Given Eliezer’s belief about the probability of cryonics working and belief that others should understand that cryonics has a high probability of working, his statement that “If you don’t sign up your kids for cryonics then you are a lousy parent” is not just correct but trivial.
One of the reasons I so enjoy reading Less Wrong is Eliezer’s willingness to accept and announce the logical consequences of his beliefs.
There is a huge gap between “you are doing your kids a great disservice” and “you are a lousy parent”: “X is an act of a lousy parent” to me implies that it is a good predictor of other lousy parent acts.
EDIT: BTW I should make clear that I plan to try to persuade some of my friends to sign up themselves and both their kids for cryonics, so I do have skin in the game...
I’m not completely sure I disagree with that, but do you have the same attitude towards parents who try to heal treatable cancer with prayer and nothing else, but are otherwise great parents?
I think that would be a more effective predictor of other forms of lousiness: it means you’re happy to ignore the advice of scientific authority in favour of what your preacher or your own mad beliefs tell you, which can get you into trouble in lots of other ways.
That said, this is a good counter, and it does make me wonder if I’m drawing the right line. For one thing, what do you count as a single act? If you don’t get cryonics for your first child, it’s a good predictor that you won’t for your second either, so does that count? So I think another aspect of it is that to count, something has to be unusually bad. If you don’t get your kids vaccinated in the UK in 2010, that’s lousy parenting, but if absolutely everyone you ever meet thinks that vaccines are the work of the devil, then “lousy” seems too strong a term for going along with it.
If you don’t get your kids vaccinated in the UK in 2010, that’s lousy parenting, but if absolutely everyone you ever meet thinks that vaccines are the work of the devil, then “lousy” seems too strong a term for going along with it.
True. However, if absolutely everyone you ever meet thinks vaccines are evil except for one doctor and that doctor has science on his side, and you choose not to get your kids vaccinated because of “going along with” social pressures, then “lousy parent” is exactly the right strength of term. And that’s really the case here. Not absolutely everyone thinks cryonics is wrong or misguided. And if you can’t sort the bullshit and wishful thinking from the science, then you’re doing your child a disservice.
If “you” refers to a typical parent in the US, then it’s sensible (but hardly trivial). But it could easily be interpreted as referring to parents who are poor enough that they should give higher priority to buying a safer car, moving to a neighborhood with a lower crime rate, etc.
Eliezer’s writings about cryonics may help him attract more highly rational people to work with him, but will probably reduce his effectiveness at warning people working on other AGI projects of the risks. I think he has more potential to reduce existential risk via the latter approach.
Given Eliezer’s belief about the probability of cryonics working and belief that others should understand that cryonics has a high probability of working, his statement that “If you don’t sign up your kids for cryonics then you are a lousy parent” is not just correct but trivial.
One of the reasons I so enjoy reading Less Wrong is Eliezer’s willingness to accept and announce the logical consequences of his beliefs.
There is a huge gap between “you are doing your kids a great disservice” and “you are a lousy parent”: “X is an act of a lousy parent” to me implies that it is a good predictor of other lousy parent acts.
EDIT: BTW I should make clear that I plan to try to persuade some of my friends to sign up themselves and both their kids for cryonics, so I do have skin in the game...
I’m not completely sure I disagree with that, but do you have the same attitude towards parents who try to heal treatable cancer with prayer and nothing else, but are otherwise great parents?
I think that would be a more effective predictor of other forms of lousiness: it means you’re happy to ignore the advice of scientific authority in favour of what your preacher or your own mad beliefs tell you, which can get you into trouble in lots of other ways.
That said, this is a good counter, and it does make me wonder if I’m drawing the right line. For one thing, what do you count as a single act? If you don’t get cryonics for your first child, it’s a good predictor that you won’t for your second either, so does that count? So I think another aspect of it is that to count, something has to be unusually bad. If you don’t get your kids vaccinated in the UK in 2010, that’s lousy parenting, but if absolutely everyone you ever meet thinks that vaccines are the work of the devil, then “lousy” seems too strong a term for going along with it.
True. However, if absolutely everyone you ever meet thinks vaccines are evil except for one doctor and that doctor has science on his side, and you choose not to get your kids vaccinated because of “going along with” social pressures, then “lousy parent” is exactly the right strength of term. And that’s really the case here. Not absolutely everyone thinks cryonics is wrong or misguided. And if you can’t sort the bullshit and wishful thinking from the science, then you’re doing your child a disservice.
If “you” refers to a typical parent in the US, then it’s sensible (but hardly trivial). But it could easily be interpreted as referring to parents who are poor enough that they should give higher priority to buying a safer car, moving to a neighborhood with a lower crime rate, etc.
Eliezer’s writings about cryonics may help him attract more highly rational people to work with him, but will probably reduce his effectiveness at warning people working on other AGI projects of the risks. I think he has more potential to reduce existential risk via the latter approach.