= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
brilee comments on Mentioning cryonics to a dying person - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (72)
Am I the only one who finds this about as distasteful as the rabbi who goes around a hospital ward trying to solicit deathbed conversions?
If a cryonics decision is to be made, it should be made when the person is not under duress.
Jews don't solicit conversions. Conversion is possible, but it requires an extensive course of study which isn't feasible on a deathbed.
From the above, I am not sure that this is one of the available options.
How to change that: http://www.FoolQuest.com/kriosgrad.htm
If the rabbis go around turning it from a deathbed into just a bed, I'm all for it.
Presumably the rabbis think their job is at the very least equally important.
I'm aware of that. To get my approval, they'll have to do be accomplishing something I approve of.
There's two things you could potentially approve of. The rabbis have a set of beliefs, and an algorithm they use to decide how to act on these beliefs.
I am pretty sure you disapprove of the beliefs. But what about the rabbi algorithm is different from the cryonics advocate algorithm? As far as I can tell, they are identical, and I'm sure you're not suggesting they switch to the "Do what Luke_A_Somers approves of, rather than what I think is right" algorithm.
Furthermore, I think the objection that the cryonics advocate is being distasteful is an objection to the algorithm, not to the beliefs.
I can approve of actions without getting into questions about motivations. Especially in murky waters like religion.
It would be extremely unlikely for a Rabbi to do that for specific theological reasons that I'm not going to get into at the moment. (Essentially even most Orthodox Jews are functionally close to universalists in regards to the afterlife and don't think that non-Jews need to convert to go to heaven.)
There's also a clear distinction when one is talking to a relative like the OP mentions as opposed to being a stranger talking to essentially random people. As a society we consider that to be much less of a problem.
But besides all that, I don't really have a problem with the Rabbi or Priest who does that. If they sincerely think that the stakes are just that high then they should do whatever they can to get people to convert. Someone who stands by while someone dies and they maybe had an opportunity to do something that they think will save them seems morally reprehensible. The problem with the person trying to get deathbed conversions is more because a) pragmatically it will likely have more of a negative reaction to surrounding individuals and thus hurt one's cause more than it helps b) the religions are simply wrong, and thus taking up the last few precious minutes someone has in this world.
As others have said, that option is no longer available. I don't find it as bad as you do though, for three reasons:
She's a relative, not a stranger, so this kind of discussion would have happened anyway if I'd cleared my cryonics cache before six months ago
She has reasons to accept it that she accepts; the problem with a lot of religious conversions is that the only reason I should believe in the religion is because it says to and anecdotal evidence; for cryonics, the reason to believe in it is the standardly-accepted science and evident technological progress, both things most people at least claim to accept, but without any anecdotal evidence that it works.
I am disgusted by people who think that something is that important but don't do anything about it. My standard example is vegetarians who believe that animals are conscious sentient beings whose death is as tragic as a human's, but don't attempt to persuade others not to eat meat. Of course, if they did persuade others, everybody else would be annoyed, but if they're committing murder and you can get them to stop, you should. Similarly, if somebody is dying and you can potentially stop them, you should.
Edit: formatting
Yes, it would have been better for DanielH to tell his grandmother about cryonics before she was ill than it would be now. But that option is no longer available, so what matters now is whether there's some way of telling her now that's better than not telling her at all.