NancyLebovitz 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

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Comment author: mikedarwin 01 August 2011 02:33:36AM *  18 points [-]

Taken at face value, the comments above are those of a sociopath. This is so not because this individual is willing to sacrifice others in exchange for improved odds of his own survival (all of us do that every day, just by living as well as we do in the Developed World), but because he revels in it. It is even more ominous that he sees such choices as being inevitable, presumably enduring, and worst of all, desirable or just. Just as worrisome is the lack of response to this pathology on this forum, so far.

The death and destruction of other human beings is a great evil and a profound injustice. It is also extremely costly to those who survive, because in the deaths of others we lose irreplaceable experience, the opportunity to learn and grow ourselves, and not infrequently, invaluable wisdom. Even the deaths of our enemies diminishes us, if for no other reason than that they will not live long enough to see that they were wrong, and we were right.

Such a mind that wrote the words above is of a cruel and dangerous kind, because it either fails, or is incapable of grasping the value that interaction and cooperation with others offers. It is a mind that is willing to kill children or adults it doesn't know, and is unlikely to know in a short and finite lifetime, because it does not understand that much, if not almost all of the growth and pleasure we have in life is a product of interacting with people other than ourselves, most of whom, if we are still young, we have not yet met. Such a mind is a small and fearful thing, because it cannot envision that 10, 20, 30, or 500 years hence, it may be the wisdom, the comfort, the ideas, or the very touch of a Romanian orphan or of a starving sub-Saharan African “child” from whom we derive great value, and perhaps even our own survival. One of the easiest and most effective ways to drive a man mad, and to completely break his will, is to isolate him from all contact with others. Not from contact with high intellects, saintly minds, or oracles of wisdom, but from simple human contact. Even the sociopath finds that absolutely intolerable, albeit for very different reasons than the sane man.

Cryonics has a blighted history of not just attracting a disproportionate number of sociopaths (psychopaths), but of tolerating their presence and even of providing them with succor. This has arguably has been as costly to cryonics in terms of its internal health, and thus its growth and acceptance, as any external forces which have been put forward as thwarting it. Robert Nelson was the first high profile sociopath of this kind in cryonics, and his legacy was highly visible: Chatsworth and the loss of all of the Cryonics Society of California's patients. Regrettably, there have been many others since.

It is a beauty of the Internet that it allows to be seen what even the most sophisticated psychological testing can often not reveal: the face of the florid sociopath. Or perhaps, in this case I should say, the name of same, because putting a face to that name is another matter altogether.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 02 August 2011 05:23:33AM 8 points [-]

Cryonics has a blighted history of not just attracting a disproportionate number of sociopaths (psychopaths), but of tolerating their presence and even of providing them with succor

Details?

I've seen a couple of cases of people disliking cryonics because they see its proponents as lacking sufficient gusto for life, but no cases of disliking or opposing cryonics because there are too many sociopaths associated with it.

Comment author: handoflixue 23 August 2011 08:17:22PM 0 points [-]

For what it's worth, LessWrong has done a pretty good job of firming up exactly that perspective for me.

In fairness, I don't mind psychopathic behavior, and I'm still signing up. I've definitely developed a much lower opinion of cryonics advocacy since being here, though.

Comment author: katydee 24 August 2011 06:56:15AM 4 points [-]

I'm curious as to what brought you to these conclusions. Can you explain further?

Comment author: handoflixue 25 August 2011 08:34:10AM 0 points [-]

Taken at face value, the comments above are those of a sociopath.

Well, that line captures a lot of it.

Eliezer's response was to link me to an XKCD comic.

So, thus far, the quality of discourse here has been sociopathic fictional characters and webcomics...

Comment author: katydee 25 August 2011 09:08:27AM 3 points [-]

The post by "Voldemort" was an obvious joke/fakepost, though, and Eliezer's comment was on the mark even if he did use a webcomic to illustrate his point...

Comment author: handoflixue 25 August 2011 05:57:41PM 0 points [-]

What makes you so certain that the Voldemort post was a joke, and not simply a sociopath posting on an alternate account to avoid the social consequences of holding such a stance? Certainly, there seem to be quite a few other people here who would pick immortality over saving 28 other lives, if you put the two choices "side by side".

