gwern comments on "Ray Kurzweil and Uploading: Just Say No!", Nick Agar - Less Wrong

4 Post author: gwern 02 December 2011 09:42PM

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Comment author: gwern 04 December 2011 09:21:37AM 0 points [-]

Do you think F(P1) is more than epsilon different from F(P2)? Than F(P3)? Do you think F(P2) is more than epsilon different from F(P3)?

Erm, yes, to all three. The two transitions all involve things which are initially plausible and have not been driven down to epsilon (which is a very small quantity) by subsequent research.

For example, we still don't have great evidence that brain activity isn't dynamicly dependent on electrical activity (among others!) which is destroyed by death/cryonics. All we have are a few scatter-shot examples about hypothermia and stuff, which is a level of proof I would barely deign to look at for supplements, much less claim that it's such great evidence that it drives down the probability of error to epsilon!

Comment author: TheOtherDave 04 December 2011 03:01:16PM 0 points [-]

OK, thanks for clarifying.