The other standard argument is that cryonics doesn’t need to come out of my world-saving budget, it can come out of my leisure budget. Which is also true, but it requires that I’m interested enough in cryonics that I get enough fuzzy points from buying cryonics to make up whatever I lose in exchange. And it feels like once you take the leisure budget route, you’re implicitly admitting that this is about purchasing fuzzies, not utilons, which makes it a little odd to apply to all those elaborate calculations which are often made with a strong tone of moral obligation. If one is going to be a utilitarian and use the strong tone of moral obligation, one doesn’t get to use it to make the argument that one should invest a lot of money on saving just a single person, and with highly uncertain odds at that.
I imagine that a lot of people on Less Wrong get off on having someone tell them “with a strong tone of moral obligation” that death can be defeated and that they simply must invest their money in securing their own immortality. Even if it isn’t a valid moral argument, per say, phrasing it as one makes cryonics buyers feel more good about their choice and improves the number of warm fuzzies they get from the thought that some day they’ll wake up in the future, alive and healthy with everyone congratulating them on being so very brave and clever and daring to escape death like that.
Even if it isn’t a valid moral argument, per say, phrasing it as one makes cryonics buyers feel more good about their choice and improves the number of warm fuzzies they get from the thought that some day they’ll wake up in the future, alive and healthy with everyone congratulating them on being so very brave and clever and daring to escape death like that.
Just asking, were you trying to make that sound awful and smug? Because that honestly sounds like a future I don’t want to wake up in.
I want to wake up in the future where people have genuine compassion for the past, and are happy to welcome the “formerly dead” to a grand new life, hopefully even including their friends and loved ones who also made it successfully to “the Future”. If the post-cryonic psychological counsellors of the future woke me up with, “Congratulations, you made the right business decision!”, then I would infer that things had gone horribly wrong.
Lost in the wilderness, I think we should go North; you, South. If I find help, but learn that you died, my first thought will not be “neener neener told you so”.
Is is possible cryonic wakers might be treated very poorly? Perhaps stigmatized?
I’m very ignorant of what all is involved in either “end” of cryonics, but what if, say, the cost of resurrecting the frozen person is prohibitively high and future people lobby to stop their waking up? And even the ones who do wake up are treated like pariahs?
It might play out like the immigaration situation in the US: A nation, founded by immigrants, that is now composed of a big chunk of citizens who hate immigrants.
I can already hear the arguments now…
“They won’t know if we don’t wake them up. Besides every one we wake costs us X resources which damages Y lives by Z%.”
A nation, founded by immigrants, that is now composed of a big chunk of citizens who hate immigrants.
How is that any different from saying “a nation, founded by slaveowners, that is now composed of a big chunk of citizens who hate slaveowners”? Certainly the fact that your ancestors benefited from being slaveowners is no reason why you should support slaveowners now.
Just asking, were you trying to make that sound awful and smug?
Yep.
While genuine compassion is probably the ideal emotion for a post-cryonic counselor to actually show, it’s the anticipation of their currently ridiculed beliefs being validated, with a side order of justified smugness that gets people going in the here and now. There’s nothing wrong with that: “Everyone who said I was stupid is wrong and gets forced to admit it.” is probably one of the top ten most common fantasies and there’s nothing wrong with spending your leisure budget on indulging a fantasy. Especially if it has real world benefits too.
it’s the anticipation of their currently ridiculed beliefs being validated, with a side order of justified smugness that gets people going in the here and now.
That’s… actually kinda sad, and I think I’m going to go feed my brain some warm fuzzies to counter it.
Trying to live forever out of spite instead of living well in the here and now that’s available? Silly humans.
Don’t worry, poiuyt is making all of this up. I don’t personally know of anyone to whom this imaginary scenario applies. The most common sentiment about cryonics is “God dammit I have to stop procrastinating”, hence the enjoinders are welcome; as for their origin point, well, have you read HPMOR up to Ch. 96?
I feel that I am being misunderstood: I do not suggest that people sign up for cryonics out of spite. I imagine that almost everyone signed up for cryonics does so because they actually believe it will work. That is as it should be.
