Upvoted because this is a good critique. My rationale for using this scale is that I was less interested in absolute interest in cryonics and more in relative interest in cryonics between groups. The data and my code are publicly available, so if you are bothered by it, then you should do your own analysis.
Andy_McKenzie
Karma: 952
A review of cryonics/brain preservation in 2016
How computational approaches can contribute to brain preservation research
Stand-up comedy as a way to improve rationality skills
I used ingres’s excellent LW 2016 survey data set to do some analyses on the extended LW community’s interest in cryonics. Fair warning, the stats are pretty basic and descriptive. Here it is: http://www.brainpreservation.org/interest-in-cryonics-from-the-less-wrong-2016-survey/
You didn’t explain anything about the evolution of your thoughts related to cryonics/brain preservation in particular. Why is that?
I’m a PhD student in genomics (read: argument to authority). Regulatory issues are definitely important and largely an impediment that should be removed, imo. That said, I think the larger issue is capturing and integrating good phenotypic and disease state data into datasets. Although there are large genomics data sets available, generally they have pretty sparse and poorly annotated phenotypic data. This is actually tied to other regulatory issues related to medicine. If you think this is important, please do consider getting involved in the area.
Yes. This is part of the mission of the Brain Preservation Foundation. The American Cryonics Society is also in this space, I believe.
What should cleonid do instead (if anything)? And even if something is not true in general, could it still be used as an approximation?
Great! Please feel free to also contact Ken Hayworth if you are interested in more information: http://brainpreservation.org/content/contact
What does “adequately funded” mean in this context? Certainly labs at the Buck Insitute could easily expand in personal or experiments given more money. Importantly, SENS and BI also collaborate, and many SENS grant dollars are awarded to scientists at BI (I don’t know the exact numbers, but last time I looked into it, this was the case).
If you think that there is promise in brain preservation (e.g., cryonics), your money may also be highly leveraged if you donate to the Brain Preservation Foundation (disclosure: I’m a volunteer for BPF). Cryonics is not a static technology—this is the #1 lesson from Mike Darwin’s blog, who is probably the most knowledgeable person about cryonics alive. And other technologies for brain preservation, such as aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation, are possible. BPF has a track record of providing grants that has already led to promising research avenues. However, there is basically no funding for this research, as publicly evidenced by the fact that BPF’s two largest donations over the past two years have been for $1000 each.
Cool. You might also find my attempt at this interesting: http://lesswrong.com/lw/csf/which_cognitive_biases_should_we_trust_in/
This is fantastic and each entry is in good format to be converted to SRS (eg, Anki) cards, either backwards or forwards.
With regard to your first question, you could also
A) plan to move to a hospice near a facility when you are near to death
and/or
B) arrange for standby to transfer you after legal death.
Of course, there are many trade-offs involved with either. In my estimation, the most useful thing would be for you to get engaged in a local community and try to push forward on basic research and logistical issues involved, although obviously that is not an easy task.
With regard to your second question, as with everything in cryonics, this has been endlessly discussed. See a good article by Mike Dawrin on the topic here: http://chronopause.com/chronopause.com/index.php/2011/08/11/the-kurzwild-man-in-the-night/index.html
This is a widely discussed topic. See, eg, here: http://mindclones.blogspot.com/?m=1
Great post, but IMO not that compelling of a title. Maybe add like ”, or, Why God Mode is Super Lame.”
Thanks for your response and not to be argumentative, but honest question: doesn’t that mean that you want some forms of AI research to slow down, at least on a relative scale?
I personally don’t see any thing wrong with this stance, but it seems to me like you’re trying to suggest that this trade-off doesn’t exist, and that’s not at all what I took from reading Bostrom’s Superintelligence.
That we want to stop AI research. We don’t. Current AI research is very far from the risky areas and abilities. And it’s risk aware AI researchers that are most likely to figure out how to make safe AI.
Is it really the case that nobody interested in AI risk/safety wants to stop or slow down progress in AI research? It seemed to me there was perhaps at least substantial minority that wanted to do this, to buy time.
I think this is a good point, although I think that a Givewell-like site theoretically could compare charities in a particular domain in which outcomes aren’t easily measurable. Just because things aren’t easily measurable doesn’t mean that they are unmeasurable.