New York Times Features Robin Hanson and the “Hostile Wife Phenomenon” in Cryonics Friday, Jul 9 2010
cryonics 10:40 am
I really didn’t think the mainstream could possibly care much about this issue, but the New York Times seems to be jumping all over our small community, so now we get the amusement of seeing our internal issues get hashed out in front of everyone. Yay.
From “Until Cryonics Do Us Part”:
Robin is the kind of nerd who is very excited about the future, an orientation evident on his C.V., which lists published articles like “Economic Growth Given Machine Intelligence” (on why robots will give us growth rates “an order of magnitude” higher than we’ve currently got), “Burning the Cosmic Commons: Evolutionary Strategies of Interstellar Colonization” (on what behaviors we can expect from extraterrestrials) and “Drift-Diffusion in Mangled Worlds Quantum Mechanics” (it’s very complicated). His enthusiasm is evident in the way he talks about these ideas, hands in the air, laughing amiably every time he brings up the distance between his own theories and those of the mainstream. If he is in a chair, the chair is moving with him.
Nice personality profile. I noticed that there was one glaring error in the article regarding the process of cryonics… it claims that your brain is surgically removed after metabolism ceases, but it’s really the head. This is an important distinction. You’d think that reporters writing an article on cryonics would at least read the damn Alcor web page for ten minutes and get that right.
The original paper, “Is That What Love is? The Hostile Wife Phenomenon in Cryonics” goes into more depth if you’re interested. My explanation for the phenomenon is pretty simple: gender differences in enthusiasm towards science. I predict that more women will come to appreciate science when more technologies are developed that focus on the empathic nuances of human communication. We already see this to some extent with things like SecondLife, though that may be a bad example due to its particular idiosyncrasies. If you disagree with me, feel free to say so in the comments, but please hold the accusations of sexism (towards me or otherwise), as that will poison any opportunity for actual discussion.
Yes, I know it’s verboten to ever mention any differences between men and women, but keep in mind that many of the differences have to do with attitudes that are only skin-deep, and more or less chosen. (Though there are definitely differences that seem to center around the specific adaptive problems men and women were invented by evolution to solve.) I think that the only way gender relations can be improved is by analyzing the differences between (the average of) men and (the average of) women and trying to reconcile them, rather than ignoring said differences.
Anyway, for Robin Hanson’s personal justification of why he thinks being frozen and eventually uploaded will work, see “Philosophy Kills”.
Women are actually more enthusiastic about most medicine than men. Women go to the doc more often, and push men to go more often than men push women. So this isn’t about women not being as pro science.
Cryonics is sufficiently radical “medicine” that I think it gets processed mentally completely separately from other medicines. It falls more in the category of “is genetic engineering a good idea”, or “would you strap yourself to a jetpack and fly around”? It’s just so radical that it can’t be seen as normal medicine.
The article pointed out how you try to call it medicine and your students refuse that framing. IF it could actually be framed as medicine in the mainstream, then we might predict more women to accept it, but that framing might never happen. By the time cryonics patients are revived, the technology for indefinite lifespans (barring accidents)_will already be available.
So Robin Hanson refutes your claim about female attitudes regarding medicine and you weasel out of it by re-labeling an issue of “radical” medicine. Instead of women not being pro-science, maybe the issue is auto-didact computer science and computer engineers are more capable of self-delusion than the rest of the population.
While Howley gets the brain-vs-head part of cryonics wrong, she certainly gets the extremely specific and small sub-group of the male population that is interested in cryonics right.
This issue has nothing to do with gender or sex.
> This issue has nothing to do with gender or sex
How convenient that reality happens to be politically correct!
A brilliant, rational refutation Roko. I put forward the following counterpoint:
1. Generalizations about small, specific communities bounded by interests and vocation are often more accurate than generalizations about large populations bounded by biological factors, such as sex.
2. Cryonics proponents are generally white, middle class, males involved with computer engineering or programming.
3. Cryonics proponents face resistance from their significant others in that cryonics makes cryonics proponents seem unconcerned with present relationships, in denial of their own mortality, or wasteful with money.
4. Being generally heterosexual, cryonics proponents face resistance from women, specifically their wives.
5. In that there are roughly three billion women on the planet and approx. less than 5,000 (I am making this number up, though the logic holds at 50,000) active cryonics proponents facing resistance from their wives, it is most logical to generalize, if such a generalization must be made, about cryonics proponents, not women.
6. Therefore, “Hostile Wife Phenomenon” is actually “Distant, socially dysfunctional Husband Syndrome” which manifests frequently among cryonics proponents. As a coping mechanism, they project their disorder onto their wives and women in general to justify their continued obsessions and emotional failings.
What would you like to say about the approximately 25% of cryonicists that according to the NYT article are female?
Two things:
1. It doesn’t affect my assertion that it if we’re generalizing, it should be about the cryogenics community, not all female humans.
