Fair enough. I’m not claiming that there is a supermajority solidly convinced of the practical feasibility of cryonics, and significant life extension, and immortalism. The impression that I get is more nearly that most of the hypotheticals that I see here posit more medical and technical progress than is supported by observation. Now, these are hypotheticals—for instance the discussion of consequences of various (large!) degrees of life extension (starting at 1000-year lifespans) in the responses to the original post on this page. It is perfectly valid to discuss improbable hypotheticals. Nonetheless, I get the impression that very few of the hypotheticals explored on LW posit something close to the stagnation that we’ve actually seen in many fields. Perhaps it doesn’t count as a tribal belief, but it does seem to set a tone of the discussion here—and not in the direction of making the discussion less wrong :-)
Fair enough. I’m not claiming that there is a supermajority solidly convinced of the practical feasibility of cryonics, and significant life extension, and immortalism. The impression that I get is more nearly that most of the hypotheticals that I see here posit more medical and technical progress than is supported by observation. Now, these are hypotheticals—for instance the discussion of consequences of various (large!) degrees of life extension (starting at 1000-year lifespans) in the responses to the original post on this page. It is perfectly valid to discuss improbable hypotheticals. Nonetheless, I get the impression that very few of the hypotheticals explored on LW posit something close to the stagnation that we’ve actually seen in many fields. Perhaps it doesn’t count as a tribal belief, but it does seem to set a tone of the discussion here—and not in the direction of making the discussion less wrong :-)