I had a funny click with my girlfriend earlier this evening. I suggested that she should sign up for cryonics at some point soon, and I was surprised that she was against the idea. In response to her objections, I explained it was vitrification and not freezing, etc. etc. but she wasn’t giving me any rational answers, until she said that she really wanted to see the future, but she also wanted to watch the future unfold.
She thought by cryonics that I meant right now, Futurama style. After a much needed clarification she immediately agreed that cryonics was a good idea.
So based on her understanding of what you said, she was actually right to object.
I guess the lesson here is that we must learn not to skip steps in the explanation of unconventional ideas because there is a risk that people will be opposed to things that aren’t even part of the proposal, and there is a further risk that we won’t notice that’s what is going on (in your case, you noticed it and corrected the situation, but what if there had been a huge fight and the subject had never been brought up again? That would have been a sad reason not to sign up for cryonics...).
Now this is disturbing: she assumes by default that you are suggesting to freeze her alive, “to see the future”. Not the kind of “click” we’d be looking for, “everything is possible” is actually worse than absurdity heuristic-enabled epistemic hygiene.
I had a funny click with my girlfriend earlier this evening. I suggested that she should sign up for cryonics at some point soon, and I was surprised that she was against the idea. In response to her objections, I explained it was vitrification and not freezing, etc. etc. but she wasn’t giving me any rational answers, until she said that she really wanted to see the future, but she also wanted to watch the future unfold.
She thought by cryonics that I meant right now, Futurama style. After a much needed clarification she immediately agreed that cryonics was a good idea.
So based on her understanding of what you said, she was actually right to object.
I guess the lesson here is that we must learn not to skip steps in the explanation of unconventional ideas because there is a risk that people will be opposed to things that aren’t even part of the proposal, and there is a further risk that we won’t notice that’s what is going on (in your case, you noticed it and corrected the situation, but what if there had been a huge fight and the subject had never been brought up again? That would have been a sad reason not to sign up for cryonics...).
Now this is disturbing: she assumes by default that you are suggesting to freeze her alive, “to see the future”. Not the kind of “click” we’d be looking for, “everything is possible” is actually worse than absurdity heuristic-enabled epistemic hygiene.
I think her default understanding was more like “Kevin is really morally depraved and probably not serious anyways”.
It was funnier in the real world; I sucked away most of the humor with my written retelling.