(Edit: after having written this entire giant thing, I notice you saying that this was just a “why are some people not interested in cryo” comment, whereas I very much am trying to change your mind. I don’t like trying to change people’s minds without warning (I thought we were having that sort of discussion, but apparently we aren’t), so here’s warning.)
But it seems that natural death seems like a good point to say “enough is enough.” In other words, letting what’s been given be enough.
You’re aware that your life expectancy is about 4 times that of the people who built the pyramids, even the Pharoahs, right? That assertion seems to basically be slapping all of your ancestors in the face. “I don’t care that you fought and died for me to have a longer, better life; you needn’t have bothered, I’m happy to die whenever”. Seriously: if natural life span is good enough for you, start playing russian roulette once a year around 20 years old; the odds are about right for early humans.
As a sort-of aside, I honestly don’t see a lot of difference between “when I die is fine” and just committing suicide right now. Whatever it is that would stop you from committing suicide should also stop you from wanting to die at any point in the future.
I’m aware this is a minority view, but that doesn’t necessarily make it any less sensible; insert historical examples of once-popular-but-wrong views here.
Most people who try to make all their beliefs fit with all their other beliefs, end up forcing some of the puzzle pieces into wrong-shaped holes.
Then they’ve failed at the actual task, which is to make all of your beliefs fit with reality.
When we get to human values, some of them REALLY ARE in conflict with others,
My values are part of reality. Some of them are more important than others. Some of them contradict each other. Knowing these things is part of what lining my beliefs up with reality means: if my map of reality doesn’t include the fact that some of my values contradict, it’s a pretty bad map.
You seem to have confused people who are trying to force their beliefs to line up witheachother (an easy path to crazy, because you can make any belief line up with any other belief simply by inserting something crazy in the middle; it’s all in your head after all) with people with people who are trying to force their beliefs to line up withreality. It’s a very different process.
Part of reality is that one of my most dominant values, one so dominant that almost no other values touch its power, is the desire to keep existing and to keep the other people I care about existing. I’m aware that this is selfish, and my compromise is that if reviving me will use such resources that other people would starve to death or something, I don’t want to be revived (and I believe my cryo documents specify this; or maybe not, it’s kind of obvious, isn’t it??). I don’t have any difficulty lining up this value with the rest of my values; except for pretty landscapes, everything I value has come from other humans.
In some sense, I don’t try to line this, or any other value, up with reality; I’m basically a moral skeptic. I have beliefs that are composed of both values (“death is bad”) and statements about reality (“cryo has a better chance of saving me from death than cremation”) such that the resulting belief (“cryo is good”) is subservient to both matching up with reality (although I doubt anyone will come up with evidence that cryo is less likely to keep you alive than cremation) and my values, but having values and conforming my beliefs with reality are totally separate things.
Careful with life-expectancy figures from earlier eras. There was a great chance of dying as a baby, and a great chance for women to die of childbirth. Excluding the first—that is, just counting those that made it to, say, 5 years old, and the life-expectancy greatly shoots up, though obviously not as high as now.
As a sort-of aside, I honestly don’t see a lot of difference between “when I die is fine” and just committing suicide right now. Whatever it is that would stop you from committing suicide should also stop you from wanting to die at any point in the future.
An important reason for not dying at the moment is that it would make the people you most care about very distraught. Dying by suicide would make them even more distraught. Signing up for cryonics would not make them less distraught and would lead to social disapproval. Not committing suicide doesn’t require that one place a great deal of intrinsic value in one’s own continued existence.
I think if the only reason you’re staying alive is to stop other people from being sad, you’ve got a psychological bug WRT valuing yourself for your own sake that you really need to work on, but that is (obviously) a personal value judgment. If that is the only reason, though, you’re right, suicide is bad and cryo is as bad or worse.
I imagine that such a person will have a really shitty life whenever people close to them leave or die; sounds really depressing. I can only hope, for their sake, that such a person dies before their significant other(s).
As a sort-of aside, I honestly don’t see a lot of difference between “when I die is fine” and just committing suicide right now. Whatever it is that would stop you from committing suicide should also stop you from wanting to die at any point in the future.
You seem to have confused people who are trying to force their beliefs to line up with each other [...] with people with people who are trying to force their beliefs to line up with reality.
When it comes to our values, there is no “reality”, but we can hope to adjust them to be coherent and consistent under reflection. I think your paragraph “As a sort-of aside” is an example of exactly that kind of moral thinking.
As a sort-of aside, I honestly don’t see a lot of difference between “when I die is fine” and just committing suicide right now. Whatever it is that would stop you from committing suicide should also stop you from wanting to die at any point in the future.
This statement is simply not true in this form. My survival instincts prevent me from committing suicide, but they don’t tell me anything about cryonics. On another thread, VijayKrishnan explained this quite clearly:
We are evolutionarily driven to dislike dying and try to postpone it for as long as possible. However I don’t think we are particularly hardwired to prefer this form of weird cryonic rebirth over never waking up at all. Given that our general preference to not die has nothing fundamental about it, but is rather a case of us following our evolutionary leanings, what makes it so obvious that cryonic rebirth is a good thing.
One can try to construct a low-complexity formalized approximation to our survival instincts. (“This is how you would feel about it if you were smarter.”) I have two issues with this. First, these will not actually be instincts (unless we rewire our brain to make them so). Second, I’m not sure that such a formalization will logically imply cryonics. Here is a sort of counterexample:
On a more abstract level, the important thing about “having a clone in the future” aka survival is that you have the means to influence the future. So in a contrived thought experiment you may objectively prefer choosing “heroic, legendary death that inspires billions” to “long, dull existence”, as the former influences the future more. And this formalization/reinterpretation of survival is, of course, in line with what writers and poets like to tell us.
