Meta question here: why does reference-class forecasting work at all?
Presumably, the process is that when you cluster objects by visible features, you also cluster all their invisible features too, and the invisible features are what determines the time evolution of those objects.
If the category boundary of the “reference class” is a simple one, then you can’t fool yourself by interfering with the statistical correlation between visible and hidden attributes.
For example, reference class forecasting predicts that cryo will not work because cryo got clustered with all the theistic religious afterlives, and things like the alchemists’ search for the Elixir of Life. The visible attribute we’re clustering on is “actions that people believe will result in an infinite life, or >200 year life”.
But a cryonics advocate might complain that this argument is trampling roughshod over all the careful inside view reasoning that cryonicists have done about why cryo is different than religion or superstition: namely that we have a scientific theory for what is going on.
If you drew the boundary around “Medical interventions that have a well accepted scientific theory backing them up”, then cryo fares better. The different boundaries you can draw lead to focus upon different hidden attributes of the object in question: cryonics is like religion in some ways, but it is also like heart transplants.
Meta question here: why does reference-class forecasting work at all?
Presumably, the process is that when you cluster objects by visible features, you also cluster all their invisible features too, and the invisible features are what determines the time evolution of those objects.
If the category boundary of the “reference class” is a simple one, then you can’t fool yourself by interfering with the statistical correlation between visible and hidden attributes.
For example, reference class forecasting predicts that cryo will not work because cryo got clustered with all the theistic religious afterlives, and things like the alchemists’ search for the Elixir of Life. The visible attribute we’re clustering on is “actions that people believe will result in an infinite life, or >200 year life”.
But a cryonics advocate might complain that this argument is trampling roughshod over all the careful inside view reasoning that cryonicists have done about why cryo is different than religion or superstition: namely that we have a scientific theory for what is going on.
If you drew the boundary around “Medical interventions that have a well accepted scientific theory backing them up”, then cryo fares better. The different boundaries you can draw lead to focus upon different hidden attributes of the object in question: cryonics is like religion in some ways, but it is also like heart transplants.