All of Bart119's Comments + Replies

Hey, thanks for the reply. I appreciate it. I'm not upset if people want to downvote the rant -- rants by their nature are not carefully argued. The best spin might be 'brainstorming'. I'll edit it to label it up-front. But I don't see how the original post is poorly argued; that's what matters for visibility. The one thing I'll note is:

average life expectancy has been increasing for at least 50 years now, surely there's evidence showing how people have damaged the common good in the name of life extension

I agree and think that supports the point. The ... (read more)

Thank you for clarifying. Sure, if you're enjoying life and there's no cost to going on living, we'll all choose that. The question is how much we'll pay to keep that chance of living a while longer.

In response, I'd say that somehow the focus is too narrowly on any one point in time. At any given moment, it's terrifying to think you'll die and you'll do a great deal to avoid it at that moment. But as we talk of pre-committing in game theory situations, you might want to pre-commit regarding death too. You might say you don't want extraordinary measures ta... (read more)

It's nothing I have enough detail on to support a separate post. I suspect my phrasing emphasized the wrong part of it (sorry). I have no reason to think our society is due for a catastrophic "dip" in the next few hundred years. I'd even give it a thousand. And after that we might well recover, but preservation of any individual life gets iffy through that period. So I'm giving us one in ten thousand of reversing aging or uploading brains before that collapse (100-1,000 years from now). The chances of developing it when civilizations rise and fal... (read more)

Thank you very much. I apologize for not looking at the post after posting it (doh). Basic "QA". Was it worth writing this comment, or am I just contributing to data smog? Don't know. Anyway, the thanks are genuine.

Forewarning: this is something of a rant and not carefully argued... Hey, someone with (at least somewhat) similar views. Great to hear from you. I skimmed the other discussion, and regret I didn't see it earlier. I don't worry about an inability to die if you don't like life, and think the population issue isn't so bad by itself (I worry about the disproportionate number of old people (even if healthy) and the rarity of children. But "unknown consequences" weighs very heavily. The status quo bias isn't such a bad thing as a defense against hubri... (read more)

Yes, and I think we should stop paying for some current procedures that prolong decrepitude, as well as not funding new ones.

I'm sympathetic to the idea that basic, proven health care (80% of the benefit for 20% of the cost) should be free to all, and that more expensive, less effective health care should be available to people rich enough to buy it. But this is highly problematic politically. If your society supports "(top of the line) health care is a right, not a privilege", then standard models of resource allocation are problematic. Political leaders might give in to the demands, at the cost of health care spending rising to (say) 50% of GDP. We could lose our economic competitiveness in a catastrophic way.

This applies in some areas, but not others. It might apply in health care if your treatment gives people another 100 years of healthy life all in one fell swoop. But the actual history of medical research is that since the appetite for extra months of life and extra percentage points of cures is unlimited, we see costs rising rather than falling. The cost of a given medication should fall after it goes out of patent protection, for instance, but there is always (so far) some other medication or device that is (at least marginally and allegedly) better. This is the most fundamental problem with the US health care system: patients demand more health care regardless of the price -- a cost they want someone else to bear.

What I would do is close to what a certain fairly mainstream set of health care reformers would like to do. It would involve reducing much spending in the last three months of life when a terminal condition exists, it would involve taking age into account in allocating donated organs. It would involve drug companies showing that a proposed new drug is more effective (or otherwise significantly superior to) existing medications, not just that it is effective. Although this is not an idea I have seen elsewhere, I might also take an "end-to-end" app... (read more)

I estimate the chance of getting uploaded or having the effects of aging reversed before society collapses (at least to the point that such a person would die) is about, oh, one in ten thousand. Given that estimate and my sense of the cost, then that is an implication of what I am saying.

I'm trying to find out how short-term or long-term your thinking is. Moving to Mars seems very fragile, depending on constant input from planet earth. The challenges of moving to another star system where you could have a self-sustaining life are immense. Neither option is available in your lifetime. I think quantitative estimates of the survival of sapience on earth are pretty much useless -- the uncertainties of individual estimates are way too high. As a young man in 1981 I debated moving from the US to Australia as a hedge against nuclear war, a much m... (read more)

The initial question was just meant to open the issue of future negatives, and having gotten some feedback on how the issue had been discussed before, I gave the bulk of my thoughts in a reply to my initial post.

What I consider much more realistic possibilities (more realistic than benign, enlightened resurrection) are being revived with little regard to brain damage and to serve the needs of an elite. I laid it out in my other response in this thread (I don't know how to link to a particular comment in a thread, but search for 'When I started this thread'.)

