Someone else gets it.

Atheism doesn't spread from a successful ideological struggle for the allegiance of the human mind; atheism arises organically from the fact that humans have a weak attachment to religion, and they lose interest in it when they enjoy adequate socioeconomic conditions.

So says Nigel Barber in a piece, "Why Atheism Will Replace Religion," on The Huffington Post:

The reasons that churches lose ground in developed countries can be summarized in market terms. First, with better science, and with government safety nets, and smaller families, there is less fear and uncertainty in daily life and hence less of a market for religion. At the same time many alternative products are being offered, such as psychotropic medicines and electronic entertainment that have fewer strings attached.

I've wondered about the "alternative products" which compete with religion. Do they succeed because they display supernormal stimuli? Until recently I worked with a barely literate woman who has expressed no interest in religion that I know of, despite volunteering other things about her life; yet she had read all four of the Twilight novels and then had to tell me way more than I cared to know about them. By comparison, most people in developed societies don't find the gospels that compelling as discretionary reading; the Jesus story bores modern people, in other words.

Indeed, why do Americans, at least, display "rational ignorance" about religion, yet many of them go out of their way to learn useless things, like the people who study the made-up Klingon language, memorize sports statistics, write concordances of Tolkien's works, etc? A pharmacist who worked with my father back in the 1970's knew just about everything knowable about baseball cards, for example, which made him Tulsa's leading expert on the subject. Talk about putting a lot of effort into a trivial accomplishment.

Ridiculous breeding versus practical limits

How do religious obsessives in developed societies who produce ridiculous numbers of children in their families keep track of them all? Think about the problem of keeping the medical, dental and school records straight on a dozen or more children, even if you claim to know them as individuals. Then imagine what can happen when the kids get to the age where they can evade parental supervision part of the day.

Suppose you have a fundamentalist Mormon household like Kody Brown's, and the husband introduces another wife into the family with her children from a previous marriage. How do you prevent the teenage kids in your family from getting sexually involved with the unrelated teenage kids coming along with the new wife?

Why did skeptics give exoplanets special treatment?

With all the news about exoplanets these days, including the announcement of the discovery of one which could, theoretically, support life, we should remind ourselves that as recently as 20 years ago we had no evidence that such things existed in our universe.

Of course, people had assumed they existed for a long time. Speculations about a "plurality of worlds," corresponding to exoplanets in some interpretations, apparently go back to Epicurus and his Roman expositor Lucretius; and the idea has shown up in fiction from time to time before the 20th Century. (Voltaire provides a well-known example.) When the genre of science fiction emerged in the 20th Century, imaginative writers ran wild with the idea of exoplanets and made it part of the popular understanding of the universe.

Yet, as I've pointed out, until the 1990's we had no evidence that such things existed. The idea of exoplanets before 1990 or so belonged in the box of what skeptics would call "extraordinary claims," sometimes also called woo-woo; and it shouldn't have gotten out of that box and become scientifically respectable without "extraordinary evidence."

But curiously, to the best of my knowledge, no skeptic before 1990 categorized belief in the existence of exoplanets as woo-woo. Skeptics seemed to have taken a faith position in favor of exoplanets' existence, in other words, despite the fact that exoplanets play a role in other residents of the woo-woo box like Mormonism, Scientology and some UFO cults.

What accounts for exoplanets' special treatment before the evidence came in? Because of a non-empirical commitment to the idea based on materialist philosophy? Or because some high status skeptics, like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, had scientific backgrounds and wrote science fiction about exoplanets? Or because some scientists with the related evidence-free belief in extraterrestrial intelligence, for example Carl Sagan, had aligned themselves with the skeptic community?

It makes me wonder what other ideas about reality we've wrongly categorized so far.

I got a perfect score on Pew Forum's Religious Knowledge Quiz.

Try it yourself.

I seem to have the sticky sort of mind which remembers all kinds of obscure information, and I've read more than average about the world's religions. The late Madalyn O'Hair would probably dismiss me as a "philosophical atheist," though I've gotten to the point where I don't care much about religion these days, even when religious beliefs become a social nuisance. Gregory S. Paul's research has contributed to my change of thinking about religiosity. The firebrands on both sides of the god question have framed it as an ideological struggle for the contents of the human mind, when the empirical evidence suggests a more banal situation.

Perhaps I've developed into Madalyn's "practical atheist," which she approved of and called the "Maslovian type":



I've also lately modified my view of human life which has made me happier for some reason. I don't feel ready to blog about it just yet.

No, the change doesn't directly bear upon cryonics. Humanity still has a common emergency, and we need technological solutions for dealing with this emergency. Cryonicists at least have exerted themselves to attempt one of the solutions. The people who perform cryonic suspensions have done more with half their asses than all the people who continue to sit on their intact asses and do nothing.

Slide rule-punk

The other day I called the film When Worlds Collide "slide rule-punk" because it shows a science fictional situation using the cutting edge technologies available circa 1950, like a differential analyzer, the microfilming of books and liquid fuel rockets. (German rocket engineers don't make an appearance in that film, BTW.) It seems to me that you could define a genre of science fiction analogous to steampunk which assumes a level of technology available beginning roughly 1900, when petroleum became a significant energy source, and ending around 1950, just before computers became powerful enough to matter.

That period coincides with the early development of science fiction, which often places people in science fictional situations, like interstellar travel, who still use Victorian-era technologies like cartridge firearms, slide rules, film cameras and typewriters. These stories often project social science fads from the time into the far future as well, like psychoanalysis, General Semantics. hard IQ-determinism, social Darwinism and eugenics. Yet they also assume General Relativity,which comes from the same era; that seems to have worn a lot better as a scientific idea.

I haven't investigated this yet, but I wonder if someone still writes stories like this today, in alternative universes where, say, manned space travel succeeded but digital computing languished, so that the scientists and engineers still have to use slide rules and human intelligence to solve their problems.

I also wonder about the tendency to publish stories set in "the future" but premised on collapse situations where people have to fall back on simpler technologies to survive. If you postulate a society of peasant farmers or hunter-gatherers living among the ruins of American civilization in the year 2110, I wouldn't call that "science fiction," exactly.

Of course, I remember when we'd call a story set in the year 2010 "science fiction." Life in the real year 2010 doesn't much resemble the speculations about it I read in my youth.

TLC, the cable network for haphazardly breeding religious obsessives

Apparently TLC has carved out a niche for reality series about haphazardly breeding religious obsessives. In addition to its new show Sister Wives, about a polygynous fundamentalist Mormon (FM) family with an absurd number of children, it also has run another series about "quiverfull" breeders in Arkansas titled 19 Kids & Counting, which I haven't seen. (I think Mom, who lives in Arkansas, follows the latter show.)

I watched most of the first episode about the FM family last night, which focused mainly on having three blonde reproductive expediters in their 30's talk about their lives and the problems of sharing the same husband under one roof. (They claim they don't engage in N-somes, for N > 2, when it comes to sex, which I guess distinguishes them from the fictional polyamorists in Caprica.)

Yes, as I've already inferred, TLC produces chick-oriented programming. The dorky wholesomeness of the situation did not appeal to me. It also goes to show how Mormonism manages to combine the ordinary with the weird in a way that I find off-putting.

And yet, and yet, when mainstream Mormons lived this way in the 19th Century, their social movement still managed to attract plenty of women as early adopters. The FM males today also seem to have little trouble persuading multiple women to live in the same household as their wives. The FM guy in the reality show even announced towards the end of the premiere episode that he had another woman lined up to become his fourth wife!

In other words, Mormonism displays chick magnetism, at least for women with procreation-oriented personalities. It contrasts sharply with the female kryptonite aspect of cryonics, so what, exactly, accounts for the difference?

Robert C. Truax dies.

Apparently without cryonic suspension, as far as I can tell.

Ed Regis devotes a chapter to Truax in his book Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition:



BTW, I refuse to engage in the superstitious practice of ordering dead people to "rest in peace."

