X-Message-Number: 19772
Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 16:31:16 -0700
From: <>
Subject: The Future, My Friends (Steve Harris = The Amazing Creswell)

> Message #19744
> Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2002 10:48:21 -0400
> From: Thomas Donaldson 
> Subject: CryoNet #19732 - #19740

> No, the validity of ANY means for predicting
> future probability is
> false.

COMMENT:

No kidding?  I take it you have no monitary investments in anything, then? 
Keep it all under the bed, perhaps?  But that involves a prediction of a
future probability also. So what DO you do?

You can't even feed yourself without assuming something about the future,
Thomas, because you don't know-- can't even guess-- otherwise where the fork
will go.

Donaldson:

 If you want to think about the
> probability of extraterrestrial
> civilizations, less than 50 years after the
> "Drake equation" came
> out we've discovered lots of sunlike stars with
> Jupiter sized planets
> close to their sun, or even where the Earth is
> here. And indications
> are that the Galaxy may have only a restricted
> zone in which complex
> life could evolve: too few metals in the outer
> parts, too many 
> supernovas and big stars in the closer parts to
> the center. (One
> author now suspects ... from astronomical
> evidence ... that stars
> with much more metal than the Sun are likely to
> form such Jupiters).
> This basically eliminates any worth to Drakes
> equation: after all,
> if one of the probabilities can be so badly
> wrong, which others
> are also? We're have to wait and see, maybe
> even go out there
> and look. The Drake equation is useless,
> basically a way to make
> our feelings look like rational calculations.


Comment: I'm sorry, but the general argument above is just wrong. Suppose you
attempt to predict the weather 72 hours in advance. By 24 or 48 hours later
you may know things you didn't know, such as an unexpected development in a
storm, or something else your models didn't predict, but which is in fact
being measured now in the environment. So you'll have to update your forecast
for what is now only 48 or 24 hours away. Maybe now it's quite different.
Perhaps when you get to 0 hour, you're completely wrong!  

NONE of this says a thing about the validity of the general method, however.
Weather forecasting is not some way of making our feelings look like rational
calculations. 

On the contrary: what appear as "rational calculations," when they apply to
nature, or even to the value of a share in a company in the future, are only
*rational* to some degree or other. They represent mathematical MODELS, which
are all imperfect, involve many assumptions and simplications, and rely on all
kinds of unstated premises. The future will always be inductively uncertain
for a host of reasons, but that does not mean there's nothing to be rationally
said about it.

Nor is there anything to the argument that if you can't quantitate your views
of the future perfectly, you shouldn't be using numbers at all. If it were,
we'd never WOULD use a number regarding the future, and that would not only be
the end of weather forecasting, but the end of most science as we know it. In
science, predicting the future is the name of the game. It's all science
basically is about.

Donaldson:
> And the same may be said of any calculations on
> the probability of revival from cryonic 
> suspension.

Comment: Then you have no no rational basis whatsoever for making the decision
of whether to sign up for cryonics or not, do you? Did you flip a coin? There
is a cost to cryonics, so how did you decide to spend the money on cryonics
rather than something else?

> Message #19747
> From: "George Smith" 

> But one more "probability" about a future that
> hasn't happened which we can
> "calculate":
> 
> P8: Probability of physical survival if you die
> NOW without cryonics.  ZERO%
> 
> Ladies and Gentlemen, please stop playing this
> baloney game of assigning 
> scientific sounding probabilities ("more than
> zero", etc.) to the reality of
> absolute ignorance of what will possible in
> regard to cryonics succeeding in
> the future.

COMMENT:

George, I will, if you'll agree to live your life as though you couldn't
estimate anything about the future at all, period.  But then I suppose I'd
find you frozen and immobile, and you'd certainly not be able to post again to
cryonet, since that involves assumptions about what will happen when you hit
certain keys on your computer. These probabilities are not perfectly 1, you
know. (For example, all the apostrophe's disappeared out of a recent message
of mine because Gates and company decided to use a different text code for
them in Wordpad than for the dos-text generated by MS-WORD. I made an
assumption, and was wrong. There you are.)

The fact that we all will surely die without cryonics is an assumption, and
the P is not perfectly one. One or more religions may be correct. Perhaps
early Nanotech or the Pleasure Saucers of Bob Dobbs will arrive, and save us. 

Furthermore, there's a fly in the ointment of viewing Cryonics as a Pascal's
Wager, and that is that the low probability of life extension is not an
infinite value, and the money you spend to try to fend off death is not a zero
value (unless you're filthy rich). There's not a person on this list who
hasn't, as some time in his or her life, risked his life minimally (or perhaps
more than minimally) in order to have some simple fun (maybe a lot of fun,
maybe a little). Is that rational?  Who says not?

Steve Harris 


> This exercise in hubris and "scientism" can
> dissuade innocent people who are
> considering cryonics for themselves and those
> they love through what amounts
> to a completely bogus pretense regarding
> "probability" of success.

It's not an exercise in hubris and scientism to estimate the future, and use
numbers to do it. I'm sure you have investments, too, George. And I'm hope
they aren't in Enron and Worldcom.

SBH

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