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

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

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

Article Navigation

Comments (310)

Comments (310)

Sort By: Best

Show:

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

Comment author: alyssavance 08 February 2010 09:39:30PM 8 points [-]

"Your example is pathological. "Painless sterilisation" and "being shot in ten years" are uncommon in the ancestral environment."

Yes, that's why the two are different- because evolution did a lousy job at making an organism's desires match its own desires.

"Like I said, most organisms value having kids over living for a long time. That is because nature is concerned with reproduction - and not longevity. If you still do not "get" that, try sitting in on the class I mentioned."

You do not understand the difference between what evolution wants and what an organism wants. They are not the same thing. See http://lesswrong.com/lw/l0/adaptationexecuters_not_fitnessmaximizers/.

Comment author: timtyler comment score below threshold [+] (13 children)

Comment author: alyssavance 08 February 2010 09:53:17PM 2 points [-]

You are saying, "Evolution would want organisms to value X, therefore organisms really do value X". I pointed out that this is not valid logic, and gave a case where the logic breaks down. What is your reply? From your comment "For "lousy" read "excellent"" it seems to be faith in the ability of evolution, to which my reply is http://lesswrong.com/lw/ks/the_wonder_of_evolution/.

Comment author: timtyler 08 February 2010 10:03:32PM * -2 points [-]

What I originally said was:

"most organisms value having kids over living for a long time."

I said MOST organisms - and referred to a specific example: kids vs lifespan.

Your representation of my position drops the qualifying word "most" and generalises it. That is not a legitimate operation in an argument.

Also, perhaps best to stop using quotation marks when attributing distorted versions of my views to me.

Comment author: mattnewport 08 February 2010 10:10:01PM 2 points [-]

You appeared to be generalizing in this case from 'most organisms' to 'most people' which doesn't seem valid to me.

Comment author: timtyler 08 February 2010 10:36:15PM 1 point [-]

I do also think is is generally true that most people value having kids over living for a long time - though I wasn't making a logical generalisation from "most organisms" to "most people" in the absence of other observations.

Biology has reproduction as an ultimate goal, and longevity as an instrumental one - and most people's actions seem broadly consistent with that to me - though obviously there are a few methusalahites.

Comment author: alyssavance 08 February 2010 10:09:15PM * 2 points [-]

"I said MOST organisms - and referred to a specific example: kids vs lifespan."

You were obviously not excluding humans, since you then said immediately afterward:

"It appears to be fairly easy to trade kids for longer life - adopt a regime of dietary energy restriction. Very few people do that. I figure they mostly value kids over a long life."

If you had said "most organisms would prefer to die in a few years rather than be sterilized, but humans are different because we have more complex value systems" you might at least have a case, but you're very clearly trying to extent your argument from biology to humans (at least most humans) and it very clearly fails.

Comment author: timtyler comment score below threshold [+] (6 children)

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

Article Navigation

Comments (310)

Nearest Meetups

Virtual Study Room

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

Recent Rationality Quotes

Recent Wiki Edits

Top Contributors, 30 Days

Recent Karma Awards

Comments (310)

Top Contributors, 30 Days

You'll need to login or register to do that

(Don't worry, it only takes a few seconds)

Create

Login