= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Christian_Szegedy comments on Open Thread: July 2010, Part 2 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (770)
um... why isn't it? There's a logically possible chance of revival someday, yeah. But with no way to estimate how likely it is, you're blowing money on mere possibility.
We don't normally make bets that depend on the future development of currently unknown technologies. We aren't all investing in cold fusion just because it would be really awesome if it panned out.
Sorry, I know this is a cryonics-friendly site, but somebody's got to say it.
There are a lot of alternatives to fusion energy and since energy production is a widely recognized societal issue, making individual bets on that is not an immediate matter of life and death on a personal level.
I agree with you, though, that a sufficiently high probability estimate on the workability of cryonics is necessary to rationally spend money on it.
However, if you give 1% chance for both fusion and cryonics to work, it could still make sense to bet on the latter but not on the first.
Don't read too much into my fusion analogy; you're right that cryonics is different than fusion.
May I suggest also that we be careful to distinguish cold fusion from fusion in general? Cold fusion is extremely unlikely. Hot fusion reactors whether laser confinement or magnetic confinement already exist, the only issue is getting them to produce more useful energy than you put in. This is very different than cold fusion where the scientific consensus is that there's nothing fusing.
... and different to almost any other unproven technology (for the exact same reason).