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James_Miller comments on We really need a "cryonics sales pitch" article. - Less Wrong Discussion

10 Post author: CronoDAS 03 August 2015 10:42PM

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Comment author: James_Miller 05 August 2015 02:40:17AM 2 points [-]

Authority. Look at who has signed up for cryonics. Peter Thiel, Robin Hanson, Ray Kurzweil, and Aubrey de Grey are all Alcor members.

Comment author: advancedatheist 05 August 2015 03:07:17AM *  4 points [-]

Eh, smart people can rationalize doing dumb things - Skepticism 101.

I would point to cryobiologist Greg Fahy, Ph.D., as a more relevant authority:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Fahy

Comment author: [deleted] 06 August 2015 04:17:47AM 2 points [-]

Those are all also examples of famous contrarians, as well as famous futurists... anyone who knows who those people are will also know that.

Comment author: Val 05 August 2015 04:47:36AM *  2 points [-]

If I wanted to play the devil's advocate, i would point out two issues with this:

  1. Most of the people in your example seem to be very rich. For such a very rich person the costs might be as insignificant as the cost of buying a beer might be for me. This means, if it turned out to be a scam, they wouldn't lose almost anything. I, on the other hand, might lose a significant portion of my net worth, which might have had a better use in the hands of my family than in the hands of a fraudster.

  2. There are famous celebrities who join a certain very infamous cult disguising itself as a religion, whose name I don't mention because that might be enough for them to sue me. Of course, most of those celebrities are no scientists or engineers, so this point can be weak against your list of examples.

Comment author: advancedatheist 05 August 2015 02:21:45PM 1 point [-]

If everyone outside of cryonics thinks of it as a rich man's indulgence, then why haven't adventuresses showed up? In the real world, cryonics acts like "female Kryptonite."