I don’t think death is an appropriate punishment for much of anything, but try telling that to the second law of thermodynamics… or for that matter, the state legislature of Texas.
Fiddling around with preferences given a condition of absolute abundance is good for figuring out direction, but not distance. Scarcity and diminishing returns present different challenges. This is not a question of what, but of how badly, of how much would be good enough.
Would you be willing to become batman for this? Say some obnoxious redneck at a Tea Party rally shoots himself in the foot, gets infected, the faith healer can’t fix it so it just gets worse until his whole leg smells like the week after Gettysburg. Would you break into the morgue, cut off his head and have it cryopreserved, at your own expense, against his wishes and the wishes of his surviving family, if you had the cash and were reasonably certain you could get away with it? How much do you care?
I would vote this up because the basic point seems to be valid, but I can’t in good conscious vote up something that has the line about “some obnoxious redneck at a Tea Party rally shoots himself in the foot, gets infected, the faith healer can’t fix it” which is such a long list of unhelpful stereotypes that I don’t know where to start. Politics is the mindkiller, let’s not let it kill any more minds than necessary. The basic point you are asking, how far should one go to cryonicly preserve those who don’t wish to or are ambivalent is a very good point, but the mind-killing and ingroup-outgroup mentality just isn’t helpful.
Incidentally, the Tea Party members itself look to be quite complicated and a surprisingly diverse proportion of the population. While there are some issues where the Tea Party members are factually confused, one of the largest differences between Tea Partiers and the general population seems to be that the Tea Partiers are more pessimistic than the general population. See e.g. here. There’s evidence of glaring ignorance among individual Tea Partiers (such as thinking that Patrick Henry was a great supporter of the Constitution) but there’s no strong evidence that those sort of confused and ignorant views are widespread or that the level of confusion is any worse than the general population. The Tea Partiers are not evil, stupid mutants.
Would you be willing to become batman for this? Say some obnoxious redneck at a Tea Party rally shoots himself in the foot, gets infected, the faith healer can’t fix it so it just gets worse until his whole leg smells like the week after Gettysburg. Would you break into the morgue, cut off his head and have it cryopreserved, at your own expense, against his wishes and the wishes of his surviving family, if you had the cash and were reasonably certain you could get away with it? How much do you care?
To be honest, yes, that does sound like a net moral positive to me. That doesn’t mean there’s no opportunity cost, though; right now that’s probably nowhere near the optimal thing for most people to be doing, even if it wouldn’t be a net negative.
I don’t think death is an appropriate punishment for much of anything, but try telling that to the second law of thermodynamics… or for that matter, the state legislature of Texas.
Fiddling around with preferences given a condition of absolute abundance is good for figuring out direction, but not distance. Scarcity and diminishing returns present different challenges. This is not a question of what, but of how badly, of how much would be good enough.
Would you be willing to become batman for this? Say some obnoxious redneck at a Tea Party rally shoots himself in the foot, gets infected, the faith healer can’t fix it so it just gets worse until his whole leg smells like the week after Gettysburg. Would you break into the morgue, cut off his head and have it cryopreserved, at your own expense, against his wishes and the wishes of his surviving family, if you had the cash and were reasonably certain you could get away with it? How much do you care?
I would vote this up because the basic point seems to be valid, but I can’t in good conscious vote up something that has the line about “some obnoxious redneck at a Tea Party rally shoots himself in the foot, gets infected, the faith healer can’t fix it” which is such a long list of unhelpful stereotypes that I don’t know where to start. Politics is the mindkiller, let’s not let it kill any more minds than necessary. The basic point you are asking, how far should one go to cryonicly preserve those who don’t wish to or are ambivalent is a very good point, but the mind-killing and ingroup-outgroup mentality just isn’t helpful.
Incidentally, the Tea Party members itself look to be quite complicated and a surprisingly diverse proportion of the population. While there are some issues where the Tea Party members are factually confused, one of the largest differences between Tea Partiers and the general population seems to be that the Tea Partiers are more pessimistic than the general population. See e.g. here. There’s evidence of glaring ignorance among individual Tea Partiers (such as thinking that Patrick Henry was a great supporter of the Constitution) but there’s no strong evidence that those sort of confused and ignorant views are widespread or that the level of confusion is any worse than the general population. The Tea Partiers are not evil, stupid mutants.
I know, I was just trying to shake up the “save all humans no matter what” cached thought.
That particular stereotype probably wasn’t the best way I could have handled it. Thank you for your criticism.
To be honest, yes, that does sound like a net moral positive to me. That doesn’t mean there’s no opportunity cost, though; right now that’s probably nowhere near the optimal thing for most people to be doing, even if it wouldn’t be a net negative.