Virtue ethics for the cryonicist

I've started to read up on virtue ethics from the following sources:

Virtue ethics (Wikipedia)

Virtue Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Virtue Ethics (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

I've gathered that virtue ethics focuses on the character of the moral agent in determining the right thing to do, as opposed to whether the agent's actions follow some universally applicable rule (according to deontological ethics) or else maximize utility (according to consequentialist or utilitarian theories). Basically a virtue ethicist says that you act virtuously by doing what you think a virtuous person would do in your situation. That sounds circular, but it resembles the problem-solving technique sometimes called "borrowing genius." What would a smart person do to solve the problem you face? Come to think of it, it also reminds me of the question in christian culture, "What would Jesus do?"

I find the idea of virtue ethics psychologically appealing because hedonism as a goal in life makes me uncomfortable; it doesn't feel right as an expression of my character. I've never understood the appeal of drinking alcohol or using other recreational drugs, for example. (My pharmacist father probably played a role in explaining to me the unmysterious nature of drugs and what they do, so that I didn't find them alluring.) From hindsight, my history of incompetent courting probably derives from the same psychological disposition. Even if I could have lived the way some of these game bloggers claim they do, I doubt I would have pursued that for very long because of my aversion to alcohol, and the fact that women have to offer me something in addition to their sexual values to keep me interested. (In other words, I appreciate women's intelligence and character, on the rare occasions I can find them. I guess that makes me a sexist.)

Virtue ethics also appeals to me because it involves studying role models for inferences about how to live; it allows for personal development; and it adds to a sense of "portability" that I value as a cryonicist.

I can define "portability" in reference to its opposite. Some people object to cryonics because they fear that if it works, you would wake up in an environment where you didn't know anyone and wouldn't "belong," so you'd do better to shut your trap about superlongevity and die in the current environment like everyone else and spare yourself this allegedly horrible alienation in Future World. (Apparently some female psychologies fear the prospect of alienation more than male psychologies.)

One, that wouldn't necessarily happen, if you've formed relationships with other cryonicists who also survive with you to that time. (I could write a skit about a cryonaut who wakes up in Future World and realizes that the cryonicists he disliked from before have also revived with him.)

Two, even if it does turn out that way, how long would you have that problem until you've made new friends and become reoriented? A few weeks? a year?

Three, I get the impression that cryonics attracts people who seem psychologically disposed to adapt to this scenario better than average because they tend to define themselves more in terms of their knowledge, skills, abilities, and dare I say, moral character, than in terms of social or environmental factors like relationships, culture, nationality or commitments to ideological communities. You can carry the former aspects of yourself with you wherever you go, so I call them "portable," unlike the external things which tend to clutter most people's lives in a given place and time. In my case, for example, it wouldn't surprise me if, upon my revival in Future World, I have to learn a new language, live under the laws of a post-American political sovereignty, adopt radically different assumptions about reality and even convert to the currently dominant religion, if necessary, to fit in until I can explore other options. A re-entry like this into Future World might seems too disruptive to most people, unless they define themselves by what they can port with them. But then, I've lived with these ideas for much of my life, so they no longer produce discomfort in me.

Virtue ethics, which focuses on the character of the agent as he moves across time and space, therefore seems to fit organically into a cryonicist's internal survival kit, so it deserves more study.

Like I don't have enough to read about already, despite an impaired right eye. I keep finding things that I need more and more life expectancy to explore. I'll have to start a millennium-at-a-glance chart to schedule my time better.

Alcor faces a financial crisis in 2011?

I haven't published something confidential. You can find a link to the document here on Alcor's website. Scroll down to the third page:

10_09 11, Executive Director's Report

You'd think after all these years, Alcor would have figured out how to secure a stable and adequate income so that it doesn't face this recurring problem.

A slide rule-punk classic from the 1950's.

Apparently this established the tropes for later movies about astronomical doomsdays like Deep Impact and Armageddon: The astronomer who discovers a looming cosmic catastrophe, and has to warn the authorities about it, despite the chaos the knowledge of doom causes once it gets out:

When Worlds Collide

Interestingly, it shows a capable female character in a supporting role. Early on she uses an analog computer - something like Vannevar Bush's Differential Analyzer? - to calculate orbits, whereas otherwise the women in the era's films would leave the higher math to their menfolk. (Note to the people who call me a sexist: I approve of women who have this ability.)

And despite the obligatory religious references, including allusions to the story of Noah's Ark, the characters treat their one shot at survival as a rational engineering exercise. The spaceship fleeing Earth's destruction takes on a crew of apparently single men and women of childbearing age, with scientific, medical or technical training - but no clergyman to marry them and teach them and any resulting children about christianity in their new home on the other planet! Based on rational considerations, clergymen can't justify their survival in this kind of situation because they lack reality-based skills and waste scarce resources, like the fuel needed to launch their masses into orbit.

I also like the shrewd and domineering businessman who funds the spaceship project, a kind of alpha Middle-Aged Man who understands human nature and knows how to get things done. (He correctly predicted the violence towards the end.) Private entrepreneurs step in where politicians won't venture. Too bad he couldn't make it to the new planet, because a community usually benefits from experienced tribal elders; but his involuntary sacrifice (the main scientist character keeps him from boarding the spaceship, saying that the new world belongs to the young) saves enough fuel to make the voyage a success.

Mainstreaming fundamentalist Mormons' plural marriages?

Normally I ignore the programming on TLC because it seems too chick-oriented; but this got my attention:

Meet the Polygamist Family of TLC's Sister Wives

Also refer to this link.

The fundamentalist Mormon (FM) practice of plural marriage (PM) resembles the current lifestyle fad called polyamory, though in the FM's case PM has a religious motivation. Polyamorists, by contrast, often use secular psychological beliefs to rationalize their behavior.

The math doesn't work out for the boys the FM subculture produces, however. In some FM communities, the fathers drive out their own adolescent sons because they don't want the sexual competition for the additional, younger women the fathers would like to add to their harems.

Given the deteriorated economy in the U.S., PM might have financial advantages if it results in raising household income while reducing per capita household expenses, assuming that all the adults in the PM bring home paychecks from jobs (instead of, saying, gaming the welfare system, which some FM wives reportedly do because the state doesn't recognize their marriages and treats them as single mothers). You could benefit from a greater division of labor; one wife could launder everyone's clothes while another wife prepares meals, for example. You could also save money by sharing the same durable goods like cars, televisions and furniture instead of having to buy duplicates for separate households.

BTW, polyamory and its variants have intrigued visionary thinkers like F.M. Esfandiary, Robert Heinlein and Robert Rimmer; but Robert Ettinger doesn't find the idea that compelling as a lifestyle option for "immortal supermen":

At this point one might ask why we are so concerned with marriage-how do we know there will be such a thing as marriage among fully liberated, financially independent people? Why not casual relationships? The answer, of course, is that most of us need the security and comfort of an intimate, loyal companion; yet we are foolish and irresponsible enough to need the bracing of a formal contract. This will doubtless change when superman becomes sufficiently super, but this may take a while.

It is tempting to view group marriage as the wave of the future, with its apparent advantages of sexual variety and clan strength-a milieu of warmth and nurture for the young, of stimulation and support for the adult, where no one ever lacks the services of a husband or wife, a mommy or daddy. Science fiction writers have been fond of this theme, but the rather scanty evidence seems to point to failure; the complexity seems to increase nervous stress, rather than relieve it. Perhaps superman could handle it, but he isn't likely to need it, even for variety in a very long life.

Apparently when Ettinger wrote this (circa 1970), he didn't realize how cryonics would act like female Kryptonite and result in a lot of unattached straight male cryonicists. Too bad the single guys in cryonics don't have the "problems" experienced by the husbands in PM's. (Though I have heard about a secular version of a PM involving one prominent cryonicist.)

Brave New World has something going for it.

