I am a little bothered by the scale you used—on a scale from 0-5 where:
0: no and don’t want to sign up
1: no, still considering it.
2: no, would like to but can’t afford it.
etc. towards more interested in cryonics.
If we take an ordinary human who has barely even heard that cryonics is a real thing—the entry point to the scale is somewhere between 0 and 1 on the 6 point scale. Which means that as much as we have detailed data of states above 1; we don’t have detailed data of states below 1. Which means that we potentially only recorded half the story; and with that; we have unrepresentative data that skews positively towards cryonics.
Upvoted because this is a good critique. My rationale for using this scale is that I was less interested in absolute interest in cryonics and more in relative interest in cryonics between groups. The data and my code are publicly available, so if you are bothered by it, then you should do your own analysis.
I am bothered by it to the extent that it was confusing because it was not automatically representative of the “absolute interest in cryonic” as you called it, but with what I pointed out in mind it is possible to still take the data as good information. (so not bothered enough to do my own analysis)
Interesting that Lesswrongers are 50,000 times more likely to sign up for cryonics than the general population. I had previously heard criticism of Lesswrong, that if we really believe in cryonics, it’s irrational that so few are signed up.
Also surprising that vegetarianism correlates with cryonics interest.
That’s no-win given that ideas generally held on LW imply that we should sign up for cryonics.
There’s nothing necessarily unfair about that. Suppose some group’s professed beliefs imply that the sun goes around the earth; then you may say that members of the group are inconsistent if they aren’t geocentrists, and crazy if they are. No win, indeed, but the problem is that their group’s professed beliefs imply something crazy.
In this case, I don’t think it’s clear there is such a thing as LW’s professed beliefs, it’s not clear that if there are they imply that we should sign up for cryonics, and I don’t think signing up for cryonics is particularly crazy. So I’m not exactly endorsing the no-win side of this. But it looks like you’re making a complaint about the logical structure of the criticism that would invalidate some perfectly reasonable criticisms of (other?) groups and their members.
it looks like you’re making a complaint about the logical structure of the criticism
Nope. I’m making a guess that this particular argument looked like a good soldier and so was sent into battle; a mirror-image argument would also look like a good soldier and would also be sent into the same battle. Logical structure is an irrelevant detail X-/
Right, but what about the people who say they strongly believe in cryonics, have income high enough to afford it (and the insurance isn’t that expensive actually), yet haven’t signed up? I.e. “cryocrastinators”. There are a lot of those on the survey results every year.
I believe this was the argument used, that Lesswronger’s aren’t very instrumentally rational, or good at actually getting things done. Again, I can’t find the post in question, it’s possible it was deleted.
What does “we really believe” mean? That seems like something we categorically don’t do.
(1) We don’t hold group belief but individuals have different beliefs. (2) We think in terms of probability that are different for different people It seems criticism like that comes from people who don’t understand that we aren’t a religion that specicies what everybody has to believe.
If the people who belief that cryonics works with >0.3 are signed up for cryonics when available while the people who think it only works with ~0.1 are not signed up I don’t see any sign of irrationality.
If the people who belief that cryonics works with >0.3 are signed up for cryonics when available while the people who think it only works with ~0.1 are not signed up I don’t see any sign of irrationality.
Has anybody looked at the data set to check if that’s indeed the case?
I was just summarizing something I remember reading. I searched for every keyword I can think of but I can’t find it.
But I swear there was a post highly critical of lesswrong, and one of the arguments was that. That if such a high percentage of lesswrongers believe in cryonics, why are so few signed up? It was an argument that lesswrong is ineffective.
It was just interesting to me to see the most recent statistics, and a lot of people are signed up, and certainly much higher than the general population.
It would be an argument that lesswrongers are not perfect. Also “lesswrongers” includes people who merely read the website once in a while.
I am completely unsurprised by the fact that mere reading LW articles doesn’t make people perfect.
I would be more bothered by finding out that “lesswrongers” are less rational than the average population, or just some large enough control group that I could easily join instead of LW. But the numbers abour cryonics do not show that.
I think that if LWers are 50,000 times more likely to do something than the general population, that proves neither rationality nor irrationality. It just shows that LWers are chosen by an extremely selective process.
