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V_V comments on PSA: Very important policy change at Cryonics Institute - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (98)
A proper test of that claim would require a poll, but since most physicists are not signed up for cryonics, don't make public statements endorsing it, and when specifically interviewed about it say they don't believe cyronics works, it seems fair to infer that most physicists indeed don't believe cyronics works.
What makes you believe that? Cryonics is relatively well known among scientifically educated audiences. it's even the main plot device of a tv show aimed at general audiences (Futurama).
Moreover, physicists are usually atheists, therefore in principle they should have no religous objection to cryonics.
Seriously, where do you think information theory comes from? And do you actually even know what information theory is about? Because people here seem to be using the term as a buzzword without actually using any information theory in their arguments.
Except that cryonics is actually in their area of expertise. And in the area of expertise of cryobiologists (the people who cryopreserve tissues in a way that can be shown to actually work). What do cryobiologists say about cryonics? I bet you already know the answer...
Irrelevant ad hominem.
This physicist has never heard anyone talk about cryonics in meatspace, and assumed that the Futurama thing was fictional until reading Less Wrong. (Also, Fry was alive when he got frozen.)
For some not-very-large value of “usually”. Where I am, physicists aren't that less likely to be religious than random people the same age and geographic provenance (but it's probably different elsewhere).
How old were you when you started reading Less Wrong?
That would be surprising. Do you have any reference?
24. Why?
No statistics about that, I'm afraid. You'd have to accept my anecdata. I have met at least a dozen Catholic physicists, many of whom engaged in various kinds of Catholic associations; that's somewhere around half the physicists I know well enough to know their religious stance. (Also, [REDACTED].)
That's less surprising if you know that the person most people where I'm from think of first when they hear "physicist" is this guy.
Because the younger you started reading Less Wrong the higher the probability that you were first exposed to its common topics by it.
You seem to be suggesting that the knowledge physicists have about cryonics is based on their generalist knowledge as educated layment. You further observe that much of this knowledge comes from fictional evidence in popular culture. I heartily agree.
Physics and mathematics. My comment doesn't suggest otherwise. This does not mean that all physicists are particularly well versed in it when it is not their area of expertise.
This is your core confusion. Reasoning from this premise would indeed lead you to the conclusion you reach. Given that I reject this premise it follows that I can gain little information from all the chains of reasoning that you base upon it. Neuroscientists are not experts in extracting one to one mappings from preserved brain tissue to individual identities. This is why the expected behaviour of neuroscientsists is to do what experts nearly always do when thinking about things outside their field---pattern match to the nearest thing within their field and overestimate the relevance of their knowledge.
False. You have the common misunderstanding of what that logical fallacy refers to. If my argument was "this is a confirmed troll therefore its words are false" it would be an ad hominem fallacy (mind you, a slightly weakend variant would hold even then, to whatever extent personal testimony of the troll was considered evidence). This was not argument in that quote. It is highly relevant to why I believe it was necessary to excuse myself for the act of replying to disruption attempts.
The existence of cryonics is common knowledge. You just need an internet connection to look up the details.
Still I expect them to be more proficient in it than random people who use the term as a buzzword over the interwebs.
While the people who would keep you on dry ice for two weeks obviously are.
You are making classical crackpot excuses to handwave away expert knowledge. I don't think there is any productive way for us to continue this discussion.
Um... no? I seem to recall questioning that choice elsewhere on this thread and giving partial support to another (MichaelAnisimov) who claimed in colourful terms that it is a critical failure.
No I'm not. I'm disagreeing with you about which people are experts. You are not an expert at choosing appropriate experts to defer to. You are appealing to absurdly irrelevant authority. "Expert" status and prestige is not transferable across domains. Or at least it shouldn't be for those who are interested in attaining accurate beliefs.
Obviously not. Our disagreement about how how rational thinking works is rather fundamental, with all that entails.