I find this fascinating, but perhaps not for the reasons others might:

Kids conceived by IVF excel academically

Van Voorhis compared the academic performance of 423 Iowa children, ages 8 to 17, who were conceived by IVF at UI Hospitals and Clinics with the performance of 372 age- and gender-matched peers from the same Iowa schools.

Researchers also analyzed whether different characteristics of the children, parents, or IVF methods affected children’s test scores.

The study found that children born by IVF performed above average on standardized tests compared to their peers, and that a number of factors were linked to higher test scores, including older age of the mother, higher education levels of both parents, and lower levels of divorce.

Importantly, the study also showed that different IVF procedures—using fresh versus frozen embryos—and different methods of insemination had no effect on children’s test scores.

Although the study was not able to fully explain why children conceived by IVF performed better than their peers, Van Voorhis speculates that parents of children conceive by IVF might be older and have higher levels of education than average.

“By using age- and gender-matched children from the same classrooms as a control group to compare to our study participants, we attempted to control for any socioeconomic or environmental differences between the children born by IVF and their peers,” Van Voorhis says.

“But there still may have been some differences between the IVF children and the controls that we could not see from our data.”

The IVF kids might happen to grow up in more enriching environments just from having more mature, more experienced and better educated parents, certainly.(The effects of having a Middle-Aged Man as a father?)

But I wonder about a deeper reason for their advantages, not mentioned in this article, but obvious to me: Do the IVF kids benefit because their conception involves intelligent design, instead of the sloppy, random, haphazard process through which the rest of humanity gets conceived?

I mean, seriously, how many conceptions happen by chance because a young man forgot to stop by the drug store to buy condoms on the way to his hot date at the drive-in; or a young woman drank too much alcohol at a party and hooked up with an opportunistic inseminator in the room? Despite our delusions of dignity and grandeur, we start out in life as accidents for the most part, and suboptimal ones at that.

IVF, by contrast, removes such irrational circumstances from the business of propagating the human species. And that in itself might account for the better outcomes, though I don't know how to test for that as a possible cause.

See what a productive MIT graduate has done with his life.

Unlike some "nanotechnologists" I could name, when Amar Bose spent years working on hard problems in inventive problem solving, he usually got tangible results:

Better Living Through Curiosity

Still waiting for bobbles.

I hadn't realized that the technology of brain/computer interfacing has gotten that far along:

Brain Coprocessors
The need for operating systems to help brains and machines work together.

Given the ever-increasing number of brain readout and control technologies available, a generalized brain coprocessor architecture could be enabled by defining common interfaces governing how component technologies talk to one another, as well as an "operating system" that defines how the overall system works as a unified whole--analogous to the way personal computers govern the interaction of their component hard drives, memories, processors, and displays. Such a brain coprocessor platform could facilitate innovation by enabling neuroengineers to focus on neural prosthetics at an algorithmic level, much as a computer programmer can work on a computer at a conceptual level without having to plan the fate of every individual bit. In addition, if new technologies come along, e.g., a new kind of neural recording technology, they could be incorporated into a system, and in principle rapidly coupled to existing computation and perturbation methods, without requiring the heavy readaptation of those other components.

I wonder when we'll start to wear computer interface headbands as casually as we now carry cell phones with us everywhere, like in Vernor Vinge's novel Marooned in Realtime:

A man has to make a living.

Come stay at the Creekside Preserve Lodge & Cabins, near Prescott, AZ:

Robert Ettinger set the precedent for this.

Aschwin de Wolf, commenting on another round of the fruitless (so far) debate about mind uploading, writes:

Cryonics is often associated with ideas like mind uploading and transhumanism. One negative consequence of this (un)intentional association is that some people who are considering cryonics feel that they have to embrace a much larger set of controversial ideas than what they are actually being asked to consider. As a result, there is a real risk that people reject cryonics for reasons that have little to do with the proposal of cryonics itself. Advocates of cryonics do not do themselves a favor by promoting the idea of human cryopreservation as part of a larger set of futurist ideas instead of just promoting cryonics as an experimental medical procedure to extend life. There is too much at stake to alienate people by piling more controversial ideas on top of what is already considered to be a radical idea. Such a low-key attitude will also produce a more consistent message because it extends the element of uncertainty that is inherent in cryonics to other areas of life as well.

However, Robert Ettinger set the precedent for framing cryonics as part of a package deal with other futurist ideas a generation ago. In Man Into Superman (1972), Ettinger writes:

It should be amply clear by now that the immortal superman represents not just a goal, but a way of life, a world-view only partly compatible with today's dominant ideologies. We might call this fresh outlook the new meliorism, of which the cryonics or people-freezing program is an important current element.

Given cryonics' failure to thrive, the package-deal approach apparently hasn't worked, despite all the propaganda about transhumanism (today's equivalent to Ettinger's "new meliorism") as a growing "movement."

It would make more sense now to reframe cryonics as an extension of current world views, for example, the emphasis on healthy lifestyles and human flourishing, instead of presenting it as an implicit criticism of what most people believe. Anthropologist Tiffany Romain sees cryonics somewhat like that in her paper about cryonics' "social world."

An economics question

Compare two situations:

(1) You own and invest $1 million and earn a 5% return on it, producing an income of $50,000 a year.

(2) You earn $50,000 a year from a holding a job in the same economy.

Could you interpret the income in (2) as the return on the human capital instantiated in your person and evaluated at about $1 million?

Of course, the $1 million in (1) can't fire you, unlike the employer in (2).

The difference shows the confused thinking about what makes people "wealthy" in our society. Plenty of "well paid" people dependent on wage incomes of hundred of thousands of dollars, but with little net worth or savings, hardly count as "wealthy," as they discover when the paychecks stop.

A modest enhancement to fight Idiocracy.

Some transhumanist thinker - probably philosopher Nick Bostrom - argues that if we increased everyone's height by an inch, this form of enhancement would keep everyone's relative status the same and not make much practical difference.

By contrast, if we could increase everyone's IQ by ten points, that enhancement could revolutionize our society, not by making the world's smart people a little smarter, but by making the world's dumbasses substantially smarter. Such a modest IQ boost could push a mass of stupid people above some critical threshold so that they start to make better decisions for themselves and reduce the zoo-keeping costs they impose upon the rest of us.

Bostrom and a co-author in one of their joint papers (PDF) write (refer to the paper for references):

General cognitive capacity of individuals—imperfectly measured by IQ scores—is positively correlated with a number of desirable outcomes. It reduces the risk of a wide array of social and economic misfortunes, such as bad health, accidents, and even being the victim of homicide, while reducing overall mortality and improving educational outcomes. In prisoner’s‐dilemma type experiments people with higher cognitive abilities cooperate more often and appear to have a stronger future orientation, something that appears to promote economic success. While many non‐cognitive factors also play large roles in determining professional and life success, cognitive capacity is part of an important feedback loop of human capital acquisition.

If raising everyone's IQ by 10 points could lead to improved health, fewer accidents, less violent crime, increased life expectancies, more efficient and productive humans minds which could benefit from education, a stronger future-orientation (or as some economists say, lower time preferences), etc. -- what could possibly go wrong with this sort of enhancement, assuming that it sticks without a "Flowers for Algernon" reversal?

You can find many of Bostrom's talks on the internet. I like this one because Bostrom proposes the goal for humanity of making something like Abraham Maslow's self-actualization or peak experiences the normal state, instead of letting them happen rarely and haphazardly, if at all:



I'd prefer that transhumanists emphasize the sorts of goals ordinary people can understand, as Bostrom does in his talk, instead of the esoterica like mind uploading which appeal only to other propeller heads.

BTW, Ayn Rand apparently had a similar idea about self-actualization. In Atlas Shrugged, Dagny Taggart finally sees John Galt's lab in his New York apartment, and notices Galt's stalker collection about her:

"How long have you been-?"

