advancedatheist

Karma: −125

advancedatheist 12 Jan 2014 14:49 UTC
45 points
on: Why I haven’t signed up for cryonics
Cryonics has a more serious problem which I seldom see addressed. I’ve noticed a weird cognitive dissonance among cryonicists where they talk a good game about how much they believe in scientific progress, technological acceleration and so forth—yet they seem totally unconcerned about the fact that we just don’t see this alleged trend happening in cryonics technology, despite its numerous inadequacies. In fact, Mike Darwin argues that the quality of cryopreservations has probably regressed since the 1980′s.

In other words, attempting the cryogenic preservation of the human brain in a way which makes sense to neuroscientists, which should become the real focus of the cryonics movement, has a set of solvable, or at least describable, problems which current techniques could go a long way towards solving without having to invoke speculative future technologies or friendly AI’s. Yet these problems have gone unsolved for decades, and not for the lack of financial resources. Just look at some wealthy cryonicists’ plans to waste $100 million or more building that ridiculous Timeship (a.k.a. the Saulsoleum) in Comfort Texas.

What brought about this situation? I’ve made myself unpopular by suggesting that we can blame cryonics’ association with transhumanism, and especially with the now discredited capital-N Nanotechnology cultism Eric Drexler created in the 1980′s. Transhumanists and their precursors have a history of publishing nonsensical predictions about how we’ll “become immortal” by arbitrary dates within the life expectancies of the transhumanists who make these forecasts. (James D. Miller does this in his Singularity Rising book. I leave articulating the logical problem with this claim as an exercise to the reader). Then one morning we read in our email that one of these transhumanists has died according to actuarial expectations, and possibly went into cryo, like FM-2030; or simply died in the ordinary way, like the Extropian Robert Bradbury.

In other words, transhumanism promotes a way of thinking which tends to make transhumanists spectators of, instead of active participants in, creating the sort of future they want to see. And cryonics has become a casualty of this screwed up world view, when it didn’t have to turn out that way. Why exert yourself to improve cryonics’ scientific credibility—again, in ways which neuroscientists would have to take seriously—when you believe that friendly AI’s, Drexler’s genie-like nanomachines and the technological singularity will solve your problems in the next 20-30 years? And as a bonus, this wonderful world in 2045 or so will also revive almost all the cryonauts, no matter how badly damaged their brains.

Well, I don’t consider this a feasible “business plan” for my survival by cryotransport. And I know some other cryonicists who feel similarly. Cryonics needs some serious rebooting, and I’ve started to give some thought about regarding how I can get involved in the effort once I can find the people who look like they can make a go of it.

advancedatheist 19 Jul 2014 5:47 UTC
32 points
on: [LINK] Another “LessWrongers are crazy” article—this time on Slate
According to the Slate article,

Yudkowsky and Peter Thiel have enthused about cryonics, the perennial favorite of rich dudes who want to live forever.

Uh, no. Surprisingly few “rich dudes” have shown an interest in cryonics. I know quite a few cryonicists and I have helped to organize cryonics-themed conferences, and to the best of my knowledge no one on the Forbes 500 list has signed up.

Moreover ordinary people can afford cryonics arrangements by using life insurance as the funding mechanism.

We can see that rich people have avoided cryonics from the fact that the things rich people really care about tend to become status signals and attract adventuresses in search of rich husbands. In reality cryonics lacks this status and it acts like “female Kryptonite.” Just google the phrase “hostile wife phenomenon” to see what I mean. In other words, I tell straight men not to sign up for cryonics for the dating prospects.

advancedatheist 1 Jun 2011 20:13 UTC
28 points
on: Rationality Quotes: June 2011
From Space Viking, by H. Beam Piper:

“Young man,” Harkaman reproved, “the conversation was between Lord Trask and myself. And when somebody makes a statement you don’t understand, don’t tell him he’s crazy. Ask him what he means. What do you mean, Lord Trask?”

