This is flat-out classism. [..] Shaming parents into considering
cryonics is a low blow indeed. Instead of sneering at those of us who
cannot be supermom/dad, why not spend your time preparing a persuasive
case for the scientific community to push for a government-sponsored
cryonics program? Otherwise the future will be full of those lucky
enough to be born into privileged society: the Caucasian, white-collar,
English-speaking segment of the population, and little else. What a
bland vision for humanity.
Yud’s reply:
Response voted up in the hopes that it shames comfortable
middle-class parents into signing up their kids for
cryonics.
> Otherwise the future will be full of those lucky enough to be born into privileged society: the Caucasian, white-collar, English-speaking segment of the population, and little else. What a bland vision for humanity.
"Reluctantly, I must concede that white supremacy is the only rational position."
I’d forgotten all about this piece until /u/titotal’s post jogged my
memory.
This was one of the first articles I’d read on Lesswrong, and it’s
the one that really made me skeptical of both Yud and the site as a
whole- I’ve done a fair amount of work in biology, and seeing the
obsession over a field as underdeveloped as cryonics was…
enlightening.
This is pretty much the sentiment that led me down the same path. After any modicum of experience it's pretty easy to tell that 99% of these people have never opened a book beyond a biology 101 course, let alone set foot in a lab.
And it tears my heart out, because I am a hero and this was
like seeing a ray of sunlight from a normal world, some alternate
Everett branch of humanity where things really were normal instead of
crazy all the goddamned time, a world that was everything this world
could be and isn’t.
These guys can barely find ways to fill the day now, but they want to
be immortal? If cryonics works, the main customers will be people who
spent their entire current life fantasizing about the distant
future.
Even now, with cryonics that *don't* work, the main customers are *already* people who spend their time fantasizing about the distant future. [As an example, see the guy proselytizing cryonics *in this very thread*.](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/dse1ny/another_yudkowsky_classic_im_having_trouble/f6pns25/)
i think the idea was supposed to be that he was very overwhelmed by emotion- which is interesting because lesswrongers try to present themselves as rational, and paint their opponents as over-emotional in an attempt to discredit them, but then they themselves frequently use arguments which begin and end with saying how strongly they feel, and how upset they are, and expect those arguments to be taken seriously.
why, I can even think of one automaton who is particularly brazen about this. not to name any names.
If you don’t get your kids baptized you are a bad parent.
I was expecting there to be some nutcases in that room, people who’d
signed up for cryonics for just the same reason they subscribed to
homeopathy or astrology, i.e., that it sounded cool.
What? It sounded cool seems like a fine reason to me. You are dead
anyway. I wouldn’t call people who say ‘it sounds cool, sign me up’
nutcases.
It tears my heart out. I’m having trouble remembering to breathe as I
write this. My own little brother isn’t breathing and never will
again.
Well, that certainly sucks. A lot, my sympathies Yud.
This trauma certainly puts the rest of the rant in context. I can’t
really sneer at that, just feel empathy. Losing a loved one sucks, even
more so if they are young.
Why is he so afraid of death? I don’t want to die soon, but who wants
to live forever? One day I will die and my children/next generation will
move forward. I don’t get it.
Yes but by being cryogenized instead of being burried like a good christian, as your Lord Jesus Christ has ordered you, you are angering God - which by my calculations has 1.23456% chance of existing - and will be denied both a place in paradise and a resurection at the end of times. Checkmate.
And that’s why Pascal wagers are stupid. Because by living your life as a good christian you would acumulate positive karma, which means you will be reincarnated as some stupid shit, like an anteater or a dung beetle*, rather than access Nirvana, which by my calculations has 2.71828% chance of being real.
\* Which itself is much more statistically likely than being reincarnated as some cool shit, like a grizzly bear or a fucking shark.
You can (a) find a swastika on this profile without even clicking once and (b) four clicks will get you to comments by it - on a subreddit where its flair is "National Socialism" - which try to "well ackshually" the political spectrum definition of fascism
I'd rate the odds of cryonics actually working at this stage as "functionally 0%" rather than 0.00013%.
