In looking over the comments here, there are a few missed points that I believe heavily shift the balance in favor of having cryonics arrangements. The first is that the need for “cryonics,” in the generic sense, is never likely to go away. While it is true that we can currently envision technologies to repair all of the pathological processes we currently understand, that does NOT mean that we understand all of the things that both can, and will go wrong with us in the future.
Let’s assume that aging is conquered tomorrow. Within some definite (but unknown) period of time you are going to fill up your hard drive—or your “soft drive,” if you prefer. Humans were not designed to store thousands of years of memories and experiences. And we may be doing just that, if the people with Superior Autobiographical Memory are any indication. So unless you are happy with eventually losing most, or all of your current memories, something will have to change…
A likely consequence of this limitation is that we are going to have to reconfigure our brains. I use this very conservative example, because it speaks to the NECESSITY of doing this. Probably most of the people on LW envision, and even desire, vastly more daring reworks of their identity-encoding hardware and software. That will inevitably carry associated risk. It is very easy (at least for me) to envision major and very complicated screw-ups in cognitive re-engineering that cannot be easily or rapidly sorted out. In fact, this sort of thing happens today on a small, but nevertheless sometimes lethal, and not infrequently very damaging way, when people become psychologically confused, or “existentially damaged.” A good example is when seemingly normal people get taken over by ideas, or become ensnared in cults. Is “deprogramming” a treatment, or coercion? Malware, either deliberately designed or accidentally created, which badly damages programs and data are yet another example. So, leaving hardware out of consideration, it seems likely that people will still get very nasty “software” diseases that do a lot of damage in a short period of time, and that require that the “system” (person) be shut down until a solution can be found. Nanotechnology will not solve this problem because the problem is a meta-problem that is intrinsic to complex systems interacting in an open universe.
I also think it will also be a long time, if ever, before damage to “hardware” substrates becomes 100% repairable 100% of the time in REAL TIME. As long as it is possible to envision pathologies that render the individual into a degraded and nonfunctional state, which current technology cannot reverse, then you will need cryonics, regardless of what it is subsequently called or what preservation technology is used.
My next point is that there are a couple of implicit assumptions in the foregoing arguments which are demonstrably not true. The first is that cryonics is a discrete, consumable product, like a bag of crisps, a candy bar, or even a computer or a radio. Or that it is like an automobile maintenance contract, or an insurance policy that pays off when you need it.
It isn’t.
All of those products and services can be assigned, with a high degree of precision, a probability as to how they will perform and what your likelihood is of being satisfied with them. They are fully developed products. And mostly, all you need to know about them is present, free for the asking in your culture in the form of “common knowledge,” information from friends and family, and, of course, in advertising. You pay your money and that’s it. Nobody needs to explain to you, or to or anyone else what a TV or broom are for, how to use them, and what might go wrong with them over time.
This is no way describes cryonics.
So, the first benefit you get by signing up is that you now have a proprietary interest in learning what it is that you just bought; and you will soon become aware that you need to KEEP LEARNING, because cryonics is an undeveloped, immature, and above all, experimental technique. I signed up with the Cryonics Society of New York (CSNY) when I was 15 years old. CSNY is long, long gone and I’ve been signed up with 2 other organizations that have vanished. If you can’t keep learning until old age or “death” overtakes you, you are unwilling to do so, or you are an idiot, then cryonics is not for you.
And because cryonicists are the most rabid and intense of the life extensionists, you will also soon learn that they are at the absolute edge of emerging science in this area. In other words, you stand to be the first to know about newly developed and developing technology to combat aging. That can either “kill you or cure you, “depending upon how good your judgment is.
Finally, non-cryonicists, because they have the view of cryonics as a developed product (like an automobile or a light bulb) have a similarly inaccurate and warped view of the odds. The odds of the Titanic sinking with the loss of 1517 lives were 100% on 15 April 1912. But, what if the Titanic were to have taken, say, 48 hours to sink? Depending upon how the passengers and crew behaved in that interval, the number of survivors might have gone way up, or way down.
There were a lot of smart people on board the Titanic—very clever and very inventive people. But they were panicked, they were dealing with a panicked mass of passengers, and they had very little time to react. Given 48 hours, and the willing participation of the best minds aboard that ship, how many people need have died, or would have died? Were there ways, other than the optimal loading of the inadequate number of lifeboats that would have saved lives? Would clothing those passengers consigned to the icy sea in multiple layers of clothing saturated in grease, shortening, or oil, attaching them to life-ropes, and rotating them in and out of the lifeboats, have saved additional lives? What kind of makeshift lifeboats or floating platforms could have been made on an expedient basis from materials on the ship, allowing additional passengers to remain afloat out of the freezing water?
