Here are a handful of my specific objections to Modern Male Sati:
Hanson is arguing that cryonicists’ wives should be accepting of the fact that their husbands are a) spending a significant portion of their income on life extension, and b) spending a lot of time thinking about what they are going to do with their wives are dead, and if they can’t accept these things, they are morally equivalent to widow-burners. This is not only needlessly insulting, but also an extremely unfair comparison.
In making this comparison, Hanson is also calling cryonicists’ wives selfish for not letting their husbands do what they want. This is a very male view of what a long-term relationship should be like, without anything to counterbalance it. It comes off like a complaint, sort of like, “my wife won’t let me go out to the bar with my male friends.”
Hanson writes: ” It seems clear to me that opposition is driven by the possibility that it might actually work.” This is wrong—it seems pretty obvious that your spouse believing in the “a)” and “b)” I listed above are valid reasons to be frustrated with them, regardless of whether you actually believe them. Also, this line strikes me as cheap point-scoring for cryonics (although I don’t know if Hanson intended it this way).
Hanson implicitly assumes that this is a gender issue, and talks about it as such, but this isn’t necessarily so. What about men who have cryonicist wives? It’s quite possible that there actually is a gender element involved here, but not even asking the question is what I object to.
Hanson’s tone encourages others to talk about women in a specific way, as an “other,” or an out-group. This is bad for various reasons that should be somewhat self-evident.
Do you have any idea at all what reading this site is like if you have a different set of preferences? We never make any effort at all to make this site at all more inclusive of ideological or value diversity, when it is precisely this that might help us refine the art more!
No, I don’t think I know what it’s like reading this site with a different set of preferences. That said, I would like to see some value diversity, and I would welcome some frank discussions of gender politics. But. There should also be people writing harshly-worded rebuttals when someone says something dreadfully wrong about the opposite gender or promotes some untrue stereotype.
It might also be worth noting that lack of value diversity is the reason I object to OB_2008. Factual content aside, Modern Male Sati and Is Overcoming Bias Male? promote a very specific view of gender politics that will anger and deter some potential readers. This creates a kind of evaporation cooling effect where posters can be even more wrong about gender politics and have no one to call them out on it.
a) spending a significant portion of their income on life extension, and b) spending a lot of time thinking about what they are going to do with their wives are dead, and if they can’t accept these things, they are morally equivalent to widow-burners.
Indian widows would use up a great deal of the husband’s estate while living on for unknown years or decades (the usual age imbalance + the female longevity advantage). As for thinking about afterwards… well, I imagine they would if they had had the option, as does anyone who takes out life insurance and isn’t expected to forego any options or treatments.
This is not only needlessly insulting, but also an extremely unfair comparison.
Assuming the conclusion. The question is are the outcomes equivalent… Reading your comment, I get the feeling you’re not actually grappling with the argument but instead venting about tone and values and outgroups.
Hanson is also calling cryonicists’ wives selfish for not letting their husbands do what they want.
Oh, so if the husband agrees not to go out to bars, then cryonics is now acceptable to you and the wife? A mutual satisfaction of preferences, and given how expensive alcohol is, it evens the financial tables too! Color me skeptical that this would actually work...
If this were a religious dispute, like, say, which faith to raise the kids in, would you be objecting? Is it ‘selfish’ for a Jewish dad to want to raise his kids Jewish? If it is, you seem to be seriously privileging the preferences of wives over husbands on all matters, and if not, it’d be interesting to see you try to find a distinction which makes some choices of education more important than cryonics!
What about men who have cryonicist wives? It’s quite possible that there actually is a gender element involved here, but not even asking the question is what I object to.
Opposition to cryonics really is a gender issue: look at how many men versus women are signed up! That alone is sufficient (cryonicist wives? rare as hen’s teeth), but actually, there’s even better data than that in “Is That What Love is? The Hostile Wife Phenomenon in Cryonics”, by Michael G. Darwin, Chana de Wolf, and Aschwin de Wolf; look at the table in the appendix.
Assuming the conclusion. The question is are the outcomes equivalent…
It’s an unfair comparison because widow-burning comes with strong emotional/moral connotations, irrespective of actual outcomes. It’s like (forgive me) comparing someone to Hitler, in the sense that even if the outcome you’re talking about is equivalent to Hitler, the emotional reaction that “X is like Hitler” provokes is still disproportionately too large. (Meta-note: Let’s call this Meta-Godwin’s Law: comparing something to comparing something to Hitler.)
As for the actual outcomes: It seems to me that there is some asymmetry because the widow is spending their husband’s money after they are dead, whereas the cryonicist is doing the spending while they are still around. But I’ll drop this point because, as you said, I am less interested in the actual argument and more interested in how it was framed.
Reading your comment, I get the feeling you’re not actually grappling with the argument but instead venting about tone and values and outgroups.
Yes; I explicitly stated this in my fifth bullet point.
