An interesting point. Keeping in mind that cryonics “believers” trust cryonics with varying degrees of probability and that many or even most of them try to appear more rational to their skeptical friends by saying “The probability is only 20% but that still makes it a good bet based on expected utility”, then I’d say that I’ve seen both behaviors. That is, I’ve seen some cryonicists expressing grief, some cryonicists (including myself) saying “See you later”, and my untrustworthy eyeballs indicate that this correlates to how much trust they have in cryonics.
Eyeballs also indicate that someone who’s more deeply involved in the cryonics community per se is less likely to mourn, regardless of what they say about their verbal probabilities. And furthermore, when someone is suspended who themselves believed strongly in cryonics, “weak” cryonics advocates are less likely to mourn that person! This may have something to do with the degree to which mourning is empathy...? Or do they, perhaps, believe just strongly enough to worry that the one will come back and be annoyed at the “condolences”?
Are weakly religious people less likely to mourn the death of strongly religious people? I’m guessing “Yes”—and it’d be easier to gather data here.
Sounds like priming: since the deceased is associated with not mourning cryonically suspended, the attitude towards this issue changes in the context. I expect that the verbal probabilities, if not premeditated, will also change, if the question is framed like “what is the probability that [this person] will be restored?”, depending on the belief of [this person] in the success.
I’m sure it’s possible to believe in God but deceive oneself into belief of atheism. And then grieve shallowly with a feeling that the deceased is not really gone forever.
I was, for a period of a few months, in this category. And I’ve still sort of got something attached to that mental state, if I think about it hard enough.
Really? I would expect you of all people to see it.
Most atheists alieve in God and trust him to make the future turn out all right (ie they expect the future to magically be ok even if no one deliberately makes it so). Hence “beyond the reach of god” and all that stuff.
I guess this is offtopic in this particular thread, though.
Most atheists alieve in God and trust him to make the future turn out all right (ie they expect the future to magically be ok even if no one deliberately makes it so).
The statement in parentheses seems to contradict the one outside. Are you over-applying the correlation between magical thinking and theism?
The statement in parentheses seems to contradict the one outside.
The implication is “no one human”- that is, the atheists in question still live in a positive universe rather than a neutral one, but don’t have an explanation for the positivity.
People alieve that nothing too bad will happen if they behave well or otherwise follow some set of rules. (I have to fight this feeling myself!) I can well imagine people having a mental picture, which they habitually use to make predictions, in which something justifies this feeling. But do they picture a deity as commonly described? Or do they picture their parents/society/church having (limited) magical powers?
I highly doubt that that expectation is due to hidden belief in gods. It sounds more like an overly strong generalization from “it all adds up to normality” to me.
In other words, you can expect the future to turn out alright without any agents actively making it so based purely on inductive bias.
If you knew that everyone got uploaded to a virtual world when they died, and the virtual world was better in every way than the natural world, and when you died you would be reunited with them in the virtual world, then would you really have something to grieve about when their soul passed out of their body?
Yes; you would be unable to talk to them for.. however long it’d take before you could join them.
Of course the rational solution then would be suicide or, failing that, good, ethical actions that certainly would get you into heaven but just happen to be incredibly dangerous. I’m sure we could find some.
You don’t grieve because of what you said. You grieve because you miss them and you don’t know when you will see them. I know it is selfish but its true. I attended a funeral once where the son of the deceased was a friend and “We are sad not because we would no longer see him, but because we do not know when.”, Of course he maybe lying but sometimes we can take these people’s statements at face value. Some people are short sighted, they are saddened inspite of their belief that they would be reunited and what they term the other side/life would be a far far better place. They are saddened because their lives have to change , maybe not for the better.
Wait, couldn’t people have been programmed by evolution to grieve no matter what they truly believe about where the deceased went?
This seems like an empirical proposition. Does anybody here know what cryonics believers say who’ve seen friends or loved ones frozen?
An interesting point. Keeping in mind that cryonics “believers” trust cryonics with varying degrees of probability and that many or even most of them try to appear more rational to their skeptical friends by saying “The probability is only 20% but that still makes it a good bet based on expected utility”, then I’d say that I’ve seen both behaviors. That is, I’ve seen some cryonicists expressing grief, some cryonicists (including myself) saying “See you later”, and my untrustworthy eyeballs indicate that this correlates to how much trust they have in cryonics.
Eyeballs also indicate that someone who’s more deeply involved in the cryonics community per se is less likely to mourn, regardless of what they say about their verbal probabilities. And furthermore, when someone is suspended who themselves believed strongly in cryonics, “weak” cryonics advocates are less likely to mourn that person! This may have something to do with the degree to which mourning is empathy...? Or do they, perhaps, believe just strongly enough to worry that the one will come back and be annoyed at the “condolences”?
Are weakly religious people less likely to mourn the death of strongly religious people? I’m guessing “Yes”—and it’d be easier to gather data here.
Sounds like priming: since the deceased is associated with not mourning cryonically suspended, the attitude towards this issue changes in the context. I expect that the verbal probabilities, if not premeditated, will also change, if the question is framed like “what is the probability that [this person] will be restored?”, depending on the belief of [this person] in the success.
I’m sure it’s possible to believe in God but deceive oneself into belief of atheism. And then grieve shallowly with a feeling that the deceased is not really gone forever.
Also known as “there are no atheists in foxholes”.
That sounds theoretically possible but I haven’t seen it.
I was, for a period of a few months, in this category. And I’ve still sort of got something attached to that mental state, if I think about it hard enough.
Really? I would expect you of all people to see it.
Most atheists alieve in God and trust him to make the future turn out all right (ie they expect the future to magically be ok even if no one deliberately makes it so). Hence “beyond the reach of god” and all that stuff.
I guess this is offtopic in this particular thread, though.
The statement in parentheses seems to contradict the one outside. Are you over-applying the correlation between magical thinking and theism?
The implication is “no one human”- that is, the atheists in question still live in a positive universe rather than a neutral one, but don’t have an explanation for the positivity.
People alieve that nothing too bad will happen if they behave well or otherwise follow some set of rules. (I have to fight this feeling myself!) I can well imagine people having a mental picture, which they habitually use to make predictions, in which something justifies this feeling. But do they picture a deity as commonly described? Or do they picture their parents/society/church having (limited) magical powers?
I highly doubt that that expectation is due to hidden belief in gods. It sounds more like an overly strong generalization from “it all adds up to normality” to me.
In other words, you can expect the future to turn out alright without any agents actively making it so based purely on inductive bias.
I’ve seen that for planets a lot more than for people, yes.
If you knew that everyone got uploaded to a virtual world when they died, and the virtual world was better in every way than the natural world, and when you died you would be reunited with them in the virtual world, then would you really have something to grieve about when their soul passed out of their body?
Yes; you would be unable to talk to them for.. however long it’d take before you could join them.
Of course the rational solution then would be suicide or, failing that, good, ethical actions that certainly would get you into heaven but just happen to be incredibly dangerous. I’m sure we could find some.
You don’t grieve because of what you said. You grieve because you miss them and you don’t know when you will see them. I know it is selfish but its true. I attended a funeral once where the son of the deceased was a friend and “We are sad not because we would no longer see him, but because we do not know when.”, Of course he maybe lying but sometimes we can take these people’s statements at face value. Some people are short sighted, they are saddened inspite of their belief that they would be reunited and what they term the other side/life would be a far far better place. They are saddened because their lives have to change , maybe not for the better.