The allegation that cryonics is pseudoscience reminds me of the allegations that Singularitarianism/Transhumanism are “atheist religion”, “the rapture for nerds”, etc. That confusion, I think, comes when people see the questions we’re investigating — “Could we live forever?”, “Could we end suffering?”, etc. — and assume that we’re answering the questions in a way similar to how religion does… or they don’t even think to remember why they believe religion is bad, and they assume that it’s the questions rather than the answers. Obviously, the problem with religion isn’t the questions it asks, nor their motives for asking those questions; the problem is the way religion acquires answers to those questions. The same applies to seeking eternal life. Eternal life as a goal isn’t wishful thinking; it’s wishful thinking when people mistakenly believe that the goal is easy or has already been reached (“you can live forever if you believe in Jesus”, etc.). Yet it’s not surprising that many perfectly intelligent people buy into these memes. They are used to hearing completely bullshit answers to these completely legitimate questions, so they get to the point where the questions themselves set off their bullshit alarms, even in the context of attempting to investigate them within a rigorous scientific/rational framework.
The “singularity == religion” and “cryonics == pseudoscience” memes are comparable to someone in the early 1960s comparing the Apollo program to the story of the Tower of Babel, and then dismissing the program on that basis as a technically infeasible religious fantasy.
Actually the Apollo program was quite well supported by the advancing missile technologies that were developed from the 1940s and onwards. Those early and ongoing tests made clear demonstrations of the ability to launch man-made objects into orbits around the earth and the moon. There’s no such similar testing that has been done for cryonics. That analogy is really exaggerating things.
If you think that the Apollo program was better supported by missile evidence than cryonics is by the rabbit kidney vitrification, you’re going to have to show your workings. You should do so in more than a comment, though, since whatever you post will as I show above be the best anti-cryonics article in the world.
Reading this back, I have to add that the Apollo program was much better supported by missile evidence than cryonics is by the rabbit kidney vitrification. However, I don’t think the difference is qualitative.
I’ve also encountered people who criticize the predictions surrounding the singularity, which misses the point that the singularity is the point beyond which predictions cannot be made.
edit: Didn’t mean that as a comprehensive definition.
Thanks for saving me from karmic hell, but I still don’t see the conflict. I seem to follow the Vinge version, which doesn’t appear to be proscribed.
I may have been too categorical, obviously one can make all the predictions he likes, and some with a high percentage of certainty, for instance “If cryorevival is possible then post singularity it will be trivial to implement” but that still doesn’t give us any certainty that this will be so, for instance a post singularity paperclip maximizer would be capable of cryorevival but have no interest in it.
Depends on your objectives. If you believe the singularity is something that will happen regardless then it’s harmless to spin scenarios. I gather that people like Elizier figure that the Singularity will happen unavoidably but that it can be steered towards optimum outcomes by setting down the initial parameters, in which case I suppose it’s good to have an official line about “how things could be/how we want things to be”
I’ve also encountered people who criticize the predictions surrounding the singularity, which misses the point that the singularity is the point beyond which predictions cannot be made.
More seriously, not only is the question the same, the answer is the same too: “Why yes, you can live forever! And it’s easy! Just pay this reasonable fee to the Organization, and we will take care of it.”
If religion teaches us anything, it is that people really don’t want to die, and will happily be convinced by very poor arguments that they aren’t going to.
Therefore, the fact that a given person is convinced that cryonics will work is much weaker evidence about whether cryonics will work or not than if that that person were convinced it will not, since it would require less high-quality evidence to convince him or her in the “yes” direction.
This argument holds even if the person is yourself—we should be more doubtful about our convictions if they happen to be the kind of thing that we are inherently predisposed to believe.
Therefore, the fact that a given person is convinced that cryonics will work is much weaker evidence about whether cryonics will work or not than if that that person were convinced it will not, since it would require less high-quality evidence to convince him or her in the “yes” direction.
No it isn’t. The similarity to religion means that people will be more easily convinced it will not work, unless it happens to be the mainstream belief.
Very true! So a clever man will know that the cryonist was convinced against the odds, and so the fact that the cryonist was convinced is strong evidence; clearly the clever man should believe also. But! this must have been how the cryonist reasoned, which explains why he was easily convinced with a minimum of evidence. That means that it is actually very easy to be convinced about effectiveness of cryonics, so other peoples’ belief is weak evidence after all. So I can clearly not believe in cryonics!
Yes, getting hugely tangled up in meta-level arguments instead of looking at the actual arguments and evidence and object-level way-the-world-is would indeed be a classic blunder.
