Funny, the psychologist Robert Sapolsky has written about how people’s ability to seek and appreciate novelty seems to fall into a developmental window which closes in our 30′s, as we can see from older people’s resistance to listening to new genres of music or developing tastes for new kinds of food. That would explain why Baby Boomers still listen to the music they grew up with in the 1960′s and 1970′s, but they resist eating sushi because that didn’t become widely available in the U.S. until the 1980′s, after their novelty-seeking phase ended.
I turned 53 back in November, however, and I seem to have less of a problem with that. I recognize the music I grew up with when I hear it on oldies stations or internet channels, but I don’t seek it out. In the past 15 years or so I’ve started to listen to jazz and Celtic music, I eat sushi on occasion and I have even developed a fondness for cats, when previously I didn’t care for them. (The Babelfish-like Toxoplasma gondii parasite has probably taken over my brain and turned me into a cat-adoring zombie.)
This phenomenon has some bearing on my current frustrations with the direction of the cryonics movement, because to me many older cryonicists look like they haven’t evolved mentally from the time they read certain influential books early in their lives. I don’t claim exemption from that tendency, of course, but I chuckled recently when I read a post on New Cryonet by someone who claimed that he learned everything he needed to know about economics from Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action. Suppose we could bring back to life an educated, English-speaking individual from the 18th Century who resisted the effort to update his thinking for the 21st Century because he thought he learned everything he needed to know from the books he read 250 years ago? “I mastered everything I need to know about political economy from the pamphlets of the French Physiocrats, thank you, sir.”
I’ve also noticed this tendency in Alcor’s CEO, who still refers to Julian L. Simon’s famous wager with Paul Ehrlich as an alleged vindication of Simon’s cornucopianism over Ehrlich’s Malthusianism, even though Peter Thiel has pointed out recently that trends in commodities prices have supported Ehrlich’s side of the wager since the 1990′s.
And, of course, I have a huge problem now with basing cryonics’ propaganda & apologetics on Eric Drexler’s fantasies from the 1980′s about capital-N Nanotechnology, when that looks increasingly unarrivable. How many more decades have to pass before cryonicists give up on this mirage and look for real technological paths to revival? And why do I have the cognitive plasticity to see this, but apparently no other cryonicist has reached a similar conclusion?
Is there some way us young people can precommit now to taking the outside view and being heavily influenced by the young people of tomorrow when we’re old?
If any young person of the future is having an disagreement with me and happens across this decades-old comment, feel free to use it as an argument for your side.
Is there some way us young people can precommit now to taking the outside view and being heavily influenced by the young people of tomorrow when we’re old?
By starting right now, then carrying on? Heinlein (in the voice of Lazarus Long) had some advice about this:
“To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods.”
Funny, the psychologist Robert Sapolsky has written about how people’s ability to seek and appreciate novelty seems to fall into a developmental window which closes in our 30′s, as we can see from older people’s resistance to listening to new genres of music or developing tastes for new kinds of food. That would explain why Baby Boomers still listen to the music they grew up with in the 1960′s and 1970′s, but they resist eating sushi because that didn’t become widely available in the U.S. until the 1980′s, after their novelty-seeking phase ended.
I turned 53 back in November, however, and I seem to have less of a problem with that. I recognize the music I grew up with when I hear it on oldies stations or internet channels, but I don’t seek it out. In the past 15 years or so I’ve started to listen to jazz and Celtic music, I eat sushi on occasion and I have even developed a fondness for cats, when previously I didn’t care for them. (The Babelfish-like Toxoplasma gondii parasite has probably taken over my brain and turned me into a cat-adoring zombie.)
This phenomenon has some bearing on my current frustrations with the direction of the cryonics movement, because to me many older cryonicists look like they haven’t evolved mentally from the time they read certain influential books early in their lives. I don’t claim exemption from that tendency, of course, but I chuckled recently when I read a post on New Cryonet by someone who claimed that he learned everything he needed to know about economics from Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action. Suppose we could bring back to life an educated, English-speaking individual from the 18th Century who resisted the effort to update his thinking for the 21st Century because he thought he learned everything he needed to know from the books he read 250 years ago? “I mastered everything I need to know about political economy from the pamphlets of the French Physiocrats, thank you, sir.”
I’ve also noticed this tendency in Alcor’s CEO, who still refers to Julian L. Simon’s famous wager with Paul Ehrlich as an alleged vindication of Simon’s cornucopianism over Ehrlich’s Malthusianism, even though Peter Thiel has pointed out recently that trends in commodities prices have supported Ehrlich’s side of the wager since the 1990′s.
And, of course, I have a huge problem now with basing cryonics’ propaganda & apologetics on Eric Drexler’s fantasies from the 1980′s about capital-N Nanotechnology, when that looks increasingly unarrivable. How many more decades have to pass before cryonicists give up on this mirage and look for real technological paths to revival? And why do I have the cognitive plasticity to see this, but apparently no other cryonicist has reached a similar conclusion?
Reference:
http://books.google.com/books?id=oy52m6kgQQMC&lpg=PA199&ots=2SAvuckkAX&dq=sapolsky%20open%20season&pg=PA199#v=onepage&q&f=false
Is there some way us young people can precommit now to taking the outside view and being heavily influenced by the young people of tomorrow when we’re old?
If any young person of the future is having an disagreement with me and happens across this decades-old comment, feel free to use it as an argument for your side.
By starting right now, then carrying on? Heinlein (in the voice of Lazarus Long) had some advice about this:
“To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods.”
Yeah, that’s the obvious first step. I’m just looking for ways to add redundancy.