this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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Science shows that the brain and the rest of the nervous system stops at death. How that relates to the notion of consciousness is still pretty much unknown, and many neuroscientists will tell you that. We haven't yet found an organ or process in the brain responsible for the conscious mind that we can say stops at death.

no matter how many neuroscientists I ask, none of them will tell me which part of the brain contains the soul. the orange site actually has a good sneer for this:

You don't need to know which part of the brain corresponds to a conscious mind when they entire brain is dead.

a lot of the rest of the thread is the most braindead right-libertarian version of Pascal’s Wager I’ve ever seen:

Ultimately, it's their personal choice, with their money, and even if they spend $100,000 on paying for it, or more, it doesn't mean they didn't leave other assets or things for their descendants.

By making a moral claim for why YOU decide that spending that money isn't justified, you're going down one very arrogant and ultimately silly road of making the same claim to so many other things people spend money and effort they've worked hard for on specific personal preferences, be they material or otherwise.

Maybe you buying a $700,000 house vs. a $600,000 house is just as idiotic then? Do you really need the extra floor space or bathrooms?

Where would you draw a line? Should other once-implausible life enhancement therapies that are now widely used and accepted also be forsaken? How about organ transplants? Gene therapy? highly expensive cancer treatments that all have extended life beyond what was previously "natural" for many people? Often these also start first as speculative ideas, then experiments, then just options for the rich, but later become much more widely available.

and therefore the only rational course of action is to put $100,000 straight into the pockets of grifters. how dare I make any value judgments at all about cryonicists based on their extreme distaste for the scientific method, consistent history of failure, and use of extremely exploitative marketing?

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[–] corbin@awful.systems 2 points 1 year ago

Huh, surely the thread can't be that bad. It's about cryonics, which is science, right?

It seems there's pretty good evidence that Jesus died and resurrected, if only because the Roman soldiers probably wouldn't obscure details that would damage the credibility of Jesus' religion.

Okay, that's enough HN for today.