James_Miller comments on Why I haven't signed up for cryonics - Less Wrong

29 Post author: Swimmer963 12 January 2014 05:16AM

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Comment author: James_Miller 12 January 2014 11:42:48PM 16 points [-]

James D. Miller does this in his Singularity Rising book. I leave articulating the logical problem with this claim as an exercise to the reader)

I would be grateful if you would tell me what the logical problem is.

Comment author: Icehawk78 14 January 2014 06:31:48PM 2 points [-]

Presumably, the implication is that these predictions are not based on facts, but had their bottom line written first, and then everything else added later.

[I make no endorsement in support or rejection of this being a valid conclusion, having given it very little personal thought, but this being the issue that advancedatheist was implying seems fairly obvious to me.]

Comment author: James_Miller 14 January 2014 06:46:15PM 2 points [-]

Thanks, if this is true I request advancedatheist explain why he thinks I did this.

Comment author: Icehawk78 16 January 2014 02:56:02PM 0 points [-]

I can't say on behalf of advancedatheist, but others who I've heard make similar statements generally seem to base them on a manner of factor analysis; namely, assuming that you're evaluating a statement by a self-proclaimed transhumanist predicting the future development of some technology that currently does not exist, the factor which best predicts what date that technology will be predicted as is the current age of the predictor.

As I've not read much transhumanist writing, I have no real way to evaluate whether this is an accurate analysis, or simply cherry picking examples of the most egregious/popularly published examples (I frequently see Kurzweil and... mostly just Kurzeil, really, popping up when I've heard this argument before).

[As an aside, I just now, after finishing this comment, made the connection that you're the author that he cited as the example, rather than just a random commenter, so I'd assume you're much more familiar with the topic at hand than me.]

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