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I'm impressed at how positively the author portrayed cryonicists. The parts which described the mishaps which occurred during/before the freezing process were especially moving.
The article discusses the Brain Preservation Foundation. The BPF has responded here:
A COURAGEOUS STORY OF BRAIN PRESERVATION, “DYING YOUNG” BY AMY HARMON, THE NEW YORK TIMES.
In response to
Open thread, Sep. 14 - Sep. 20, 2015
Probably the biggest cryonics story of the year. In the print edition of The New York Times, it appeared on the front page, above the fold.
A Dying Young Woman's Hope in Cryonics and a Future, by Amy Harmon
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/us/cancer-immortality-cryogenics.html
You can also watch a short documentary about Miss Suozzi here:
http://www.nytimes.com/video/science/100000003897597/kim-suozzis-last-wishes.html
In response to
Open thread 7th september - 13th september
A friend of mine attributes the refugee crisis in the Levantine countries to a severe drought caused by "climate change."
Does "climate change" mysteriously stop at Israel's borders? I haven't heard of any political breakdown or mass emigration from that country.
In response to
Open thread 7th september - 13th september
(Reposted from the previous OT)
One of my professors claimed that postmodernism, and particularly its concept of "no objective truth", is responsible for much of the recent liberalism of society, through the idea of "live and let live". (Specific examples given were attitudes towards legalization of gay marriage and drugs.) I pointed out that libertarianism and liberalism predated postmodernism historically, and they said that that's true, but you can still trace the popularity back to postmodernism.
Is this historically accurate? If not, is there something I can point to that would convince them? It seems to me that the shift in society is much more a shift on the object level questions than on the meta level "should we ban things we disagree with", but I don't know very much recent history of philosophy (it isn't strictly their field either, so I'm justified in not taking them at face value).
The cemeteries of the world show where the hard boundary of objective truth lies.
In response to
Stupid Questions September 2015
How does it change your view of "the ascent of man" when you realize that only some human populations in the northern latitudes of Eurasia evolved enough intelligence to make way more than their share of contributions to the body of knowledge and the stock of high-value capital?
In response to
Why people want to die
If anti-aging technology was the medical standard, few would opt out of it. Many people would opt for voluntary suicide of some sort after 10^x years for x between roughly 2 and 4.
The claim that "people want to die" basically caches out to "if effective anti-ageing tech were available for free/cheap, then most voluntary suicides would just so happen to coincide with the present-day life expectancy of 80 years, or people would actually opt out of anti-ageing treatments entirely and decide to age".
Well, I find it extremely unlikely that that would be true.
Suppose that miss average woman who reads women's health magazines articles on the "top 8 natural anti-ageing solutions" today and buys expensive snake-oil anti ageing cream today is transported to the year 2200, as is Mr mid 30s metrosexual man with his "grooming arsenal". Will they use the cheap actually effective anti-ageing treatments instead of their snake oil that they spend money on today? Absolutely.
So years pass on the calendar without them ageing and they hit roughly 80. Will they suddenly decide to just kill themselves because it's been about 30 years since their kids grew up? But not 10 years or 60? It seems pretty unreasonable to me that the point of psychological exhaustion with life will happen to coincide with the point when biological bodies currently wear out.
The variance will be huge. Maybe Mr Metrosexual will just want to go clubbing, get drunk, play football, have a long series of major relationships, go on holidays, play xbox etc for 10^3 years? Why the hell not? Maybe mind modification will at some point become popular in non-nerdy circles at some point over those 1000 years? I don't think you have to be into majorly nerdy stuff to get 10^3 years of fun out of life.
You could alternatively argue that the claim that "people want to die" basically caches out to "people will eventually want to die rather than live for a literally infinite amout of time". At that point I think it basically becomes vacuous for reasons that have probably been debated ad nauseum in futurist spaces; finite dynamical system cannot evolve indefinitely without looping etc etc.