Sure, it *might* be viable someday, and who knows- if we haven't annihilated ourselves with nuclear war in a thousand years, it might even be possible to revive those cryogenically frozen.
But given the current problems facing even the cryogenic part (to say nothing of the actual revival), I place little faith in it.
I mean, there's always an infinitesimally small chance that if I jump off a skyscraper, I'll be saved by a time traveler from a distant future who'll reward my audacity with the secret to immortality. But that doesn't mean I'll think it anywhere near likely enough to actually do that.
If it works you'll probably wake up in communism. I just hope you've read enough Marx to make sense of the transition. The average cryonic-revived person may have some trouble understanding the politics of the future world.
There's a difference between personally believing that cryonics are a worthwhile investment and proselytizing them by pretending that "if you don't sign up your kids for cryonics then you are a lousy parent."
And this Pascal-wager bullshit of "you only have a small chance of success but the reward is infinitely valuable" just sounds like a sad way of convincing yourself tbh, don't actually expect it to work on people who need what little money they have to *just live a nice life* rather than bust it on dreams of being resurrected in technoHeaven.
The notion of using money to fund the remote possibility of "waking up in paradise" when you could instead use it to try and fix *any of the awful shit currently going on in the world* is borderline disgusting to me, actually, whether your chances of success are 0.00013 or fucking 32.33 (repeating of course). Like, I fully understand that you can care about several issues at one, but there's still this thing called having a sense of priorities, and it should tell you that desperately defending cryonics when some people dare sneer at it is useless.
building a plane is much less complicated than somehow freezing the entire complex apparatus of the human brain and then thawing it without any loss of function bruh
**Abbas ibn Firnas**
Abu al-Qasim Abbas ibn Firnas ibn Wirdas al-Takurini (809–887 A.D.), also known as Abbas ibn Firnas (Arabic: عباس بن فرناس), was an Andalusian polymath: an inventor, physician, chemist, engineer, Andalusian musician, and Arabic-language poet. Of Berber descent, he was born in Izn-Rand Onda, Al-Andalus (today's Ronda, Spain), lived in the Emirate of Córdoba, and is reputed to have attempted flight.The crater Ibn Firnas on the Moon is named in his honor, as well as the Ibn Firnas Airport in Baghdad and one of the bridges over the Guadalquivir river in Córdoba.
***
**Man-lifting kite**
A man-lifting kite is a kite designed to lift a person from the ground. Historically, man-lifting kites have been used chiefly for reconnaissance and entertainment. Interest in their development declined with the advent of powered flight at the beginning of the 20th century.
***
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This is self-sneering content. Commenter:
Yud’s reply:
I’d forgotten all about this piece until /u/titotal’s post jogged my memory.
This was one of the first articles I’d read on Lesswrong, and it’s the one that really made me skeptical of both Yud and the site as a whole- I’ve done a fair amount of work in biology, and seeing the obsession over a field as underdeveloped as cryonics was… enlightening.
Uh
These guys can barely find ways to fill the day now, but they want to be immortal? If cryonics works, the main customers will be people who spent their entire current life fantasizing about the distant future.
Wait, does Yud think “I forgot to breathe” makes him sound intelligent or was that just a shitty attempt at a self-deprecating joke?
If you don’t get your kids baptized you are a bad parent.
What? It sounded cool seems like a fine reason to me. You are dead anyway. I wouldn’t call people who say ‘it sounds cool, sign me up’ nutcases.
I’m reminded of the bad guy in borderlands 2, who also thinks he is the hero of the story.
Well, that certainly sucks. A lot, my sympathies Yud.
This trauma certainly puts the rest of the rant in context. I can’t really sneer at that, just feel empathy. Losing a loved one sucks, even more so if they are young.
The unshakeable faith despite evidence to the contrary, contrasted with the smug superiority over anyone religious is just so fun.
This makes me curious about whether he has any kids himself.
Why is he so afraid of death? I don’t want to die soon, but who wants to live forever? One day I will die and my children/next generation will move forward. I don’t get it.
[deleted]