In the 16th century they didn’t have computers or the theory of computation, they didn’t know about neurons, they didn’t know about quantum mechanics or atomic orbitals, they didn’t know about genes or DNA or molecular biology. We’ve gone from da Vinci enclosing the human form in a circle, to genome projects and cortical simulations and artificial organs. We can synthesize a bacterial genome from raw ingredients with molecular precision. We have understood the genetic causality of embryonic differentiation. What would be irrational, would be to know all that, and still think that intelligence, the interactions of individual atoms, and the aging process, will remain beyond technological intervention. Humans are the tool-using primate, and it turns out that our evolutionary role is to use our old tools to make new tools that will then remake ourselves and the world. You can’t give a tool-using monkey access to its own blueprint and then expect nothing to happen.
In the 16th century they didn’t have computers or the theory of computation, they didn’t know about neurons, they didn’t know about quantum mechanics or atomic orbitals, they didn’t know about genes or DNA or molecular biology. We’ve gone from da Vinci enclosing the human form in a circle, to genome projects and cortical simulations and artificial organs. We can synthesize a bacterial genome from raw ingredients with molecular precision. We have understood the genetic causality of embryonic differentiation.
Sure. What’s your point?
What would be irrational, would be to know all that, and still think that intelligence, the interactions of individual atoms, and the aging process, will remain beyond technological intervention.
Indeed, and that’s what my artificial knee example was about.
But unless you expand the definition of “transhumanism” to the belief that there will be progress in medicine, computer technology and chemistry, in which case I dare you to find someone who is not a transhumanist, this is not what we are talking about.
What we are talking about are things such as cryonics, which institutions like the Society for Cryobiology, actual domain experts who know what they are talking about, consider pseudoscience. And yet, there are prominent transhumanists who are willing to give tens of thousands dollars to people who do this (and in case you are wondering, Alcor isn’t much better).
So please, spare me the claim that transhumanism is based on science and technology.
What we are talking about are things such as cryonics, which institutions like the Society for Cryobiology, actual domain experts who know what they are talking about, consider pseudoscience.
The cryobiologists long ago forfeited any reason to take them seriously as critics, with such dogmatizing as their bylaws banning cryonicists and public lies about ‘exploding lysosomes’. Fruit of the tainted tree etc.
Accusations made by a totally uninterested party like Mike “Darwin” ( * ) based largely on anonymous testimony. I don’t know about lysosomes, but he could have got just one incorrect claim in a private letter.
If cryobiologists think that cyronics is pseudoscience and possibly a fraud, then it seems perfectly reasonable that they want to distance themselves from it. The point is, why do they believe that cyronics is pseudoscience in the first place?
Mike “Darwin” says that it’s because they are prejudiced and they have a personal grudge against him, but that sounds quite unlikely, expecially given that, as even he claims, cryobiologists have been indifferent or even supportive of cryonics in the early days.
What likely happened is that the evidence that cryopreservation of whole human bodies (or heads) was not viable accumulated, and cryobiologists did what proper scientists are supposed to do: discard the failed hypothesis. Mike “Darwin” and his ilk, on the other hand, clinged to it like the homeopathists inventing stories about “water memory” when they learn about Avogadro constant.
I don’t have the expertise to evaluate all the technical claims in the article, but Mike “Darwin” lecturing cryobiologists about cryobiology sounds like creationists lecturing evolutionary biologists about evolutionary biology.
If I have to apply the authority heuristics I’m certainly defaulting to the mainstream authority, not to some guy who sells a fringe practice that (a) appears to be unviable in the light of my knowledge, (b) looks very much like a religious ritual (c) has been the subject of confirmed scams in the past, and is now offered by questionable organizations.
( * why this guy doesn’t use his real name instead of trying to hijack the reputation of a great scientist? It’s like calling yourself Einstein or Newton)
“Based largely”? Are we reading the same page? I see plenty of papers, articles, FOIA lawsuits, TV programs, quotes from published bylaws etc.
The point is, why do they believe that cyronics is pseudoscience in the first place?
Yes, that’s a good question, especially when their original criticism—exploding lysosomes—is now on the ash-heap of history, and when their entire field demonstrates the success of cooling and vitrifying techniques. One you don’t answer.
Mike “Darwin” says that it’s because they are prejudiced and they have a personal grudge against him, but that sounds quite unlikely, expecially given that, as even he claims, cryobiologists have been indifferent or even supportive of cryonics in the early days.
Really? Let’s look at what Darwin himself wrote in response to this exact question:
But beyond this particular incident, it is clear that the Society had a long history of less focused enmity toward cryonics. What was responsible for this enmity and lack of cooperation between cryonicists and cryobiologists? The answer is: a lot of things.