The allegation that cryonics is pseudoscience reminds me of the allegations that Singularitarianism/Transhumanism are “atheist religion”, “the rapture for nerds”, etc. That confusion, I think, comes when people see the questions we’re investigating — “Could we live forever?”, “Could we end suffering?”, etc. — and assume that we’re answering the questions in a way similar to how religion does… or they don’t even think to remember why they believe religion is bad, and they assume that it’s the questions rather than the answers. Obviously, the problem with religion isn’t the questions it asks, nor their motives for asking those questions; the problem is the way religion acquires answers to those questions. The same applies to seeking eternal life. Eternal life as a goal isn’t wishful thinking; it’s wishful thinking when people mistakenly believe that the goal is easy or has already been reached (“you can live forever if you believe in Jesus”, etc.). Yet it’s not surprising that many perfectly intelligent people buy into these memes. They are used to hearing completely bullshit answers to these completely legitimate questions, so they get to the point where the questions themselves set off their bullshit alarms, even in the context of attempting to investigate them within a rigorous scientific/rational framework.
The “singularity == religion” and “cryonics == pseudoscience” memes are comparable to someone in the early 1960s comparing the Apollo program to the story of the Tower of Babel, and then dismissing the program on that basis as a technically infeasible religious fantasy.
Actually the Apollo program was quite well supported by the advancing missile technologies that were developed from the 1940s and onwards. Those early and ongoing tests made clear demonstrations of the ability to launch man-made objects into orbits around the earth and the moon. There’s no such similar testing that has been done for cryonics. That analogy is really exaggerating things.
If you think that the Apollo program was better supported by missile evidence than cryonics is by the rabbit kidney vitrification, you’re going to have to show your workings. You should do so in more than a comment, though, since whatever you post will as I show above be the best anti-cryonics article in the world.
Reading this back, I have to add that the Apollo program was much better supported by missile evidence than cryonics is by the rabbit kidney vitrification. However, I don’t think the difference is qualitative.
I’ve also encountered people who criticize the predictions surrounding the singularity, which misses the point that the singularity is the point beyond which predictions cannot be made.
edit: Didn’t mean that as a comprehensive definition.
That is not the most common usage here. See Three Singularity Schools and the LW wiki page.
EDIT: The parent comment does not deserve to be at −4. This is a reasonable thing for an inexperienced commenter to say.
Voted up for niceness.
Thanks for saving me from karmic hell, but I still don’t see the conflict. I seem to follow the Vinge version, which doesn’t appear to be proscribed.
I may have been too categorical, obviously one can make all the predictions he likes, and some with a high percentage of certainty, for instance “If cryorevival is possible then post singularity it will be trivial to implement” but that still doesn’t give us any certainty that this will be so, for instance a post singularity paperclip maximizer would be capable of cryorevival but have no interest in it.
If that were true about the Singularity, then wouldn’t it be correct to criticize the people who make predictions about it?
Depends on your objectives. If you believe the singularity is something that will happen regardless then it’s harmless to spin scenarios. I gather that people like Elizier figure that the Singularity will happen unavoidably but that it can be steered towards optimum outcomes by setting down the initial parameters, in which case I suppose it’s good to have an official line about “how things could be/how we want things to be”
I dispute that point.
There is no “point beyond which predictions cannot be made”. That is a SF fantasy.
God forbid someone might mistake our hypothetical discussions about future smarter than human artificial intelligences for science fiction.
More seriously, not only is the question the same, the answer is the same too: “Why yes, you can live forever! And it’s easy! Just pay this reasonable fee to the Organization, and we will take care of it.”
If religion teaches us anything, it is that people really don’t want to die, and will happily be convinced by very poor arguments that they aren’t going to.
Therefore, the fact that a given person is convinced that cryonics will work is much weaker evidence about whether cryonics will work or not than if that that person were convinced it will not, since it would require less high-quality evidence to convince him or her in the “yes” direction.
This argument holds even if the person is yourself—we should be more doubtful about our convictions if they happen to be the kind of thing that we are inherently predisposed to believe.
No it isn’t. The similarity to religion means that people will be more easily convinced it will not work, unless it happens to be the mainstream belief.
Very true! So a clever man will know that the cryonist was convinced against the odds, and so the fact that the cryonist was convinced is strong evidence; clearly the clever man should believe also. But! this must have been how the cryonist reasoned, which explains why he was easily convinced with a minimum of evidence. That means that it is actually very easy to be convinced about effectiveness of cryonics, so other peoples’ belief is weak evidence after all. So I can clearly not believe in cryonics!
A classic blunder!
Yes, getting hugely tangled up in meta-level arguments instead of looking at the actual arguments and evidence and object-level way-the-world-is would indeed be a classic blunder.