THAT is the position of cryonics and cryonicists. The odds are not fixed to those calculated at any given point in time, because you are NOT carting off a discrete product to screw into your lamp, or to process your words, or to play your games on. YOU set the odds of success or failure to an amazing degree. [You also do this, to a tiny degree, for the success or failure of the company that you buy a light bulb or a computer from.] Cryonics is thus an ACTIVIST proposition. Customers can, of course, be customers if they insist. But in cryonics, as in any other market transaction (perfected or experimental) you get what you pay for. In the case of cryonics, the fees required for success are not even remotely reducible to cold hard cash alone. It’s going to all the composure, good judgment and raw intelligence we can muster to escape the sinking ship fate has consigned us to and make it that far shore where we can continue our journey through life, indefinitely.
In general, any debate about whether something is “good” or “bad” is sketchy, and can be changed to a more useful form by converting the thing to an action and applying utilitarianism
Disease (and by analogy, malware) is dissolved here.
And because cryonicists are the most rabid and intense of the life extensionists, you will also soon learn that they are at the absolute edge of emerging science in this area.
Howconvenient that the way to optimize life extension happens to be the same set of actions that would entail signing up for cryonics.
The odds of the Titanic sinking with the loss of 1517 lives were 100% on 15 April 1912.
I always enjoy reading your comments and from their length and writing I can tell you put a lot into them. Perhaps you’ll also put up shorter posts with single thoughts as they come to you, the way I and some others do, which would be great as well. LW has a high standard it holds ideas, arguments, and most of all attempts to persuade to, which is why I enjoy the site and hope you post more often. I think you would pick up certain valuable ideas quickly, the posts I linked to are related to the parts of your comment I quoted.
1) I respect the desire for precision in the use of words, and I understand that each culture has its own nomenclature and rules.Those here that I have seen so far seem eminently reasonable.
2) I have no interest whatsoever (and haven’t for many years) in persuading anyone to sign up for cryonics—including friends and family. While it is an understandable error, my purpose here is not to convince, proselytize, or recruit, but rather to identify minds that are useful to my current endeavor. They will not need persuasion—they will ‘know the lion by his paw.’
3) Forgive my levity, but in urging mono-topical posts of short duration, you pointed me to three dissertations dealing with a range of subjects within each essay, the shortest of which was ~1,400 words and the longest of which was 2,700 words—not including commentary.
4) For the record, I use the word disease in the context your writer specified: as .something unusual, abnormal, and I would add, deleterious to the normal functioning and survival of the organism. I know little about computing and have even less aptitude to learn. I use the word malware as software that damages or destroys data that the computer’s owner doesn’t want destroyed or degraded. I would add that given my predicament, when that happens it is a complex, difficult and thoroughly unpleasant thing to sort out which generally requires my machine spend time in “stasis” until the appropriate expertise can be brought to bear.
5) My posts here have been mostly confined to the subject of cryonics and were never intended to continue. I’ve really enjoyed the discussion and I’ve found this an interesting and rewarding forum. Many thanks!
3) Forgive my levity, but in urging mono-topical posts of short duration, you pointed me to three dissertations dealing with a range of subjects within each essay, the shortest of which was ~1,400 words and the longest of which was 2,700 words—not including commentary.
I suck at being tactful and polite, particularly in this medium. I was trying to say I like your writing by saying you could add short comments to your repertoire, I hadn’t meant to imply you should decrease your production of long ones. That I genuinely enjoy your comments was not the sole motivation behind my writing what I did, I was trying to soften the criticism, and trying not to be rude.
I was also trying to make convenient for you what I was pointing towards, at the level of depth you would want it in, whatever that might be. That’s what I meant to do by having “How” go to link summarizing the content of the following link “convenient”, to present the same idea to the extent you cared to engage it.
4) For the record, I use the word disease in the context your writer specified
My intent was to show that they are analogous, I wasn’t claiming you didn’t use the word that way. What the article shows is that the question “Is “deprogramming” a treatment, or coercion?” is misguided.
2) While it is an understandable error,
I did not mean to imply that you are here to persuade people to sign up for cryonics, if that is what you thought I meant. Rather, when people make assertions, they often are attempting to persuade the reader of their truth. I just did that in the preceding sentence, there is nothing wrong with persuasion! You are trying to persuade me of at least five things in the parent of this comment, this is not a bad thing.