I am only pointing out that being told that I am stupid for signing up for cryonics is disheartening. Even if it is not a rational argument against cryonics, the disapproval of others still affects me. I know this because my friends and family make it a point to regularly inform me of the fact that cryonics is “a cult”, that I am being “scammed out of my money” by Alcor and that even if it did work, I am “evil and wrong” for wanting it. Being told those things fills me with doubts and saps my willpower. Hearing someone on the pro-cryonics side of things reminding me of my reasons for signing up is reassuring. It restores the willpower I lose hearing those around me insulting my belief. Hearing that cryonics is good and I am good for signing up isn’t evidence that cryonics will work. Hearing that non-cryonicists will “regret” their choice certainly isn’t evidence that cryonics is the most effective way to save lives. But it is what I need to hear in order to not cave in to peer pressure and cancel my policy.
I get my beliefs from the evidence, but I’ll take my motivation from wherever I can find it.
Eliezer, I have been a frequent and enthusiastic participant on /r/hpmor for years before I decided to buck up and make a LessWrong account.
The most common sentiment about cryonics is “God dammit I have to stop procrastinating”,
I don’t recall someone answering my question in the other place I posted it, so I might as well ask you (since you would know): provided I am unwilling to believe current cryonic techniques actually work (even given a Friendly superintelligence that wants to bring people back), where can I be putting money towards other means of preserving people or life-extension in general?
Gwern had a posting once on something called “brain plastination”, which supposedly works “better” in some sense than freezing in liquid nitrogen, even though that still relies on em’ing you to bring you back, which frankly I find frightening as all hell. Is there active research into that? Into improved cryonics techniques?
Or should I just donate to anti-aging research on grounds that keeping people alive and healthy for longer before they die is a safer bet than, you know, finding ways to preserve the dead such that they can be brought back to life later?
There’s good and bad spite. Good spite is something like, “They call me mad! But I was right all along. Muahahaha!” and feeling proud and happy that you made the right choice despite opposition from others. Bad spite is something like, “I was right and they were wrong, and now they’re suffering for their mistakes. Serves them right”. One is accomplishment, the other is schadenfreude.
Yes, it is a great psychological coping mechanism. Death is such a deeply personal topic that it would be folly to assume fuzzies, or the avoidance of frighties, didn’t factor in.
However, such is the case with any measure or intervention explicitly relating to lifespan extension. So while extra guarding against motivated cognition is in order when dealing with one’s personal future non-existence and the postponing thereof, saying “you’re doing it because of the warm fuzzies!” isn’t sufficient rejection of death escapism.
The cryonics buyer may well answer “well, yes, that, and also, you know, the whole ‘potential future reanimation’ part”. You still have to engage with the object level.
I imagine that a lot of people on Less Wrong get off on having someone tell them “with a strong tone of moral obligation” that death can be defeated and that they simply must invest their money in securing their own immortality. Even if it isn’t a valid moral argument, per say, phrasing it as one makes cryonics buyers feel more good about their choice and improves the number of warm fuzzies they get from the thought that some day they’ll wake up in the future, alive and healthy with everyone congratulating them on being so very brave and clever and daring to escape death like that.
Just asking, were you trying to make that sound awful and smug? Because that honestly sounds like a future I don’t want to wake up in.
I want to wake up in the future where people have genuine compassion for the past, and are happy to welcome the “formerly dead” to a grand new life, hopefully even including their friends and loved ones who also made it successfully to “the Future”. If the post-cryonic psychological counsellors of the future woke me up with, “Congratulations, you made the right business decision!”, then I would infer that things had gone horribly wrong.
Lost in the wilderness, I think we should go North; you, South. If I find help, but learn that you died, my first thought will not be “neener neener told you so”.
Interesting...
Is is possible cryonic wakers might be treated very poorly? Perhaps stigmatized?
I’m very ignorant of what all is involved in either “end” of cryonics, but what if, say, the cost of resurrecting the frozen person is prohibitively high and future people lobby to stop their waking up? And even the ones who do wake up are treated like pariahs?
It might play out like the immigaration situation in the US: A nation, founded by immigrants, that is now composed of a big chunk of citizens who hate immigrants.
