Stupid Questions Open Thread Round 4

lukeprog

This is for anyone in the LessWrong community who has made at least some effort to read the sequences and follow along, but is still confused on some point, and is perhaps feeling a bit embarrassed. Here, newbies and not-so-newbies are free to ask very basic but still relevant questions with the understanding that the answers are probably somewhere in the sequences. Similarly, LessWrong tends to presume a rather high threshold for understanding science and technology. Relevant questions in those areas are welcome as well. Anyone who chooses to respond should respectfully guide the questioner to a helpful resource, and questioners should be appropriately grateful. Good faith should be presumed on both sides, unless and until it is shown to be absent. If a questioner is not sure whether a question is relevant, ask it, and also ask if it's relevant.

Ask away!

Previously: round 1, round 2, round 3

From the original thread:

This is for anyone in the LessWrong community who has made at least some effort to read the sequences and follow along, but is still confused on some point, and is perhaps feeling a bit embarrassed. Here, newbies and not-so-newbies are free to ask very basic but still relevant questions with the understanding that the answers are probably somewhere in the sequences. Similarly, LessWrong tends to presume a rather high threshold for understanding science and technology. Relevant questions in those areas are welcome as well. Anyone who chooses to respond should respectfully guide the questioner to a helpful resource, and questioners should be appropriately grateful. Good faith should be presumed on both sides, unless and until it is shown to be absent. If a questioner is not sure whether a question is relevant, ask it, and also ask if it's relevant.

Ask away!

Good. Is this just an intuition, or can you communicate more precise reasons? A list of red flags could be useful (whether they are present or not).

Alcor: Improperly trained personnel, unkempt and ill-equipped facilities.

[...] Saul Kent invited me over to his home in Woodcrest, California to view videotapes of two Alcor cases which troubled him – but he couldn’t quite put his finger on why this was so.[...] Patients were being stabilized at a nearby hospice, transported to Alcor (~20 min away) and then CPS was discontinued, the patients were placed on the OR table and, without any ice on their heads, they were allowed to sit there at temperatures a little below normal body temperature for 1 to 1.5 h

... (read more)

5drethelin14y

Things people are willing to pay lots of money for are a strong signal to unscrupulous people. Examples abound of people doing scams as investment advice, counterfeiting art, or selling knock-off designer jewelry. Cryonics is something where you pay a lot of money for a service many years down the line. Someone could easily take in cryonics payments for years without ever having to perform a cryopreservation, and only have it become known after they've disappeared with the profits. Alternately, the impossibility of checking results means that a cryonics provider can profit off of shoddy service and equipment, and you might never realize. On these lines, any organization that is unwilling to let you inspect their preservation equipment etc. is suspect in my eyes. Cryonics organizations are also susceptible to drift in motives of their owners. Maybe the creators 10 years ago were serious about cryonics, but if the current CEO or board of directors cares more about optimizing cheap equipment and profits, then that group might become a de facto scam.

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Stupid Questions Open Thread Round 4

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Stupid Questions Open Thread Round 4

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