There is a total lack of evidence in support of resurrecting a frozen human because its never been done and as of now nobody knows if it is even possible.
Others have already addressed this claim but I’d like to address it another way briefly. In particular, just because a specific technological goal has not yet been achieved does not mean there is no evidence for that goal. If one said in 1968 that there was no evidence that humans could go to the Moon that would be regarded as likely incorrect. Here’s a brief list of technologies we don’t have today. I’d be deeply surprised if you don’t consider it likely that we’ll have at least some of these at some point in the future: 1) practical fusion power, 2) A human mission to Mars 3) Substantial life extension 4) direct brain-computer interfaces.
All of these examples fit your model of being technologies which we don’t have yet. The third example, life extension seems particularly relevant. Based on your comment above I’m pretty sure you would not be willing to say “There is a total lack of evidence in support of substantial life extension of humans because its never been done and as of now nobody knows if it is even possible.”
This kind of rebuttal absolutely fails, because it simply doesn’t address the point. You’re taking the OP completely out of context. The OP is arguing against cryonics evidence in the context of having to dish out substantial money. The pro-cryonics LW community asserts that you must pay money if you believe in cryonics, since it’s the only rational decision, or some such logic. In response, critics (such as the OP) contend that cryonics evidence isn’t sufficient to justify paying money. This is totally different from asserting that you don’t believe in cryonics or the possibility of cryonics out of context.
In your examples, you don’t have to pay out of your wallet if you believe that 1) practical fusion power, 2) human mission to Mars, 3) substantial life extension exists. These examples are misleading.
Take your beliefs seriously. If you believe something, you must accept all consequences; if you don’t accept some consequences, you must stop believing. The alternative is hypocrisy, compartmentalization, curiosity-stopping.
Paying money is a decision made based on your beliefs, not the other way around. You are not allowed to change your beliefs based on the decisions your beliefs suggest, only on evidence pertaining to the beliefs themselves.
Perhaps Sam can clarify his remarks but that’s strongly not what I got from the context. That argument has some validity, but he actually wrote:
How in the world can you assign any value to that proposal? There is a total lack of evidence in support of resurrecting a frozen human because its never been done and as of now nobody knows if it is even possible. So essentially cryonics is a way to spend money on a one in a million chance you might be revived in the future. Why? I would much rather bet on life extension then cryonics.
He didn’t say one needs to assign low value to the probability that it will happen but had a problem assigning “any value” due to a “total lack of evidence.” That sounds like a much stronger claim especially when he then refers to making a “bet” by comparison on life extension. If that is what Sam meant, I’d be particularly curious what the monetary level would be where he’d sign up.
Incidentally, the claim that because a technology does not yet exist we must assign it a very low probability of arising seems almost trivially false. The largest hard drives today are in the 2-4 terabyte range. I’m pretty willing to bet that we will see 10 terabyte hard drives pretty soon and almost certainly will eventually. The only major ways for this not to happen are a very large scale catastrophe or the discovery of new technologies that render large hard drives unnecessary. Thus, the tiny chance of this not occurring is even smaller if one instead talks about compact data storage objects in the 10 TB range.
One can use other examples which are slightly less trivial. Currently, the best Go programs are in the mid to low dan rankings. But I don’t think anyone seriously thinks that because no one has demonstrated a better program that the probability of such programs arising is therefore very low.
The argument type used fails even more badly when one is talking about something like cryonics where we don’t even need the technology soon, it just needs to eventually exist.
This argument might be different if Sam focused on technical aspects that would make cryonics difficult in the long-term or if one focused on sociological aspects (which he did briefly touch upon but not in any detail). But the argument being dealt with by my comment seems to focus simply on the claimed lack of “evidence” due to the technology not yet existing. That style argument fails.
M, but that doesn’t seem to be what SamAdams said. He didn’t just say the probability was low enough for it to not be worth it, he said “There is a total lack of evidence in support of resurrecting a frozen human because its never been done and as of now nobody knows if it is even possible.” Admittedly, he did say immediately afterward, “So essentially cryonics is a way to spend money on a one in a million chance you might be revived in the future. ” So that seems to be a little inconsistent? I would think that if things really were as he described before, one in a million would be quite an overestimate.
