pdf23ds comments on That Magical Click - Less Wrong

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

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (400)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

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

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