I can already hear the arguments now…
“They won’t know if we don’t wake them up. Besides every one we wake costs us X resources which damages Y lives by Z%.”
How is that any different from saying “a nation, founded by slaveowners, that is now composed of a big chunk of citizens who hate slaveowners”? Certainly the fact that your ancestors benefited from being slaveowners is no reason why you should support slaveowners now.
Yep.
While genuine compassion is probably the ideal emotion for a post-cryonic counselor to actually show, it’s the anticipation of their currently ridiculed beliefs being validated, with a side order of justified smugness that gets people going in the here and now. There’s nothing wrong with that: “Everyone who said I was stupid is wrong and gets forced to admit it.” is probably one of the top ten most common fantasies and there’s nothing wrong with spending your leisure budget on indulging a fantasy. Especially if it has real world benefits too.
That’s… actually kinda sad, and I think I’m going to go feed my brain some warm fuzzies to counter it.
Trying to live forever out of spite instead of living well in the here and now that’s available? Silly humans.
Don’t worry, poiuyt is making all of this up. I don’t personally know of anyone to whom this imaginary scenario applies. The most common sentiment about cryonics is “God dammit I have to stop procrastinating”, hence the enjoinders are welcome; as for their origin point, well, have you read HPMOR up to Ch. 96?
I feel that I am being misunderstood: I do not suggest that people sign up for cryonics out of spite. I imagine that almost everyone signed up for cryonics does so because they actually believe it will work. That is as it should be.
I am only pointing out that being told that I am stupid for signing up for cryonics is disheartening. Even if it is not a rational argument against cryonics, the disapproval of others still affects me. I know this because my friends and family make it a point to regularly inform me of the fact that cryonics is “a cult”, that I am being “scammed out of my money” by Alcor and that even if it did work, I am “evil and wrong” for wanting it. Being told those things fills me with doubts and saps my willpower. Hearing someone on the pro-cryonics side of things reminding me of my reasons for signing up is reassuring. It restores the willpower I lose hearing those around me insulting my belief. Hearing that cryonics is good and I am good for signing up isn’t evidence that cryonics will work. Hearing that non-cryonicists will “regret” their choice certainly isn’t evidence that cryonics is the most effective way to save lives. But it is what I need to hear in order to not cave in to peer pressure and cancel my policy.
I get my beliefs from the evidence, but I’ll take my motivation from wherever I can find it.
Eliezer, I have been a frequent and enthusiastic participant on /r/hpmor for years before I decided to buck up and make a LessWrong account.
I don’t recall someone answering my question in the other place I posted it, so I might as well ask you (since you would know): provided I am unwilling to believe current cryonic techniques actually work (even given a Friendly superintelligence that wants to bring people back), where can I be putting money towards other means of preserving people or life-extension in general?
Gwern had a posting once on something called “brain plastination”, which supposedly works “better” in some sense than freezing in liquid nitrogen, even though that still relies on em’ing you to bring you back, which frankly I find frightening as all hell. Is there active research into that? Into improved cryonics techniques?
Or should I just donate to anti-aging research on grounds that keeping people alive and healthy for longer before they die is a safer bet than, you know, finding ways to preserve the dead such that they can be brought back to life later?
The Brain Preservation Foundation may be what you’re looking for.
There’s good and bad spite. Good spite is something like, “They call me mad! But I was right all along. Muahahaha!” and feeling proud and happy that you made the right choice despite opposition from others. Bad spite is something like, “I was right and they were wrong, and now they’re suffering for their mistakes. Serves them right”. One is accomplishment, the other is schadenfreude.
Yes, it is a great psychological coping mechanism. Death is such a deeply personal topic that it would be folly to assume fuzzies, or the avoidance of frighties, didn’t factor in.
However, such is the case with any measure or intervention explicitly relating to lifespan extension. So while extra guarding against motivated cognition is in order when dealing with one’s personal future non-existence and the postponing thereof, saying “you’re doing it because of the warm fuzzies!” isn’t sufficient rejection of death escapism.
The cryonics buyer may well answer “well, yes, that, and also, you know, the whole ‘potential future reanimation’ part”. You still have to engage with the object level.