I used ingres’s excellent LW 2016 survey data set to do some analyses on the extended LW community’s interest in cryonics. Fair warning, the stats are pretty basic and descriptive. Here it is: http://www.brainpreservation.org/interest-in-cryonics-from-the-less-wrong-2016-survey/
I am a little bothered by the scale you used—on a scale from 0-5 where:
0: no and don’t want to sign up 1: no, still considering it. 2: no, would like to but can’t afford it. etc. towards more interested in cryonics.
If we take an ordinary human who has barely even heard that cryonics is a real thing—the entry point to the scale is somewhere between 0 and 1 on the 6 point scale. Which means that as much as we have detailed data of states above 1; we don’t have detailed data of states below 1. Which means that we potentially only recorded half the story; and with that; we have unrepresentative data that skews positively towards cryonics.
Upvoted because this is a good critique. My rationale for using this scale is that I was less interested in absolute interest in cryonics and more in relative interest in cryonics between groups. The data and my code are publicly available, so if you are bothered by it, then you should do your own analysis.
I am bothered by it to the extent that it was confusing because it was not automatically representative of the “absolute interest in cryonic” as you called it, but with what I pointed out in mind it is possible to still take the data as good information. (so not bothered enough to do my own analysis)
Interesting that Lesswrongers are 50,000 times more likely to sign up for cryonics than the general population. I had previously heard criticism of Lesswrong, that if we really believe in cryonics, it’s irrational that so few are signed up.
Also surprising that vegetarianism correlates with cryonics interest.
It’s a standard no-win situation: if too few have signed up, LW people are irrational; and if many have signed up, LW is a cult.
That’s no-win given that ideas generally held on LW imply that we should sign up for cryonics.
There’s nothing necessarily unfair about that. Suppose some group’s professed beliefs imply that the sun goes around the earth; then you may say that members of the group are inconsistent if they aren’t geocentrists, and crazy if they are. No win, indeed, but the problem is that their group’s professed beliefs imply something crazy.
In this case, I don’t think it’s clear there is such a thing as LW’s professed beliefs, it’s not clear that if there are they imply that we should sign up for cryonics, and I don’t think signing up for cryonics is particularly crazy. So I’m not exactly endorsing the no-win side of this. But it looks like you’re making a complaint about the logical structure of the criticism that would invalidate some perfectly reasonable criticisms of (other?) groups and their members.
Nope. I’m making a guess that this particular argument looked like a good soldier and so was sent into battle; a mirror-image argument would also look like a good soldier and would also be sent into the same battle. Logical structure is an irrelevant detail X-/
Right, but what about the people who say they strongly believe in cryonics, have income high enough to afford it (and the insurance isn’t that expensive actually), yet haven’t signed up? I.e. “cryocrastinators”. There are a lot of those on the survey results every year.
I believe this was the argument used, that Lesswronger’s aren’t very instrumentally rational, or good at actually getting things done. Again, I can’t find the post in question, it’s possible it was deleted.
I bet many LessWrongers are just not interested in signing up. That’s not irrational, or rational, it’s just a matter of preferences.
What does “we really believe” mean? That seems like something we categorically don’t do. (1) We don’t hold group belief but individuals have different beliefs.
(2) We think in terms of probability that are different for different people
It seems criticism like that comes from people who don’t understand that we aren’t a religion that specicies what everybody has to believe.
If the people who belief that cryonics works with >0.3 are signed up for cryonics when available while the people who think it only works with ~0.1 are not signed up I don’t see any sign of irrationality.
Has anybody looked at the data set to check if that’s indeed the case?
The linked post contains graphs.
I was just summarizing something I remember reading. I searched for every keyword I can think of but I can’t find it.
But I swear there was a post highly critical of lesswrong, and one of the arguments was that. That if such a high percentage of lesswrongers believe in cryonics, why are so few signed up? It was an argument that lesswrong is ineffective.
It was just interesting to me to see the most recent statistics, and a lot of people are signed up, and certainly much higher than the general population.
It would be an argument that lesswrongers are not perfect. Also “lesswrongers” includes people who merely read the website once in a while.
I am completely unsurprised by the fact that mere reading LW articles doesn’t make people perfect.
I would be more bothered by finding out that “lesswrongers” are less rational than the average population, or just some large enough control group that I could easily join instead of LW. But the numbers abour cryonics do not show that.
I think that if LWers are 50,000 times more likely to do something than the general population, that proves neither rationality nor irrationality. It just shows that LWers are chosen by an extremely selective process.
It is hilarious and yet quite predictable that one of the only groups nearly as unenthused about cryonics as ‘committed theists’ was ‘biologists’.