X-Message-Number: 9521
From:  (John P. Pietrzak)
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
Subject: Re: Pietrzak 4
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 1998 16:54:32 GMT
Message-ID: <>
References: <>

On 18 Apr 1998 14:54:19 GMT,  (Ettinger) wrote:

>John Pietrzak ends his Cryonet # 9508 with two questions. My answer to each is
>NO. 
>
>The feedback I have had on "Cryonics: The Probability of Rescue," although not
>"statistically significant," suggests that most of those who have read it

>carefully found no fault with it. (And, as previously noted, for whatever it is

>worth, the original paper was not found by the professionals who reviewed it to
>have ANY errors or unjustified conclusions.)

Sir, if I may, you spend the first 16 pages of your paper putting
together a particular methodology for determining probabilities.  Only
in the last four pages do you attempt to apply that system to
cryonics.  Of those four pages, we have:

1) the restriction to discussing just the scientific question of
success or failure (pp. 16-17)
2) A discussion (glorification?) of intuition (pp. 17-18)
3) The switch to economics ("Unlimited Wealth...") (pp. 19-20)
4) A half-page summary, the first place in the entire paper which
seems to have any explicit link between your sixteen pages of
probability study and cryonics.  Even here, you only give your own
personal opinions on the sweep of history.  I have had to take the
additional step of assuming that you meant to use this information
where you speak of intuition in the earlier section of the paper, in
that you stop immediately after voicing those opinions.  (Otherwise,
why would you have bothered with writing this paper at all?)

No, there are no problems with your concepts of probability, assuming
that one is comfortable with Koopman's intuition-based ideas, and with
Bayes' classical a priori methodology (both of which are steps away
from the purely "objective" ideals common to most scientists).  There
are no problems with the use of your opinions (as defined on p. 20) as
the basis for the results of the paper, given that someone finds your
intuition appropriate for generating inputs.  What I must insist,
however, is that in whatever manner you use your system, with your
opinions being either a priori knowledge or partitioned into some sort
of set of experiments and samples, that it is in fact impossible for
you to end up with a probability value that was not already implicit
in your intuitions.  Your system _is_ circular in nature.

Again, if your answer to my question #1 is still NO, then what
_objective_ data are you using?  If your answer to my question #2 is
still NO, then exactly how are you applying your theory of
probability, and in what manner is it superior to intuition alone?
Otherwise, there is simply NO WAY you can deny either question.  If
you indeed wish to improve your paper, I suggest that additions along
this line would be the most appropriate way to go about it.


John

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