2. 25% of cryonauts being female would seem to refute the whole premise of “Hostile Wife Phenomenon.” If women are a) nearly non-existant in STEM communities b) generally opposed to “radical medicine” and science then how is it possible that c) a quarter of cryonauts are female?
> Therefore, “Hostile Wife Phenomenon” is actually “Distant, socially dysfunctional Husband Syndrome”
Actually, I agree with the spirit of your reply; to be sane in a world of madness, to want a better future for yourself and others is, whilst not dysfunctional, certainly somewhat radical and nonconforming, which smells a lot like socially dysfunctional.
When they burned witches, the sentiment certainly would have been “these women are socially dysfunctional”.
How about mentioning also another syndrome, like “Intolerant dominatrix control freak syndrome”. I guess this syndrome has a very different gender distribution, but it is equally revealing of emotional failings.
Live and let live, do your own thing and let others do theirs, and don’t complain of others’ choices as long as they don’t reduce your own ability to choose. There is really no other way.
Of course, its a gender issue. If it wasn’t, there would be largely equal numbers of men and women signed up for cryonics.
Actually, it’s a money issue; most people who have enough to spare on cryonics are men.
I don’t think it’s lack of enthusiasm for science. I think it’s more “eeww, gross!” It may be, though I think this is a sexist argument, that men are less deathist due to greater need to control stuff.
I also think that dependent women might see cryonics as not worthwhile because one would dependent on, and possibly the property of, a reviver.
Finally women may more biased toward spending money on children or child surrogates.
Men tend to be risk takers more than women, and cryonics is huge and unlikely gamble. I think the gross out factor is real as well.
However, I think the real root of the problem is that cryonics plays with peoples’ minds about whether someone is truly dead. When someone dies or deanimates, the family likes to have closure. Cryonic suspension, due to its uncertain nature, prevents such closure and this creates much anxiety for many people. I think it is the uncertainty combined with lack of closure is the main problem most people have with cryonics.
> Men tend to be risk takers more than women, and cryonics is huge and unlikely gamble
Whereas burial or cremation are both entirely risk free, right?
They are absolutely risk free, Roko, because you know exactly what you are going to get. For something to be a risk their has to be the potential for different outcomes.
* ‘there’
So would you say that an investment that was a guaranteed loss is less risky than owning a US treasury bill? Why don’t you burn all your money then?
I like the idea of closure. Imagine a newly forged widow, should they be sad that their loved one has died? or sad that they will have to wait until they are revived?
How can they remarry? or fall in love with anyone else? it could be taken as a betrayal to do so. So we have extra guilt tacked onto the widow moving on with their lives.
It sounds pretty horrible actually, to be alive when you’re mate is dead in very nearly every sense of the word, but is still is hanging around.
Oh, on top of that, you’re going to get old and old, and when he comes back, he will probably just leave you for some young (compared to you, an old widow) tramp.
Actually despite the other reasons I mentioned, I really think one reason fewer women are interested in cryonics is that they see the cost of acting in an unconventional manner as higher and also may see uploading as essentially worthless, regardless of the philosophical issues, because they are more emotionally invested in tight interaction with the physical world.
I consider Howley’s article a PR failure for cryonics because it profiles a submissive beta male whom people feel comfortable berating online, as the article’s comments indicate.
Consider:
1. Robin calls himself a “nerd,” works as a college professor and writes geeky academic papers that only other geeks can understand.
2. He’s stayed with the same woman (and an older one at that) for the past 28 years, which signals that he doesn’t have “game.”
3. Robin’s wife really doesn’t respect him.
These facts send the message that Robin resides somewhere down the male dominance hierarchy, sort of like a higher-IQ and functionally autistic version of Al Bundy.
By contrast, if Howley had portrayed an extroverted alpha male with a younger, prettier wife or girlfriend who treated him deferentially (even if she didn’t share his passion for cryonics), signs of financial success and the implication that he still had his “game” going for him, people’s brains would process these signals and attribute higher status to this individual. People naturally feel disinclined to attack dominant males, so I suspect this alternative article would have generated fewer hostile comments.
In my view, basing legal, social, cultural, job-related, or most all interpersonal relations except for choice of sex partner, on gender stereotypes should not be done. Only provable biologicial differences should be taken into account in behavioral studies.
In this case, as was pointed out earlier, it’s hard to define what is more to blame, the male’s behavioral differences or the female’s, so what should probably be done is try to find the common ground issue that determines why one side is pro and the other side is nay, rather then argue over gender. It doesn’t see to be the prime factor at work.
Gender is a provable biological difference — isn’t that obvious? Valkyrie Ice, you should read the Evolutionary Psychology Primer.
Men and women are actually sometimes referred to (informally!) as two different species because they each carry different physical and mental hardware to deal with specific adaptive problems. Improving gender relations requires understanding these differences and reconciling them, not ignoring them, as you appear to be! Really, come on.
