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All of FraserOrr's Comments + Replies

What are some good examples of fake beliefs?
Answer by FraserOrr-20

I have read neither the book nor the chapter you refer to, but I wll comment on fake beliefs: they are evidently beneficial, or else they would not exist, and I think that is because the goal of humans is not the achievement of rationality, but other things (Maslow, for example). Rationality may lead to those benefits, but it is only one way.

Let me offer you two specific examples:

The belief that the earth was created 6,000 years ago

Here in the USA a disturbingly large percentage of people hold this belief, something that is plainly not true, since all the ... (read more)

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4Adam Zerner
There are many examples of things about the design of humans that exist but are not beneficial. Rationality does not assume this. It very much acknowledges that humans are flawed and have irrational drives. Both seem like legitimate beliefs to me, where legitimate means that there is proper anticipation control, or a prediction being made.
Beware Experiments Without Evaluation
FraserOrr60

A few thoughts on this:

  1. The person advocating such experiments is usually an advocate of the change rather than a curious seeker of truth. Consequently, the lack of evaluation is a feature not a bug.
  2. It is very hard to get good data out of any experiment that has a sample size of one.
  3. It is often very hard to measure the actual thing you desire, and so as a consequence, insofar as there is measurement it is measurement of something that can be measured rather than something that is a useful measurement.
  4. Even insofar as it is possible to measure something usefu
... (read more)
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Abnormal Cryonics
FraserOrr00

The 15 year gain may be enough to get you over the tipping point where medicine can cure all your ails, which is to say, 15 years might buy you 1000 years.

I think you are being pretty optimistic if you think the probability of success of cryonics is 10%. Obviously, no one has any data to go on for this, so we can only guess. However, there is a lot of strikes against cryonics, especially so if only your head gets frozen. In the future will they be able to recreate a whole body from head only? In the future will your cryogenic company still be in business? ... (read more)

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Abnormal Cryonics
FraserOrr40

Question for the advocates of cryonics: I have heard talk in the news and various places that organ donor organizations are talking about giving priority to people who have signed up to donate their organs. That is to say, if you sign up to be an organ donor, you are more likely to receive a donated organ from someone else should you need one. There is some logic in that in the absence of a market in organs; free riders have their priority reduced.

I have no idea if such an idea is politically feasible (and, let me be clear, I don't advocate it), however, w... (read more)

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1gregconen
In most cases, signing up for cryonics and signing up as an organ donor are not mutually exclusive. The manner of death most suited to organ donation (rapid brain death with (parts of) the body still in good condition, generally caused by head trauma) is not well suited to cryonic preservation. You'd probably need a directive in case the two do conflict, but such a conflict is unlikely. Alternatively, neuropreservation can, at least is theory, occur with organ donation.
1Roko
No, the reasoning being that by the time you're decrepit enough to be in need of an organ, you have relatively little to gain from it (perhaps 15 years of medium-low quality life), and the probability of needing an organ is low ( < 1%), whereas Cryo promises a much larger gain (thousands? of years of life) and a much larger probability of success (perhaps 10%).