With a life expectancy measured in e.g. a few months (depending on your threshold), the scenario would necessarily be along the lines of either an nonagenarian or someone with terminal cancer, dilated cardiomyopathy etcetera in the final stages.
Autopsy regulations greatly vary from country to country. It would be trivial to perform the “transition” at a location without such regulation. That particular problem is a minor one compared with all the other ones, for a determined smart person an inconvenience at best.
It is however a very convenient argument to not intervene while you have any time left to live.
Death itself is seen as a problem to be overcome, and it is tackled, but autopsy regulations aren’t? If that doesn’t come across as propping up a belief-in-belief, what will?
A time differential of only 10 minutes, let alone hours of some interim cooling procedures is the difference between freezing a mostly intact brain, and a (microscopically) jumbled mess of torn membranes, with the information irrecoverable for the most part (due to the destruction process / function not being injective).
Regarding the public backlash, does that outweigh greatly reducing your own chances of survival?
Autopsy regulations greatly vary from country to country. It would be trivial to perform the “transition” at a location without such regulation. That particular problem is a minor one compared with all the other ones, for a determined smart person an inconvenience at best.
I’m afraid I don’t believe you. You can convince me by providing a detailed how-to guide on jumping jurisdictions, committing suicide and having yourself cryonically suspended. Besides, your argument is self-defeating. If it’s so trivial then there’s no need to plan ahead. If at the time of learning of my impending doom, I’m still capable of executing a plan involving international travel and coordination with the standby team then surely I’m also capable of googling for “countries with permissive suicide laws”.
Death itself is seen as a problem to be overcome, and it is tackled, but autopsy regulations aren’t? If that doesn’t come across as propping up a belief-in-belief, what will?
Simple akrasia will always be the favored explanation if all that you’ve observed is that people assert to believe something yet fail to act in accordance with that belief. To get into belief-in-belief territory, there must be a perception that believing is virtuous and important. This applies to some religious beliefs (where your sins can always be forgiven but lose your faith and you are going to hell). It might also apply to political or any other beliefs strongly tied to group identity (where being outed as disagreeing with your tribe can get you in social trouble). It doesn’t apply to cryonics.
Or maybe you mean that people only believe in cryonics to stave off existential terror. That’s still wouldn’t be belief-in-belief but merely a wrong belief held for stupid reasons (and you need to explicitly argue for the wrongness of that belief rather than psychoanalyzing people if you want to be taken seriously).
I’m afraid I don’t believe you. You can convince me by providing a detailed how-to guide on jumping jurisdictions, committing suicide and having yourself cryonically suspended.
Sure. For one, with a short life expectancy you’re not being detained where you live. You can travel whereever. I assure you there are plenty of e.g. European countries that will not mandatorily do autopsies on people that died within a few months of their expected end of life. How do I know? Well, I’ve interned at one of those overworked, understaffed forensic pathology institutes. Just leave a letter and overdose on pain medication. Dignitas (assisted suicide organisation) patients don’t undergo autopsies.
Too much of a hassle, going overseas? No worries, I got you covered. Incidentally, I got PM’ed with this paper with the remark that physician-assisted suicide cases (shouldn’t be too hard for a smart person with a short life expectancy to get into) such as “Kevorkian’s patients were autopsied, as is apparently normal for euthanasia.”
Just from checking out that one particular paper, I wasn’t surprised to come across “As mentioned previously, autopsies are not required of individuals who die from legalized PAS in Oregon”. Maybe by chance I checked the one US state that’s different from all others, and many EU countries? Probably not.
Regarding cryonic companies apparently not aggressively fighting that issue (which may raise public awareness, not necessarily a bad thing even if it’s bad publicity at first. Better raising awareness of any kind than indifference), that in itself isn’t a good sign regarding their seriousness.
(If your next argument were “But I might be too sick too travel, with only a few months left”, then … well, I’d probably disengage :)
Besides, your argument is self-defeating. If it’s so trivial then there’s no need to plan ahead.
What I care about with this topic is using the argument as a discriminator to distinguish how much of the belief into cryonics is carried by its actual merit versus how much is based on staving off existential angst.
People talking up the importance of—autopsy regulations (!) such that it seems like a stop sign, while taking on magnitudes harder problems in, say, FAI, indicate a belief-in-belief.
Then surely I’m also capable of googling for “countries with permissive suicide laws”.
So would that be your plan? It’s something that you should probably look into before your death is impending. Would you? That’s all I’m asking.
This applies to some religious beliefs (where your sins can always be forgiven but lose your faith and you are going to hell). (...) It doesn’t apply to cryonics.
