Open Thread, April 1-15, 2012

OpenThreadGuy

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

I was quite surprised by the strong and negative reaction to my comment about cryonics being afterlife for atheists. Even EY jumped into the fray. It must have hit a raw point, or something. As jkaufman noted, the similarities are uncanny. So, it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, but is heatedly advocated here and elsewhere to be a raven. The only reasonable argument (I don't consider marketing considerations reasonable) is by orthonormal, who suggested that this is a surface similarity and paying attention to it amounts to a cargo cult.

Hence my question: how do you tell if a certain procedure is a cargo cult or something worthwhile, if there is no easy experimental test? If you find such a procedure, please apply it to something other than cryonics, so that it does not appear to be an ad hoc solution.

I was quite surprised by the strong and negative reaction to my comment about cryonics being afterlife for atheists.

You made a 'suggestion for a catchy slogan' for cryonics which actually constitutes an emotional argument against cryonics (that is, it affiliates it with something that is already rejected so implies that it too should be rejected). That makes it a terrible suggestion for a catchy slogan for cryonics advocates to adopt.

If you want to make a point about how cryonics has a feature that is similar to a feature in some religions then make th... (read more)

1John_Maxwell14y

Maybe rationalists don't like being casually labeled as something they are trying very hard not to be (religious)?

10AlanCrowe14y

Why do you ask for an easy experimental test? If the experiment is hard, such that you rely on third party reports, but the result is not in doubt, then the experiment serves just as well. Granting that experiments may be hard, if we are sure that they are reported honestly, here are two that are relevant to cryonics. First is the well know point of food hygiene, that one should not refreeze frozen meat. Some food poison bacteria are not killed by freezing, and grow every time the meat is warm enough. If I were a salmonella bacterium I would sign up for cryonics, confident that I was using a proven technology. Second is the use of hypothermia in heart surgery. The obvious deadness of the patients is very striking for some-one my age (51), brought up in a world where death was defined by the stopping of the heart. I imagine the equivalent for the Christian vision of resurrection to eternal life in heaven is that at most funerals the priest says the magic words and the corpse revives for 5 minutes to say final goodbyes and reassure the mourners that they will meet up again on judgment day. Since it is only for five minutes, not eternity, and since it is on earth, not in heaven, one may find it unconvincing, just as one may find the use of hypothermia in heart surgery unconvincing. It is not exactly the thing promised. Nevertheless, such partial demonstrations are important. There would be few Jews left if priests could work the 5 minutes thing and rabbis couldn't. There are various ways of stopping a corpse from rotting. The Egyptians had techniques of mummification. Burning and retention of the ashes prevents icky decay. Pasteurization, that is mild heating, to kill bacteria does something useful. Why are cryonicists wedded to cold? As we have seen, there are experimental reasons for the choice. This seems very different from the main religious practice of being Protestant, Catholic, Sunni, or Shia, and following the religion one was born to without expecting one