“After event W happens, everyone will see the truth of proposition X, leading them to endorse Y and agree with me about policy decision Z.”
Isn’t this just a standard application of Bayesianism? I.e. after event W happens, people will consider proposition X to be somewhat more likely, thereby making them more favorable to Y and Z. The stronger evidence event W is, the more people will update and the further they will update. But no one piece of evidence is likely to totally convince everyone immediately, nor should it.
For instance, if “a 2-year-old mouse is rejuvenated to allow 3 years of additional life” that’s some evidence for lifespan extension and I would update accordingly, but not all the way to infinite life extension is obviously possible and worthy of reshaping the economy around. If a two-year old mouse trained in a maze is rejuvenated and still remembers the maze it was trained in, that’s much stronger evidence for useful lifespan extension, and I start to think maybe we should fund a Manhattan Project for human rejuvenation. If a 20-year-old signing chimpanzee is rejuvenated to allow 30 years of additional life, and still remembers how to sign, and perhaps can tell us facts from its previous life, that’s really strong evidence. (Though that might actually require language skills beyond those of a non-rejuvenated signing chimpanzee.)
On the other hand, if the two-year old mouse is rejuvenated but seems to have forgotten the maze, or the chimpanzee is rejuvenated, but not only has forgotten how to sign, but is demonstrably mentally handicapped relative to other chimpanzees, that’s actually evidence against life extension.
The wheel of progress turns slowly but it does turn. Expecting no one to update at all on new evidence is as equally wrong as expecting everyone to update from 0 to 1 overnight. After event W happens, most scientists who know what W means, young and old, will increase their estimate of the truth of proposition X; and after event W2, and then W3, happen they’ll update still more. I’ve seen this happen repeatedly over my lifetime. For instance, in the last 20 years pretty much all astrophysicists have come to believe in a positive cosmological constant, dark matter, and dark energy, as implausible as those ideas sounded 40 years ago, because the evidence has piled up one observation at a time. Certainly some astrophysicists have retired and died and been replaced in those 20 years; but absolutely those scientists remaining have changed their minds. The rest of society will follow along as soon as it becomes important for them to do so. In astrophysics that day of relevance may never come, but in more down-to-earth subjects it may take years but not a lifetime’s worth of years.
“After event W happens, everyone will see the truth of proposition X, leading them to endorse Y and agree with me about policy decision Z.”
Isn’t this just a standard application of Bayesianism? I.e. after event W happens, people will consider proposition X to be somewhat more likely, thereby making them more favorable to Y and Z. The stronger evidence event W is, the more people will update and the further they will update. But no one piece of evidence is likely to totally convince everyone immediately, nor should it.
For instance, if “a 2-year-old mouse is rejuvenated to allow 3 years of additional life” that’s some evidence for lifespan extension and I would update accordingly, but not all the way to infinite life extension is obviously possible and worthy of reshaping the economy around. If a two-year old mouse trained in a maze is rejuvenated and still remembers the maze it was trained in, that’s much stronger evidence for useful lifespan extension, and I start to think maybe we should fund a Manhattan Project for human rejuvenation. If a 20-year-old signing chimpanzee is rejuvenated to allow 30 years of additional life, and still remembers how to sign, and perhaps can tell us facts from its previous life, that’s really strong evidence. (Though that might actually require language skills beyond those of a non-rejuvenated signing chimpanzee.)
On the other hand, if the two-year old mouse is rejuvenated but seems to have forgotten the maze, or the chimpanzee is rejuvenated, but not only has forgotten how to sign, but is demonstrably mentally handicapped relative to other chimpanzees, that’s actually evidence against life extension.
The wheel of progress turns slowly but it does turn. Expecting no one to update at all on new evidence is as equally wrong as expecting everyone to update from 0 to 1 overnight. After event W happens, most scientists who know what W means, young and old, will increase their estimate of the truth of proposition X; and after event W2, and then W3, happen they’ll update still more. I’ve seen this happen repeatedly over my lifetime. For instance, in the last 20 years pretty much all astrophysicists have come to believe in a positive cosmological constant, dark matter, and dark energy, as implausible as those ideas sounded 40 years ago, because the evidence has piled up one observation at a time. Certainly some astrophysicists have retired and died and been replaced in those 20 years; but absolutely those scientists remaining have changed their minds. The rest of society will follow along as soon as it becomes important for them to do so. In astrophysics that day of relevance may never come, but in more down-to-earth subjects it may take years but not a lifetime’s worth of years.