X-Message-Number: 19754
Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2002 17:26:11 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jeff Davis <>
Subject: SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
Cryofolk,
Here's my 'take' on the odds:
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
For anyone who missed my 28 Aug 1998 post detailing
how I reached this 'assessment', you can find it in
the archives at:
http://www.cryonet.org/archive/10333
When, in Message #19720, wrote:
"Just pointing out (like you did) that most of us are
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
simply playing the odds ($50k for a 1 in a million
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
shot at extending our lifespan vs. a ZERO % chance)
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
goes a long way to showing we aren't faith based, at
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
the most, we can be accused of betting on long shots,
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
however the payout is MUCH bigger than the Preakness
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
longshot winner."
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
I heaved a big sigh of disappointment. The
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
recalcitrant and pernicious "long shot" meme again.
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
The more's the pity since we have the means--
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
analytical deconstruction followed by memeabrasion--to
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
beat back this nettlesome little abscess of an idea.
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY.
I was going to post a response, but George beat me to
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
it. People go around believing, and exasperatingly
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
repeating the 'long shot' nonsense, people who should
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
know better, who call themselves 'thoughtful'
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
and 'rationalist' and--worst of all--***SUPPORTERS***
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
(!!!???) of cryonics. With friends like these...
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
They repeat it for no other reason than that
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
prejudiced and equally ill-informed and uncritical
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
folks before them have engraved memetic ruts of
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
wrongheadedness into the language centers of their--
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
and larger society's--brains. Then, sadly, whenever
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
they think or speak of matters cryonic, the wheels of
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
thought and speech drop, all innocent and habitual,
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
into that timeworn rut, with nary a moments pause to
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
reflect on what is factual and what is garbage-in-
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
garbage-out. Cryofolk owe it to themselves to rise
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
above monkey-hear-monkey-speak. The MHMS method of
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
probability assessment is--pardon my French--pure
crap.
--------------------------------------
In Message #19735, "George Smith"
<> writes, responding in part to
nsane1:
"...pro-cryonics "skeptics" who are giving 0.00001
odds ("one in a million").
<snip>
...giving fractional odds to the likelihood of
cryonics eventually succeeding is just nuts.
The simple, practical truth of cryonics success
probability is either zero or 100%.
It either will eventually work FOR YOU or it won't."
<end quote>
George is 100% right. Any 'answer' you get without a
valid method of probability assessment, and good facts
to submit to the method, isn't worth much. Which
leaves you with, "I don't know." Which is the
beginning of wisdom. (Equivalent to "Either it will
work or it won't. Doh!")
-----------------------------------
I was then quite pleased to read the thoughtful and
immensely constructive comments of Steve Harris
(quoted below). I wholeheartedly support further
development--modeled, per Steve's example, on the
Drake Equation/Markov method--of a rational treatment
of the 'probability' issue.
I would very much like to see such an approach
developed to the point where it becomes the default
authority on probability assessment. It doesn't have
to give an answer--that's not the point--but rather
would serve to systematize the handling of the
question, parameterize, set boundaries, clarify, set
the rules, bring order to chaos, and demote to the
status of pretentious musings the current crop of
guesses. (And ultimately confirming 'my' guess, which
is clearly--
SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY
--correct. (;-)
Best, Jeff Davis
"Our father was not a religious man. The faith that
many people place in God, we place in science and
other human endeavors."
John Henry and Claudia Williams
-----------------------------
Message #19739
From: "Steve Harris" <>
References: <>
Subject: Re: Shermer and Cryonics
Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2002 21:54:55 -0600
<snip>
...physicist Brian Wowk and I, more than a decade ago
actually *used* a version of the Drake equation to
estimate in a Markovian way the chances that cryonics
would "work" for somebody signed up to do it. It used
probabilities like:
P1: Probability that your memories will survive your
cardiac arrest until the cryonics organization can
reach your side and get your brain cool.
P2: Probability that your memories will then survive
cryoprotectant solution and vitrification in liquid
nitrogen.
P3: Probability that eventually molecular repair
technology will be invented that is capable of
restoring humans, memory intact, when damaged this
badly.
P4: Probability that society will survive development
of that technology.
P5: Probability that your cryonics organization will
survive that long, as well as you with it (these can
be slip into sub probabilities if you like).
P6: Probability that anybody in the best of futures,
will be interested, resourceful, and nice enough to
use the technology on you.
P7: Probability that you'll then be allowed to live a
live that would be more acceptable to you than being
dead.
Multiply them all together (we presume that the
probabilities are independent of each other, which is
maybe a big assumption) and there you are. Just as
with the Drake equation there are many unknowns, and
many places where you get to extrapolate.
For example: I argue in the Krell essay that the
timeline is somewhere between 50 to 100 years to get
to the Ultimate Technologies. What's the
probability that a cryonics organization will survive
the necessary 50 to 100 years? You can look at the
survival record of similar investment organizations,
funds, churches and (my favorite) cemeteries that are
still in upkeep. Stats are available as to the
fraction of all humans ever to go into liquid
nitrogen, that are still there now, and how long for
each--and you could in theory figure a Weibull failure
curve for that. (The first guy ever to be frozen in
1967, BTW, is still in just as good a shape, and
is still frozen. But some aren't). Do memories survive
hours of clinical death? We don't know, but you can
culture living cells from human brains after 8 hours
of death in the morgue, even without any special
attempt to cool rapidly. That's a clue. We think that
memories are in synapses, and synapses are reasonably
(but not perfectly!) intact in cryopreparations of
brain. It's not the perfect strawberry, but not mush
either. Some fraction of cryonicists don't get their
brains saved (we had one go down in the Twin Towers on
9/11 for example). But there are numbers for that,
too. And so on.
In any case, I wrote Shermer that I hope he sees the
point. There's no more reason to be snotty about this
than SETI, or anything else in the future. Just put
down your reasons, and your estimates. So long as no
physics is being proposed violated, the probabilities
should never be really close to zero. I personally
think that memories are present in freshly (a few
hours) "dead" people, and that the development of the
ultimate biorepair technology to get them out, is
inevitable. Whether our organizations or indeed our
civilization will survive that time, or that
technology, is another matter. If they do, I can't
think of anything more fascinating than resurrecting
people from the past-- heck, look how hard they work
restoring and mounting old dinosaur bones. How much
neater to do Jurassic Park, if you could? Or a
historical person (which should be a lot easier if you
start with a cryopreserved one)?
Steve Harris
P.S. Keats' refrain of woe in "La Belle Dame Sans
Merci" is "The sedge has withered from the lake,/ And
no birds sing." I recently ran across a somewhat
parallel thought in Steinbeck's _East of Eden_: "Oh
but
strawberries don't taste as they used to and the
thighs of women have lost their clutch." That's the
one I thought of when I read Shermer's cryonics
comments. Perhaps he was just having a bad day?
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