A proper test of that claim would require a poll, but since most physicists are not signed up for cryonics, don’t make public statements endorsing it, and when specifically interviewed about it say they don’t believe cyronics works, it seems fair to infer that most physicists indeed don’t believe cyronics works.
Yeah … you’re simply wrong here, Wedrifid.
physicists are usually atheists
Really? I thought they were merely disproportionately non-religious?
Except that cryonics is actually in their area of expertise. And in the area of expertise of cryobiologists (the people who cryopreserve tissues in a way that can be shown to actually work).
Is it? Techniques for minimising the damage might be within their purview, but the possibility of reconstruction in the future?
Actually, no, technically that would be a subset of their field. But that isn’t the same as everyone in that field being an expert in it. Or even most of them.
Really? I thought they were merely disproportionately non-religious?
I was using atheist as a synonym of irreligious, which was an imprecision, but according to the references I can find, scientists are indeed mostly irreligious or atheists: ”Scientists and in particular eminent scientists are mostly atheists, perhaps the only demographic in the West in which this occurs.”—Demographics of atheism
Techniques for minimising the damage might be within their purview, but the possibility of reconstruction in the future?
I suppose nobody is really an expert in technologies that don’t yet exist anywhere outside sci-fi books, but cryobiologists and neurobiologists are the people best equipped to undestand the type and extent of damage that crypreservation causes to nervous tissue and the effect this damage is likely to have on personal identity.
So was I. I was under the impression physicists were only more irreligious than baseline, rather than most of them being irreligious; although “top” scientists are much more so.
Trying to look up the actual statistics … OK, a lot of it is behind paywalls and frankly I’m too lazy to do much beyond a quick Google, but Wikipedia claims scientists in general are about equal numbers atheists, agnostics and theists (i.e. 2/3rds non-theist.) And physicists are just under that, apparently (29%). But I can’t read the actual sources for these vaguely-worded assertions (they have some, though!)
The most—practically the only, in popular discussions of this—cited study on this topic seems to be this, which, naturally, isn’t much good (short, though.)
So going with WPs figure … eh, it’s a bit higher than I expected offhand, so hey, new data! I wouldn’t call that “usually”, but ultimately that’s a semantic question of usage. I don’t attach huge confidence to Wikipedia’s figures, though I would say they’re in the right ballpark; do you by any chance have better ones?
We may be getting offtopic, though, since I’m not sure how much bearing atheism has on reactions to cryonics in practice.
I suppose nobody is really an expert in technologies that don’t yet exist anywhere outside sci-fi books, but cryobiologists and neurobiologists are the people best equipped to undestand the type and extent of damage that crypreservation causes to nervous tissue and the effect this damage is likely to have on personal identity.
At risk of repeating myself: determining whether damage has passed information-theoretic death falls under the purview of physics and cryobiology, among a variety of other fields. That is not at all the same thing as saying that it is “in the area of expertise” of every physicist and cryobiologist, and thus a (hypothetical) survey of them would be “expert opinion”.
Frankly, I suspect I’ve learned all I can from this discussion. I’ll read your reply in case I’m wrong, but I’m tapping out.
At risk of repeating myself: determining whether damage has passed information-theoretic death falls under the purview of physics and cryobiology, among a variety of other fields. That is not at all the same thing as saying that it is “in the area of expertise” of every physicist and cryobiologist, and thus a (hypothetical) survey of them would be “expert opinion”.
I agree with what you are saying here and think you’ve struck the right balance between acknowledging genuine competence and expecting universal expertise over general fields of knowledge. Elsewhere and at a different time it might be worth having a conversation about how to select experts in subjects similar to this one. There is something of a recursive problem in as much as it requires knowledge to know which experts are the ones that are relevant or knowledge to know which person to ask-which-people-should-be-asked. Different beliefs about how to choose authorities to believe seems to be a huge source of disagreement over a variety of problems and frequently results in “reference class tennis”.
It seems that you are venturing into No true Scotsman territory:
Clearly you can divide any research field in sub-fields and sub-sub-fields. You could even try to argue that nobody is an expert in anything they haven’t pubished a scientific paper on (and even then, maybe the paper had multiple authors and Author 1 was not an expert in what Author 2 did, and the referees who did the peer review weren’t really experts, and so on...), but I don’t think that would lead to a viable concept of expertise.
