You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

gwern comments on Stupid Questions Open Thread Round 2 - Less Wrong Discussion

15 Post author: OpenThreadGuy 20 April 2012 07:38PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (208)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: gwern 24 April 2012 08:21:47PM *  0 points [-]

Of course not. Why the low probability is important is because it defeats the simplistic non-probabilistic usual accounts of cultists as believing in dogmatic shibboleths; if Bart119 were sophisticated enough to say that 10% is still too much, then we can move the discussion to a higher plane of disagreement than simply claiming 'LW seems obsessed with cryonics', hopefully good arguments like '$250k is too much to pay for such a risky shot at future life' or 'organizational mortality implies <1% chance of cryopreservation over centuries and the LW average is shockingly optimistic' etc.

To continue your existential risk analogy, this is like introducing someone to existential risks and saying it's really important stuff, and then them saying 'but all those risks have never happened to us!' This person clearly hasn't grasped the basic cost-benefit claim, so you need to start at the beginning in a way you would not with someone who immediately grasps it and makes a sophisticated counter-claim like 'anthropic arguments show that existential risks have been overestimated'.