The actual merit of the preservation approach nonwithstanding, how is cryonics not the technological equivalent of a deep-frozen stairway to heaven? The parallels in terms of eschatological topics (including skipping death, chance of skipping ahead in limbo to some kind of death-less future) are easy enough to find.
There being more convincing reasons in favor of cryonics merely makes it harder to distinguish between belief and belief-in-belief. But arguing against giving up even a few months of your life for greatly increasing your actual chances still seems to do the trick.
Or maybe you mean that people only believe in cryonics to stave off existential terror. That’s still wouldn’t be belief-in-belief
It seems to fit the kind of reasoning arguing for the invisible dragon pretty nicely. Even if there is a case to be made for immediate cryonics. “A few weeks less life, and supposedly my brain will much less damaged? - Well, that won’t work, you know, autopsy regulations!”
Also, arguing for “a few hours until hibernation, that’s close enough for eventual reactivation” is in fact like arguing for unfounded religious beliefs. It’s a whole different topic than immediate preservation. I can’t over-emphasise the difference of just a few hours (though I am certainly trying).
and you need to explicitly argue for the wrongness of that belief rather than psychoanalyzing people if you want to be taken seriously
No, I merely have to find a good discriminator to distinguish want-to-believe from believes-for-rational-reasons. Belief-in-belief does not imply that the belief is actually wrong.
(Excuse the tone, no adversity intended. Also, minor typographical edit)
Maybe by chance I checked the one US state that’s different from all others, and many EU countries? Probably not.
You did. Most states require autopsy for any criminal/unnatural causes of death, including suicide. Oregon (and Washington) has a death with dignity law, which makes suicide non-criminal in some cases. The standard autopsy exemption in most states comes from a doctor’s signature that the cause of death was known and natural. To my knowledge there’s no compendium of state autopsy laws anywhere, you have to look state by state, but on average suicide is an instant mandatory autopsy.
In some states you can block an autopsy based on religious belief. Some people have organized to make cryonics a verified religious exemption to save time on paperwork. Only a few states explicitly allow this, however. See here.
Thanks, I stand corrected on that (darn Occam’s Razor for being a heuristic that’s subject to occasional failure).
However, I shouldn’t have brought that speculative part up. It’s peripheral to my point, which is that it’s still doable to travel to a place without mandatory autopsies, and to give up a few e.g. weeks of your life for instant cryonification.
Consider:
After a mere around four hours after a stroke (subject to national guidelines), there’s no significant treatment done anymore! Not only is the central zone of oxygen deprivation given up upon after a span of minutes to an hour, but the peripheral cells (the penumbra) is as well (after those around 4 hours).
When you die, the entirety of your brain is equivalent to the central area, the ground zero of a stroke, just in terms of oxygen deprivation.
It’s a whole other ballpark. Cryonics after more than a few minutes should be called MangledBrainFreezing, it’s just that different.
I can’t fathom why people who supposedly whole-heartedly (whole brainedly) invested in cryonics don’t find ways around such simple barriers as autopsy regulations. (Simple because even if as an alternative there’s only 1 state in the US, and a couple European countries, really how many workarounds do you need? Just one.)
Not taking care of that eventuality only makes sense to me if in fact the investment for psychological reasons outweighs the actual credence one lends to cryonics. I realize that doesn’t apply to all subscribers.
If you had picked a state at random, Occam’s Razor (or Bayes rule or whatever) would have applied. Given that someone was providing you with an example of a state without suicide autopsies, you should update significantly less on other states having that property.
Traveling to Europe is unrealistic, for several reasons. The difficulty of travel when one is that infirm, for one. Not all european countries are as permissive with what they allow people to do with bodies after death, I haven’t looked into it much (as I don’t live there), but I’ve heard there’s been a bit of legal trouble in trying to get cryonics organizations set up in several of the euro countries. And finally, my provider (CI & SA) do not do international cases, both due to the cost and due to legal difficulty in transporting the body.
However your comment about Oregon gives me hope. :) If this is still the case when I’m nearing my expected death I will travel to Oregon and make my arrangements there. Thank you!
But arguing against giving up even a few months of your life for greatly increasing your actual chances still seems to do the trick.
I don’t argue that. As I mentioned in my previous comment, I would gladly go into suspension a few months early. Even earlier than that in extreme cases.
What I care about with this topic is using the argument as a discriminator to distinguish how much of the belief into cryonics is carried by its actual merit versus how much is based on staving off existential angst.