Rather, advocating for something by asserting that it has no opportunity costs is not just non-persuasive, it’s anti-persuasive because it is either clumsy attempted manipulation or rationalization—artful manipulation I wouldn’t be so inclined to comment on, but I genuinely felt empathically embarrassed to read “And because cryonicists are the most rabid and intense of the life extensionists, you will also soon learn that they are at the absolute edge of emerging science in this area. In other words, you stand to be the first to know about newly developed and developing technology to combat aging.”
Perhaps false modesty, or sloth, led me to provide links to what others have said, rather than try to explain more directly what I thought the issue was and how it applied. Perhaps one consideration that led me to write a sparse comment with links is that I know how easy it is for me to miscommunicate over featureless text comments, and how little I can rely on my intent being understood, such that it is valid for me to enlist others’ words to help me communicate...apparently even that didn’t help me here. Alas, there is no law of the universe that reads: “when people intend to communicate, they are skilled enough in communication such that if only they try hard enough and have good intentions, their meaning will be conveyed”.
I honestly think that you, from what I have read by you, wouldn’t even have to work hard or think hard to avoid making certain mistakes. That isn’t an attempt to be nice, as I think any further effort I spend on that is entirely wasted in at least this thread at this point.
You are smart enough that I was embarrassed for you to see you make certain errors of reasoning, happy that they can easily be fixed for you, and that you have happened upon a place that can easily fix them, and happy that I have found such a useful place, and happy that other people here are good at highlighting parts of my arguments and saying the equivalent of “you are being a dumbass at the following places in your argument, and let me explain how to fix that,” to me without it being awkward or unnatural, and I’m sorry I don’t have that skill.
Sorry, you’ve spent a lot of time trying to address things that really aren’t problems. I was in no way offended, or put off. It’s axiomatic, but worth noting yet again, that correspondence in writing is a dangerous way to communicate, because it lacks the context of intonation, facial expressions, and other non-verbal cues.
The best way to deal with errors in my writing, thinking or actions, real or perceived, is directly, matter of factly, and with only such tact as common courtesy requires. Public statements can be dealt with publicly, privates ones are best dealt with privately...
I think this will also save you time (when you are correct), because a succinct critique of an error is a hell of a lot less draining than spending time and energy crafting a convoluted, or overly polite reply. I do understand that this site is about a rigorous way of way thinking.
Finally, in reading your response, I realize that my comment about why I’ve posted here extensively recently, and am unlikely to continue to do so, may have been misinterpreted. It should be taken at face value as the literal truth. My primary obligations in terms of time, energy and writing must necessarily be elsewhere for the foreseeable future. This is just the way it is and it has nothing to do with LW.
Thanks for your letter—I know it took a fair bit of time to write and I really do appreciate it ;and I appreciate even more the sentiments expressed!
Thanks! I’m glad people are being so helpful with this.
In looking over the comments here, there are a few missed points that I believe heavily shift the balance in favor of having cryonics arrangements. The first is that the need for “cryonics,” in the generic sense, is never likely to go away. While it is true that we can currently envision technologies to repair all of the pathological processes we currently understand, that does NOT mean that we understand all of the things that both can, and will go wrong with us in the future.
Let’s assume that aging is conquered tomorrow. Within some definite (but unknown) period of time you are going to fill up your hard drive—or your “soft drive,” if you prefer. Humans were not designed to store thousands of years of memories and experiences. And we may be doing just that, if the people with Superior Autobiographical Memory are any indication. So unless you are happy with eventually losing most, or all of your current memories, something will have to change…
A likely consequence of this limitation is that we are going to have to reconfigure our brains. I use this very conservative example, because it speaks to the NECESSITY of doing this. Probably most of the people on LW envision, and even desire, vastly more daring reworks of their identity-encoding hardware and software. That will inevitably carry associated risk. It is very easy (at least for me) to envision major and very complicated screw-ups in cognitive re-engineering that cannot be easily or rapidly sorted out. In fact, this sort of thing happens today on a small, but nevertheless sometimes lethal, and not infrequently very damaging way, when people become psychologically confused, or “existentially damaged.” A good example is when seemingly normal people get taken over by ideas, or become ensnared in cults. Is “deprogramming” a treatment, or coercion? Malware, either deliberately designed or accidentally created, which badly damages programs and data are yet another example. So, leaving hardware out of consideration, it seems likely that people will still get very nasty “software” diseases that do a lot of damage in a short period of time, and that require that the “system” (person) be shut down until a solution can be found. Nanotechnology will not solve this problem because the problem is a meta-problem that is intrinsic to complex systems interacting in an open universe.
I also think it will also be a long time, if ever, before damage to “hardware” substrates becomes 100% repairable 100% of the time in REAL TIME. As long as it is possible to envision pathologies that render the individual into a degraded and nonfunctional state, which current technology cannot reverse, then you will need cryonics, regardless of what it is subsequently called or what preservation technology is used.
