isacki

It's years since this thread came up, but just my two cents on this suggestion.

Correct me if I'm significantly wrong, but I think your premise is that overwhelming evidence is first assembled in a good theoretician's brain, is logically processed into a theory, and then the correct theory is presented and found correct by virtue of this process. The crucial process was that they had to accumulate enough pieces of evidence in accord with the theory to select it, since you believe information theory prohibits any other ways of going about this business.

The thing is, if we follow the line of argument that the number of pieces of information must correspond to... (read more)

True, in the positive/negative dichotomy it is a Pascal's Wager.

Probably what makes the sell harder for cryonics is that it promises not an infinitely good future but merely one of uncertain quality, though one that it is possible to hypothesise about based on well-discussed inferences from the very fact you were woken up.

As things stand right now I have to admit it's hard to see where you would get a big jump in takeup, because it seems conceded that the science is a very long way away and thus the probability of it working will not appear to rise for a very long time, and also the impression of a future world... (read more)

Is your position a kind of unfunny joke, like you were put up to say this? It is only because I am open enough to the possibility that this is actually your opinion that I feel forced to bother with a rebuttal.

It is unreasonable in the extreme, given current knowledge about cryonics, to force your own beliefs of what every child that is born in the world should have, almost as unreasonable as your comparisons above: "Is it acceptable for the father in the ghetto to beat his child to death, because he's too poor to afford a psychologist?" Why? Because it is yet not even remotely a proven technique, and explicitly... (read more)

I'm a casual observer who came across this advocation of cryonics - I have no objections to the idea and it interests me on a theoretical plane.

The general impression I receive of the promotion of cryonics quite a simple and effective argument:

"Cryonics offers a non-zero possibility that you may be able to continue your existence beyond your first death, the choice of which during your first life has minimal cost or even possible benefits to yourself."

Interestingly enough, and I quite happily mention this in good faith despite the inevitable flame risks of mentioning un-kosher topics in public (though that sort of blanket disregarding would be regrettable), this bears intriguing parallels with... (read more)

That's very interesting to read - I have the same trait and surely it must be fairly widespread and not particular to us. Essentially a trait to subject highly favoured, especially very trivial hypotheses to burdensome checking, for the sake of intellectual integrity or 'epistemic hygiene' which you intriguingly coin. Maybe this trait is called OCD.

For example, in the post above: it is referenced that the woman suggests magic exists because science does not know everything, it is replied that lack of knowledge does not imply non-existence, and the woman is said to have 'clicked' by concluding that magic is inconsistent. While this final conclusion sounds very reasonable, for completeness I still... (read more)