Source:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20728/20728-h/20728-h.htm

advancedatheist 26 Jun 2013 15:15 UTC
25 points
0
on: For FAI: Is “Molecular Nanotechnology” putting our best foot forward?
For some reason no one wants to hold Eric Drexler accountable now for the grandiose, irresponsible and frankly cringe-worthy things he wrote back in the 1980′s.

Case in point. I turned 27 in 1986, the year Drexler published Engines of Creation, so I belong to the generation referred to in the following speculation:

http://e-drexler.com/d/06/00/EOC/EOC_Chapter_8.html

Imagine someone who is now thirty years old [in 1986]. In another thirty years, biotechnology will have advanced greatly, yet that thirty-year-old will be only sixty. Statistical tables which assume no advances in medicine say that a thirty-year-old U.S. citizen can now expect to live almost fifty more years—that is, well into the 2030s. Fairly routine advances (of sorts demonstrated in animals) seem likely to add years, perhaps decades, to life by 2030. The mere beginnings of cell repair technology might extend life by several decades. In short, the medicine of 2010, 2020, and 2030 seems likely to extend our thirty-year-old’s life into the 2040s and 2050s. By then, if not before, medical advances may permit actual rejuvenation. Thus, those under thirty (and perhaps those substantially older) can look forward—at least tentatively—to medicine’s overtaking their aging process and delivering them safely to an era of cell repair, vigor, and indefinite life-span.

I turn 54 this November, and I can assure you that no one in my generation has seen “medicine’s overtaking their aging process.”

Yet many cryonicists have bet their futures on this fantasy technology, when regular people can see that it has taken on the characteristics of an apocalyptic religious belief instead of a rational assessment of future capabilities. Cryonicist Thomas Donaldson warned that this would happen and not help cryonics’ credibility, back around the time Drexler predicted that I would start to grow younger by now.

Apparently Drexler wants to reboot his reputation with a new book, but someone needs to remind people about the things he promised us in his 1980′s-era writings which haven’t come to pass.

advancedatheist 17 Apr 2013 16:31 UTC
25 points
in reply to: diegocaleiro’s comment on: Cryocrastinating? Send me (or someone else) money!

The term is “Cryocrastinating” Stuart. It’s one of the best memes to be born here,

Excuse me. I coined the verb “to cryocrastinate” over 20 years ago: http://www.nanodic.com/Nanomaterial/Cryocrastinate.htm

Cryonicists also called cryonics “an ambulance ride to the future” way back then as well, despite the phrase’s current imputation to Eliezer: http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/casereport9209.html

Yet people wonder why I find Eliezer and other LessWrongers annoying because they’ve moved into the cryonics community and now act like they invented its key ideas and phrases. James D. Miller’s presents such a one-sided, narrow and frankly preposterous view of cryonics in Singularity Rising that I literally threw my paperback copy across the room in frustration with it. Does Miller describe the contributions of people who actually had something to do with cryonics, namely, Bob Ettinger, Saul Kent, Curtis Henderson, Art Quaife, Fred Chamberlain, Jerry Leaf, Hugh Hixon, Mike Darwin? No, instead he invokes Eliezer and Robin as the current go-to authority figures on the subject, yet these guys’ experience with cryopreservaiton probably hasn’t extended beyond putting groceries in the kitchen freezer.

advancedatheist 2 Aug 2011 15:34 UTC
24 points
in reply to: Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg) ’s comment on: On the unpopularity of cryonics: life sucks, but at least then you die
Only someone who hasn’t spent much time around people with 2-digit IQ’s would believe in “the psychological unity of humankind.” The empirical evidence shows that at least in the area of IQ or the General Intelligence Factor (g), marginal differences can have profound practical consequences:

Why g Matters: The Complexity of Everyday Life

http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997whygmatters.pdf

Nick Bostrom in one of his talks even argues that raising everyone’s IQ by 10 points would revolutionize our society for the better, not by making the smartest people a little bit smarter, but by making hundreds of millions of the world’s dumbasses substantially smarter so that they would become more educable, develop lower time preferences and make better decisions in life.