My next point is that there are a couple of implicit assumptions in the foregoing arguments which are demonstrably not true. The first is that cryonics is a discrete, consumable product, like a bag of crisps, a candy bar, or even a computer or a radio. Or that it is like an automobile maintenance contract, or an insurance policy that pays off when you need it.
It isn’t.
All of those products and services can be assigned, with a high degree of precision, a probability as to how they will perform and what your likelihood is of being satisfied with them. They are fully developed products. And mostly, all you need to know about them is present, free for the asking in your culture in the form of “common knowledge,” information from friends and family, and, of course, in advertising. You pay your money and that’s it. Nobody needs to explain to you, or to or anyone else what a TV or broom are for, how to use them, and what might go wrong with them over time.
This is no way describes cryonics.
So, the first benefit you get by signing up is that you now have a proprietary interest in learning what it is that you just bought; and you will soon become aware that you need to KEEP LEARNING, because cryonics is an undeveloped, immature, and above all, experimental technique. I signed up with the Cryonics Society of New York (CSNY) when I was 15 years old. CSNY is long, long gone and I’ve been signed up with 2 other organizations that have vanished. If you can’t keep learning until old age or “death” overtakes you, you are unwilling to do so, or you are an idiot, then cryonics is not for you.
And because cryonicists are the most rabid and intense of the life extensionists, you will also soon learn that they are at the absolute edge of emerging science in this area. In other words, you stand to be the first to know about newly developed and developing technology to combat aging. That can either “kill you or cure you, “depending upon how good your judgment is.
Finally, non-cryonicists, because they have the view of cryonics as a developed product (like an automobile or a light bulb) have a similarly inaccurate and warped view of the odds. The odds of the Titanic sinking with the loss of 1517 lives were 100% on 15 April 1912. But, what if the Titanic were to have taken, say, 48 hours to sink? Depending upon how the passengers and crew behaved in that interval, the number of survivors might have gone way up, or way down.
There were a lot of smart people on board the Titanic—very clever and very inventive people. But they were panicked, they were dealing with a panicked mass of passengers, and they had very little time to react. Given 48 hours, and the willing participation of the best minds aboard that ship, how many people need have died, or would have died? Were there ways, other than the optimal loading of the inadequate number of lifeboats that would have saved lives? Would clothing those passengers consigned to the icy sea in multiple layers of clothing saturated in grease, shortening, or oil, attaching them to life-ropes, and rotating them in and out of the lifeboats, have saved additional lives? What kind of makeshift lifeboats or floating platforms could have been made on an expedient basis from materials on the ship, allowing additional passengers to remain afloat out of the freezing water?
THAT is the position of cryonics and cryonicists. The odds are not fixed to those calculated at any given point in time, because you are NOT carting off a discrete product to screw into your lamp, or to process your words, or to play your games on. YOU set the odds of success or failure to an amazing degree. [You also do this, to a tiny degree, for the success or failure of the company that you buy a light bulb or a computer from.] Cryonics is thus an ACTIVIST proposition. Customers can, of course, be customers if they insist. But in cryonics, as in any other market transaction (perfected or experimental) you get what you pay for. In the case of cryonics, the fees required for success are not even remotely reducible to cold hard cash alone. It’s going to all the composure, good judgment and raw intelligence we can muster to escape the sinking ship fate has consigned us to and make it that far shore where we can continue our journey through life, indefinitely.
Yvain has said:
Disease (and by analogy, malware) is dissolved here.
How convenient that the way to optimize life extension happens to be the same set of actions that would entail signing up for cryonics.
On odds.
I always enjoy reading your comments and from their length and writing I can tell you put a lot into them. Perhaps you’ll also put up shorter posts with single thoughts as they come to you, the way I and some others do, which would be great as well. LW has a high standard it holds ideas, arguments, and most of all attempts to persuade to, which is why I enjoy the site and hope you post more often. I think you would pick up certain valuable ideas quickly, the posts I linked to are related to the parts of your comment I quoted.
I’ll try to keep my response brief:
1) I respect the desire for precision in the use of words, and I understand that each culture has its own nomenclature and rules.Those here that I have seen so far seem eminently reasonable.
2) I have no interest whatsoever (and haven’t for many years) in persuading anyone to sign up for cryonics—including friends and family. While it is an understandable error, my purpose here is not to convince, proselytize, or recruit, but rather to identify minds that are useful to my current endeavor. They will not need persuasion—they will ‘know the lion by his paw.’