Oh, so if the husband agrees not to go out to bars, then cryonics is now acceptable to you and the wife? A mutual satisfaction of preferences, and given how expensive alcohol is, it evens the financial tables too! Color me skeptical that this would actually work...
This is not at all what I’m arguing. I am arguing that Hanson’s post pattern-matches to a common male stereotype, the overly-controlling wife. Quoting myself, “This is a very male view of what a long-term relationship should be like, without anything to counterbalance it.” I don’t think the exchange you describe would actually work in practice.
If this were a religious dispute, like, say, which faith to raise the kids in, would you be objecting? Is it ‘selfish’ for a Jewish dad to want to raise his kids Jewish? If it is, you seem to be seriously privileging the preferences of wives over husbands on all matters, and if not, it’d be interesting to see you try to find a distinction which makes some choices of education more important than cryonics!
Forgive me, I do not understand how this is related to the point I was making. I don’t see the correspondence between this and cryonics.
Additionally, this example is a massive mind-killer for me for personal reasons and I don’t think I’m capable of discussing it in a rational manner. I’ll just say a few more things on this point: I am not accusing cryonicists of being selfish. I am saying that it is unreasonable for Hanson to accuse wives of being selfish because of the large, presumably negative impact it has on a relationship. I am also not attempting to privilege wives’ preferences over husbands; apologies for any miscommunication that caused that perception. I should probably also add that I am male, which may help make this claim more credible.
try to find a distinction which makes some choices of education more important than cryonics!
Side comment: I have no idea how to even begin comparing these two things, but I think this point is indicative of the large inferential gap between you and I. My System 1 response was to value choice of religious education over cryonics, whereas you seem to be implying (if I’m parsing your comment correctly, which I may not be) that the latter is clearly more important.
Opposition to cryonics really is a gender issue: look at how many men versus women are signed up! That alone is sufficient (cryonicist wives? rare as hen’s teeth), but actually, there’s even better data than that in “Is That What Love is? The Hostile Wife Phenomenon in Cryonics”, by Michael G. Darwin, Chana de Wolf, and Aschwin de Wolf; look at the table in the appendix.
There should also be people writing harshly-worded rebuttals when someone says something dreadfully wrong about the opposite gender or promotes some stereotype.
Can I write a harshly-worded rebuttal of the idea that promoting stereotypes is always morally wrong? Or perhaps an essay on how stereotypes are useful?
Oh, of course. In fact, before I saw your comment I changed the wording to “untrue stereotype.” Some stereotypes are indeed true and/or useful. What I object to is assuming that certain stereotypes are true without evidence, and speaking as if they are true, especially when said stereotypes make strong moral claims about some group. This is what Hanson does in Modern Male Sati and Is Overcoming Bias Male?
Edit: Tone is also important. Talking about some group as if they are an out-group is generally a bad thing. The two posts by Hanson that I mentioned talk about women as if they are weird alien creatures who happen to visit his blog.
Hold on a minute, though—I’m not sure we actually agree here. I envision this kind of norm excluding posts like Modern Male Sati and Is Overcoming Bias Male?. Do you?
I’m ok as long as we get to have a fair meta debate about a norm of excluding interesting posts like modern male sati and the like first. Also that one is allowed to challenge such norms later if circumstances change.
I mean what kind of a world would it be if people violated every norm they disagreed with? As long as the norm making system is generally ok, its better to not sabotage it. And who knows maybe I would be convinced in such a debate as well.
Here are a handful of my specific objections to Modern Male Sati:
Hanson is arguing that cryonicists’ wives should be accepting of the fact that their husbands are a) spending a significant portion of their income on life extension, and b) spending a lot of time thinking about what they are going to do with their wives are dead, and if they can’t accept these things, they are morally equivalent to widow-burners. This is not only needlessly insulting, but also an extremely unfair comparison.
In making this comparison, Hanson is also calling cryonicists’ wives selfish for not letting their husbands do what they want. This is a very male view of what a long-term relationship should be like, without anything to counterbalance it. It comes off like a complaint, sort of like, “my wife won’t let me go out to the bar with my male friends.”
Hanson writes: ” It seems clear to me that opposition is driven by the possibility that it might actually work.” This is wrong—it seems pretty obvious that your spouse believing in the “a)” and “b)” I listed above are valid reasons to be frustrated with them, regardless of whether you actually believe them. Also, this line strikes me as cheap point-scoring for cryonics (although I don’t know if Hanson intended it this way).
Hanson implicitly assumes that this is a gender issue, and talks about it as such, but this isn’t necessarily so. What about men who have cryonicist wives? It’s quite possible that there actually is a gender element involved here, but not even asking the question is what I object to.
Hanson’s tone encourages others to talk about women in a specific way, as an “other,” or an out-group. This is bad for various reasons that should be somewhat self-evident.
No, I don’t think I know what it’s like reading this site with a different set of preferences. That said, I would like to see some value diversity, and I would welcome some frank discussions of gender politics. But. There should also be people writing harshly-worded rebuttals when someone says something dreadfully wrong about the opposite gender or promotes some untrue stereotype.