Others have already addressed this claim but I’d like to address it another way briefly. In particular, just because a specific technological goal has not yet been achieved does not mean there is no evidence for that goal. If one said in 1968 that there was no evidence that humans could go to the Moon that would be regarded as likely incorrect. Here’s a brief list of technologies we don’t have today. I’d be deeply surprised if you don’t consider it likely that we’ll have at least some of these at some point in the future: 1) practical fusion power, 2) A human mission to Mars 3) Substantial life extension 4) direct brain-computer interfaces.
All of these examples fit your model of being technologies which we don’t have yet. The third example, life extension seems particularly relevant. Based on your comment above I’m pretty sure you would not be willing to say “There is a total lack of evidence in support of substantial life extension of humans because its never been done and as of now nobody knows if it is even possible.”
This kind of rebuttal absolutely fails, because it simply doesn’t address the point. You’re taking the OP completely out of context. The OP is arguing against cryonics evidence in the context of having to dish out substantial money. The pro-cryonics LW community asserts that you must pay money if you believe in cryonics, since it’s the only rational decision, or some such logic. In response, critics (such as the OP) contend that cryonics evidence isn’t sufficient to justify paying money. This is totally different from asserting that you don’t believe in cryonics or the possibility of cryonics out of context.
In your examples, you don’t have to pay out of your wallet if you believe that 1) practical fusion power, 2) human mission to Mars, 3) substantial life extension exists. These examples are misleading.
Take your beliefs seriously. If you believe something, you must accept all consequences; if you don’t accept some consequences, you must stop believing. The alternative is hypocrisy, compartmentalization, curiosity-stopping.
Paying money is a decision made based on your beliefs, not the other way around. You are not allowed to change your beliefs based on the decisions your beliefs suggest, only on evidence pertaining to the beliefs themselves.
Perhaps Sam can clarify his remarks but that’s strongly not what I got from the context. That argument has some validity, but he actually wrote:
He didn’t say one needs to assign low value to the probability that it will happen but had a problem assigning “any value” due to a “total lack of evidence.” That sounds like a much stronger claim especially when he then refers to making a “bet” by comparison on life extension. If that is what Sam meant, I’d be particularly curious what the monetary level would be where he’d sign up.
Incidentally, the claim that because a technology does not yet exist we must assign it a very low probability of arising seems almost trivially false. The largest hard drives today are in the 2-4 terabyte range. I’m pretty willing to bet that we will see 10 terabyte hard drives pretty soon and almost certainly will eventually. The only major ways for this not to happen are a very large scale catastrophe or the discovery of new technologies that render large hard drives unnecessary. Thus, the tiny chance of this not occurring is even smaller if one instead talks about compact data storage objects in the 10 TB range.
One can use other examples which are slightly less trivial. Currently, the best Go programs are in the mid to low dan rankings. But I don’t think anyone seriously thinks that because no one has demonstrated a better program that the probability of such programs arising is therefore very low.
The argument type used fails even more badly when one is talking about something like cryonics where we don’t even need the technology soon, it just needs to eventually exist.
This argument might be different if Sam focused on technical aspects that would make cryonics difficult in the long-term or if one focused on sociological aspects (which he did briefly touch upon but not in any detail). But the argument being dealt with by my comment seems to focus simply on the claimed lack of “evidence” due to the technology not yet existing. That style argument fails.
M, but that doesn’t seem to be what SamAdams said. He didn’t just say the probability was low enough for it to not be worth it, he said “There is a total lack of evidence in support of resurrecting a frozen human because its never been done and as of now nobody knows if it is even possible.” Admittedly, he did say immediately afterward, “So essentially cryonics is a way to spend money on a one in a million chance you might be revived in the future. ” So that seems to be a little inconsistent? I would think that if things really were as he described before, one in a million would be quite an overestimate.
So would it be right to say your objection is based on the expected utility of working cryonics instead of its probability?