She stopped; this time, she did not gasp; the sight confronting her could not be greeted by anything except a moment of total inner stillness: on the wall, behind a row of machinery, she saw a picture cut out of a newspaper-a picture of her, in slacks and shirt, standing by the side of the engine at the opening of the John Galt Line, her head lifted, her smile holding the context, the meaning and the sunlight of that day. A moan was her only answer, as she turned to him, but the look on his face matched hers in the picture.

"I was the symbol of what you wanted to destroy in the world," he said, "But you were my symbol of what I wanted to achieve." He pointed at the picture. "This is how men expect to feel about their life once or twice, as an exception, in the course of their lifetime. But I-this is what I chose as the constant and normal."

Disregarding the problems with Ayn Rand as the source, I, too, can see the value of enjoying peak experiences all the time, which Maslow called plateau experiences, as "the constant and the normal." Cryonics has long had that as a justification for our strange obsession, but for some reason we don't emphasize it like we used to. Mike Darwin provides an example from the 1980's.

Adding an abusive/controlling relationship to your life résumé.

Rick Ross's website, despite its material prejudicial against cryonics, has lots of interesting stuff about social psychology gone wrong, including a page about abusive and controlling relationships.

I've had a pretty sheltered life. Sometimes I wish I could have more stereotypically "bad," but survivable, experiences just so I can say I've had them, add them to my life résumé and preferably even learn some things from them I wouldn't have learned otherwise. (The branch retinal vein occlusion in my right eye, which I've had to deal with over the summer, probably counts.)

After all, you never can tell when some combination of experiences will provide you with the knowledge you need to solve a literal life-or-death problem, especially if extreme longevity becomes possible. (I guess I've assumed my Middle-Aged Man and aspiring Lazarus Long personas in writing this post.)

Though in the example I've cited, I suspect that the men who feel the need to abuse and control women do so because of their failure to attain the alpha male or high beta male status which would earn their womenfolk's respect and voluntary compliance, without the need for bullying.

Why don't Arizonans show more interest in cryonics?

A cryonics facility in Australia might operate in relative obscurity for the same reasons a similar facility in Scottsdale, Arizona has operated in relative obscurity, where you'd expect that more of the locals would show an interest in what cryonics has to offer. Thinking about this reminded me of something Robert Ettinger writes in Man Into Superman:

We have repeatedly pointed out that the main obstacle to our becoming superhuman is not technological, but psychological; it is a problem of morale, with some unusual kinks.

Ordinary political revolutions are also problems in morale; the question is not whether an oppressed majority can take control, but whether it will rise up, and sometimes all that is needed is a spark--a leader, a slogan, a dramatic event. Once the spark is struck, the flame is maintained by zealotry--idealism, militant enthusiasm, fanaticism.

The incipient cryonics revolution is under a severe handicap, viz., its supporters tend to repudiate zealotry and avoid mobs. To substitute for zealotry and mob action, individual rationalism is probably not enough; we need some emotional incitement. Perhaps greed and jealousy will help fill the bill. (Superman will not need them, but we still do.)

The aborigine who has never head of a supermarket may be contented enough with roots, berries, and grubs. If he hears of a distant land where everybody gets fat on delicacies from the supermarket, he is still unlikely to attempt the journey. But if he bears of a supermarket being built in a nearby town, and if its delights are described in some detail, and if some of his clansmen decide actually to go there, then he may stir himself. He wants his share of the goodies, and he wants to keep up with his neighbors.

Ettinger doesn't draw the explicit analogy between a supermarket and a cryonics facility, but given that people in metro Phoenix have had Alcor in the neighborhood for about 16 years, you'd think that the physical proximity would have resulted in more local members by now. I can understand an Arizonan's disinclination to visit a cryonics facility if he had to travel to a distant city, or even to another country, to get there; but Alcor resides in a neighborhood near a Costco, a Wal-Mart and other familiar American chain stores in the East Valley. You can't get more suburban and banal than that. Arizonans, especially the ones living in Maricopa County, just don't have a geographical excuse not to investigate cryonics.


View Larger Map

So I suspect that a new cryonics facility in Australia would encounter similar indifference from most Australians. Alcor's experience in Arizona suggests that a cryonics organization in Australia probably won't attract an inordinate number of members because most Australians, like most Americans, still live too far away cognitively from the cryonics action, not too far away geographically.

Australia as a cryonics refuge

Cryonics progress in the Southern Hemisphere?

Victoria's bid for frozen stiffs

VICTORIA is in the running to host the first cryonics facility outside the US and Russia to deep-freeze dead humans in the hope of one day bringing them back to life.

A dozen Melburnians who are considering cryogenic freezing were asked at a seminar last week to consider investing in an Australian centre that organisers hope to begin building in six months.

Proponents of the cryonics plant plan to store whole bodies or human heads for 50 years to a century and more until technology - particularly nanotechnology - advances to a point where full biological function can be restored.

I doubt revival will happen in "50 years to a century," especially if it depends on some physics-defying misconception called "nanotechnology."

Australia might pay off as a new source of cryonics' growth because it shows signs of an Advanced Civilization. About a fourth of Australia's population identifies itself as atheist, agnostic or nonbeliever; the country ranks highly in life expectancy; it also scores highly in the Human Development Index and The Economist magazine's Quality-of-Life Index (PDF).

In other words, Australia gives me the impression as a place where people like staying alive in this world. Setting up a new cryonics facility in another relatively efficient society might attract the previously unengaged, developed human minds we desperately need to work on our survival emergency.

Signs of an advanced civilization

I know a woman in cryonics who grew up as an atheist in Connecticut, the daughter of an atheist father and a neo-pagan mother. This has generated some interesting conversations about her family.

While my parents have never talked to me much about their religious beliefs (and that suits me fine), the contrast between my childhood environment and hers strikes me, given what I experienced from growing up in Jesus-haunted Oklahoma. It got me to thinking about developmental differences in the U.S., and how some states seem arguably more "advanced" than others.

I've never visited Connecticut, but I can find social science data about it online and compare them to the data about Oklahoma. (Arizona has its own problems, which I'll probably explore later.)

First of all, Connecticut ranks as about the 40th most religious state, while Oklahoma ranks as the 9th most religious state.

Connecticut ranks as the 7th healthiest state, while Oklahoma ranks as the 49th healthiest.

Connecticut ranks as having the 7th highest I.Q, while Oklahoma ranks as having the 41st highest.

Connecticut ranks at #37 in terms of violent crimes per 100,000 population, while Oklahoma ranks at #17.

Connecticut ranks #4 in U.S. life expectancy, while Oklahoma ranks #44.

Just from these facts alone, I get the impression that Connecticut offers a better environment for human life than Oklahoma. No doubt historical, cultural and geographic reasons account for the difference, though perhaps not in the ways you'd expect. White settlers arrived to Oklahoma relatively late in American history (Oklahoma didn't become a state until 1907), but they came mostly from the Southern states, along with the relocated Southern Indian tribes and black settlers, and they reproduced the South's inefficient culture in their new home. For that reason Oklahoma culturally resembles long-settled Southern states more than it does neighboring Kansas, which attracted Yankee and Northern European settlers. (Kansas impresses me that a better class of people live there just from having driven through the state and seeing the well maintained highways and the tidiness of its farms and small towns, contrasted with their neglected counterparts in Oklahoma.)

By contrast, Connecticut attracted efficient Dutch and English Calvinists as its early white settlers. Connecticut's integration into the developed industrial, financial and shipping economy of the Northeast probably makes a big difference as well.

You could compare other sets of states and notice similar patterns. So what does my example of Connecticut versus Oklahoma imply about the signs of an advanced civilization (AC)?

Apparently a state with more AC characteristics displays lower religiosity, better health, higher I.Q.'s, less violent crime and longer life expectancy, on average, than states with fewer AC characteristics.

So in a way, we cryonicists don't have to wait for revival in some future century to experience life in an AC; some of us have come from prototype AC's already, like my acquaintance from Connecticut. She has just taken the AC ethic to its next level with her atheism and her quest for radical life extension.