Even your most powerful argument/worst-case scenario has immortality as its outcome

By "possible", I meant that we can imagine scenarios (however unlikely) where we will be immortal. Cryonics also relies on scenarios (admittedly not quite as unlikely) where we would at least have much longer lives, though not truly immortal. If being alive for a thousand years with serious brain damage still strikes you as much preferable to death, then I agree that my argument does not apply to you.

To what extent are we not "[serving] the ends of the el

When I started this thread, I wasn't quite sure where it was going to end up. But here's what I see as the most powerful argument:

An enlightened, benign future society might revive you to let you live life to your full potential, for your sake -- when it is convenient for them. But a future society that has morality in line with some pretty good present ones (not the very best) might see you as a precious commodity to revive for the ends of the elite. An enlightened society would not revive you if you were going to be miserable with serious brain damage, b... (read more)

While I admit that a theocratic torturing society seems less likely to develop the technology to revive people, I'm not at all sure that an enlightened one is more likely to do so than the one I assumed as the basis of my other examples. A society could be enlightened in various ways and still not think it a priority to revive frozen people for their own sake. But a society could be much more strongly motivated if it was reviving a precious commodity for the selfish ends of an elite. This might also imply that they would be less concerned about the risk of things like brain damage that would interfere with the revivee's happiness but still allow them to be useful for the reviver's purposes.

The idea is that everyone who wasn't frozen got a chance to see it coming and convert, maybe two or three times as winds shifted?

Interesting. The referenced discussions often assume the post-singularity AI (which for the record I think very unlikely). The development of that technology is likely to be, if not exactly independent, only loosely correlated with the technology for cryonic revival, isn't it?

Certainly you have to allow for the possibility of cryonic revival without the post-singularity AI, and I think we can make better guesses about the possible configurations of those worlds than post-AI worlds.

I see the basic pro-cryonics argument as having the form of Pascal's wager. ... (read more)

I understand that. I said it was OK. But I thought Spectral_Dragon in particular might be interested, flaws and all. My observation of derision of such concerns is not about my post, but many other places which I have seen when researching this.

I'm with you on thinking this is a serious issue. I also think the LW community has done a very poor job of dismissing all such concerns, often with derision. A post I made on the subject got downvoted into oblivion, which is OK (community standards and all). I accept some of the criticisms, but expect to bring the issue up again with them better addressed.

LW in general seems to favor a very far view. I'm trying to get used to that, and accept it on its own terms. But however useful it may be in itself, a gross mismatch between the farness of views which are taken to be relevant to each other is a problem.

It is widely accepted that spreading population beyond earth (especially in the sense of offloading significant portions of the population) is a development many hundreds of years in the future, right? A lot of extremely difficult challenges have to be overcome to make it feasible. (I for one don't think we... (read more)

I have no commitment to 'rational' in the sense OP wants to eliminate. But what shorthand might one use for "applying the sorts of principles that are the general consensus among the LW community, as best I understand them"?

OK. Forgive my modest research skills. I've certainly seen lots of posts that assume that indefinite lifespans are a good thing, but I had never seen any that made contrary claims or rebutted such claims. I would welcome pointers to the best such discussions. It was not intended as a rant.

Interesting. Downvoted into invisibility. Because of disagreement on conclusions, or form? I suppose an assertion of over-application of rationality is in a sense off-topic, but not in the most important sense. And of course no one has to accept the intuitions (which qualify as Bayesian estimates), but are they so far off they're not worth considering?

My estimate was based on what I hear and read of others, not my own very limited experience.

As I see it, once you accept the idea that we are just a dance of particles (as I do too), then in an important sense 'all bets are off'. A person comes up with something that works for them and goes with it. You don't have any really good reason not to become a serial murderer, and no good reason to save the world if you know how. So most of us (?) pick a set of values in line with human moral intuition and what other people pick and and just go back to living. It makes us happiest. I claim you can't be secretly miserable in an existential-angsty sort of... (read more)

I modified my comment slightly to not refer to Truth. But I do think it is unreasonable to expect that people will agree on many values, e.g. whether art, psychotherapy, the worship of some particular concept of God, maximizing lifespan, hedonism, making money etc. are how best to live one's life. Discussion and debate are fine (but not required). But if an opponent doesn't convince me that premarital sex is wrong (for instance), he or she may not harass or coerce me.

When deciding how to allocate your time in life, one choice to make is what arguments to l... (read more)

I like this post. You're coming from religion, you're seeking truth, you don't want to toss out the religion completely. I think asking what self-identified rationalists have to say about that is entirely appropriate. As mwengler implies, a religious background is as good a place to get values from as anyplace else.