advancedatheist 2 Dec 2012 3:24 UTC
23 points
in reply to: aaronde’s comment on: Open Thread, December 1-15, 2012
You might get a different perspective on the present when you reach your 50′s, as I have. I used Amazon’s book-previewing service to read parts of W. Patrick McCray’s book, The Visioneers, and I realized that I could nearly have written that book myself because my life has intersected with the story he tells at several points. McCray focuses on Gerard K. O’Neill and Eric Drexler, and in my Amazon review I pointed out that after a generation, or nearly two in O’Neill’s case, we can get the impression that their respective ideas don’t work. No one has gotten any closer to becoming a space colonist since the 1970′s, and we haven’t seen the nanomachines Drexler promised us in the 1980′s which can produce abundance and make us “immortal.”

So I suspect you youngsters will probably have a similar letdown waiting for you when you reach your 40′s and 50′s, and realize that you’ll wind up aging and dying like everyone else without having any technological miracles to rescue you.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Visioneers-Scientists-Nanotechnologies-Limitless/dp/0691139830/

advancedatheist 23 Jul 2012 21:32 UTC
23 points
on: Evolutionary psychology as “the truth-killer”
I don’t see why you need to debate this with your father. On several forums I’ve advised young atheists with religiously obsessive parents that they need to secure themselves financially so that they don’t have to move back in with these parents in our bad economy. A teenage or college-aged atheist shouldn’t announce his apostasy until he can finish college with a marketable degree, get a job, pay off all debts down to zero and then save up about a year’s worth of living expenses in case he becomes unemployed. Young atheists who do this will have the financial protection they need to tell their respective families about their atheism.

advancedatheist 25 Feb 2014 15:33 UTC
22 points
on: Innovation’s low-hanging fruits: on the demand or supply sides?
Figuring out a non-eugenics technology to raise IQ’s would go a long way towards solving other problems. Nick Bostrom in one of this talks argues that raising everyone’s IQ by ten points would revolutionize the world for the better, not by making the smartest people marginally smarter, but my “uplifting” billions of dullards above a threshold where they became more educable, more employable, more law abiding, more likely to save money and plan for the future and so forth.

Psychologist Linda Gottfredson of the University of Delaware would probably agree with this outcome:

http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997whygmatters.pdf

advancedatheist 13 Oct 2012 14:58 UTC
20 points
on: Good transhumanist fiction?
“Understand,” by Ted Chiang (circa 1990):

http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/under.htm

I’ve also heard that the enhanced character in the film Limitless turns out well instead of the usual cliches where he either becomes evil, goes insane or winds up dumber than before. I haven’t seen that film yet, however.

advancedatheist 25 Oct 2010 3:22 UTC
20 points
on: Optimism versus cryonics
Since you mentioned Benjamin Franklin, apparently when he died he left two trust funds to demonstrate the power of compound interest over a couple of centuries. The example of these trusts shows that the idea of a reanimation trust staying intact for centuries doesn’t sound absurd:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin#Death_and_legacy

advancedatheist 14 Sep 2015 13:02 UTC
18 points
on: Open thread, Sep. 14 - Sep. 20, 2015
Probably the biggest cryonics story of the year. In the print edition of The New York Times, it appeared on the front page, above the fold.

A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future, by Amy Harmon

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/us/cancer-immortality-cryogenics.html

You can also watch a short documentary about Miss Suozzi here:

http://www.nytimes.com/video/science/100000003897597/kim-suozzis-last-wishes.html

advancedatheist 25 Aug 2015 1:52 UTC
18 points
on: Why people want to die

Most people do not have open-ended interests the way LWers do.

