Within the immortalist community, cryonics is the most pessimistic possible position. Consider the following superoptimistic alternative scenarios:
- Uploading will be possible before I die.
- Aging will be cured before I die.
- They will be able to reanimate a whole mouse before I die, then I'll sign up.
- I could get frozen in a freezer when I die, and they will eventually figure out how to reanimate me.
- I could pickle my brain when I die, and they will eventually figure out how to reanimate me.
- Friendly AI will cure aging and/or let me be uploaded before I die.
Cryonics -- perfusion and vitrification at LN2 temperatures under the best conditions possible -- is by far less optimistic than any of these. Of all the possible scenarios where you end up immortal, cryonics is the least optimistic. Cryonics can work even if there is no singularity or reversal tech for thousands of years into the future. It can work under the conditions of the slowest technological growth imaginable. All it assumes is that the organization (or its descendants) can survive long enough, technology doesn't go backwards (on average), and that cryopreservation of a technically sufficient nature can predate reanimation tech.
It doesn't even require the assumption that today's best possible vitrifications are good enough. See, it's entirely plausible that it's 100 years from now when they start being good enough, and 500 years later when they figure out how to reverse them. Perhaps today's population is doomed because of this. We don't know. But the fact that we don't know what exact point is good enough is sufficient to make this a worthwhile endeavor at as early of a point as possible. It doesn't require optimism -- it simply requires deliberate, rational action. The fact is that we are late for the party. In retrospect, we should have started preserving brains hundreds of years ago. Benjamin Franklin should have gone ahead and had himself immersed in alcohol.
There's a difference between having a fear and being immobilized by it. If you have a fear that cryonics won't work -- good for you! That's a perfectly rational fear. But if that fear immobilizes you and discourages you from taking action, you've lost the game. Worse than lost, you never played.
This is something of a response to Charles Platt's recent article on Cryoptimism: Part 1 Part 2
That's another factor. But I just couldn't get a feel for the numbers in the breast cancer example. This is noting that I found Bruce Schneier's analogous numbers on why security theatre is actively damaging [couldn't find the link, sorry] quite comprehensible.
(I certainly used to know maths. Did the Olympiad at high school. Always hated learning maths despite being able to, though, finally beaching about halfway through second-year engineering maths twenty years ago. I recently realised I've almost completely forgotten calculus. Obviously spent too long on word-oriented artistic pursuits. I suppose it's back to the music industry for me.)
As someone who is definitely smart but has adopted a so far highly productive life strategy of associating with people who make me feel stupid by comparison, I am happy to be a test stupid person for these purposes.
More a reference to how to cure a raging memetic cold. Cults count (I am/was an expert on Scientology ), Ayn Rand sure counts (this being the example that suggests a memetic cold is not curable from the outside and you have to let the disease run its course). What struck me was that quite innocuous works that I don't get a cold from have clearly caused one in others.
"Memetic cold": an inadequate piece of jargon I made up to describe the phenomenon of someone who gets a big idea that eats their life. As opposed to the situation where someone has a clear idea but is struggling to put it into words, I'm not even entirely sure I'm talking about an actual phenomenon. Hence the vagueness.
Possible alternate term: "sucker shoot" (Florence Littauer, who has much useful material but many of whose works should carry a "memetic hazard" warning sign). It's full of apparent life and vitality, but sucks the energy out of the entire rest of your life. When you get an exciting new idea and you wake up a year later and you've been evicted and your boyfriend/girlfriend moved out and your friends look at you like you're crazy because that's the external appearance. Or you don't wake up and you stay a crank. The catch then is when the idea is valid and it was all worth it. But that's a compelling trope because it's not the usual case.
I just looked over my notes and didn't entirely understand them, which means I need to get to work if this is ever to make coherent sense and not just remain a couple of tantalising comments and an unreleased Google doc.
Another thing re. the Bayesian explanation. It's probably quite a bad place to start reading LW content. It seems to really aim to get the reader to be able to do the math instead of just presenting the general idea. I find the newer sequence stuff a lot more approachable. Haven't ever bothered to go through the Bayes article myself.
The memetic cold thing is interesting, in particular, like you said, because there isn't a foolproof way of telling if the all-consuming weird preoccupation is fundamentally flawed, on the right track but most likely going to f... (read more)