X-Message-Number: 27744
From: Tim Freeman <>
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 07:33:27 -0700
Subject: Nick Bostrom interview, status-quo bias (was ...perfect survivor...)
References:  <>

From: Jonathan Despres <>
>...http://www.futurism.biz/wiki/Perfect_Survivor

I went to Jon's wiki, clicked "find a random nearby link" (or some
such) a few times, and stumbled upon Jon's interview with Nick Bostrom
at:

   http://www.futurism.biz/wiki/Interview_with_Nick_Bostrom

Good stuff.  I especially liked the link to Nick's fable, with a
dragon standing for aging:

   http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html

This is a special case of Nick's antidote for the status-quo bias, which
is the tendency for people to prefer existing situations over new ones
regardless of the merits of the alternatives.  Introducing the dragon
as the cause of death (as a change from the status-quo of immortality)
feels different from having a status-quo of old age and decrepitude.
The general case is described in his paper here:

   http://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/statusquo.pdf

Status-quo bias is probably the main reason people reject cryonics, so
this might be worthwhile reading.  This is more useful than hypotheses
about terror management because it leads to a potential fix.

-- 
Tim Freeman               http://www.fungible.com           
Pass it on: The Integral Fast Reactor can provide safe, clean
energy.  Politically motivated misrepresentation stopped the research.
Check it out at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor

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