A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
Other paraphrases:
Truth never triumphs—its opponents just die out.
Science advances one funeral at a time.
Might edit in my thoughts on the post later on. Probably not in depth, the Cliff notes would go something like
Naturally humans developed coping mechanisms to deal with the inevitability of dying. It would be surprising to find such mitigation methods not only diminishing the negative impact of someone close to you dying, but to actually change the sign (“get out of it stronger”). Like a car bumper which not only lessens crash damage, but actually improves the car upon impact.
Indeed, death is an integral part of the natural selection cycle, and may have various societal benefits. Let’s assume that was the whole of it, hypothetically, no negative societal downsides. So now what? Now this: I don’t care. I want neither me nor my loved ones to die, and societal consequences be damned. That doesn’t mean that ceteris paribus I don’t want to benefit society (I do), but not given the price of family dying, in which case ceteris ain’t paribus, as the saying goes.
The real Achilles’ heel of anti-deathism I’d see in the fuzzy definitions of identity / continuity of one’s personal identity / continuity of consciousness in the first place. It’s not reasoning via Sorites Paradox (“if you can’t exactly delineate heaps of sand versus grains of sands, then no heaps can exist”), it’s pointing out that commonly accepted concepts integral to anti-deathism are so fuzzy and contradictory that once you start pulling out the fuzzy strands, the whole tapestry is unraveled. The teleporter problem does to common concepts of identity what Parfit’s does to layman decision theories—it fucks them.
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
Getting stuck on certain ideas might be just a side effect of the aging/degrading brain and not necessarily depend on the years lived with an idea. Of course, if you live years with confirmation bias and sunk costs et al, you might have a lot of accumulated bias to counter. I think sunk costs is the most important psychological explanation for this phenomenom if biology is out, but might not make much sense to an immortal.
I don’t see these biases tied to biology exclusively. Basically these are plausible heuristics and optimizations of cognitive and social processes. Some mechanisms are needed. And even with much better algorithms you might still got stuck in local optimum.
Other paraphrases:
Might edit in my thoughts on the post later on. Probably not in depth, the Cliff notes would go something like
Naturally humans developed coping mechanisms to deal with the inevitability of dying. It would be surprising to find such mitigation methods not only diminishing the negative impact of someone close to you dying, but to actually change the sign (“get out of it stronger”). Like a car bumper which not only lessens crash damage, but actually improves the car upon impact.
Indeed, death is an integral part of the natural selection cycle, and may have various societal benefits. Let’s assume that was the whole of it, hypothetically, no negative societal downsides. So now what? Now this: I don’t care. I want neither me nor my loved ones to die, and societal consequences be damned. That doesn’t mean that ceteris paribus I don’t want to benefit society (I do), but not given the price of family dying, in which case ceteris ain’t paribus, as the saying goes.
The real Achilles’ heel of anti-deathism I’d see in the fuzzy definitions of identity / continuity of one’s personal identity / continuity of consciousness in the first place. It’s not reasoning via Sorites Paradox (“if you can’t exactly delineate heaps of sand versus grains of sands, then no heaps can exist”), it’s pointing out that commonly accepted concepts integral to anti-deathism are so fuzzy and contradictory that once you start pulling out the fuzzy strands, the whole tapestry is unraveled. The teleporter problem does to common concepts of identity what Parfit’s does to layman decision theories—it fucks them.
Getting stuck on certain ideas might be just a side effect of the aging/degrading brain and not necessarily depend on the years lived with an idea. Of course, if you live years with confirmation bias and sunk costs et al, you might have a lot of accumulated bias to counter. I think sunk costs is the most important psychological explanation for this phenomenom if biology is out, but might not make much sense to an immortal.
I don’t see these biases tied to biology exclusively. Basically these are plausible heuristics and optimizations of cognitive and social processes. Some mechanisms are needed. And even with much better algorithms you might still got stuck in local optimum.