Christians need to police themselves.

I can appreciate the argument made, for example, by Sam Harris, that moderate, somewhat more rational religionists "enable" their fundamentalist brethren to fall into toxic forms of belief based on their literal reading and interpretations of the religion's common scriptures. In Rational World, by contrast, no one would empower these scriptures in the first place, so that neither religious moderates nor fundamentalists would arise.

This whole rapture nonsense, based on a contrived interpretation of certain bible passages, illustrates the point:

Authorities search for 13 from 'cult-like' sect

PALMDALE, Calif. – Deputies searched a wide swath of Southern California early Sunday for a break-off religious sect of 13 people that included children as young as three and left behind letters indicating they were awaiting an apocalyptic event and would soon see Jesus and their dead relatives in heaven, authorities said.

The group of El Salvadoran immigrants, described as "cult-like" by sheriff's officials, was led by Reyna Marisol Chicas, a 32-year-old woman from Palmdale in northeast Los Angeles county, sheriff's Captain Mike Parker said.

The group left behind cell phones, identifications, deeds to property, and letters indicating they were awaiting the Rapture.

"Essentially, the letters say they are all going to heaven to meet Jesus and their deceased relatives," sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said. "Some of the letters were saying goodbye."

Thank you, rapture-hustlers. You might have contributed to another Branch Davidian-like situation.

What does it take to embarrass "moderate" christians sufficiently so that their leaders will do things to protect their faith's reputation? Why won't the "moderate" christians who don't believe in the "end times" delusion come out once in a while to criticize the ones who do? (Gary North criticizes belief in the rapture, but he does so to make room for his own fundamentalist agenda called Christian Reconstructionism.)

Instead it usually falls to us skeptics, humanists, atheists, philosophers, etc., to point out the obvious. I look forward to the coming "Jesus who?" era, when young people can grow up free from hearing about how a god loved the world so much that he had his innocent son beaten up and killed for them; and how this son rose from the dead like a zombie and ascended to heaven; and how this zombie-like thing will come back some day to rapture the living people who've given their hearts to him, while leaving the rest of us to perish in horrible ways.

I grew up in the 1970's among people who believed this insanity, as I've written before. I like to imagine an alternate reality where I came of age in a more rational society, which probably would have had offered me other economic and cultural advantages as well.

Uh, oh.

From Lessons from the Future, by Joe Castaldo, based on a interview with Canadian electronics entrepreneur Robert Miller:

Nearly all of his charity work has been done anonymously. “I’m not seeking attention,” he says. The one area to which Miller’s name has been attached is cryogenics research. The Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Arizona has even described Future Electronics as its greatest benefactor. “These people are doing so much,” he says. “They’re pure, pure people.” There have long been rumours Miller will have himself cryo-preserved when he dies. “I’ll leave it to my sons to decide,” he says.

Alcor probably appreciates the endorsement. But I have a bad feeling about the decision Miller's sons will make about his suspension, unless Miller gave a deliberately misleading answer.

Cryonics disappoints as a cult.

Michael Shermer, one of the country's better known skeptics, presents a checklist of characteristics to determine whether a social group behaves like a cult in his famous essay about Ayn Rand cultism:

Veneration of the Leader: Excessive glorification to the point of virtual sainthood or divinity.

Inerrancy of the Leader: Belief that he or she cannot be wrong.

Omniscience of the Leader: Acceptance of beliefs and pronouncements on virtually all subjects, from the philosophical to the trivial.

Persuasive Techniques: Methods used to recruit new followers and reinforce current beliefs.

Hidden Agendas: Potential recruits and the public are not given a full disclosure of the true nature of the group's beliefs and plans.

Deceit: Recruits and followers are not told everything about the leader and the group's inner circle, particularly flaws or potentially embarrassing events or circumstances.

Financial and/or Sexual Exploitation: Recruits and followers are persuaded to invest in the group, and the leader may develop sexual relations with one or more of the followers.

Absolute Truth: Belief that the leader and/or group has a method of discovering final knowledge on any number of subjects.

Absolute Morality: Belief that the leader and/or the group have developed a system of right and wrong thought and action applicable to members and nonmembers alike. Those who strictly follow the moral code may become and remain members, those who do not are dismissed or punished.

Some ill-informed, and apparently agenda-driven, people have characterized cryonics a "cult," but I don't see how they can make the case from Shermer's list.

First of all, I'd like to know what charismatic and controlling leader the cryonics "cult" supposedly has. Robert Ettinger, who founded the Cryonics Institute, enjoys a certain amount of status and respect in cryonics, but he has repeatedly acknowledged his inadequacies as a leader in the movement, as anyone can see from cryonics' failure to attain critical mass after nearly 50 years. And I laugh at the notion that he has used sex to control his "followers," much less do the other things implied by Shermer's list. I didn't find Ettinger's last book particularly interesting or persuasive as well; so much for its "absolute truth.".

I can't think of anyone in Alcor who could fit that role either. Cryonics tends to attract mostly ingregarious and often geeky or frumpy individuals, mainly beta males who outnumber the women in cryonics by something like 4 to 1. I suspect that if cryonics attracted more alpha males who had game going for them, stories about them would tend to generate fewer hostile responses, and possibly even more respectful ones. After all, humans organically form dominance hierarchies, and we naturally feel inhibited about challenging dominant males. And if cryonics attracted more alpha males, I suspect that more women would follow them into the movement.

The "female Kryptonite" aspect of cryonics poses one of the greater dangers for its survival as a social movement, in my opinion. The Objectivist movement, which didn't necessarily have to become a cult, thrived in the 1960's, despite its implicit anti-natalism, because it had attracted many women as early adopters. (Even today, a number of women write blogs and publish books and articles based on Objectivist ideas.) I guess many of Rand's fangirls in the 1960's, who sought out the company of other Rand fans, viewed Rand as a kind of romance novelist.

Similarly, 19th Century Mormonism succeeded as a social movement because of its ability to attract many women as early adopters, despite the fact that they had to defy their society's taboos about professing a dubious heterodoxy, and then defy other taboos about "adultery" when they entered into plural marriages with Mormon men.

I might welcome a Mormonism-like turn in cryonics, come to think of it, though I'd settle for just one reproductively expediting cryonicist wife in her 30's, despite my interest in polyamory. Because of the age difference, the marriage might take a toll on her health, but it could do wonders for mine.

On the bottom line, anyone who bothers to look at the cryonics culture disinterestedly, like anthropologist Tiffany Romain, would have trouble defending a case for its behavior as a cult. Romain, especially, points to how the beliefs of cryonics' "social world" exist on the same spectrum with the beliefs of mainstream American culture.

Becoming "atheistic" towards Catholic supernaturals

Why didn't Protestants suffer the wrath of the saints and the Virgin Mary, worshiped by Catholics down to our day, when they became "atheistic" towards these beta supernaturals and stopped praying to them?

Protestants might still have believed that biblical or early christian figures with those names existed historically, led exemplary lives and then went to some woo-woo realm called "heaven" after they died. But Protestants generally stopped believing that these dead people could hear living people's prayers and occasionally perform miracles for the living. (Hey, what if you prayed to them that they stay restless instead of "resting in peace"?)

Atheists could point to the lack of consequences from ignoring these lower-status supernaturals to argue that nothing bad will happen to humanity by ending the worship of the alpha supernaturals called gods.

Stealing from trusts

According to The Anticult, instead of carrying out the trust arrangements of rich people after their deaths, living people have every reason to steal, and have a party with, the money from the estates of these suckers. He expects that the fortunes of cryonicists set aside in reanimation trusts will meet this fate.

How, then, does The Anticult account for the successful and honorably managed trusts set up generations ago by Benjamin Franklin, Stephen Girard, James Smithson, Alfred Nobel and other famous individuals, not to mention all the trusts set up by obscure people? People will assume trust obligations even for unusual purposes. Smithson's and Nobel's trusts originally had something of the white elephant about them because of ambiguous instructions, until their respective trustees decided how to interpret their trustors' wishes instead of pocketing the money and walking away from the nuisance.