‘A lot of things’. I see.
What likely happened is that the evidence that cryopreservation of whole human bodies (or heads) was not viable accumulated, and cryobiologists did what proper scientists are supposed to do: discard the failed hypothesis. Mike “Darwin” and his ilk, on the other hand, clinged to it like the homeopathists inventing stories about “water memory” when they learn about Avogadro constant.
I don’t have the expertise to evaluate all the technical claims in the article, but Mike “Darwin” lecturing cryobiologists about cryobiology sounds like creationists lecturing evolutionary biologists about evolutionary biology.
So you haven’t bothered to read anything that Darwin has produced carefully, as demonstrated by your repeated mischaracterizations, you know the cryobiologists have been either wrong or lying about why cryonics wouldn’t work, and your best guess is to compare cryonics to memory water and creationism.
If I have to apply the authority heuristics I’m certainly defaulting to the mainstream authority, not to some guy who sells a fringe practice that (a) appears to be unviable in the light of my knowledge, (b) looks very much like a religious ritual (c) has been the subject of confirmed scams in the past, and is now offered by questionable organizations.
Darwin isn’t selling anything now; and I’ve asked him what he thinks of that particular 1991 essay of his, and he mentioned nothing like ‘oh, I made all that up so I could sell ALCOR memberships’ despite his fierce recent criticisms of CI and ALCOR.
Does that make you take him any more seriously and in favor of cryonics, or are Darwin’s criticisms just going to go through your one-way filter and come out as ‘cryonics is bunk, even Darwin says so!’?
( * why this guy doesn’t use his real name instead of trying to hijack the reputation of a great scientist? It’s like calling yourself Einstein or Newton)
People change their names for all sorts of reasons; for Darwin, it’s admiration for the original back when he was a kid and defending Darwinism against Creationism, not ‘trying to hijack the reputation of a great scientist’ although perhaps he was an unusually foresighted kid and adopted the name so decades later he could fool people into thinking he was someone from the 1800s?
(Which by the way is really ironic, since you’re the one comparing cryonics to Creationism! Why are you including such a lame criticism, anyway? Do you want people to dismiss you out of hand for ad hominems?)
( * why this guy doesn’t use his real name instead of trying to hijack the reputation of a great scientist? It’s like calling yourself Einstein or Newton)
Well, I hadn’t suspected that that wasn’t his original last name.
First part (from computers to molecular biology): I was explaining why “AGI … arbitrary atomic manipulation nanotech … transhuman life extension” are now likely, in a way that wasn’t in the 16th (or the 6th) century.
Second part: I’m trying to wake up your sense of change! You didn’t answer Aris when he asked you where you think 21st-century progress will stop. Do you think the human race can understand the causality of the atom, the gene, and the brain, and then only apply that knowledge superficially? Chemists routinely apply their understanding of how atoms interact, to create molecules that have never existed in nature, and that is the future of life and intelligence too: living things and thinking things that have been designed from the molecular level up, having only broad structural properties in common with their natural prototypes.
You did say all this won’t happen for “the foreseeable future”. So maybe you just mean it’s an affair of the year 3000, but not the year 2050. Let’s try to pin this down. Consider a scenario for the future solar system where most of it is inhabited by artificial life and artificial intelligence. In some places it’s still based on DNA, in some places it’s all solid-state. But there are many inhabited worlds, with their own chemical ecosystems and nonhuman cultural histories. Do you consider such a future flatly impossible? Possible but unlikely? Likely but irrelevant to this discussion?
In the 16th century they didn’t have computers or the theory of computation, they didn’t know about neurons, they didn’t know about quantum mechanics or atomic orbitals, they didn’t know about genes or DNA or molecular biology. We’ve gone from da Vinci enclosing the human form in a circle, to genome projects and cortical simulations and artificial organs. We can synthesize a bacterial genome from raw ingredients with molecular precision. We have understood the genetic causality of embryonic differentiation. What would be irrational, would be to know all that, and still think that intelligence, the interactions of individual atoms, and the aging process, will remain beyond technological intervention. Humans are the tool-using primate, and it turns out that our evolutionary role is to use our old tools to make new tools that will then remake ourselves and the world. You can’t give a tool-using monkey access to its own blueprint and then expect nothing to happen.
Sure. What’s your point?
Indeed, and that’s what my artificial knee example was about.
But unless you expand the definition of “transhumanism” to the belief that there will be progress in medicine, computer technology and chemistry, in which case I dare you to find someone who is not a transhumanist, this is not what we are talking about.
What we are talking about are things such as cryonics, which institutions like the Society for Cryobiology, actual domain experts who know what they are talking about, consider pseudoscience. And yet, there are prominent transhumanists who are willing to give tens of thousands dollars to people who do this (and in case you are wondering, Alcor isn’t much better).