Realistically, we expect researchers within any relatively self-contained field (such as neurobiology or cryobiology) to understand the general principles and issues of their field well enough to tell potentially viable scientific and technological ideas from fringe stuff unlikely to work and outright crackpottery.
Moreover, we expect scientists to be accurate in estimating the level of their own understanding within their field (or at least err predominantly on the side of underconfidence, as per Dunning–Kruger ). Therefore, when multiple scientists independently make a claim about something within their field, barring evidence to the contrary, it seems fair to assume that they know what they are talking about.
It seems that you are venturing into No true Scotsman territory:
It seems like you’re doing exactly the same thing you did before: confusing subsets with their parent sets. A subset of various fields would, I assume, have enough relevant expertise to debunk cryonics; these individuals are, traditionally, distinguished from laymen with PHDs by their arguments.
What I observe, however, is that most people, including those in the referenced fields, have only the vaguest position on cryonics picked up from pop-culture. If you’re lucky, something like “those idiots spend a fortune on con artists who tell them freezing a body means it can be revived after Science develops a cure for whatever killed them.”
Most “experts” are not, in fact, any such thing; and most people, expert and non-, have not considered the possibility in any detail. The fact that physicists have not flocked to cryonics providers is not in any sense strong evidence that they possess evidence we don’t.
What I observe, however, is that most people, including those in the referenced fields, have only the vaguest position on cryonics picked up from pop-culture. If you’re lucky, something like “those idiots spend a fortune on con artists who tell them freezing a body means it can be revived after Science develops a cure for whatever killed them.”
Common sense positions aren’t necessarily wrong: any astrogeologist will agree that the Moon is indeed not made of green cheese.
Anyway, comments by “kalla724”, who identifies him/herself as a neuroscientist (I can’t verify that, but I have no reason to believe he/she is lying) seem quite detailed, and PZ Myers, an evolutionary biologist specialized in the nervous system, also made a technical comment against cryonics. The Society for Cryobiology, which was initially sympatetic towards cryonics and included cryonicists as their members, later formally distanced themselves from the practice and even banned cryonicists from being members. Is their position on cryonics just vaguely picked up from pop-culture?
So why aren’t more scientists writing detailed debunkings of cryonics? Well, one of the house rules of the scientific community is that the burden of providing evidence lies on who is making the claim. Most scientists will not invest time and effort to debunk every detail of arguments in the form of “you can’t prove this doesn’t work”. At least not until those who make these claim generate enough noise in the arena of public opinion and start political lobbying. At that point, scientists may feel compelled to debunk as a form of civic duty.
The fact that physicists have not flocked to cryonics providers is not in any sense strong evidence that they possess evidence we don’t.
No, but the fact that neurobiologists and cryobiologists haven’t flocked to cryonics, and in particular cryobiologists have flocked away from it, implies that according to the best available scientifc understanding of the subject, cryonics is unlikely to work.
Yeah … you’re simply wrong here, Wedrifid.
Really? I thought they were merely disproportionately non-religious?
Is it? Techniques for minimising the damage might be within their purview, but the possibility of reconstruction in the future?
Actually, no, technically that would be a subset of their field. But that isn’t the same as everyone in that field being an expert in it. Or even most of them.
I was using atheist as a synonym of irreligious, which was an imprecision, but according to the references I can find, scientists are indeed mostly irreligious or atheists:
”Scientists and in particular eminent scientists are mostly atheists, perhaps the only demographic in the West in which this occurs.”—Demographics of atheism
I suppose nobody is really an expert in technologies that don’t yet exist anywhere outside sci-fi books, but cryobiologists and neurobiologists are the people best equipped to undestand the type and extent of damage that crypreservation causes to nervous tissue and the effect this damage is likely to have on personal identity.
So was I. I was under the impression physicists were only more irreligious than baseline, rather than most of them being irreligious; although “top” scientists are much more so.
Trying to look up the actual statistics … OK, a lot of it is behind paywalls and frankly I’m too lazy to do much beyond a quick Google, but Wikipedia claims scientists in general are about equal numbers atheists, agnostics and theists (i.e. 2/3rds non-theist.) And physicists are just under that, apparently (29%). But I can’t read the actual sources for these vaguely-worded assertions (they have some, though!)
The most—practically the only, in popular discussions of this—cited study on this topic seems to be this, which, naturally, isn’t much good (short, though.)