I don't say that theft from trusts never happens. It just doesn't happen nearly as often as The Anticult assumes it does. Trusts have an excellent reputation in Western societies.

Indeed, consider the social advantages of showing that you can handle someone else's money in a trust without abusing your position. That signals to other people your integrity, which can generate its own rewards, including business and even sexual opportunities you might not have had otherwise. White collar thieves who steal from trusts, by contrast, lose status in our society when their crimes become public knowledge. I don't see why trustees will treat reanimation trusts any differently from other kinds of trusts.

From hindsight,

Tulsa seemed like a sad place to me in the 1970's and 1980's, with its inadequate economy (based on humiliating and absurd servility jobs), its educational and cultural deficiencies, its often destructive weather, its distance from the more happening parts of the U.S., and the coarse, mostly Southern-derived people who formed the bulk of the population when I lived there.

I've gathered that the city looks even seedier and more impoverished now, especially after the neighborhood in east Tulsa where I grew up has become something like a barrio. The Wikipedia article about my junior high school describes the changing demographics of my old neighborhood.

I can understand why so many Anglo Tulsans, at least, have latched onto the rapture as a fantasy means of escape.

The Anticult's woo-woo about death

The Anticult, a regular poster on the Cult Education Forum, continues to write absurd things about cryonics. Among his howlers, this individual seems blind to the irrationality of his beliefs about "death," not to mention his ignorance about the real world of trusts.

For example:

Yes, you can "trust" that once you are dead dead dead, and they have your former Estates assets, you can trust that its game over. They can do anything they want with your former money, as you a legally dead, and you gave them all your (former) money.

They can buy hot-tubs with your money, and take "cryonics business trips" to tropical "tourist" sites overseas.

Why didn't someone steal James Smithson's fortune after he died, instead of honoring his wishes to use it to found the Smithsonian Institution in the U.S., a country he never visited, which continues to exist to this day? What about all the other functioning trusts set up by the deceased? Why does The Anticult think that cryonics-related trusts won't work similarly?

But I mainly want to point to the possibility that cryonics bothers "skeptics" like The Anticult because it implies that they have unexamined woo-woo beliefs about "death," not cryonicists.

Consider the circularity of the usual definition:

If death is defined as the impossibility of revival, then saying someone cannot be revived because they are dead is obviously a circular argument. Yet this is the most commonly used argument against cryonics. It is said that cryonics cannot work because cryonics patients are dead. While this sounds profound, it says nothing. Mathematician Thomas Donaldson put it best:

"It is not possible to argue this question of irreversibility in the terms in which it is usually asked. At present, for most injuries and diseases, the custom is to take those who are afflicted with them, put them in boxes, and bury them. When, because of this treatment, they decline still more until they become dry bones, these dry bones are then exhibited as evidence for the irreversibility of death and the folly of believing that dead people might ever be restored to life. It is one point of cryonics that WE DO NOT INTEND TO ALLOW MATTERS TO GO THAT FAR."

— from A Brief Scientific Introduction to Cryonics
by Thomas Donaldson, PhD

Cryonics, in other words, raises the prospect that our traditional, seemingly "rational" understanding of death rests on a fallacy.

I would go further to say that anyone who believes, even implicitly, that something spooky or mystical happens at "death" which defies technological interventions, even by technologies allowable in the future, has not liberated himself from thinking about death as a theological event, no matter how much he may protest his "skepticism" and "rationality."

H. Beam Piper had problems with Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged."

But he generally liked Robert Heinlein' works. I tend to view H. Beam Piper as a kind of poor man's Robert Heinlein. Piper, Rand and Heinlein, all born in the first decade of the 20th Century, expressed similar views on politics and economics in their maturity, so it makes sense to read their novels together as a genre in mid 20th Century American fiction which promotes individualist and libertarian ideas.

Years ago I even ran across an essay in an Objectivist publication, titled "The Science Fiction of Individualism," which argues that Piper's stories promote a Rand-compatible sense of life. (Apparently the author didn't know that Piper considered Atlas Shrugged incompetently written.) Piper focuses on the self-reliant man as the protagonist, who can recognize and act upon The Truth in Randian A is A fashion; he presents scientific discoveries, technological progress and the conquest of nature to serve human ends, like the pervasive use of nuclear power in Piper's works, as good things; he shows that the self-reliant men face a dilemma, in that they want the freedom to live according to their own judgment and abilities, but if they abandon government, socialists take over and make life difficult for them; stupidity and unreason continually threaten civilization; etc. Piper also drops hints that self-reliant men don't need a god or religion, whether or not a god exists. Objectivists would find none of these ideas in Piper objectionable, though some of Piper's stories also play with reincarnation and alternate histories.

This Enlightenment sort of world view has fallen out of fashion, unfortunately, though I suspect it will make a comeback as part of the revival of early to mid 20th Century men's culture, before feminism, political correctness, environmentalism, the servility economy, postponed maturation and other trends harmful to male psychology created a generation of lost boys. Piper's writings give me the sense of a proper sort of man's mind at work, despite my misgivings about some of the details. I'd like to see more novelists write with an outlook like Piper's, not to mention Heinlein's and a saner version of Rand's.

1970's rapture porn

I grew up in Oklahoma in the 1970's among people who believed this shit:





I even used the rapture belief to play a joke on some girls I knew in high school. In my senior English class I sat behind a girl I had a crush on (but who didn't like me) named Shelley Conrad. (Shelley later married a preacher and bred some attractive daughters.) Dawn Quinn, Shelley's BFF, as teen girls say these days, sat in the row just to the right.

One day the teacher gave Shelley a hall pass to run an errand, and I observed that Dawn hadn't noticed Shelley's departure while she talked to the boy who sat behind her. Dawn turned to see Shelley's empty desk, and asked, "Where's Shelley?" I feigned shock when I said, "The rapture!" Dawn, who went to the same church as Shelley and probably had absorbed the same propaganda about the "end times," looked genuinely alarmed for a second, then realized that I had teased her and started laughing. "Why didn't he [meaning Jesus] take me?" she said.

Then Shelley returned, Dawn told her what had happened, and Shelley grudgingly had to concede the humor, despite the fact that I had supplied it.

Though in the context of Shelley's belief system, I paid her a high compliment. She might have shown more appreciation.

Somebody has to become cryonics' Middle-Aged Man.

About 20 years ago Mike Myers had a recurring skit on Saturday Night Live called "Middle-Aged Man," based on superhero clichés, where Myers played a mature but not preeminently intelligent individual who offered practical advice to younger people. He knew so much because he had lived long enough to have solved a variety of problems and learned from his experiences. (The late Chris Farley played his sidekick, Drinkin' Buddy, and Jan Hooks played his nemesis, Independent Widow.) You can read a transcript of one of those skits here. I'd appreciate a link to a video clip, because I haven't found one.

Now that I've reached that age myself, I've imagined myself as a Middle-Aged Man in training, ready to step forward in a few years and assume an advisory role in the cryonics community as the cryonicists senior to me go into suspension and the remnant needs someone who has incorporated enough of cryonics' history and tradition to give direction and stability to our project over the next few decades.

Naturally I can imagine some cryonicists might object to my ambition. "You seem like a nice guy, Mark (or perhaps not, to some), but nothing about you impresses me." I can counter with the fact that plenty of unimpressive, and even incompetent, people have run cryonics organizations throughout their history. They often wound up in these positions because of the lack of other warm bodies in the room who might have done a better job, given the scarcity of individuals who want to get involved in our strange obsession. (Even then some of the disaster-makers managed to keep their status in cryonics, like Curtis Henderson, whose high regard among some cryonicists continues to puzzle me.)