It can be both. I’m glad it helps me stave off my existential angst, and it does so primarily because it looks to have a chance of working.
People talking up the importance of—autopsy regulations (!) such that it seems like a stop sign, while taking on magnitudes harder problems in, say, FAI, indicate a belief-in-belief.
I posted links to organizations working to make assisted suicide legal. But I do support SIAI more than these orgs because FAI is orders of magnitude more important. My personal death pales compared to human extinction.
Sure. For one, with a short life expectancy you’re not being detained where you live. [… stuff about suicide …]
Okay, I think I’m convinced about that part (partly by what you wrote and partly by realizing that some problems with suicide tourism I was thinking about seem exaggerated after thinking them through).
Unfortunately, this made me realize that this point wasn’t really relevant to our disagreement. I still don’t think that lack of cryonics-related suicide discourse on the Internet indicates that cryonicists’ don’t expect cryonics to work (or even that cryonicists’ aren’t privately considering the possibility of assisted suicide), so it was a bit disingenuous of me to bring it up. Sorry about that.
Upon further reflection I realized that I don’t really even care whether people are using cryonics purely as an existential terror management strategy. I don’t consider ‘look at all those people who already signed up’ to be a very important (or even valid) argument for cryonics so even if some of those people turn out to be totally crazy, it won’t affect my belief in the possibility of cryonics working. I think my real beef with your post was abusing the concept of belief-in-belief.
Which you’re still doing, by the way.
The actual merit of the preservation approach nonwithstanding, how is cryonics not the technological equivalent of a deep-frozen stairway to heaven? The parallels in terms of eschatological topics (including skipping death, chance of skipping ahead in limbo to some kind of death-less future) are easy enough to find.
Maybe. But a very important difference that makes the belief-in-belief concept inapplicable here is that no one claims that believing in cryonics (unlike believing in gods) will by itself affect reality in any way. Believing in cryonics isn’t considered important.
If someone takes genuine comfort from the fact that they’re signed up, then I’d say that they really believe that cryonics will work. Maybe they started believing it only for this comfort without really thinking rationally. Maybe they believe it too strongly. Maybe they got carried away and convinced themselves that the magical cryonics fairy will take care of everything and they don’t have to worry about unpleasant technical details like ischemic damage caused by delayed suspension. But it’s not belief in belief if they are actually willing to spend a pile of money on it. (In case of religious activities people can also spend money because of signaling without really believing but right now spending money on cryonics mostly gets you scorn and ridicule so that hypothesis is out.)
It seems to fit the kind of reasoning arguing for the invisible dragon pretty nicely.
Ah, but people are actually paying to have their garages suffused with dragon-killing chemical agents (dracocides?) And you’re saying that they don’t really believe in the dragon?
(Excuse the tone, no adversity intended. Also, minor typographical edit)
No need to excuse anything, I haven’t registered any adversity.
“Autopsy regulations greatly vary from country to country.”
Alcor and CI are both located in the United States, and a corresponding very high percentage of cryonic members are thus from the US (there are major transportation and logistic issues involved in cross-continent shipping of a body in sufficient condition to still make preservation viable).
Even if you go out of country to kill yourself, getting the remains shipped to Alcor will probably be very difficult, both because of the difficulty of shipping remains normally, and the suspicion invoked by the death being the result of an illegal-in-the-US suicide...
With a life expectancy measured in e.g. a few months (depending on your threshold), the scenario would necessarily be along the lines of either an nonagenarian or someone with terminal cancer, dilated cardiomyopathy etcetera in the final stages.
Autopsy regulations greatly vary from country to country. It would be trivial to perform the “transition” at a location without such regulation. That particular problem is a minor one compared with all the other ones, for a determined smart person an inconvenience at best.
It is however a very convenient argument to not intervene while you have any time left to live.
Death itself is seen as a problem to be overcome, and it is tackled, but autopsy regulations aren’t? If that doesn’t come across as propping up a belief-in-belief, what will?
A time differential of only 10 minutes, let alone hours of some interim cooling procedures is the difference between freezing a mostly intact brain, and a (microscopically) jumbled mess of torn membranes, with the information irrecoverable for the most part (due to the destruction process / function not being injective).
Regarding the public backlash, does that outweigh greatly reducing your own chances of survival?
I’m afraid I don’t believe you. You can convince me by providing a detailed how-to guide on jumping jurisdictions, committing suicide and having yourself cryonically suspended. Besides, your argument is self-defeating. If it’s so trivial then there’s no need to plan ahead. If at the time of learning of my impending doom, I’m still capable of executing a plan involving international travel and coordination with the standby team then surely I’m also capable of googling for “countries with permissive suicide laws”.
