on about $7K per year. Though I very well may die today, not having spent any of that potential money.
On the other side being revived in the distant future could be quite high in terms of personal utility. Though, I have no reason at all to believe the situation will be agreeable; in other words, permanent death very well could be for the best. I would imagine reviving a person from vitrification would be a costly venture even barring future miracle technology. Revival is not currently possible and there is no reason to think the current processes are being done in any sort of optimal way. At the very least, the cost of creating the tech to revive people will be expensive. Future tech or not, I see it likely that revival will come at some cost with perhaps no choice given to me in the matter. I see this as a likely possibility (at least more likely than a benevolent AI utopia) as science has never fundamentally made people better (more rational?)- so far at least; it certainly ticks forward and may improve the lives of some people, but they are all still fundamentally motivated by the same vestigial desires and all have the same deficiencies as before. Given our nature, I see the most likely outcome, past the novelty of the first couple of successful attempts, being some quid pro quo.
Succinctly, my projection of the most likely state of the world in which I would be revived is the same as today though with more advanced technology. Very often the ones to pioneer new technology aren't scrupulous. I very well may choose a non existence to one of abject suffering or one where my mind may be used to hurt others, etc. This would be an optimization for the worst case scenario.