4 ms·

If cryonics suddenly worked, we'd need to face the extremely serious question of why we let almost everyone die before, i. e. how we could've made one of the mo

by Kutta 10y ago

If cryonics suddenly worked, we'd need to face the extremely serious question of why we let almost everyone die before, i. e. how we could've made one of the most catastrophic humanitarian and public health oversights ever.

gech 10y ago
Uh, we didn't know better? I don't even understand how you could force guilt on ignorance
- xyzzyz 10y ago
  We can start freezing people now. The question would be, since cryo worked, why we didn't start freezing people when we already knew it could work in principle and had the technology.
  - sliverstorm 10y ago
    It isn't that simple. You can't just toss people in a freezer and figure out how to revive them in a few centuries. We already know that the freezing process damages and destroys tissues.
    - xyzzyz 10y ago
      I'd argue burying them or cremating damages and destroys tissues even worse.
  - kaybe 10y ago
    We obviously don't care that much, not for the price of ressources needed.
  - prodigal_erik 10y ago
    We haven't proven it cannot work. But we don't know if we're doing it right. We don't know if just the head is enough, or if including the whole body slows the process so much the brain is damaged. We don't know if we're using chemicals that best accommodate thawing or scanning, whichever turns out to work better. We don't know if waiting until death causes some kind of irreversible damage or psychological problems.
SapphireSun 10y ago
I'm somewhat on your side, but still, without evidence proving it could work, this argument sounds a lot like Pascal's Wager (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager). There are many propositions out there that claim infinite reward, but we can't be compelled by reason to do all of them can we? The major difference here is that there are some preliminary results that seem to point in a reasonable direction, but we're still pretty far short of something compelling.
- Kutta 10y ago
  Pascal's wager's application to real-world cost-benefit calculations is pretty much always a fallacy: http://lesswrong.com/lw/z0/the_pascals_wager_fallacy_fallacy/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/z0/the_pascals_wager_fallacy_fallacy... Large payoff and small chance (with a wide confidence interval) has nothing to do with "infinite" payoff and "infinitesimal" chance. There are valid and interesting decision theoretic problems and paradoxes that arise with unbounded payoffs, but those aren't real-world in the way that outlier risk scenarios are real-world in banking and investment. Cryonics is absolutely real-world in that sense, and we can and should hang some expected value tag there. I have a fairly low confidence that cryonics will in fact work, but I wholly stand by my point that if it turns out to work, then that should be cause for a huge "we fucked up" moment coupled with a copious amount of soul-searching. But this shouldn't be put into a reference frame centered on "guilt" or "responsibility", although such things would be inevitably involved. Rather, it's a case of established models turning out to be wrong, and what matters is that everyone updates and learns from it as quickly as possible. Ignorance can be condoned but not willful and destructive ignorance in the face of ample evidence.
  - tempestn 10y ago
    I can see this being a serious issue on a personal level as well. In fact, it directly relates to the article, as this could be one of the things the newly awakened would struggle with. I've considered cryonics for myself, but being relatively young still, I haven't looked into it too seriously. That said, if I did eventually go through with it and it did turn out to work, I could see feeling massive remorse for all the people I didn't convince (and financially support if necessary) to do the same. If I do decide to do it, I would certainly try to have my wife and children do the same, but what about my parents? Or my wife's parents? Our siblings? And then what if my kids only go along with to humour me, but their (future) families don't? Not to mention friends... In a sense you would feel like you let all those people die, because you knew of something they could do, but didn't do everything possible to see it happen. Of course, even if that's how it felt after the fact, ex-ante it's far from a sure thing. Even the most optimistic likely see it as a significant long shot. And even if you were particularly confident, pushing freezing on everyone you know would basically make you the scientific equivalent of a religious zealot. Still, more than just waking up having lost most or all of the people you know, you would be dealing with that, and the knowledge that their deaths were preventable. That would be tough.
deleted 10y ago
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by Kutta 10y ago

gech 10y ago

Uh, we didn't know better? I don't even understand how you could force guilt on ignorance

xyzzyz 10y ago
We can start freezing people now. The question would be, since cryo worked, why we didn't start freezing people when we already knew it could work in principle and had the technology.
- sliverstorm 10y ago
  It isn't that simple. You can't just toss people in a freezer and figure out how to revive them in a few centuries. We already know that the freezing process damages and destroys tissues.
  - xyzzyz 10y ago
    I'd argue burying them or cremating damages and destroys tissues even worse.
- kaybe 10y ago
  We obviously don't care that much, not for the price of ressources needed.
- prodigal_erik 10y ago
  We haven't proven it cannot work. But we don't know if we're doing it right. We don't know if just the head is enough, or if including the whole body slows the process so much the brain is damaged. We don't know if we're using chemicals that best accommodate thawing or scanning, whichever turns out to work better. We don't know if waiting until death causes some kind of irreversible damage or psychological problems.

SapphireSun 10y ago

I'm somewhat on your side, but still, without evidence proving it could work, this argument sounds a lot like Pascal's Wager (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager). There are many propositions out there that claim infinite reward, but we can't be compelled by reason to do all of them can we? The major difference here is that there are some preliminary results that seem to point in a reasonable direction, but we're still pretty far short of something compelling.

Kutta 10y ago
Pascal's wager's application to real-world cost-benefit calculations is pretty much always a fallacy: http://lesswrong.com/lw/z0/the_pascals_wager_fallacy_fallacy/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/z0/the_pascals_wager_fallacy_fallacy... Large payoff and small chance (with a wide confidence interval) has nothing to do with "infinite" payoff and "infinitesimal" chance. There are valid and interesting decision theoretic problems and paradoxes that arise with unbounded payoffs, but those aren't real-world in the way that outlier risk scenarios are real-world in banking and investment. Cryonics is absolutely real-world in that sense, and we can and should hang some expected value tag there. I have a fairly low confidence that cryonics will in fact work, but I wholly stand by my point that if it turns out to work, then that should be cause for a huge "we fucked up" moment coupled with a copious amount of soul-searching. But this shouldn't be put into a reference frame centered on "guilt" or "responsibility", although such things would be inevitably involved. Rather, it's a case of established models turning out to be wrong, and what matters is that everyone updates and learns from it as quickly as possible. Ignorance can be condoned but not willful and destructive ignorance in the face of ample evidence.
- tempestn 10y ago
  I can see this being a serious issue on a personal level as well. In fact, it directly relates to the article, as this could be one of the things the newly awakened would struggle with. I've considered cryonics for myself, but being relatively young still, I haven't looked into it too seriously. That said, if I did eventually go through with it and it did turn out to work, I could see feeling massive remorse for all the people I didn't convince (and financially support if necessary) to do the same. If I do decide to do it, I would certainly try to have my wife and children do the same, but what about my parents? Or my wife's parents? Our siblings? And then what if my kids only go along with to humour me, but their (future) families don't? Not to mention friends... In a sense you would feel like you let all those people die, because you knew of something they could do, but didn't do everything possible to see it happen. Of course, even if that's how it felt after the fact, ex-ante it's far from a sure thing. Even the most optimistic likely see it as a significant long shot. And even if you were particularly confident, pushing freezing on everyone you know would basically make you the scientific equivalent of a religious zealot. Still, more than just waking up having lost most or all of the people you know, you would be dealing with that, and the knowledge that their deaths were preventable. That would be tough.

deleted 10y ago

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