At least I've observed the cryonics situation for over two decades, I've worked for one of Alcor's former officials in his own company, and I have some experience in running a business as the understudy of this long-time entrepreneur and cryonicist. I can't imagine what I could tell a cryonics organization to do that would turn out as badly as some of the mistakes (to make an understatement) I've seen in Alcor's history. What I've lacked in youthful abilities I might more than compensate for in my later decades through my tortoise strategy in learning good judgment.

Real chemists on "nanometer-scale robots envisaged by K. Eric Drexler."

From Richard Smalley's Of Chemistry,Love and Nanobots (PDF), which appeared in Scientific American a few years ago:

Self-replicating, mechanical nanobots are simply not possible in our world. To put every atom in its place — the vision articulated by some nanotechnologists — would require magic fingers. Such a nanobot will never become more than a futurist’s daydream.

Chemistry is subtle indeed. You don’t make a girl and a boy fall in love by pushing them together (although this is often a step in the right direction). Like the dance of love, chemistry is a waltz with its own step-slide-step in three-quarter time. Wishing that a waltz were a merengue — or that we could set down each atom in just the right place—doesn’t make it so.

From George H. Whitesides's The Once and Future Nanomachine, also from Scientific American a few years ago:

Small machines will eventually be made, but the strategy used to make them, and the purposes they will serve, remain to be devised. Biology provides one brilliantly developed set of examples: in living systems, nanomachines do exist, and they do perform extraordinarily sophisticated functions. What is striking is how different the strategies used in these nanometer-scale machines are from those used in human-scale machines.

In thinking about how best to make nanomachines, we come up against two limiting strategies. The first is to take existing nanomachines--those present in the cell--and learn from them. We will undoubtedly be able to extract from these systems concepts and principles that will enable us to make variants of them that will serve our purposes, and others that will have entirely new functions. Genetic engineering is already proceeding down this path, and the development of new types of chemistry may enable us to use biological principles in molecular systems that are not proteins and nucleic acids.

The second is to start from scratch and independently to develop fundamental new types of nanosystems. Biology has produced one practical means for fabrication and synthesis of functional nanomachines, and there is no reason to believe that there cannot be others. But this path will be arduous. Looking at the machines that surround us and expecting to be able to build nanoscale versions of them using processes analogous to those employed on a large scale will usually not be practical and in many cases impossible. Machining and welding do not have counterparts at nanometer sizes. Nor do processes such as moving in a straight line through a fluid or generating magnetic fields with electromagnets. Techniques devised to manufacture electronic devices will certainly be able to make some simple types of mechanical nanodevices, but they will be limited in what they can do.

The dream of the assembler holds seductive charm in that it appears to circumvent these myriad difficulties. This charm is illusory: it is more appealing as metaphor than as reality, and less the solution of a problem than the hope for a miracle. Considering the many constraints on the construction and operation of nanomachines, it seems that new systems for building them might ultimately look much like the ancient systems of biology. It will be a marvelous challenge to see if we can outdesign evolution. It would be a staggering accomplishment to mimic the simplest living cell.

A rational cryonics movement would have absorbed the implications of these critiques from nearly a decade ago, then changed its thinking about revival problems accordingly.

Something I've thought about lately.

Alcor approved my suspension membership literally on my 31st birthday, November 2, 1990; so this November 2 marks my 20th year as a suspension member. I've met about ten people who have since gone into suspension, including some prominent cryonics activists like Jerry Leaf (apparently the Gunman on the Grassy Knoll), Mae Ettinger, Thomas Donaldson and Jackson Zinn.

If I hang around cryonics long enough in reasonably good health, eventually I could become a senior figure in the cryonics community as the older cryonicists either go into the dewars, drop out or die under conditions where they couldn't get suspended any way.

I wonder if, through this indisposition of competing mature cryonicists, my status and influence in cryonics will rise so that I can start to have a say in how at least one cryonics organization does things. I hereby give notice to other cryonicists that they should take that into consideration regarding me.

Gregory S. Paul explains what makes religion go away.

You can read Gregory S. Paul's popular exposition here (PDF).

Religious belief and activity are seen as a superficial coping mechanism that is easily cast off when the majority in a given society enjoy democratic governance and a secure, comfortable middle-class lifestyle.

He also presents his thesis in the following video (unfortunately with poor sound quality):



Basically the firebrands on both sides of the theism versus atheism debate have missed the point: Most people really don't care about religion for its own sake, much less for its validity, but fall into religiosity as a response to defective living conditions. Anthropologists also call this tendency "magical thinking."

Ayn Rand did not discover human capital.

Every Labor Day, Rand cultists publish predictable essays about how man's mind creates wealth, not his muscle power, with the implication that nobody had figured this out before Ayn Rand. For example:

This Labor Day Celebrate Man's Mind, by Fredric Hamber.

I have nothing against the idea of "celebrating man's mind," in principle. The economic value of cultivated human minds even has a name in mainstream economic thinking: "human capital." The go-getting countries in the late 19th Century like Japan and Germany, when they realized they needed to jump-start their industrialization, even invested a lot of resources into building human capital at a time when the earlier industrializers, Great Britain and the United States, treated the economic development of the mind more haphazardly. Japan's and Germany's efforts apparently paid off, though they squandered their advantages in the wars they started. But they didn't need Ayn Rand to tell them how to employ man's mind to generate their high rates of economic growth a century ago.

Naturally I have to ask about the value of Rand's human capital. In the first place, do novelists and philosophers who know how to do nothing else useful even represent human capital? Rand held a variety of jobs on her way to celebrity as a novelist and pop philosopher, but she apparently despised that ordeal as somehow beneath her; and the published accounts I've read indicate that she lacked abilities in tasks which mediocre people can usually master, like bathing regularly, preparing meals, paying her bills on time and taking care of her health.

And in the second place, does Rand's philosophy of Objectivism encourage the development of human capital now? Considering that Objectivism serves more as a rationalization for a grievance attitude than as a constructive guide, I rather doubt it. What does it do to young people's motivation to tell them, as Objectivist cranks tend to do, that they have no chance and no future in our current society because of taxes, regulations and fiat money, when plenty of non-Objectivists have thrived regardless of these conditions? Wouldn't that message tend to make the ones who adopt it as their view of life less inclined to develop their own human capital, and thus make them drop out of the pool of human minds worth celebrating on Objectivists' version of Labor Day?

I ordered from The Great Courses company today.

I've gotten catalogs from The Great Courses for years, but I never ordered anything.

However, today I succumbed and ordered two courses on DVD from its sale catalog: Biology and Human Behavior: The Neurological Origins of Individuality, 2nd Edition, by Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D; and Understanding the Brain, by Jeanette Norden, Ph.D.

I rationalized the purchase, which came to $100 and change with shipping, by considering that I got some good news about my right eye today (normal intraocular pressure, so I can stop taking the Combigan drops); and I have a birthday coming up any way. So why not indulge myself?

Besides, by listening to lectures by scientists about neuroscience, I can also justify the expense as part of my Survival II* project.

And when I've finished with them, I can also pass them around to my friends. For example, a reproductive expediter I affectionately call Titanium Girl might like to borrow them.



* Survival I: Financial independence; getting plenty of income automatically from sources which I don't have to work for and which can't fire me. Survival II: Something along the lines of engineered negligible senescence; a state where I can go about my business without having to worry about aging and other pathologies.

A grown-up who attempts to achieve real things.

Craig Venter has reportedly started a company to "create living creatures — bacteria, algae or even plants — that are designed from the DNA up to carry out industrial tasks and displace the fuels and chemicals that are now made from fossil fuels." He's raised over $100 million in capital so far, with more on the way.

Supposedly the company would do the following:

In the approach toward which Dr. Venter is driving, engineers would specify the entire genetic code of a cell — essentially the software that runs the cell — on computers, making design changes as if on a word processor. They would then press the “print” button, so to speak, and the DNA would be manufactured from its chemical components. The synthetic DNA would then be transplanted into an existing cell, where it would “boot up” and take control of the cell’s operations.

