Eliezer, I’ve been pondering reconciliation between male and female sex/relationship preferences for a while, so I really like this line of thought:
Eliezer said:
The male shadows and the female shadows are pretty much agreed that (real) men need to be able to better read female minds; but since this is a satisfaction of a relatively more “female” desire—making men more what women wish they were—the male shadows ask in return that the sex-drive mismatch be handled more by increasing the female sex drive, and less by decreasing male desire...
This is what pickup artists in the seduction community are doing: getting better at reading women’s minds (through evolutionary psychology and pseudo-empirical observation/testing), and attracting women such that women’s sexual interest is aroused. When you have studied pickup, you realize that a large amount of the gap between male and female desires is due to societally-enforced incompetence with the opposite sex, on the part of both sexes. Of course, male pickup artists are stacking the deck in their direction, according to male-typical relationship preferences (which include relationships, but which are stacking in the casual direction a bit more than female-typical preferences). Hopefully, a counterpart to male pickup will become available to women which will give women a level of insight into male sexual psychology similar to what pickup artists have into female sexual psychology (not that many women don’t already have this type of savvy).
Once the opposite sex’s preferences and behaviors stop looking so black-boxy, I think there will be greater potential for harmony between the sexes.
Tim Walters said: By that logic, one should pay to have prayers said for one’s soul.
Even if the probability of cryonics revival is miniscule, I would still bet that it’s higher than (a) the existence of a deity, (b) who could be effectively prayed to, (c) who would care about my prayers and answer them, and (d) the existence of a soul separate from material existence.
Bill Mill said: Thought experiment: tomorrow, John Q. Scientist reveals that he can, for the cost of $1 million, revive any person who has been cryogenically frozen. Say 1000 people are frozen cryogenically in an acceptable state right now. Do we revive them? Why? What if they will only get (maybe) another year? 5 years? 10 years? Who pays for it? What if it’s $100 million?
But it wouldn’t happen tomorrow. It would happen far enough in the future that the present (which will be the past, by then) will be interesting for historical reasons. If we would revive frozen people from the 1800′s, why wouldn’t we? From my view of human psychology, many of us would be thrilled to bring back people from 100+ years ago. The main barrier would be the cost, assuming the technology was there. And the more people we unfreeze, the more economies of scale come into play. The price of reviving people will only go down as time passes, due to technology improving.
Of course, we could have a scenario where museums pay to revive us, and then keep us as an exhibit to recoup the cost. That would make a great sci-fi story.