Simple akrasia will always be the favored explanation if all that you’ve observed is that people assert to believe something yet fail to act in accordance with that belief. To get into belief-in-belief territory, there must be a perception that believing is virtuous and important. This applies to some religious beliefs (where your sins can always be forgiven but lose your faith and you are going to hell). It might also apply to political or any other beliefs strongly tied to group identity (where being outed as disagreeing with your tribe can get you in social trouble). It doesn’t apply to cryonics.
Or maybe you mean that people only believe in cryonics to stave off existential terror. That’s still wouldn’t be belief-in-belief but merely a wrong belief held for stupid reasons (and you need to explicitly argue for the wrongness of that belief rather than psychoanalyzing people if you want to be taken seriously).
Sure. For one, with a short life expectancy you’re not being detained where you live. You can travel whereever. I assure you there are plenty of e.g. European countries that will not mandatorily do autopsies on people that died within a few months of their expected end of life. How do I know? Well, I’ve interned at one of those overworked, understaffed forensic pathology institutes. Just leave a letter and overdose on pain medication. Dignitas (assisted suicide organisation) patients don’t undergo autopsies.
Too much of a hassle, going overseas? No worries, I got you covered. Incidentally, I got PM’ed with this paper with the remark that physician-assisted suicide cases (shouldn’t be too hard for a smart person with a short life expectancy to get into) such as “Kevorkian’s patients were autopsied, as is apparently normal for euthanasia.”
Just from checking out that one particular paper, I wasn’t surprised to come across “As mentioned previously, autopsies are not required of individuals who die from legalized PAS in Oregon”. Maybe by chance I checked the one US state that’s different from all others, and many EU countries? Probably not.
Regarding cryonic companies apparently not aggressively fighting that issue (which may raise public awareness, not necessarily a bad thing even if it’s bad publicity at first. Better raising awareness of any kind than indifference), that in itself isn’t a good sign regarding their seriousness.
(If your next argument were “But I might be too sick too travel, with only a few months left”, then … well, I’d probably disengage :)
What I care about with this topic is using the argument as a discriminator to distinguish how much of the belief into cryonics is carried by its actual merit versus how much is based on staving off existential angst.
People talking up the importance of—autopsy regulations (!) such that it seems like a stop sign, while taking on magnitudes harder problems in, say, FAI, indicate a belief-in-belief.
So would that be your plan? It’s something that you should probably look into before your death is impending. Would you? That’s all I’m asking.
The actual merit of the preservation approach nonwithstanding, how is cryonics not the technological equivalent of a deep-frozen stairway to heaven? The parallels in terms of eschatological topics (including skipping death, chance of skipping ahead in limbo to some kind of death-less future) are easy enough to find.
There being more convincing reasons in favor of cryonics merely makes it harder to distinguish between belief and belief-in-belief. But arguing against giving up even a few months of your life for greatly increasing your actual chances still seems to do the trick.
It seems to fit the kind of reasoning arguing for the invisible dragon pretty nicely. Even if there is a case to be made for immediate cryonics. “A few weeks less life, and supposedly my brain will much less damaged? - Well, that won’t work, you know, autopsy regulations!”
Also, arguing for “a few hours until hibernation, that’s close enough for eventual reactivation” is in fact like arguing for unfounded religious beliefs. It’s a whole different topic than immediate preservation. I can’t over-emphasise the difference of just a few hours (though I am certainly trying).
No, I merely have to find a good discriminator to distinguish want-to-believe from believes-for-rational-reasons. Belief-in-belief does not imply that the belief is actually wrong.
(Excuse the tone, no adversity intended. Also, minor typographical edit)
You did. Most states require autopsy for any criminal/unnatural causes of death, including suicide. Oregon (and Washington) has a death with dignity law, which makes suicide non-criminal in some cases. The standard autopsy exemption in most states comes from a doctor’s signature that the cause of death was known and natural. To my knowledge there’s no compendium of state autopsy laws anywhere, you have to look state by state, but on average suicide is an instant mandatory autopsy.
In some states you can block an autopsy based on religious belief. Some people have organized to make cryonics a verified religious exemption to save time on paperwork. Only a few states explicitly allow this, however. See here.
Thanks, I stand corrected on that (darn Occam’s Razor for being a heuristic that’s subject to occasional failure).
However, I shouldn’t have brought that speculative part up. It’s peripheral to my point, which is that it’s still doable to travel to a place without mandatory autopsies, and to give up a few e.g. weeks of your life for instant cryonification.