3) Forgive my levity, but in urging mono-topical posts of short duration, you pointed me to three dissertations dealing with a range of subjects within each essay, the shortest of which was ~1,400 words and the longest of which was 2,700 words—not including commentary.
4) For the record, I use the word disease in the context your writer specified: as .something unusual, abnormal, and I would add, deleterious to the normal functioning and survival of the organism. I know little about computing and have even less aptitude to learn. I use the word malware as software that damages or destroys data that the computer’s owner doesn’t want destroyed or degraded. I would add that given my predicament, when that happens it is a complex, difficult and thoroughly unpleasant thing to sort out which generally requires my machine spend time in “stasis” until the appropriate expertise can be brought to bear.
5) My posts here have been mostly confined to the subject of cryonics and were never intended to continue. I’ve really enjoyed the discussion and I’ve found this an interesting and rewarding forum. Many thanks!
I suck at being tactful and polite, particularly in this medium. I was trying to say I like your writing by saying you could add short comments to your repertoire, I hadn’t meant to imply you should decrease your production of long ones. That I genuinely enjoy your comments was not the sole motivation behind my writing what I did, I was trying to soften the criticism, and trying not to be rude.
I was also trying to make convenient for you what I was pointing towards, at the level of depth you would want it in, whatever that might be. That’s what I meant to do by having “How” go to link summarizing the content of the following link “convenient”, to present the same idea to the extent you cared to engage it.
My intent was to show that they are analogous, I wasn’t claiming you didn’t use the word that way. What the article shows is that the question “Is “deprogramming” a treatment, or coercion?” is misguided.
I did not mean to imply that you are here to persuade people to sign up for cryonics, if that is what you thought I meant. Rather, when people make assertions, they often are attempting to persuade the reader of their truth. I just did that in the preceding sentence, there is nothing wrong with persuasion! You are trying to persuade me of at least five things in the parent of this comment, this is not a bad thing.
Rather, advocating for something by asserting that it has no opportunity costs is not just non-persuasive, it’s anti-persuasive because it is either clumsy attempted manipulation or rationalization—artful manipulation I wouldn’t be so inclined to comment on, but I genuinely felt empathically embarrassed to read “And because cryonicists are the most rabid and intense of the life extensionists, you will also soon learn that they are at the absolute edge of emerging science in this area. In other words, you stand to be the first to know about newly developed and developing technology to combat aging.”
Perhaps false modesty, or sloth, led me to provide links to what others have said, rather than try to explain more directly what I thought the issue was and how it applied. Perhaps one consideration that led me to write a sparse comment with links is that I know how easy it is for me to miscommunicate over featureless text comments, and how little I can rely on my intent being understood, such that it is valid for me to enlist others’ words to help me communicate...apparently even that didn’t help me here. Alas, there is no law of the universe that reads: “when people intend to communicate, they are skilled enough in communication such that if only they try hard enough and have good intentions, their meaning will be conveyed”.
I honestly think that you, from what I have read by you, wouldn’t even have to work hard or think hard to avoid making certain mistakes. That isn’t an attempt to be nice, as I think any further effort I spend on that is entirely wasted in at least this thread at this point.
You are smart enough that I was embarrassed for you to see you make certain errors of reasoning, happy that they can easily be fixed for you, and that you have happened upon a place that can easily fix them, and happy that I have found such a useful place, and happy that other people here are good at highlighting parts of my arguments and saying the equivalent of “you are being a dumbass at the following places in your argument, and let me explain how to fix that,” to me without it being awkward or unnatural, and I’m sorry I don’t have that skill.
Sorry, you’ve spent a lot of time trying to address things that really aren’t problems. I was in no way offended, or put off. It’s axiomatic, but worth noting yet again, that correspondence in writing is a dangerous way to communicate, because it lacks the context of intonation, facial expressions, and other non-verbal cues.
The best way to deal with errors in my writing, thinking or actions, real or perceived, is directly, matter of factly, and with only such tact as common courtesy requires. Public statements can be dealt with publicly, privates ones are best dealt with privately...
I think this will also save you time (when you are correct), because a succinct critique of an error is a hell of a lot less draining than spending time and energy crafting a convoluted, or overly polite reply. I do understand that this site is about a rigorous way of way thinking.
Finally, in reading your response, I realize that my comment about why I’ve posted here extensively recently, and am unlikely to continue to do so, may have been misinterpreted. It should be taken at face value as the literal truth. My primary obligations in terms of time, energy and writing must necessarily be elsewhere for the foreseeable future. This is just the way it is and it has nothing to do with LW.
Thanks for your letter—I know it took a fair bit of time to write and I really do appreciate it ;and I appreciate even more the sentiments expressed!