[extropy-chat] Re: Agreement on technical matters

[Keith Henson]

At 09:57 AM 18/03/05 +1100, Brett Paatsch  wrote:

snip

>At present I don't try to cite evidence to support my opinion on
>cryonics I just collect it when I come across it. My reason for this
>is that I think that what originally draws people to explore cryonics
>(myself included) is not truth-seeking but hope.
>When people use their reasoning skills to fortify their hopes rather than 
>to try and find out what is true "evidence" tends to be looked
>at as an obstacle to be gotten around not something to be weighted.
>Its possible that most cryonics supporters may not be able to
>dispassionately weight "evidence" in the absence of an emotionally
>favourable alternative solution. I don't know that.

I think it is more likely that emotional involvement at a level below what 
people are aware of prevents them from giving up making a virtue of 
something they could not do anything about in the past.  Take a look at the 
typical arguments against cryonics and see how many of them are not 
rational.  (People *should*)

>Until there is a framework into which evidence and arguments for
>and against can be evenly weighted I don't want to feed a
>rationalisation process. It takes too much time to do that and I don't
>get any return on time invested.  I'm mortal, I value my time.
>Damien doesn't seem to be around at present but what I was hoping
>to explore was whether it would be possible for people on opposite
>sides of the "can cryonics work?" issue to advance-agree on any sort
>of third-party judging process.
>
>Robin has put an enormous amount of time and effort into finding
>ways of enhancing our truth seeking orientation and through his
>notion of idea futures I think he may be onto something very
>powerful.   I'm still probing for weaknesses and limits in idea futures 
>and its mainly out of interest in that that I am looking at the
>cryonics question.

Idea futures would work fine for cryonics.  But it would not answer this 
question short of reviving a frozen person.

>If people whose views on cryonics are as different as Hal's and Robin's 
>from mine and Damien's (as I perceive them) could agree
>on a judging process that would yield more truth than we each
>currently have then that would be an important vindication of some key 
>ideas. And if we can't then that might be informative
>too.
>I see the stakes as much higher (potentially) than the single issue
>of cryonics.
>
>"Can cryonics work?" might not be the easiest thing to set up
>a bet on.
>In his paper _Could Gambling Save Science?_  Robin states:
>
>"Presumably we want as much progress as possible per effort
>invested, at least in situations where the following notion of "progress" 
>makes sense. Consider a well-posed question, such
>as "Is the Earth basically spherical?", with a handful of possible
>answers (such as "No, it's flat"). Experience indicates that, with
>enough study and evidence, one of the answers will eventually
>stand out as best to most anyone who considers the question
>carefully. At least this seems to happen for most questions that
>have been traditionally labelled "scientific"; questions about the
>morality of abortion or the nature of God may not fare as well."
>Now I can readily see that the question "Can cryonics work?"
>could legitimately contain subquestions such as whether revival
>from update

update?

>would constitute "working" and might necessarily
>involve a judgement on what constitutes identity.
>I don't see that the existence of valid subquestions makes the
>main question unjudgeable however.
>I don't know if "what is identity?" is outside judgement informed by the 
>best scientific evidence and the most careful
>consideration of logical argument though.

Simply reviewing what has already been said about the topic just since it 
started being discussed on the net would take much more than a normal human 
life span.

Keith Henson