So please, spare me the claim that transhumanism is based on science and technology.
The cryobiologists long ago forfeited any reason to take them seriously as critics, with such dogmatizing as their bylaws banning cryonicists and public lies about ‘exploding lysosomes’. Fruit of the tainted tree etc.
Accusations made by a totally uninterested party like Mike “Darwin” ( * ) based largely on anonymous testimony. I don’t know about lysosomes, but he could have got just one incorrect claim in a private letter.
If cryobiologists think that cyronics is pseudoscience and possibly a fraud, then it seems perfectly reasonable that they want to distance themselves from it. The point is, why do they believe that cyronics is pseudoscience in the first place?
Mike “Darwin” says that it’s because they are prejudiced and they have a personal grudge against him, but that sounds quite unlikely, expecially given that, as even he claims, cryobiologists have been indifferent or even supportive of cryonics in the early days.
What likely happened is that the evidence that cryopreservation of whole human bodies (or heads) was not viable accumulated, and cryobiologists did what proper scientists are supposed to do: discard the failed hypothesis. Mike “Darwin” and his ilk, on the other hand, clinged to it like the homeopathists inventing stories about “water memory” when they learn about Avogadro constant.
I don’t have the expertise to evaluate all the technical claims in the article, but Mike “Darwin” lecturing cryobiologists about cryobiology sounds like creationists lecturing evolutionary biologists about evolutionary biology.
If I have to apply the authority heuristics I’m certainly defaulting to the mainstream authority, not to some guy who sells a fringe practice that (a) appears to be unviable in the light of my knowledge, (b) looks very much like a religious ritual (c) has been the subject of confirmed scams in the past, and is now offered by questionable organizations.
( * why this guy doesn’t use his real name instead of trying to hijack the reputation of a great scientist? It’s like calling yourself Einstein or Newton)
“Based largely”? Are we reading the same page? I see plenty of papers, articles, FOIA lawsuits, TV programs, quotes from published bylaws etc.
Yes, that’s a good question, especially when their original criticism—exploding lysosomes—is now on the ash-heap of history, and when their entire field demonstrates the success of cooling and vitrifying techniques. One you don’t answer.
Really? Let’s look at what Darwin himself wrote in response to this exact question:
‘A lot of things’. I see.
So you haven’t bothered to read anything that Darwin has produced carefully, as demonstrated by your repeated mischaracterizations, you know the cryobiologists have been either wrong or lying about why cryonics wouldn’t work, and your best guess is to compare cryonics to memory water and creationism.
Darwin isn’t selling anything now; and I’ve asked him what he thinks of that particular 1991 essay of his, and he mentioned nothing like ‘oh, I made all that up so I could sell ALCOR memberships’ despite his fierce recent criticisms of CI and ALCOR.
Does that make you take him any more seriously and in favor of cryonics, or are Darwin’s criticisms just going to go through your one-way filter and come out as ‘cryonics is bunk, even Darwin says so!’?
People change their names for all sorts of reasons; for Darwin, it’s admiration for the original back when he was a kid and defending Darwinism against Creationism, not ‘trying to hijack the reputation of a great scientist’ although perhaps he was an unusually foresighted kid and adopted the name so decades later he could fool people into thinking he was someone from the 1800s?
(Which by the way is really ironic, since you’re the one comparing cryonics to Creationism! Why are you including such a lame criticism, anyway? Do you want people to dismiss you out of hand for ad hominems?)
This seems denotatively true.
Well, I hadn’t suspected that that wasn’t his original last name.
First part (from computers to molecular biology): I was explaining why “AGI … arbitrary atomic manipulation nanotech … transhuman life extension” are now likely, in a way that wasn’t in the 16th (or the 6th) century.
Second part: I’m trying to wake up your sense of change! You didn’t answer Aris when he asked you where you think 21st-century progress will stop. Do you think the human race can understand the causality of the atom, the gene, and the brain, and then only apply that knowledge superficially? Chemists routinely apply their understanding of how atoms interact, to create molecules that have never existed in nature, and that is the future of life and intelligence too: living things and thinking things that have been designed from the molecular level up, having only broad structural properties in common with their natural prototypes.
You did say all this won’t happen for “the foreseeable future”. So maybe you just mean it’s an affair of the year 3000, but not the year 2050. Let’s try to pin this down. Consider a scenario for the future solar system where most of it is inhabited by artificial life and artificial intelligence. In some places it’s still based on DNA, in some places it’s all solid-state. But there are many inhabited worlds, with their own chemical ecosystems and nonhuman cultural histories. Do you consider such a future flatly impossible? Possible but unlikely? Likely but irrelevant to this discussion?