lessdazed comments on On the unpopularity of cryonics: life sucks, but at least then you die - Less Wrong

72 Post author: gwern 29 July 2011 09:06PM

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

Article Navigation

Comments (465)
Tags: fundraising charity cryonics happiness psychology aging harry_potter

Comments (465)

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

Comment author: lessdazed 31 July 2011 02:17:09AM 15 points [-]

Cryonics sounds strange and not-of-our-tribe and they don't see other people doing it, a feeling expressed in words as "weird". It's perceptually categorized as similar to religions or other scams they've heard about from the newspaper, based purely on surface features and without any reference to, or remediability by, the strength of the underlying logic; that's never checked

If you want people to sign up for cryonics, the method with by far the strongest conversion ratio is to train them from scratch in advanced sanity techniques.

The implication of the latter quote is that the sanity techniques are being applied, and cryonics is being signed up for largely because of its merits.

I think that the former quote captures more of what is going on. A community is being created in which cryonics isn't as weird, removing previous barriers without implicating rationality directly.

I have a testable prediction that can partially parse out at least one factor. One disproportionately powerful influence on human beings in addition to (and mutually reinforcing) group think/behavior is accepting authority. (It is true that what others do is valid evidence for the validity of what they are doing, and is greater evidence the more the other(s) resemble(s) (an) optimal reasoning system(s) and is/are informed,)

I predict that if/as it becomes better known that Eliezer Yudkowsky signed up with the Cryonics Institute and not Alcor, the ratio of people signing up with Alcor and citing LW/HPATMOR to the people signing up with the Cryonics Institute and citing LW/HPATMOR will decrease.

Comment author: nazgulnarsil 31 July 2011 08:18:57AM 5 points [-]

"I think that the former quote captures more of what is going on. A community is being created in which cryonics isn't as weird, removing previous barriers without implicating rationality directly."

Very much so. People don't actually believe in the future.

Comment author: advancedatheist 31 July 2011 04:16:44PM *  7 points [-]

People don't actually believe in the future.

Unfortunately that has an element of truth in it. Cryonics now has a reputation has a paleo-future fad from the 1960's, along with visions of space colonization, the postindustrial leisure society and the like. Many of the articles about Robert Ettinger's recent suspension present that as a subtext in describing his career. For example. the Washington Post obit says:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/from-phyics-teacher-to-founder-of-the-cryonics-movement/2011/07/24/gIQAupuIXI_story.html

Most scientists also scoffed at Mr. Ettinger’s vision, but his manifesto came as the world was adjusting to the atomic bomb, Sputnik’s robotic spacecraft and a host of other sci-fi-seeming technologies. To many at the time, Mr. Ettinger’s optimism seemed appropriate.

With the implication that in our disillusioned era, Ettinger sounds like a crank and a fool.

Comment author: soreff 31 July 2011 05:31:21PM *  4 points [-]

I'm not sure that the intent was quite that harsh. "a crank and a fool" wasn't in the original obit. To view Ettinger's optimism as more in keeping with the zeitgeist of the 1960s than of the 2010s does not seem wholly unreasonable. Just in stark economic terms, U.S. real median household income peaked back in 1999. The median person in the U.S. has lost quite a lot over the last decade: income, security, access to health care, perhaps social status (as Vlaimir_M pointed out). It isn't unreasonable of them to disbelieve in an improving future.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit