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Your site says you operate under Crocker's rules, Julian, so please hear me out. (And to Phil Welch: I understand, but allow me the claim that he probably would

by robertk 15y ago

Your site says you operate under Crocker's rules, Julian, so please hear me out. (And to Phil Welch: I understand, but allow me the claim that he probably would have agreed with the message. And even if the distastefulness depends on the probability of a dead man's agreement with a position, should we not prevent ourselves from lashing out at people who post the message so that people may at least read and decide for themselves on an issue as important as this?) Firstly, Christopher is not dismissive of life-extension techniques that transhumanists espouse. If he could live longer right now due to a technique formerly classified a "espoused by transhumanists," he would choose to, as is evinced all over that essay. Rather, he is largely dismissive of life-extension techniques that don't work. The transhumanism part has nothing to do with it. In that essay, cryonics is lumped in with the paragraph that discusses bad advice. So we can agree that Christopher considers cryonics as bad science, the same way he considers eating the granulated essence of the peach pit to prevent overwhelming growth of a malignant neoplasm bad science. On the other hand, the rest of the essay discusses good science, that is, science which has been proven to work. He discusses its "near-miraculous" quality. Perfusion of chemicals to preserve and prepare brain tissue is already textbook science, just not applied to whole brains. The case of Clive Wearing is one piece of an assortment of evidence that consciousness is a clever illusion (the philosopher of consciousness, Daniel Dennett, can say a lot here). Ultimately, cryonics is science that (by definition) has not been proved to work, but nonetheless serious science. Please don't deny that. Harvard neuroscientist Kenneth Hayworth explains this much better than I could, so I leave the floor to him: http://brainpreservation.org/documents/killed_by_bad_philosophy.pdf http://brainpreservation.org/documents/killed_by_bad_philoso... This issue is much too important to worry about what's distasteful.

jpulgarin 15y ago
Christopher is largely dismissive of the life-extension techniques that transhumanists espouse, such as cryogenic preservation I should have been clearer: "Christopher Hitchens believes that most of the techniques that transhumanists think will lead to radically longer lifespans will not work." I think that we are not in disagreement.
- robertk 15y ago
  I see. Then I lay the claim that Hitchens did not have enough medical expertise to know what will or will not work, and conditional on something working, he would have espoused it, and conditional on it not working, he would have not have espoused it. As such, I further lay the claim that he would have been in favor of allowing people to evaluate the underlying science for themselves, in case he made a mistake and it does work.

by robertk 15y ago

jpulgarin 15y ago

Christopher is largely dismissive of the life-extension techniques that transhumanists espouse, such as cryogenic preservation I should have been clearer: "Christopher Hitchens believes that most of the techniques that transhumanists think will lead to radically longer lifespans will not work." I think that we are not in disagreement.

robertk 15y ago
I see. Then I lay the claim that Hitchens did not have enough medical expertise to know what will or will not work, and conditional on something working, he would have espoused it, and conditional on it not working, he would have not have espoused it. As such, I further lay the claim that he would have been in favor of allowing people to evaluate the underlying science for themselves, in case he made a mistake and it does work.