You’re saying the level of confidence to look for is one that would be appropriate for any new medical treatment, rather than (say) the confidence you’d look for when making a change in foreign policy.
One reason we’re so demanding in the realm of medical evidence is because we can be, and since it can be life and death, if we can be we probably should be. In the case of a pill, we can do an RCT, providing high quality, repeatable statistical evidence on its efficacy—so anyone proposing I take a pill who doesn’t have an RCT backing them up is a bit suspicious. In the case of cryonics, I hope it’s clear that it’s not because of a lack of respect for evidence that we’re unable to show you an RCT.
There is absolutely insufficient evidence to have the same confidence in cryonics as we do in, say, ibuprofen for reducing inflammation. Because of this lack of evidence, we have great uncertainty. What we’re trying to ask is, in the face of that uncertainty, how will you make a decision? Is it always appropriate in the medical sphere to choose inaction whenever the evidence in favour of action is only weak and circumstantial?
You’re saying the level of confidence to look for is one that would be appropriate for any new medical treatment, rather than (say) the confidence you’d look for when making a change in foreign policy.
One reason we’re so demanding in the realm of medical evidence is because we can be, and since it can be life and death, if we can be we probably should be. In the case of a pill, we can do an RCT, providing high quality, repeatable statistical evidence on its efficacy—so anyone proposing I take a pill who doesn’t have an RCT backing them up is a bit suspicious. In the case of cryonics, I hope it’s clear that it’s not because of a lack of respect for evidence that we’re unable to show you an RCT.
There is absolutely insufficient evidence to have the same confidence in cryonics as we do in, say, ibuprofen for reducing inflammation. Because of this lack of evidence, we have great uncertainty. What we’re trying to ask is, in the face of that uncertainty, how will you make a decision? Is it always appropriate in the medical sphere to choose inaction whenever the evidence in favour of action is only weak and circumstantial?