So going with WPs figure … eh, it’s a bit higher than I expected offhand, so hey, new data! I wouldn’t call that “usually”, but ultimately that’s a semantic question of usage. I don’t attach huge confidence to Wikipedia’s figures, though I would say they’re in the right ballpark; do you by any chance have better ones?
We may be getting offtopic, though, since I’m not sure how much bearing atheism has on reactions to cryonics in practice.
[section split off into separate comment.]
At risk of repeating myself: determining whether damage has passed information-theoretic death falls under the purview of physics and cryobiology, among a variety of other fields. That is not at all the same thing as saying that it is “in the area of expertise” of every physicist and cryobiologist, and thus a (hypothetical) survey of them would be “expert opinion”.
Frankly, I suspect I’ve learned all I can from this discussion. I’ll read your reply in case I’m wrong, but I’m tapping out.
I agree with what you are saying here and think you’ve struck the right balance between acknowledging genuine competence and expecting universal expertise over general fields of knowledge. Elsewhere and at a different time it might be worth having a conversation about how to select experts in subjects similar to this one. There is something of a recursive problem in as much as it requires knowledge to know which experts are the ones that are relevant or knowledge to know which person to ask-which-people-should-be-asked. Different beliefs about how to choose authorities to believe seems to be a huge source of disagreement over a variety of problems and frequently results in “reference class tennis”.
It seems that you are venturing into No true Scotsman territory:
Clearly you can divide any research field in sub-fields and sub-sub-fields. You could even try to argue that nobody is an expert in anything they haven’t pubished a scientific paper on (and even then, maybe the paper had multiple authors and Author 1 was not an expert in what Author 2 did, and the referees who did the peer review weren’t really experts, and so on...), but I don’t think that would lead to a viable concept of expertise.
Realistically, we expect researchers within any relatively self-contained field (such as neurobiology or cryobiology) to understand the general principles and issues of their field well enough to tell potentially viable scientific and technological ideas from fringe stuff unlikely to work and outright crackpottery.
Moreover, we expect scientists to be accurate in estimating the level of their own understanding within their field (or at least err predominantly on the side of underconfidence, as per Dunning–Kruger ). Therefore, when multiple scientists independently make a claim about something within their field, barring evidence to the contrary, it seems fair to assume that they know what they are talking about.
It seems like you’re doing exactly the same thing you did before: confusing subsets with their parent sets. A subset of various fields would, I assume, have enough relevant expertise to debunk cryonics; these individuals are, traditionally, distinguished from laymen with PHDs by their arguments.
What I observe, however, is that most people, including those in the referenced fields, have only the vaguest position on cryonics picked up from pop-culture. If you’re lucky, something like “those idiots spend a fortune on con artists who tell them freezing a body means it can be revived after Science develops a cure for whatever killed them.”
Most “experts” are not, in fact, any such thing; and most people, expert and non-, have not considered the possibility in any detail. The fact that physicists have not flocked to cryonics providers is not in any sense strong evidence that they possess evidence we don’t.
Tapping out now.
Common sense positions aren’t necessarily wrong: any astrogeologist will agree that the Moon is indeed not made of green cheese.
Anyway, comments by “kalla724”, who identifies him/herself as a neuroscientist (I can’t verify that, but I have no reason to believe he/she is lying) seem quite detailed, and PZ Myers, an evolutionary biologist specialized in the nervous system, also made a technical comment against cryonics.
The Society for Cryobiology, which was initially sympatetic towards cryonics and included cryonicists as their members, later formally distanced themselves from the practice and even banned cryonicists from being members. Is their position on cryonics just vaguely picked up from pop-culture?
So why aren’t more scientists writing detailed debunkings of cryonics? Well, one of the house rules of the scientific community is that the burden of providing evidence lies on who is making the claim. Most scientists will not invest time and effort to debunk every detail of arguments in the form of “you can’t prove this doesn’t work”.
At least not until those who make these claim generate enough noise in the arena of public opinion and start political lobbying. At that point, scientists may feel compelled to debunk as a form of civic duty.
No, but the fact that neurobiologists and cryobiologists haven’t flocked to cryonics, and in particular cryobiologists have flocked away from it, implies that according to the best available scientifc understanding of the subject, cryonics is unlikely to work.
Bye.