Sometimes I wonder. Status is zero sum. The extremely long lived are high status (this includes fictional entities such as Gods, Elves or wizards). Cryonics or life extension may just sound like “I’m higher status than you.”
The natural response is to seek devastating arguments or just blurt out: “What makes you so special?”
I’m sure someone has brought this up before, can anyone provide links? I’m afraid I still haven’t caught up to the LW culture and am not done with the sequences or catching up on the old debates (which I’m guessing from this thread, is a regular topic) by a long shot.
“You have to understand,” says Peggy, who at 54 is given to exasperation about her husband’s more exotic ideas. “I am a hospice social worker. I work with people who are dying all the time. I see people dying All. The. Time. And what’s so good about me that I’m going to live forever?”
(As one commentator on, I think, Katja Grace’s blog said—what’s so bad about you that you should die?)
I found that article about Robin discouraging. He comes across to me as a geek version of Al Bundy, with 50 more IQ points, an academic job and a wife named Peggy who doesn’t respect him. In fact, she holds her husband in so much contempt in the area of cryonics that it wouldn’t surprise me if she has plans to cremate his body ASAP after his death to make sure he has no chance of “living forever.”
Robin’s marriage makes an interesting contrast with the marriage between Robert Ettinger and his second wife Mae. I got to meet Robert and Mae at cryonicist Don Laughlin’s ranch near Kingman, AZ in 1994. Robert gave a talk about his history of cryonics activism and how he lacked the sort of personality to have made more of an impact on public opinion. “I’m not a fun guy,” he said. Mae interrupted him by saying, “But I think you are!” I could detect genuine admiration for him in that exchange, and it seemed consistent with other things I’ve heard about the relationship between the two.
In fact, she holds her husband in so much contempt in the area of cryonics that it wouldn’t surprise me if she has plans to cremate his body ASAP after his death to make sure he has no chance of “living forever.”
Well, that does seem in line with her comment about cremation—she gets the rest of his body.
Or did you mean she will frustrate the cryonic suspension and burn the brain as well? Well, that’s different. I don’t think that’ll happen—the article reads as she’s made her peace with it. So, I’ve registered a more general prediction: Robin Hanson’s brain will be cryogenically frozen. (The 2041 date comes from looking at an actuarial table for a 52 year old man and then adding a few years.)
Or did you mean she will frustrate the cryonic suspension and burn the brain as well? Well, that’s different. I don’t think that’ll happen—the article reads as she’s made her peace with it.
Like women never lie to their husbands. Women have a history of interfering with the menfolk’s interest in cryonics, and I don’ t see that changing any time soon. In fact, I’d like to run an experiment: What if Alcor and CI both announced that they would no longer accept new female members, but they would tolerate the existing female members as “grandmothered” in? I doubt we’d see any women outside of cryonics motivated enough to challenge that policy by, say, filing a lawsuit for discrimination.
Cryonics organizations can’t even give suspensions away. Alcor and Omni magazine (remember that publication?) about 20 years ago offered a contest with a free suspension membership as the prize. As I recall, someone with a disability won the contest, but he didn’t follow through with the arrangements and didn’t respond to efforts to communicate with him. About 30 years ago, Mike Darwin offered the science fiction writer Frederik Pohl a free suspension, which he refused despite having written a novel and some other things about cryonics in the 1960′s.
So do you think we’d see “reverse psychology” at work by forbidding women from joining, with the effect of getting them interested in cryonics for the same reasons they’ve wanted to invade the other male-dominated social spaces they associate with power? Or would the discrimination just reinforce something they don’t want to do anyway?
I don’t know if it would make any women want cryonic preservation who didn’t want it already, but I’m sure it would anger plenty of women aside from those who wanted cryonic preservation in the first place.. It’s arbitrary discrimination. You don’t have to want to attend a country club to be angry that other people want to keep you out.
Well that’s the trick isn’t it? Convincing people to sign up for something because another group says they shouldn’t even if it takes money, many of us have sworn to avoid similar mind-hacks but the ones who haven’t may find something to use here.
If you were to actually attempt that approach, I think you’d get a reduction in signups because it would make cryonics seem even more cultish and anathema to mainstream norms, reducing the number of potentially amenable people who would consider it at all.
There are plenty of dark arts to choose from other than those relating to scarcity. To reduce the perception of cultishness around an idea, raise awareness of cultish groups that oppose it, and count on people mistaking reversed stupidity for intelligence and being repelled by the negative halo.
No, see, what you do is you have one cryonics group forbid women, and the rest of them make a lot of noise about how the first group is a bunch of jerks and don’t speak for the community at all. The first group takes a status hit, yeah, but the other groups get a nice status boost, and the whole thing generates a fair bit of attention—and high-quality, ‘this relates to me personally’ attention, at that—if done right.
Can’t speak for anyone else, but I would find it terribly irritating. Would also wonder how much money I could get off a lawsuit. I am not yet sure if cryonics would be helpful in living to my maximum lifespan (which I would like to be as long as possible), but I certainly don’t think this proposal sounds reasonable.
Also, how would it make sense to stop offering cryonics to women who decide to get the procedure in order to punish women who don’t? And wouldn’t that also punish husbands with wives who agree to be placed in cryonics with them? And if you are only postulating stopping unmarried women from joining, rather than women who have husbands who also want to join, again how does this punish these people you dislike who would probably only smile smugly at the news and think “well at least that’s a few less people who can try for immortality!” These women aren’t really any different from a large number of men who say they object to cryonics mainly because they think immortality is wrong (I don’t really think this objection makes any sense, but a lot of people seem to think this way). The only difference is that they happen to be married to men who want this procedure. And if one or the other seriously thinks this disagreement is a problem, maybe they need to end the relationship.
