X-Message-Number: 26486
From: Tim Freeman <>
Date: Sun,  3 Jul 2005 07:03:31 -0700

Subject: More important battle; crowd-following equilibrium (was Re: [CN] reply)
References:  <>

From: <>
X-Ref: Message #26469
>As long as the problem and conclusion my argument identifies
>continues to exist, millions or billions of people are losing their
>chance to avoid death.

Agreed so far.  Lots of people are going to certain death who don't
have to.  

Failure to do cryonics isn't the only issue of this type, by the way;
lots of people consume junk food, lots of people consume cigarettes,
lots of people don't exercise, etc.  These simpler tangible things
have less extreme consequences than cryonics, but they're easier to
understand and they have real scientific evidence behind them.
Because of the increased chances of success, the net benefit trying to
get the remaining smokers to quit (for example) might be greater than
the net benefit of trying to get the remaining people attached to
inessential cryonics-preventing aspects of
religion-as-commonly-practiced to let go of it.

The previous paragraph might be construed as a suggestion that you
undertake one of those other projects instead, such as getting the
smokers to quit.  There are some problems with that.  First, it's not
for me to tell you what kind of charity to do.  Second, I'm not doing
any of the above, so my behavior shows that I don't find the other
projects worthwhile either.  I'll say why in a moment.

>There is no more important battle for mankind.  

I don't make decisions for mankind; the relevant question is whether
there's a more important battle for me, right now.  Doing what I can
to try to keep myself alive is (in my opinion) more important than
trying to change the outcome for the crowd, mostly because I'm much
more likely to control my own actions than I am to successfully
influence a crowd.  (I might feel different if I've maxed-out my
contributions to my own longevity, but I'm quite far from that.)

Trying to persuade large groups of people to think for themselves (as
opposed to imitating someone else) is much like trying to corner the
world oil market.  Free markets have an equilibrium, and they're
bigger than you, so straightforward attempts to manipulate them
usually backfire.  The same is true for crowd-following behavior.  

There is an equilibrium between imitating others and thinking for
oneself because the relative merit of independent thought
vs. imitation depends on the set of people available to imitate.
Let's look at the pros and cons of the alternatives:

Thinking for yourself has one main advantage: you might do the right
thing when the crowd has made a collective mistake.  Hopefully
willingness to do cryonics is an example of this advantage.

Disadvantages of thinking for yourself include:

1. The effort required.

2. The social consequences when the crowd notices that you aren't part
   of the group.  (Hansen's "Are Beliefs Like Clothes" essay at
   http://hanson.gmu.edu/belieflikeclothes.html is relevant here.)

3. Implementations of new ideas tend to be buggy, so there can be bad personal
   consequences from doing something new even if on the whole it's a good idea.

Some people don't think for themselves and imitate someone else.  This
strategy avoids all the costs of independent thought, but it increases
the risk of following someone to some dysfunctional destination.  This
risk can be controlled by trying to choose a leader who seems to be
succeeding, or by choosing a leader who was chosen by someone else who
might have made the decision more carefully than you.

If everyone else is an independent thinker, it makes sense for me to
watch several of them, sit back and let them suffer from debugging
their new ideas, and imitate them when they seem to be stably
suceeding.  If everyone else is a follower, then the group will wander
off in some random probably-bad direction, so it makes sense for me to
be an independent thinker so I don't suffer their fate.  The
equilibrium is therefore somewhere in the middle; from experience it's
pretty clear that in the equilibrium state, most people will be
followers.  Thus you can't change the equilibrium number of
independent thinkers by exhorting individuals to think independently.

In the argument above I spoke as though each individual is either an
independent thinker or a follower.  Actually, the choice is made per
behavior, not per individual.  I'm a follower in most things: I'm
typing on a keyboard that is identical to what's owned by hundreds of
other people, I eat food made from ingredients identical to what's
available to millions of other people, I don't independently reproduce
any results from physics experiments, and so forth.  I have enough
energy to attempt independent thought on very few aspects of my life.

If this model is valid, then it's clear how to effectively recruit
people to cryonics.  Recruiting the independent thinkers requires a
reasoned argument and technically competent cryonics organizations.
Recruiting the followers requires us to be obviously successful in our
everyday lives and to have stable social groups where enough of the
people in the group are interested in cryonics.  The crowd-followers
in the minority will then feel compelled to adopt cryonics.  Then we
bring in a few more non-cryonicist followers and repeat.  This has
worked in my personal life.

Note that this model provides a small role for independent thinkers
who specialize in cynically exploiting the followers.  I'll call these
people con-men.  If there are too few con-men, the followers will be
highly trusting so I can make a good living by being a con-man.  If
there are too many con-men, the followers will have been exploited or
will know people who have been exploited, so they will think for
themselves more and it won't be productive for me to be a con-man.
Thus there is an equilbrium number of con-men and it's hopeless to
change their overall number by directly confronting individual
con-men.  The con-men sometimes react to their obvious incentive to
prevent theft of sheep from their herd.  Keith Henson's experience
supports this.

If this model is valid, what has to happen to get anywhere by suing a
religion?  You need a judge and a jury who are independent thinkers
(which isn't their job).  If you win the first round, you need a
legislature that doesn't immediately revise the law to make you lose,
so you need a legislature composed mostly of independent thinkers
(which isn't their job).  (This is ignoring Pizer's claim that his
goal is PR rather than victory.  I think he needs a chance of winning
to get much PR, so I don't think that's a useful distinction.)

-- 
Tim Freeman               http://www.fungible.com           
Programmer/consultant in the Sunnyvale, CA area.       

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