The politically incorrect Manosphere blogs discuss how women who reject traditional roles for themselves, namely, early marriage and family formation, seem to hit a "wall" in their later 20's as they realize that men will stop paying attention to them (as their fertility crashes) in favor of younger crops of women. The women who miss the marriage and childbirth window altogether wind up living alone with their cats, and they seem to lack much meaning and purpose in life because they neglected doing what women evolved to do.
I suppose if you could rejuvenate these women, restock their eggs and make them fertile like 18 year old girls again, they might find a renewed zest for life. Only I doubt that because I don't see how you can de-experience them psychologically to undo the damage from having all those sterile sexual encounters the first time around.
So, yes, I do find it plausible that most women probably lack the inner resources to handle radical life extension, given the limited nature of their lives under current circumstances.
In response to
Why people want to die
Death just isn't that big a deal. The desire to live forever—even in a scenario where one could stay young and vigorous—seems very odd to me.
I grew up an Evangelical Christian. We took heaven very seriously and quite literally. Being obsessed with living forever in heaven seemed like a great idea at the time, though it may have been largely due to the fact a literal never-ending-human-oven version of hell was the only other option on the table.
When I stopped Christianing and started thinking, it took a while, but violent opposition to my death went away. Of course, it's still pretty much the biggest roadblock in my future, because it's... well, death. But it's not a problem that requires a solution anymore. It's gonna happen. Oh well.
I think it's cool that smart people like the LWers and others like them might beat biological death one day—through anti-aging, or cryonics and mind uploading, or whatever. But I don't think it's going to be the game changer they seem to think it will be. Problems will still abound.
Eventually I guess you could just wirehead everyone to experience perfect blissful ecstasy for all eternity. Maybe that would solve the Universe.
Eventually I guess you could just wirehead everyone to experience perfect blissful ecstasy for all eternity.
Or else Immortal Supermen(TM) would have progressed so far that they will enjoy wireheading as an occasional treat, like drinking a glass of some highly regarded wine with dinner.
In response to
Why people want to die
The long-term solution: Sexbots. Of course, sexbots are the cause of, or solution to most long-term problems.
Yeah, if you want to turn more and more adolescent boys into adult male virgins who lack the skills they need for living in a society full of self-directed women.
I honestly don't understand some transhumanists' obsession with sexbots, especially coming from men who have had organic sexual experiences with women - namely, with women who felt attracted to them. (I distinguish those from alienated sexual experiences with prostitutes.)
In response to
Why people want to die
Most people do not have open-ended interests the way LWers do.
Marvin Minsky said something similar a few years ago, to the effect that most people don't have "real goals," unlike the scientists Minsky knows who tell him that they have personal lists of problems that they would like to solve, but the problems will take longer than their current life expectancies.
Mike Darwin also mentioned this as a problem in an essay he published in Cryonics magazine back in 1984:
http://www.alcor.org/cryonics/cryonics8402.txt
Darwin thinks that the arrival of practical superlongevity will shake out a whole lot of people who can't use it constructively - they'll die any way, in other words - based on an analogy to how we still haven't adapted fully to the recent wealth revolution. He references Elvis Presley as an example of maladaptation to great wealth; but since Presley died in 1977 and most of you don't remember him, you might think of, say, Michael Jackson or those buffoonish Kardashians as more recent examples of people who have wealth that they don't know how to use well.
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Probably the biggest cryonics story of the year. In the print edition of The New York Times, it appeared on the front page, above the fold.
A Dying Young Woman's Hope in Cryonics and a Future, by Amy Harmon
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/us/cancer-immortality-cryogenics.html
You can also watch a short documentary about Miss Suozzi here:
http://www.nytimes.com/video/science/100000003897597/kim-suozzis-last-wishes.html
Yet som there be that by due steps aspire
To lay their just hands on that Golden Key
That ope's the Palace of Eternity.
(John Milton, Comus, lines 12-14)
May Kim find that Golden Key some day.