Sometimes I wonder. Status is zero sum. The extremely long lived are high status (this includes fictional entities such as Gods, Elves or wizards). Cryonics or life extension may just sound like “I’m higher status than you.”
The natural response is to seek devastating arguments or just blurt out: “What makes you so special?”
I’m sure someone has brought this up before, can anyone provide links? I’m afraid I still haven’t caught up to the LW culture and am not done with the sequences or catching up on the old debates (which I’m guessing from this thread, is a regular topic) by a long shot.
A common reaction; I was reading up on the hostile wife phenomenon for a mini-essay on cryonics, and the quote from Robin Hanson’s wife was quite striking (https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/magazine/11cryonics-t.html):
(As one commentator on, I think, Katja Grace’s blog said—what’s so bad about you that you should die?)
I found that article about Robin discouraging. He comes across to me as a geek version of Al Bundy, with 50 more IQ points, an academic job and a wife named Peggy who doesn’t respect him. In fact, she holds her husband in so much contempt in the area of cryonics that it wouldn’t surprise me if she has plans to cremate his body ASAP after his death to make sure he has no chance of “living forever.”
Robin’s marriage makes an interesting contrast with the marriage between Robert Ettinger and his second wife Mae. I got to meet Robert and Mae at cryonicist Don Laughlin’s ranch near Kingman, AZ in 1994. Robert gave a talk about his history of cryonics activism and how he lacked the sort of personality to have made more of an impact on public opinion. “I’m not a fun guy,” he said. Mae interrupted him by saying, “But I think you are!” I could detect genuine admiration for him in that exchange, and it seemed consistent with other things I’ve heard about the relationship between the two.
Well, that does seem in line with her comment about cremation—she gets the rest of his body.
Or did you mean she will frustrate the cryonic suspension and burn the brain as well? Well, that’s different. I don’t think that’ll happen—the article reads as she’s made her peace with it. So, I’ve registered a more general prediction: Robin Hanson’s brain will be cryogenically frozen. (The 2041 date comes from looking at an actuarial table for a 52 year old man and then adding a few years.)
Like women never lie to their husbands. Women have a history of interfering with the menfolk’s interest in cryonics, and I don’ t see that changing any time soon. In fact, I’d like to run an experiment: What if Alcor and CI both announced that they would no longer accept new female members, but they would tolerate the existing female members as “grandmothered” in? I doubt we’d see any women outside of cryonics motivated enough to challenge that policy by, say, filing a lawsuit for discrimination.
I would.
I’m hesitant to downvote the proposal of a way to put one’s beliefs to the test, even a hypothetical one, but I seriously doubt your prediction.
Cryonics organizations can’t even give suspensions away. Alcor and Omni magazine (remember that publication?) about 20 years ago offered a contest with a free suspension membership as the prize. As I recall, someone with a disability won the contest, but he didn’t follow through with the arrangements and didn’t respond to efforts to communicate with him. About 30 years ago, Mike Darwin offered the science fiction writer Frederik Pohl a free suspension, which he refused despite having written a novel and some other things about cryonics in the 1960′s.
So do you think we’d see “reverse psychology” at work by forbidding women from joining, with the effect of getting them interested in cryonics for the same reasons they’ve wanted to invade the other male-dominated social spaces they associate with power? Or would the discrimination just reinforce something they don’t want to do anyway?
I don’t know if it would make any women want cryonic preservation who didn’t want it already, but I’m sure it would anger plenty of women aside from those who wanted cryonic preservation in the first place.. It’s arbitrary discrimination. You don’t have to want to attend a country club to be angry that other people want to keep you out.
Well that’s the trick isn’t it? Convincing people to sign up for something because another group says they shouldn’t even if it takes money, many of us have sworn to avoid similar mind-hacks but the ones who haven’t may find something to use here.
If you were to actually attempt that approach, I think you’d get a reduction in signups because it would make cryonics seem even more cultish and anathema to mainstream norms, reducing the number of potentially amenable people who would consider it at all.
There are plenty of dark arts to choose from other than those relating to scarcity. To reduce the perception of cultishness around an idea, raise awareness of cultish groups that oppose it, and count on people mistaking reversed stupidity for intelligence and being repelled by the negative halo.
Like so.
Alternately, just use a Boombox
No, see, what you do is you have one cryonics group forbid women, and the rest of them make a lot of noise about how the first group is a bunch of jerks and don’t speak for the community at all. The first group takes a status hit, yeah, but the other groups get a nice status boost, and the whole thing generates a fair bit of attention—and high-quality, ‘this relates to me personally’ attention, at that—if done right.
Interesting, if i ever attempt it ill take that into account :)
Can’t speak for anyone else, but I would find it terribly irritating. Would also wonder how much money I could get off a lawsuit. I am not yet sure if cryonics would be helpful in living to my maximum lifespan (which I would like to be as long as possible), but I certainly don’t think this proposal sounds reasonable.
Also, how would it make sense to stop offering cryonics to women who decide to get the procedure in order to punish women who don’t? And wouldn’t that also punish husbands with wives who agree to be placed in cryonics with them? And if you are only postulating stopping unmarried women from joining, rather than women who have husbands who also want to join, again how does this punish these people you dislike who would probably only smile smugly at the news and think “well at least that’s a few less people who can try for immortality!” These women aren’t really any different from a large number of men who say they object to cryonics mainly because they think immortality is wrong (I don’t really think this objection makes any sense, but a lot of people seem to think this way). The only difference is that they happen to be married to men who want this procedure. And if one or the other seriously thinks this disagreement is a problem, maybe they need to end the relationship.