Marvin Minsky said something similar a few years ago, to the effect that most people don’t have “real goals,” unlike the scientists Minsky knows who tell him that they have personal lists of problems that they would like to solve, but the problems will take longer than their current life expectancies.

Mike Darwin also mentioned this as a problem in an essay he published in Cryonics magazine back in 1984:

http://www.alcor.org/cryonics/cryonics8402.txt

Darwin thinks that the arrival of practical superlongevity will shake out a whole lot of people who can’t use it constructively—they’ll die any way, in other words—based on an analogy to how we still haven’t adapted fully to the recent wealth revolution. He references Elvis Presley as an example of maladaptation to great wealth; but since Presley died in 1977 and most of you don’t remember him, you might think of, say, Michael Jackson or those buffoonish Kardashians as more recent examples of people who have wealth that they don’t know how to use well.

advancedatheist 15 Aug 2015 4:30 UTC
17 points
on: Time-Binding
Korzybski fits into a larger intellectual pattern since the Enlightenment, where smart people think that human affairs have gotten disordered somehow.The intellectual reformer believes he can diagnose the problem, find a solution by arguing from plausible first principles, and then get humanity back on a normative path. Just think of Robert Owen, Karl Marx, Ayn Rand, L. Ron Hubbard, Buckminster Fuller, Timothy Leary, etc.

Basically these intellectuals think teleologically, and they assume that humans should have instruction manuals that intellectuals can deduce and make explicit so that humans can fulfill their proper “purpose,” whatever that means. Considering that all of the attempts at writing these implicit manuals disagree on fundamental matters, perhaps we should just reject the assumption and acknowledge that we evolved as kludges with conflicting and ill-fitting components, which don’t allow for the inferencing of a coherent instruction manual.

advancedatheist 24 Jun 2015 15:29 UTC
17 points
on: Cryonics: peace of mind vs. immortality
Cryonics will definitely fail if the peace-of-mind cryonicists dominate it instead of the serious adults who want to survive.

You can see most cryonicists’ fundamental lack of seriousness from the fact that they talk a good game about how much they believe in scientific, technological and medical progress. So what happens when you try to draw their attention to the many correctible shortcomings in the real, existing practice of cryonics? They usually shrug those off as if these problems don’t matter.

Uh, hello?

This fundamental lack of an evidence- and reality-orientation in many cryonicists goes a long way towards explaining why mainstream people don’t find the cryonics idea credible, much less its haphazard implementation. I just have no patience these days with cryonicists who invoke Eric Drexler’s discredited fantasies from the 1980′s, or who make fallacious comparisons between cryonicists and the Wright brothers. Cryonics falls into the overlap between neuroscience and cryobiology, and progress in it will have to come from the application of those real sciences.

advancedatheist 4 Aug 2014 16:39 UTC
17 points
on: Bragging Thread, August 2014
Does losing weight count? According to the arbitrarily precise $20 digital bathroom scale I bought from Walmart, I weighed 233.6 lbs on July 1, and 223.4 lbs as of this morning.

I weighed 263.8 lbs on April 16, about two weeks after the start of my current diet. The BMI charts I’ve looked at say I should weigh ~ 170 lbs, or about what I did in my senior year of high school (’77-’78). That weight doesn’t sound feasible to me now.

advancedatheist 11 May 2015 14:32 UTC
16 points
in reply to: ZankerH’s comment on: Open Thread, May 11 - May 17, 2015
Cryonicist Ben Best has put a lot of effort into studying and testing personal alarm gadgets you can wear which signal cardiac arrest to try to reduce the incidence of these unattended deanimations and long delays before cryopreservation. I plan to look into those myself.

Ironically, I’ve noticed that cryonicists talk a lot about how much they believe in scientific, medical and technological progress, but then they don’t seem to want to act on it when you present them with evidence of the correctable deficiencies of real, existing cryonics.