I was raised as an atheist, toyed with Quakerism for a while, but went back to atheism, but with a kinder view of religion. Quakers may not be great at cost-benefit tradeoffs, but they've been at the forefront of progressive values forever. I'm ... (read more)

Thanks for pointers into what is a large and complex subject. I'm not remotely worried about things coming in from the stars. As for letting the AI out of the jar, I'm a bit perplexed. The transcripts are not available for review? If not, what seems relevant is the idea that an ideal encryption system has to be public so the very smartest people can try to poke holes in it. Of course, the political will to keep an AI in the box may be lacking -- if you don't let it out, someone else will let another one out somewhere else. Seems related to commercial release of genetically modified plants, which in some cases may have been imprudent.

I haven't read much in the super-intelligent AI realm, but perhaps a relatively naive observer has some positive value. If we get to the point of producing AI that seems remotely super-intelligent, we'll stick firewalls around it. I don't think the suggested actions of a super-intelligent AI will be harmful in an incomprehensible way. An exception would if it created something like the world's funniest joke. The problem with HAL was that they gave him control of spacecraft functions. I say we don't give 'hands' to the big brains, and we don't give big brains to the hands, and then I won't lose much sleep.

Like CuSithBell, I'll plead the restrictive relative clause interpretation, bolstered by the absence of a comma. I'll also plead common sense as an ambiguity resolution tool. And not only do we have the existence of cultural Catholics, we've got as our first estimate a minimum (if every God-believing French person were a Catholic) of 41% of Catholics who don't subscribe to a vital church teaching.

I think atheists sometimes have a one-dimensional extreme view of believers. I never was a believer really (though I tried to be a Quaker for a while). I am a Unitarian-Universalist for social reasons (one joking definition of UUs is "atheists with children" -- and I'd encourage atheists to consider if it might meet their needs).

Believers know very well that there have been no unambiguous miracles lately, that really horrible things happen in the world despite a presumably benevolent God, and that the evidence for God is indirect. I think very fe... (read more)

58% of French people consider themselves Catholic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_France

34% of French people assent to: "I believe there is a God". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Europe

Of course, there are methodological issues and this doesn't prove the matter definitively, but it certain suggests that a lot of French people are "cultural Catholics" the way we have "cultural Jews" in the US.

I think you (and most commenters) are treating this hypothetical believer in a rather disrespectful and patronizing fashion. I would think the ethical thing to do is to engage in a meta-discussion with such a person and see whether there are certain subjects that are off limits, how they feel about your differing views on God, how they would feel about losing their faith, etc. They might ask you similar questions about what might make you become a believer. You might find yourself incorrect about what might make them lose their belief.

It's certainly possib... (read more)

I tend to fall on the side of those who say, "Wait, don't panic". Well, 'panic' would be a strong emotion of the kind you say you're not having, but you're obviously uneasy, and rightly so. Right to feel that way.

When 'the system' looks at you, they're going to see a person who is functioning pretty well in the world. That's the major thing they care about. And it's no small thing!

Things are likely to change at your age, simply with the passing of time. Are you going to go to college? Get out of the house somehow? That could get you more perspect... (read more)

Maybe setting the bounds of the problem would help some. I'm assuming:

1. Some form of representative democracy as political context, in the absence of any better systems.

2. A system of law protecting most property rights -- no arbitrary expropriations.

3. Socialism no more extreme than in (say) postwar Scandinavian countries.

4. Libertarianism no more extreme than (say) late 19th century USA.

5. Regulated capitalism. The question is how much regulation or taxation.

Given those parameters, I don't need the Communist Manifesto or any radical anarchist works. North... (read more)

Good point. The truth is, my starting point is much less libertarian than most LWers, if I recall survey results correctly. I'm trying to understand the other side, which is I gather virtuous within a rationality framework. I wasn't trying to bias what answers I would get, but you're right that it could in some fashion or other.

Is this the right place to engage in thread necromancy? We'll see.

I've been troubled by the radical altruism argument for some years, and never had a very satisfactory reason for rejecting it. But I just thought of an argument against it. In brief, if people believe that their obligation is to give just about everything they have to charity, then they have created a serious disincentive to create more wealth.

It starts with the argument against pure socialism. In that system, each person works as hard as he or she can in order to produce for the good of so... (read more)

Maybe I'm missing something.

I'm not saying my behavior is random, or un-caused. I experience preferences among actions. Factors I'm unaware of undoubtedly play a part, something I can speculate on, and others as well, and I or they could try to model them. But as I experience reality, I'm only striving up to a point to do the Right Thing. My speculation is that if the cost exceeds the cost of reminding myself I'm actually a nihilist, I'll bail on morality.

I'm very interested in arguments as to why nihilism isn't a consistent position -- heck, even why it's not a good idea or how other people have gotten around it.

