First, your conclusion sounds very off-base. You are not only saying that society at large is failing to evaluate cryonics rationally, you are saying that this is a symptom of an incipient civilization-ending comprehensive failure of rationality, brought on by processes endogenous to cultural and institutional development.
I think we would agree that certain foreseeable future technologies are a civilization-ending threat in themselves. So what am I to make of your idea that on top of this, we are also facing, a la Spengler or Toynbee, doom from within? It could be an excessive gloomy supposition by someone depressed at society’s failure to deal with the imminent concrete existential risks. It was always going to be difficult to deal with those technologies, on account of their complexity and historical novelty. There is no particular need to postulate unusual systemic blockages to rational innovation that are peculiar to the present.
Do you see what I’m saying? You’re embracing an unnecessarily pessimistic perspective on the world’s rationality—namely, that it’s in a radically downward cycle, destroying itself, losing its “ability to respond coherently to threats”—and I think this is motivated largely by your own status as a mostly ignored advocate of certain innovative concepts. It’s a little like people who think the world is ending because they personally are dying. Huge innovations never happen easily and there is no need to posit that today’s big innovations are struggling because they’re in a milieu of civilizational decline. There surely are phenomena specific to the present which are degrading collective rationality, but I don’t believe that’s one of them.
I also have some problems with this whole near-mode, far-mode theory (it’s called “construal level theory”, if anyone wants to look it up). It seems like it’s partly a theoretical construct (a grouping of disparate tendencies under a single name), rather than a completely objective psychological reality.
For what it’s worth, I don’t see this as a tiding of doom. On net, it’s probably a good thing because it gives us more time until AGI. It is a general-purpose argument for contrarianism over majoritarianism, of the sort that an extreme contrarian like myself might propose as a unifying principle.
I used to think construal level theory didn’t ring true, but practically everything in psychology is a ‘theoretical construct’. So, of course, are atoms in physics and heliocentricism in astronomy.
In the comments on Safety is not Safe, I saw little disagreement with the thesis that civilization-ending threats lurk everywhere, and we lack the mental tools to perceive them; let alone avert them; that, in fact, every previous civilization has had the same defect and been brought low by it.
This doesn’t sound substantially different from “an incipient civilization-ending comprehensive failure of rationality, brought on by processes endogenous to cultural and institutional development.” If we proceed from the conclusions of Safety is not Safe, The remaining questions are whether natural far-mode thinkers decreasing their relative fitness is one of these problems, and whether society’s failure to grasp cryonics is a sign of this problem.
First, your conclusion sounds very off-base. You are not only saying that society at large is failing to evaluate cryonics rationally, you are saying that this is a symptom of an incipient civilization-ending comprehensive failure of rationality, brought on by processes endogenous to cultural and institutional development.
I think we would agree that certain foreseeable future technologies are a civilization-ending threat in themselves. So what am I to make of your idea that on top of this, we are also facing, a la Spengler or Toynbee, doom from within? It could be an excessive gloomy supposition by someone depressed at society’s failure to deal with the imminent concrete existential risks. It was always going to be difficult to deal with those technologies, on account of their complexity and historical novelty. There is no particular need to postulate unusual systemic blockages to rational innovation that are peculiar to the present.
Do you see what I’m saying? You’re embracing an unnecessarily pessimistic perspective on the world’s rationality—namely, that it’s in a radically downward cycle, destroying itself, losing its “ability to respond coherently to threats”—and I think this is motivated largely by your own status as a mostly ignored advocate of certain innovative concepts. It’s a little like people who think the world is ending because they personally are dying. Huge innovations never happen easily and there is no need to posit that today’s big innovations are struggling because they’re in a milieu of civilizational decline. There surely are phenomena specific to the present which are degrading collective rationality, but I don’t believe that’s one of them.
I also have some problems with this whole near-mode, far-mode theory (it’s called “construal level theory”, if anyone wants to look it up). It seems like it’s partly a theoretical construct (a grouping of disparate tendencies under a single name), rather than a completely objective psychological reality.
For what it’s worth, I don’t see this as a tiding of doom. On net, it’s probably a good thing because it gives us more time until AGI. It is a general-purpose argument for contrarianism over majoritarianism, of the sort that an extreme contrarian like myself might propose as a unifying principle.
I used to think construal level theory didn’t ring true, but practically everything in psychology is a ‘theoretical construct’. So, of course, are atoms in physics and heliocentricism in astronomy.
In the comments on Safety is not Safe, I saw little disagreement with the thesis that civilization-ending threats lurk everywhere, and we lack the mental tools to perceive them; let alone avert them; that, in fact, every previous civilization has had the same defect and been brought low by it.
This doesn’t sound substantially different from “an incipient civilization-ending comprehensive failure of rationality, brought on by processes endogenous to cultural and institutional development.” If we proceed from the conclusions of Safety is not Safe, The remaining questions are whether natural far-mode thinkers decreasing their relative fitness is one of these problems, and whether society’s failure to grasp cryonics is a sign of this problem.