twanvl comments on A survey of anti-cryonics writing - Less Wrong

75 Post author: ciphergoth 07 February 2010 11:26PM

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Comment author: twanvl 08 February 2010 02:48:58AM 1 point [-]

The difference between cryonics and, for example, global warming denialism is that the former makes a claim like "it is probably a good thing to do X", while the latter makes a claim like "X is/is not true". These are completely different things!

Perhaps it is better to compare it to the anti vaccine movement. They do make a claim of the form "X is good/bad for you". Now the difference becomes about evidence. For cryonics there is little evidence either way: it has never worked, and it has never not-worked. In such a case there is little we can do beyond trying to use reason alone (always a dangerous thing) and waiting for more experiments.

On the other hand, there is a lot of evidence that vaccines work just fine. Denying that evidence is wrong.

Comment author: wedrifid 08 February 2010 03:40:19AM 13 points [-]

For cryonics there is little evidence either way: it has never worked, and it has never not-worked.

Your definition of evidence is too narrow.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 February 2010 10:36:14PM 6 points [-]

Why is it a sin to deny a lot of evidence, but not a little evidence?

Comment author: randallsquared 09 February 2010 04:39:16PM 2 points [-]

Because the less evidence there is, the better the chance that we're mistaken about it, all else equal. But this seems obvious enough that I guess I'm missing your point.

Comment author: ciphergoth 09 February 2010 10:34:56PM 1 point [-]

Sure, the weaker the evidence, the less you'll be misled on average by ignoring it. But there doesn't come a point where ignoring evidence is not misleading at all compared to updating on it. It's never going to be a good idea to start saying to yourself "that's only a little bit of evidence, so I'll just pretend it wasn't there".

Comment author: randallsquared 10 February 2010 02:17:24AM 2 points [-]

If updating were costless, I'd agree.