I stumbled here while searching some topic, and now I've forgotten which one. I've been posting for a few weeks, and just now managed to find the "About" link that explains how to get started, including writing an intro here. Despite being a software engineer by trade these past 27-odd years, I manage to get lost navigating websites a lot, and I still forget to use Google and Wikipedia on topics. Sigh. I'm 57, and was introduced to cognitive fallacies years as long ago as 1972. I've tried to avoid some of the worst ones, but I also fail a lot. I ... (read more)

I remain quite confused.

In fact, it is totally unfair of you to assume that having this conversation is so pressing that it goes without saying. After all, not all theists proselytize.

OK. This seems to imply that there is some serious downside about starting such a conversation. What would it be? It would seem conciliatory to theists, if some (naturally enough) assume that what atheists want is for them to embrace atheism.

I'll say only that I'm not convinced that believing unpleasant but truth things is inherently inconsistent with being happier.

I... (read more)

It seems that implicit in any discussion of the kind is, "What do you think I ought to do if you are right?".

For theists, the answer might be something leading to, "Accept Jesus as your personal savior", etc.

For atheists, it might be, "Give up the irrational illusion of God." I'm questioning whether such an answer is a good idea if they are at least humble and uncertain enough to respect others' views -- if their goal is comfort and happiness as opposed to placing a high value on literal truth.

But do recall, I'm placing this in the "stupid questions" thread because I am woefully ignorant of the debate and am looking for pointers to relevant discussions.

Yes, it was vague. I'll try to be more precise -- as much as I can.

Suppose we do a pilot experiment in a small region on the Tigris and Euphrates where people have been living in high population densities for a long time. We have large numbers of people coming back from the dead, perhaps 10 times the current population? Perhaps with infant mortality we have 5 times as many children as adults -- lots of infants and young children.

But the UN is ready, prepared in advance. There is land for everyone. We figure at least that the dead have lost the right to the... (read more)

LWers are almost all atheists. Me too, but I've rubbed shoulders with lots of liberal religious people in my day. Given that studies show religious people are happier than the non-religious (which might not generalize to LWers but might apply to religious people who give up their religion), I wonder if all we really should ask of them is that they subscribe to the basic liberal principle of letting everyone believe what they want as long as they also live by shared secular rules of morality. All we need is for some humility on their part -- not being total... (read more)

Thank you so much for the reply! Simply tracing down the 'berserker hypothesis' and 'great filter' puts me in touch with thinking on this subject that I was not aware of.

What I thought might be novel about what I wrote included the idea that independent evolution of traits was evidence that life should progress to intelligence a great deal of the time.

When we look at the "great filter" possibilities, I am surprised that so many people think that our society's self-destruction is such a likely candidate. Intuitively, if there are thousands of soci... (read more)

I think it is a hard question. The foundations of our societies would all be shaken to the core by the sudden resuscitation that doubles the earth population (even assuming as we must that we can feed them all). I don't think "save or prolong any life of reasonable quality" scales up past a certain point. At a certain point the psychological quality of life of living individuals that comes from living in a society with a certain structure and values may trump the right of individuals who thought they were dead to live once more. (Humor: If you've been widowed three times, do you really want 3 formerly late husbands showing up at your doorstep? :-))

You mean rationally from an evolutionary point of view? You have less to lose from a bold decision, but perhaps you have much less to gain and that predominates. As a young guy you can take off into the wilds with a young wife and another few couples. Chances might be 90% you'll be killed, but if you do make it to the new land, you might start a whole new population of people.

I think if you look at deciduous trees of the same species, the young trees get their leaves earlier in the spring than the mature trees. I think I've observed that. They're "gam... (read more)

These speculations are interesting. I think it's always worth wheeling evolutionary thought up to a problem to see what it says.

However, surveying real people in our real, modern-day world seems far more direct.

I don't think either that evolution would have much of a reason to cleanly engineer a stable end-state after which development just entirely stops, and leaves you with a well-adjusted, perfectly functional body or brain. That may not be a trivial task after all.

Evolution is constantly making trade-offs, and (last I knew) the reason our bodies f... (read more)

You can distinguish the two. Older folks can learn from younger ones based on specific experience. Consider: Bob might be considering law school as a career change at 40 and learn from a 30-year-old who started the practice of law at 25 that it was not fun.

You can certainly imagine that age itself, or things that strongly correlate with age, could bring a different perspective. Another trivial sort of example: you decide at 50 that you want to buy a home where you'll never have to move again, and you are considering a condo that's on the 4th floor with no ... (read more)

Once it's shown conclusively to work no one will want it anymore :)

I don't get the joke or reference, and it sounds intriguing. Does it mean that if people can be revived successfully into indefinite lifespans, then there would be no need to freeze people going forward?

My big problem with indefinite lifespans is that I think we're already a warped society by having so many old people (meaning, say older than me at 57 :-)). I suppose if we could first keep everyone from aging and retaining their 25-year-old physiques and energy and mental status, that wo... (read more)