It might also be worth noting that lack of value diversity is the reason I object to OB_2008. Factual content aside, Modern Male Sati and Is Overcoming Bias Male? promote a very specific view of gender politics that will anger and deter some potential readers. This creates a kind of evaporation cooling effect where posters can be even more wrong about gender politics and have no one to call them out on it.
Indian widows would use up a great deal of the husband’s estate while living on for unknown years or decades (the usual age imbalance + the female longevity advantage). As for thinking about afterwards… well, I imagine they would if they had had the option, as does anyone who takes out life insurance and isn’t expected to forego any options or treatments.
Assuming the conclusion. The question is are the outcomes equivalent… Reading your comment, I get the feeling you’re not actually grappling with the argument but instead venting about tone and values and outgroups.
Oh, so if the husband agrees not to go out to bars, then cryonics is now acceptable to you and the wife? A mutual satisfaction of preferences, and given how expensive alcohol is, it evens the financial tables too! Color me skeptical that this would actually work...
If this were a religious dispute, like, say, which faith to raise the kids in, would you be objecting? Is it ‘selfish’ for a Jewish dad to want to raise his kids Jewish? If it is, you seem to be seriously privileging the preferences of wives over husbands on all matters, and if not, it’d be interesting to see you try to find a distinction which makes some choices of education more important than cryonics!
Opposition to cryonics really is a gender issue: look at how many men versus women are signed up! That alone is sufficient (cryonicist wives? rare as hen’s teeth), but actually, there’s even better data than that in “Is That What Love is? The Hostile Wife Phenomenon in Cryonics”, by Michael G. Darwin, Chana de Wolf, and Aschwin de Wolf; look at the table in the appendix.
It’s an unfair comparison because widow-burning comes with strong emotional/moral connotations, irrespective of actual outcomes. It’s like (forgive me) comparing someone to Hitler, in the sense that even if the outcome you’re talking about is equivalent to Hitler, the emotional reaction that “X is like Hitler” provokes is still disproportionately too large. (Meta-note: Let’s call this Meta-Godwin’s Law: comparing something to comparing something to Hitler.)
As for the actual outcomes: It seems to me that there is some asymmetry because the widow is spending their husband’s money after they are dead, whereas the cryonicist is doing the spending while they are still around. But I’ll drop this point because, as you said, I am less interested in the actual argument and more interested in how it was framed.
Yes; I explicitly stated this in my fifth bullet point.
This is not at all what I’m arguing. I am arguing that Hanson’s post pattern-matches to a common male stereotype, the overly-controlling wife. Quoting myself, “This is a very male view of what a long-term relationship should be like, without anything to counterbalance it.” I don’t think the exchange you describe would actually work in practice.
Forgive me, I do not understand how this is related to the point I was making. I don’t see the correspondence between this and cryonics. Additionally, this example is a massive mind-killer for me for personal reasons and I don’t think I’m capable of discussing it in a rational manner. I’ll just say a few more things on this point: I am not accusing cryonicists of being selfish. I am saying that it is unreasonable for Hanson to accuse wives of being selfish because of the large, presumably negative impact it has on a relationship. I am also not attempting to privilege wives’ preferences over husbands; apologies for any miscommunication that caused that perception. I should probably also add that I am male, which may help make this claim more credible.
Side comment: I have no idea how to even begin comparing these two things, but I think this point is indicative of the large inferential gap between you and I. My System 1 response was to value choice of religious education over cryonics, whereas you seem to be implying (if I’m parsing your comment correctly, which I may not be) that the latter is clearly more important.
Whoops. Ok. I didn’t realize that.
Can I write a harshly-worded rebuttal of the idea that promoting stereotypes is always morally wrong? Or perhaps an essay on how stereotypes are useful?
Oh, of course. In fact, before I saw your comment I changed the wording to “untrue stereotype.” Some stereotypes are indeed true and/or useful. What I object to is assuming that certain stereotypes are true without evidence, and speaking as if they are true, especially when said stereotypes make strong moral claims about some group. This is what Hanson does in Modern Male Sati and Is Overcoming Bias Male?
Edit: Tone is also important. Talking about some group as if they are an out-group is generally a bad thing. The two posts by Hanson that I mentioned talk about women as if they are weird alien creatures who happen to visit his blog.
Ah ok! I have no problem with such a proposed norm then.
Hold on a minute, though—I’m not sure we actually agree here. I envision this kind of norm excluding posts like Modern Male Sati and Is Overcoming Bias Male?. Do you?
I’m ok as long as we get to have a fair meta debate about a norm of excluding interesting posts like modern male sati and the like first. Also that one is allowed to challenge such norms later if circumstances change.
I mean what kind of a world would it be if people violated every norm they disagreed with? As long as the norm making system is generally ok, its better to not sabotage it. And who knows maybe I would be convinced in such a debate as well.
Fair point. Out of curiosity, what norms would you promote in this meta debate?