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An open letter to scientific critics of cryonics
If this isn't to your tastes, don't worry, no doubt I'll be obsessing over something else soon enough :-)
If this isn't to your tastes, don't worry, no doubt I'll be obsessing over something else soon enough :-)
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Date: 2010-02-14 01:58 pm (UTC)which I hadn't heard before, but which succinctly describes a lot of discussions I've had about religion over the years. Thanks for posting it.
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Date: 2010-02-14 06:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-14 10:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-14 11:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-16 09:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-16 01:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-16 01:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-16 02:14 pm (UTC)And, while I'm flattered, I suspect
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Date: 2010-02-14 07:20 pm (UTC)"The Society does, however, take the position that cadaver freezing is not science. The knowledge necessary for the revival of whole mammals following freezing and for bringing the dead to life does not currently exist and can come only from conscientious and patient research in cryobiology, biology, chemistry, and medicine. The act of freezing a dead body and storing it indefinitely on the chance that some future generation may restore it to life is an act of faith, not science."
It's clearly not impossible, in the same way that strong AI isn't impossible. But you also clearly have on the order of a hundred years' furious innovation to get from here to there.
And really, that some sort of freezing and revival is not theoretically impossible does not mean the cryonicists aren't the ones who have to do the legwork to show that what they're currently doing isn't an exercise in futility, and there's no reason for scientists to spend more than a moment on it.
If Alan Turing had spent the 1940s loudly proclaiming that strong AI was just around the corner and everyone must act as if it's on the way right now, and that he would happily take $120,000 of your money to this end - everyone would have every reason to expect him to put up the evidence - they would not have any reason to waste a second trying to prove it wasn't possible.
I've extended the RationalWiki cryonics article considerably; feel free to hack away on anything you consider ill-considered or not rational.
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Date: 2010-02-14 07:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-15 08:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-15 01:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-15 01:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2010-02-15 07:40 am (UTC)I don't think it's plausible. I also don't think it's implausible, still less impossible. I don't think we know enough yet to judge. I think the path there navigates chaotic ant country, and involves speculation about proposed technologies that most certainly aren't science ... but I don't see most cryonicists claiming that they are in any way that can be debunked.
By and large - and this certainly goes for what I've read of any of the pro-cryonics documents that you've linked to in this discussion, the cryonicists get the current science correct. They also speculate abut the future science, but not in terms that allow debunking. This is fine, and presumably encouraging for you, because you want to believe that cryonics could work and you won't find anyone able to prove that it doesn't. But it doesn't make the absence of a debunking strong evidence for cryonics working.
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Date: 2010-02-15 08:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-15 08:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-15 11:19 am (UTC)Well, tough, because that's the best you can have at the moment. Until a great deal more is known about the technology - even about which technological path is ultimately going to give cryonics the best shot - it is simply not possible to come anywhere near value of 'true' or 'false' to it. Very few people on either side of the debate do that, and I I'll cheerfully call any that do charlatans, whether they're pro- or anti-crynoics.
To use a simile that hasn't already been flogged to death, it would be like wanting to know now whether it's true that Liverpool will be playing football in the Champions League next year. They might be; they might not be. It's certainly possible, but it's by no means a certainty. You might want to bet money on it, but you would bet that money knowing that until nearer the end of the season, you wouldn't know whether you were going to win or not. And, while you might have a feeling for how Liverpool might manage to finish in the top four in the Premiership, you wouldn't be able to say with any certainty which games they will or won't lose int he next few months.
And certainly, if you were to post something saying 'I request that sceptics of Liverpool's chances post clear proof that Liverpool will lose to Man City next weekend, and I'd like to know the scoreline' you'd rightly be looked at a bit oddly. Making predictions about the future just doesn't work like that.
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Date: 2010-02-15 11:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2010-02-15 11:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2010-02-15 06:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-15 09:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-15 10:43 am (UTC)Although it isn't directly about the science, the bit where a cryonicist threatened the Society for Cryobiology with a lawsuit over their proposed condemnation speaks volumes. Because suing scientists for speaking out against your science is really convincing evidence ... that you're a pseudoscientist.
Then there's the debate between Ben Best and CSICOP skeptics, where Mr Best repeatedly compares being called on his unsupported claims of success rates to accusations of rape and child molestation o_0 And he proudly puts this up on his website!
If they're not pseudoscientists, they're doing a damn good imitation.
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Date: 2010-02-15 10:48 am (UTC)On the other hand they were pretty much in the process of describing a business that Darwin was at the head of as actually fraudulent, and I think quite a few business would threaten to sue under those circumstances, though I don't generally think they should.
It's not clear how to work out
P(cryonics advocates behave crazily|reanimation will happen in the future)/P(cryonics advocates behave crazily|reanimation will not happen in the future) though...
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Date: 2010-02-15 01:32 pm (UTC)(Isaac Newton was famously a complete fucking arsehole, but he was clear on how science applied to his physics. Despite his fondness for astrology.)
In this discussion, I think it's useful to distinguish the statement "some sort of cryonic suspension and revival may be possible with as yet unrealised future technologies" from "what the cryonics industry does right now does any good at all." The pro-cryonics folk tend to hear the second and answer the first. They are not the same.
In researching stuff for the RationalWiki article, I looked around for any scientific evidence that what the cryonics industry does is more than a plausible hypothesis, and does any better at information preservation than mummification did. I found none. Is there any at all?
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Date: 2010-03-18 08:41 am (UTC)http://singularityhub.com/2010/03/17/mark-roth-has-key-to-suspended-animation-another-step-towards-immortality-video/