Reference:

Personal Alarm Systems for Cryonicists

http://www.benbest.com/cryonics/alarms.html

advancedatheist 20 Aug 2013 4:30 UTC
16 points
on: [LINK] Slashdot interview with David Ettinger of the Cryonics Institute
BTW, when you have two cryonics options in the U.S., Alcor and CI, Ci has status simply from existing, because something > nothing, and because it still has some reputation capital left over from the fact that Robert Ettinger founded it.

If a third, capable cryonics organization came online, it would probably view Alcor as its competition, and that might have the effect of pushing CI into the outer darkness which TransTime entered over 30 years ago.

“Trans-what?” you might ask. Apparently it still exists and it has perhaps three suspendees, including the brain of Luna Wilson, Robert Anton Wilson’s daughter murdered in the 1970′s. Or so I’ve heard, because my efforts to contact anyone at TransTime to confirm the disposition of Luna’s brain have not resulted in responses.

Reference:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/160354250/That-70-s-Transhumanism-A-Review-of-Cosmic-Trigger-Final-Secret-of-the-Illuminati

advancedatheist 22 Jan 2013 15:40 UTC
16 points
on: Update on Kim Suozzi (cancer patient in want of cryonics)
In 1992 I attended a dinner held by Alcor’s people to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the cryosuspension of James Bedford, who has managed to stay frozen after all these years and currently resides at Alcor.

Mike Darwin gave one of his characteristically passionate and learned speeches at this event, where he invoked Joseph Campbell’s ideas popular at the time about the Hero’s Journey. As I recall it, Mike said that James Bedford, an ordinary man, went on a fantastic journey across time to an unknown future, in effect becoming a new kind of mythic hero. Some day, Mike said, Bedford the myth might contribute to reconstituting Bedford the man.

Bedford hasn’t exactly become a household name, but then his suspension happened before most of today’s Americans were born. Kim Suozzi’s struggle and cryosuspension, by contrast, has happened in our awareness and in a different media environment. She may have the potential to become a kind of mythic heroine for the millennial generation. And I would certainly like to see Suozzi the myth become Suozzi the healthy, whole young woman again.

We just need some poets to tell this myth in compelling ways. Stephenie Meyer has demonstrated that a market exists for stories about ordinary mortal women of Kim’s generation who become “reverse Arwens” by rejecting aging and other human limitations.

Steven B. Harris, MD, also wrote about the repurposing of mythological tropes for cryonics purposes years ago in his essay, “Cryonics And The Resurrection Of The Mythic Hero,” which you can read by scrolling down on this page:

http://www.alcor.org/cryonics/cryonics8809.txt

advancedatheist 15 Jun 2015 2:12 UTC
15 points
in reply to: James_Miller’s comment on: Open Thread, Jun. 15 - Jun. 21, 2015
I have a problem with how easily people can position themselves as authority figures in social movements which lack competition or standards to vet the candidates. A genuinely capable person might emerge regardless, but more through good luck than through a good process.

For example, Madalyn Murray O’Hair became America’s most famous atheist in the 1960′s and 1970′s because no one else wanted the job, not because she excelled at it compared with competitors. A mediocre but extroverted and opinionated woman willing to take risks could step into the void of the time and assume that title. Even during her life, many other atheists never bought into her cult of personality and considered her a charlatan.

By contrast, in today’s world, when many atheists have become minor celebrities, often with best selling books, and when atheists even in hick towns like Tulsa’s Seth Andrews can attract followings around the world by setting up websites and uploading podcasts and videos, Madalyn with that kind of competition wouldn’t necessarily stand out as particularly noteworthy.

I see a similar situation with today’s transhumanist scene. Any newcomer on the make with the right sort of personality (the sort I don’t have), willing to exploit social media to present controversial ideas as transhumanist philosophy, could persuade other people into accepting him as a transhumanist authority figure in a relatively short time. It would help if objective standards emerged to assess who deserves this kind of status and who doesn’t.

Now, Zoltan Istvan might do something eventually to show that he has the goods. In the meantime I have misgivings about his activities.