My survival instincts prevent me from committing suicide, but they don’t tell me anything about cryonics.
Well, your instincts evolved primarily to handle direct, immediate threats to your life. You could say the same thing about smoking cigarettes (or any other health risk): “My survival instincts prevent me from committing suicide, but they don’t tell me anything about whether to smoke or not.”
But your instincts respond to your beliefs about the world. If you know the health risks of smoking, you can use that to trigger your survival instincts, perhaps with the emotional aid of photos or testimony from those with lung cancer. The same is true for cryonics: once you know enough, not signing up for cryonics is another thing that shortens your life, a “slow suicide”.
(Edit: after having written this entire giant thing, I notice you saying that this was just a “why are some people not interested in cryo” comment, whereas I very much am trying to change your mind. I don’t like trying to change people’s minds without warning (I thought we were having that sort of discussion, but apparently we aren’t), so here’s warning.)
You’re aware that your life expectancy is about 4 times that of the people who built the pyramids, even the Pharoahs, right? That assertion seems to basically be slapping all of your ancestors in the face. “I don’t care that you fought and died for me to have a longer, better life; you needn’t have bothered, I’m happy to die whenever”. Seriously: if natural life span is good enough for you, start playing russian roulette once a year around 20 years old; the odds are about right for early humans.
As a sort-of aside, I honestly don’t see a lot of difference between “when I die is fine” and just committing suicide right now. Whatever it is that would stop you from committing suicide should also stop you from wanting to die at any point in the future.
I’m aware this is a minority view, but that doesn’t necessarily make it any less sensible; insert historical examples of once-popular-but-wrong views here.
Then they’ve failed at the actual task, which is to make all of your beliefs fit with reality.
My values are part of reality. Some of them are more important than others. Some of them contradict each other. Knowing these things is part of what lining my beliefs up with reality means: if my map of reality doesn’t include the fact that some of my values contradict, it’s a pretty bad map.
You seem to have confused people who are trying to force their beliefs to line up with each other (an easy path to crazy, because you can make any belief line up with any other belief simply by inserting something crazy in the middle; it’s all in your head after all) with people with people who are trying to force their beliefs to line up with reality. It’s a very different process.
Part of reality is that one of my most dominant values, one so dominant that almost no other values touch its power, is the desire to keep existing and to keep the other people I care about existing. I’m aware that this is selfish, and my compromise is that if reviving me will use such resources that other people would starve to death or something, I don’t want to be revived (and I believe my cryo documents specify this; or maybe not, it’s kind of obvious, isn’t it??). I don’t have any difficulty lining up this value with the rest of my values; except for pretty landscapes, everything I value has come from other humans.
In some sense, I don’t try to line this, or any other value, up with reality; I’m basically a moral skeptic. I have beliefs that are composed of both values (“death is bad”) and statements about reality (“cryo has a better chance of saving me from death than cremation”) such that the resulting belief (“cryo is good”) is subservient to both matching up with reality (although I doubt anyone will come up with evidence that cryo is less likely to keep you alive than cremation) and my values, but having values and conforming my beliefs with reality are totally separate things.
-Robin
Careful with life-expectancy figures from earlier eras. There was a great chance of dying as a baby, and a great chance for women to die of childbirth. Excluding the first—that is, just counting those that made it to, say, 5 years old, and the life-expectancy greatly shoots up, though obviously not as high as now.
An important reason for not dying at the moment is that it would make the people you most care about very distraught. Dying by suicide would make them even more distraught. Signing up for cryonics would not make them less distraught and would lead to social disapproval. Not committing suicide doesn’t require that one place a great deal of intrinsic value in one’s own continued existence.
That’s a really good point.
I think if the only reason you’re staying alive is to stop other people from being sad, you’ve got a psychological bug WRT valuing yourself for your own sake that you really need to work on, but that is (obviously) a personal value judgment. If that is the only reason, though, you’re right, suicide is bad and cryo is as bad or worse.
I imagine that such a person will have a really shitty life whenever people close to them leave or die; sounds really depressing. I can only hope, for their sake, that such a person dies before their significant other(s).
-Robin
This is the Reversal test.
When it comes to our values, there is no “reality”, but we can hope to adjust them to be coherent and consistent under reflection. I think your paragraph “As a sort-of aside” is an example of exactly that kind of moral thinking.
This statement is simply not true in this form. My survival instincts prevent me from committing suicide, but they don’t tell me anything about cryonics. On another thread, VijayKrishnan explained this quite clearly:
One can try to construct a low-complexity formalized approximation to our survival instincts. (“This is how you would feel about it if you were smarter.”) I have two issues with this. First, these will not actually be instincts (unless we rewire our brain to make them so). Second, I’m not sure that such a formalization will logically imply cryonics. Here is a sort of counterexample:
On a more abstract level, the important thing about “having a clone in the future” aka survival is that you have the means to influence the future. So in a contrived thought experiment you may objectively prefer choosing “heroic, legendary death that inspires billions” to “long, dull existence”, as the former influences the future more. And this formalization/reinterpretation of survival is, of course, in line with what writers and poets like to tell us.
Well, your instincts evolved primarily to handle direct, immediate threats to your life. You could say the same thing about smoking cigarettes (or any other health risk): “My survival instincts prevent me from committing suicide, but they don’t tell me anything about whether to smoke or not.”
But your instincts respond to your beliefs about the world. If you know the health risks of smoking, you can use that to trigger your survival instincts, perhaps with the emotional aid of photos or testimony from those with lung cancer. The same is true for cryonics: once you know enough, not signing up for cryonics is another thing that shortens your life, a “slow suicide”.