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gwern comments on Journal of Consciousness Studies issue on the Singularity - Less Wrong Discussion

14 Post author: lukeprog 02 March 2012 03:56PM

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Comment author: gwern 05 March 2012 04:55:17AM 0 points [-]

Each person has about a 1 in 12000 chance of having an unruptured aneurysm in the brain that could be detected and then treated after having a virtually risk free magnetic resonance angiography. Given the utility you likely assign to your own life it would be rational to undergo such a screening. At least it would make much more sense than signing up for cryonics. Yet you don't do it, do you?

My understanding from long-past reading of elective whole-body MRIs was that they were basically the perfect example of iatrogenics & how knowing about something can harm you / the danger of testing. What makes your example different?

(Note there is no such possible danger from cryonics: you're already 'dead'.)