I can't think of a sharper contrast with the hocus-pocus of Drexlerology. Venter can probably deliver the goods because he works in the realm of correct physical and biological principles. Therefore he can also attract the money and human capital he needs.

The Drexlerologists, by contrast, whine about their poverty and the lack of researchers in their field. Frankly I suspect the ones I've dealt with resent my criticisms because they draw attention to their low status, outside of the cryonics subculture (the members of which should have learned better by now).

The price of nonbelief

According to a new Gallup survey, the importance of religious belief in a country tends to implode when the per capita income reaches about $25,000:

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Gallup surveys in 114 countries in 2009 show that religion continues to play an important role in many people's lives worldwide. The global median proportion of adults who say religion is an important part of their daily lives is 84%, unchanged from what Gallup has found in other years. In 10 countries and areas, at least 98% say religion is important in their daily lives.

Each of the most religious countries is relatively poor, with a per-capita GDP below $5,000. This reflects the strong relationship between a country's socioeconomic status and the religiosity of its residents. In the world's poorest countries -- those with average per-capita incomes of $2,000 or lower -- the median proportion who say religion is important in their daily lives is 95%. In contrast, the median for the richest countries -- those with average per-capita incomes higher than $25,000 -- is 47%.

The United States is one of the rich countries that bucks the trend. About two-thirds of Americans -- 65% -- say religion is important in their daily lives. Among high-income countries, only Italians, Greeks, Singaporeans, and residents of the oil-rich Persian Gulf states are more likely to say religion is important.

Once again, the empirical evidence shows that religiosity in humans doesn't depend on "memes," "god genes," existential anxieties or other folk explanations. Instead religiosity arises in response to defective living conditions, and it tends to disappear, organically, in response to better living conditions, now with an inferable price tag.

Ed Regis on the nanotechnology mirage

Ed Regis stated the following in an interview in 2001, a few years before he wrote the Wired article about Eric Drexler's descent into crankery:

7. With the advent of mature MNT, where do you see the most drastic changes occurring? How can society and industry prepare for it?

"Advent of mature MNT"? You've got to be joking. The one thing that has most impressed me about MNT since I've been aware of the field, which I guess has been for about 15 years, is the snail's pace of progress toward the goal. We've seen tons of conferences, books, theories, predictions, discussions, workshops, institutes, companies, scenarios, simulations, pictures, articles, initiatives, meetings, study groups, Web sites, magazines, newsletters, matching grants and unmatching grants, etcetera. The one thing we haven't seen is any substantial progress toward MNT.

I also question the common assumption that we have to "prepare for it." I see no reason why we cannot simply wait until it happens, and then accommodate ourselves to it then and there, after the fact, when, if, and as it occurs. I think a lot of this before-the-fact worrying, handwringing, theorizing, scenarioizing, worst-case and best-case planning, etcetera, is a waste of time, especially in the event that the hoped-for revolution does not occur, or does not occur in the time frame envisioned by its prognosticators.

Since Regis wrote one of the early accounts of the cult which emerged around Drexlerology, I can imagine that he had gotten his fill of all the nonsense by 2001.



As Scott Locklin says, "People need to grow up and attempt to achieve real things, rather than imagining how cool it would be if we had nanotech factories which would give us genie-like superpowers."

The whole Drexlerology business has bothered me for awhile, along with other problems in cryonics, before I read Locklin's blog post. I have begun to try to push cryonics in a more reality-based direction, in my small way, by donating money to a couple of scientists who study cryonics-applicable ways to improve brain perfusions using rat brains as a model. They can come up with something tangible to show for their efforts, and without ordering me to read Drexler's sterile Nanosystems as a way of saying "STFU!" if I question the feasibility and value of their work.

Basically all cryonicists face what I call the WHOOSAT challenge: We Have Only One Shot At This. If something preventable goes wrong with your suspension, you cannot get a second suspension which does a better job. And if the current, Drexlerology-based thinking about revival technologies depends on what Richard Feynmann called "cargo cult science," and if cryonics organizations obstinately refuse to start looking for better science immediately, then their leaders have engaged in both tragic self-deception and inadvertent fraud.

Hear what a real inventor sounds like.

DEAN KAMEN INTERVIEW.mp3

Shaming and ridiculing some sense into cryonicists.

In my curmudgeonly middle age (I turn 51 exactly two months from today), I've decided to adopt the role of cryonics' village scold. I'd like to see how much traction I can get by my efforts to discredit the Drexlerology which has burdened cryonics for the past generation, for starters. Then I'll see what else I can do to get these people to shape up.

I have extremely self-interested reasons for doing this, of course. We have only one shot at survival by cryonic suspension, guys, and we need to inject some way overdue scientific rigor into the project. As far as Drexlerology goes, there's plenty of cargo cult science at the bottom. I'd also like to marginalize cryonics' hocus-pocus hustlers and distance cryonics from other fringe futuristic ideas which I predict will look ridiculous in another 20 years. I also want to recruit some fresh human minds into the project so that cryonicists' gatherings stop looking like Groundhog Day. (Though the last one I attended had two women in the reproductive expediting age, something which doesn't happen as much as I'd like.)

Fortunately I have low personal overhead. Status considerations matter little to me, so that gives me some freedom to cause necessary trouble in the cryonics community.

Kept Austrians versus folk Austrians

RationalWiki has a skeptical entry on Austrian economics which says:

Austrian economics is a school of economic thought that eschews mathematical modeling and empirical testing in favor of a narrative approach termed 'praxeology'.^[1][2]

As the claims of Austrian economists are difficult to verify without empirical testing, it is widely considered a pseudoscience.^[3] Austrian arguments as to why statistical methods cannot adequately describe human behavior can seem intuitively compelling, but they fail to provide the mathematical proof demonstrating why normally unbiased estimates suddenly become biased simply because they are dealing with people who make decisions. Perhaps one reason they are so uncomfortable with empiricism is that Austrian economists are more interested in defending the political ideology of libertarianism than they are in advancing economic understanding,^[4] and rigorous testing can sometimes undermine deeply held political beliefs.

I'd like to add my distinction between "kept Austrians" and "folk Austrians."

"Kept Austrians," modeled after "kept women," receive their incomes as clients of rich businessmen, often surreptitiously. Ludwig von Mises got his phony "job" at New York University this way, and in our time Peter Boettke at George Mason University benefits from the patronage of the Koch brothers. Apparently professors of Austrian economics have trouble competing for real jobs in academia based on their scholarly merits, so they need this private command-and-control economy to stay employed.

"Folk Austrians," by contrast, come to Austrian economics as autodidacts, even if they never went to college. Ron Paul and similar libertarians fall into this category. They supply the kooks drawn to Austrian economics which provide Peter Boettke with such embarrassment that he wants to change the name of the ideology to try to turn off its crank magnetism.

Of course, Boettke doesn't consider himself one of those kooks because of his interest in Austrian economics! He seems to lack a sense of irony.

"Nanotechnology" article in RationalWiki

Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology (often referred to as "nanotech") is the art of working on materials at the nanometer (one billionth of a meter) scale, hence the name. It's materials science with "nano-" on the front because that gets funding from people who've heard of Drexler.

There are two sorts of nanotechnology: reality, and science woo. . .

In science woo

The popular conception of nanotechnology is Drexler's concept of nanobots, like industrial robots scaled down a billion times. This is entirely made of bollocks and would violate physics, chemistry, and thermodynamics.^[2][1]

That Drexler has pushed an idea which is actually impossible has not deterred nanotech fans, who get as upset as they usually do when an expert in a field they're talking about points out they're simply wrong, apparently from an emotional sunk cost fallacy.^[3]

Since real scientists have entered the field of nanotechnology and started using it for things that do not defy physics, Dr. Drexler has taken to using his new favored term, "zettatechnology."^[4]

I did not know until just now that this RationalWiki article links to my recent blog post about the fallacious sunk costs reasoning of Drexler's defenders.