Consider:
After a mere around four hours after a stroke (subject to national guidelines), there’s no significant treatment done anymore! Not only is the central zone of oxygen deprivation given up upon after a span of minutes to an hour, but the peripheral cells (the penumbra) is as well (after those around 4 hours).
When you die, the entirety of your brain is equivalent to the central area, the ground zero of a stroke, just in terms of oxygen deprivation.
It’s a whole other ballpark. Cryonics after more than a few minutes should be called MangledBrainFreezing, it’s just that different.
I can’t fathom why people who supposedly whole-heartedly (whole brainedly) invested in cryonics don’t find ways around such simple barriers as autopsy regulations. (Simple because even if as an alternative there’s only 1 state in the US, and a couple European countries, really how many workarounds do you need? Just one.)
Not taking care of that eventuality only makes sense to me if in fact the investment for psychological reasons outweighs the actual credence one lends to cryonics. I realize that doesn’t apply to all subscribers.
If you had picked a state at random, Occam’s Razor (or Bayes rule or whatever) would have applied. Given that someone was providing you with an example of a state without suicide autopsies, you should update significantly less on other states having that property.
Traveling to Europe is unrealistic, for several reasons. The difficulty of travel when one is that infirm, for one. Not all european countries are as permissive with what they allow people to do with bodies after death, I haven’t looked into it much (as I don’t live there), but I’ve heard there’s been a bit of legal trouble in trying to get cryonics organizations set up in several of the euro countries. And finally, my provider (CI & SA) do not do international cases, both due to the cost and due to legal difficulty in transporting the body.
However your comment about Oregon gives me hope. :) If this is still the case when I’m nearing my expected death I will travel to Oregon and make my arrangements there. Thank you!
I don’t argue that. As I mentioned in my previous comment, I would gladly go into suspension a few months early. Even earlier than that in extreme cases.
It can be both. I’m glad it helps me stave off my existential angst, and it does so primarily because it looks to have a chance of working.
I posted links to organizations working to make assisted suicide legal. But I do support SIAI more than these orgs because FAI is orders of magnitude more important. My personal death pales compared to human extinction.
Okay, I think I’m convinced about that part (partly by what you wrote and partly by realizing that some problems with suicide tourism I was thinking about seem exaggerated after thinking them through).
Unfortunately, this made me realize that this point wasn’t really relevant to our disagreement. I still don’t think that lack of cryonics-related suicide discourse on the Internet indicates that cryonicists’ don’t expect cryonics to work (or even that cryonicists’ aren’t privately considering the possibility of assisted suicide), so it was a bit disingenuous of me to bring it up. Sorry about that.
Upon further reflection I realized that I don’t really even care whether people are using cryonics purely as an existential terror management strategy. I don’t consider ‘look at all those people who already signed up’ to be a very important (or even valid) argument for cryonics so even if some of those people turn out to be totally crazy, it won’t affect my belief in the possibility of cryonics working. I think my real beef with your post was abusing the concept of belief-in-belief.
Which you’re still doing, by the way.
Maybe. But a very important difference that makes the belief-in-belief concept inapplicable here is that no one claims that believing in cryonics (unlike believing in gods) will by itself affect reality in any way. Believing in cryonics isn’t considered important.
If someone takes genuine comfort from the fact that they’re signed up, then I’d say that they really believe that cryonics will work. Maybe they started believing it only for this comfort without really thinking rationally. Maybe they believe it too strongly. Maybe they got carried away and convinced themselves that the magical cryonics fairy will take care of everything and they don’t have to worry about unpleasant technical details like ischemic damage caused by delayed suspension. But it’s not belief in belief if they are actually willing to spend a pile of money on it. (In case of religious activities people can also spend money because of signaling without really believing but right now spending money on cryonics mostly gets you scorn and ridicule so that hypothesis is out.)
Ah, but people are actually paying to have their garages suffused with dragon-killing chemical agents (dracocides?) And you’re saying that they don’t really believe in the dragon?
No need to excuse anything, I haven’t registered any adversity.
“Autopsy regulations greatly vary from country to country.”
Alcor and CI are both located in the United States, and a corresponding very high percentage of cryonic members are thus from the US (there are major transportation and logistic issues involved in cross-continent shipping of a body in sufficient condition to still make preservation viable).
Even if you go out of country to kill yourself, getting the remains shipped to Alcor will probably be very difficult, both because of the difficulty of shipping remains normally, and the suspicion invoked by the death being the result of an illegal-in-the-US suicide...