I believe you’ve largely missed the point. Nothing in my post was about proving anything; rather, my point was that the evidencial priors for these two fields are vastly, vastly different. Both cryonics and bamboo antennas are ‘unproven’, as are the existence of gravity, the sun, you, and invisible pink unicorns. However, the priors for these things are not the same.
Bamboo antennas, homeopathy, and medical snake oil have large priors against them, those priors being that the laws of physics directly contradict thier functioning. The laws of physics must be changed to allow them to work.
Cryonics on the other hand, is not crippled by this. The laws of physics as we know them allow it and would have to be modified to prevent cryonics from working.
This is an extremely important, extremely large difference. It is not a minor barrier, it is not a minor hurdle. The laws of physics are very well understood, supported by a huge quantity of experimental evidence, and extremely comprehensive. Anything that requires updates or modifications to those laws by default has an extremely high burden of proof, one orders upon orders of magnitude higher than things which do not require changes to those laws.
Bamboo antennas, homeopathy, and medical snake oil have large priors against them, those priors being that the laws of physics directly contradict thier functioning. The laws of physics must be changed to allow them to work.
That’s true for bamboo antennas and homeopathy, although it wasn’t true w.r.t. the epistemic beliefs of those who originally proposed them. It isn’t however true for snake oil. There is nothing in the laws of physics that allows us to claim that snake oil doesn’t have curative properties, or that a weird stem cell concoction doesn’t cure neurodegenerative diseases, and so on. Nevertheless, we don’t believe that these things work because the burden of evidence is on the proponents, and the proponents failed to substantiate their claim of effectiveness.
Cryonics is exactly in the same class as these unproven medical procedures.
Cryonics on the other hand, is not crippled by this. The laws of physics as we know them allow it and would have to be modified to prevent cryonics from working.
The claim that the law of physics as we know would have to be changed to prevent cryonics from working is factually false. I challenge you to substantiate it.
I believe you’ve largely missed the point. Nothing in my post was about proving anything; rather, my point was that the evidencial priors for these two fields are vastly, vastly different. Both cryonics and bamboo antennas are ‘unproven’, as are the existence of gravity, the sun, you, and invisible pink unicorns. However, the priors for these things are not the same.
Bamboo antennas, homeopathy, and medical snake oil have large priors against them, those priors being that the laws of physics directly contradict thier functioning. The laws of physics must be changed to allow them to work.
Cryonics on the other hand, is not crippled by this. The laws of physics as we know them allow it and would have to be modified to prevent cryonics from working.
This is an extremely important, extremely large difference. It is not a minor barrier, it is not a minor hurdle. The laws of physics are very well understood, supported by a huge quantity of experimental evidence, and extremely comprehensive. Anything that requires updates or modifications to those laws by default has an extremely high burden of proof, one orders upon orders of magnitude higher than things which do not require changes to those laws.
That’s true for bamboo antennas and homeopathy, although it wasn’t true w.r.t. the epistemic beliefs of those who originally proposed them.
It isn’t however true for snake oil. There is nothing in the laws of physics that allows us to claim that snake oil doesn’t have curative properties, or that a weird stem cell concoction doesn’t cure neurodegenerative diseases, and so on.
Nevertheless, we don’t believe that these things work because the burden of evidence is on the proponents, and the proponents failed to substantiate their claim of effectiveness.
Cryonics is exactly in the same class as these unproven medical procedures.
The claim that the law of physics as we know would have to be changed to prevent cryonics from working is factually false. I challenge you to substantiate it.