Comment author: steven0461 25 August 2011 07:23:39PM 10 points [-]

Lots of people choose luxury over saving 28 lives. Doing so may be wrong, but if it's that common, it can't be strongly indicative of sociopathy.

Comment author: handoflixue 25 August 2011 07:56:59PM 3 points [-]

Lots of people let akrasia, compartmentalization, etc. keep themselves from realizing that it's actually a choice. When they're put side by side and the answer is a casual "of course I'd choose my own life", I tend to consider that stronger evidence of sociopathic behavior.

That said, yes, I consider most people to exhibit some degree of sociopathic behavior. LessWrong just demonstrates more :)

Comment author: soreff 25 August 2011 09:15:28PM 6 points [-]

I'm inclined to agree with steven0461,

Lots of people choose luxury over saving 28 lives.

Actually, this is true even for rather low values of "luxury". I, like tens of millions of other people in the developed world, am a homeowner. Yes, the cost of my (rather modest) home would have saved ~100 lives if I had instead donated it to a maximally effective charity. That isn't what I did. That isn't what the other tens of millions of homeowners did. If you want to count that as sociopathic behavior, fine. But that casts a rather wide net for what would count in that category. Is "sociopathic behavior" even a useful category if it is extended so widely? Is there much behavior left that falls outside it?

Comment author: katydee 25 August 2011 08:50:21PM *  2 points [-]

The Voldemort account is overtly a role-playing character, which are not that uncommon here (see also: Quirinus_Quirrell, GLaDOS, and Clippy).

Comment author: handoflixue 25 August 2011 10:26:50PM 2 points [-]

It still says something about the author of that character, that they (a) went through the effort of writing that reply and (b) there is not a single reply in the empathic/non-sociopathic direction demonstrating an equal amount of effort. I don't really see the relevance of it being a role-playing character at all - it's hardly incompatible that it's both a RP character and a sociopath who has chosen a sane cover for posting their socially unacceptable views (after all, Voldemort has all of 28 karma; he clearly gets down voted a decent amount)

The simple Bayesian evidence is that someone cared enough to write a sociopathic reply that was fairly in depth, and the only non-sociopathic replies were a link to a webcomic and personal preferences of "well, yeah, I'd pick immortality over 28 lives..."

Also, lumping Clippy in with clearly fictional characters is just rude ;)

Comment author: shokwave 26 August 2011 12:06:52AM 1 point [-]

a sociopath posting on an alternate account to avoid the social consequences of holding such a stance?

There are easier ways to avoid the social consequences of holding said stance; one of them is to denounce that stance. Another is to fail to comment on the matter. Logging in to an alternate account in order to say something they don't want to be seen saying has a small prior to begin with.

Comment author: handoflixue 26 August 2011 12:43:24AM 0 points [-]

p(Author is a sociopath | Author chose to RP as Voldemort specifically) > p(Author is a sociopath | Author went with a different pseudonym) is my basic assertion here. People who roleplay sociopaths are more likely to be sociopaths - roleplaying Voldemort is a safe outlet for that tendency.

That the author is writing Voldemort also seems like evidence for the hypothesis that the author agrees with Voldemort (I'd assume possibly not to that extreme, but who knows). Much the same as everyone assumes that the author behind shokwave agrees with shokwave's writing...

Comment author: nshepperd 26 August 2011 09:12:39AM 4 points [-]

Sure, roleplaying as Voldemort may be evidence for sociopathy, but if I had to estimate how much evidence, I'd call it epsilon. Roleplaying, and humour, is fun. And fun is tempting, especially on the internet.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 24 August 2011 12:02:47AM 1 point [-]

Can you expand on that claim? I find this claim to be very shocking.

Comment author: handoflixue 25 August 2011 08:34:42AM 0 points [-]

http://lesswrong.com/lw/6vq/on_the_unpopularity_of_cryonics_life_sucks_but_at/4ozz I'll go ahead and keep this to one thread for my own sanity :)