The evidence really cannot support these claims, Michael. See Janet Hyde’s meta-analysis on the subject. The few significant psychological differences noted may well be cultural.
I’d say Robin Hanson is not someone who I’d consider submissive. He doesn’t shut up despite the fact that many people disagree with him. While that doesn’t make him a rock star, his absolute refusal to bow to political correctness, even in before an unfriendly audience is not a sign of submission.
As for autism. you’d need to see someone, not just read his writing to make that diagnosis.
Also, people are often deferential alpha males to their faces, but don’t really hesitate to criticize them when they aren’t in the same room. After all Ted Williams went for cryonics and that didn’t encourage a lot of people to sign up.
I think there might be something to the cliched argument that women achieve immortality through giving birth to children, while men are more inclined to want to continually spread their genes. This might not actually occur in practice, but those innate drives under the surface might be an influencing factor that results in men wanting to preserve themselves at all costs while women are content with raising a family and then dying.
I don’t generally take the notions behind cryonics very seriously but on this issue it occurred to me that the spouse of a cryonics proponent is very likely to do so. I would tend to agree that this is not inherent to gender but rather the result of how society does encourage different relative values between the genders for things like individualism and family support.
Maybe it gets lost in the shuffle, but individualism is the only philosophy that provides a rational basis for cryonics to begin with. If you have any vested interest in the longterm survival of a traditional family or society, you’d pretty quickly see that cryonics is radically disruptive. Besides being a larger than normal commitment to preserving a dead loved one’s remains, what if you do believe it’s possible they will be revived someday? All of a sudden the time-tested survival patterns of living, dying, and passing on a good legacy to your spouse and children are thrown into question. Does your re-animated grandfather get to ask for all his stuff back?
It just seems to me that from any other basis than individualism, it’s natural that cryonics will be percieved as selfish and irrational by the other stakeholders in a family and the broader society.
The good old circle of life, eh? By the way, how old are you, Ananda?
I don’t think that presently cryonics is a working technology.
But maybe in a few decades it will be.
Of course if that will be the case we need to rethink how our society is organized.
Older people are people too, I don’t see why they have to dye if we can avoid it.
Maybe it gets lost in the shuffle, but individualism is the only philosophy that provides a rational basis for cryonics to begin with. If you have any vested interest in the longterm survival of a traditional family or society, you’d pretty quickly see that cryonics is radically disruptive.
This is understandable and can certainly explain why wives who have kids may object to cryonics. I can even sympathize with it to a certain extent. A man should provide for his family first, especially his kids.
However, this explanation fails to explain why childless spouses would object to cryonics and it certainly cannot explain why anyone would care about the random total stranger going into cryonic suspension.
What is amazing to me about the New York Times article and comments section is why anyone who has no personal interest in cryonics would even care about the issue one way or another. I usually ignore things that do not interest me. If I had no interest in cryonics, I would not care about it at all. I would completely ignore it. For some reason, this does not describe the attitudes of many New York Times readers.
The reason why the “women like living through their children” argument doesn’t work for me is that there are millions of young women totally uninterested in children who also have no interest in cryonics.
“I noticed that there was one glaring error in the article regarding the process of cryonics… it claims that your brain is surgically removed after metabolism ceases, but it’s really the head.”
Kriorus (http://www.kriorus.ru/) in Russia normally surgically remove the brain just so that the family can have a full body of the deceased for funeral.
First, let me say that I don’t believe what I’m about to say. It’s a brief hypothesis that might be interesting to test… but I wonder if there’s an evolutionary advantage in refocusing energy away from oneself and onto the next generation as one gets too old to reproduce. This would be true for BOTH genders. But since men have a longer breeding timeline and spend less energy in producing children than females (where humans are concerned), it may be that the age at which this refocusing hits is different for the two genders. Men might simply be more willing to engage in cyronics because their exposure to risk of dying vs. their refocusing on the next generation might come at a different time. Just a random thought.
This is credible.
Someone should profile the husbands of the 25% of cryo patients who are female if they really want to get to the bottom of this. If those husbands feel the same way the 75% wives do, then it is clearly just a matter of more males wanting cryo => more wives upset about it. If, however, the husbands are easier going, then it is clearly a matter of these hostile wives.
How many of the 25% of female cryo patients are married to the 75% of male cryo patients?
I have seen the comments to the NYT piece, recommended the reasonable comments, and left two comments of my own. Perhaps the editors will not publish them, even if they are on topic and not abusive. Here they are:
1 The comment 10 by jp “An easy solution would be to just agree with him all the way to the grave. Then bury or cremate him. He’ll never know.” is disgusting. I suggest the same solution should be applied to whatever wishes jp will express in his or her will.
2 I am signed up for cryonic suspension. On the basis of my scientific training the recent scientific information available to me, I think there is a fair chance it will work. If it works, I hope I will buy Robin a beer in a less intolerant world. Perhaps it will not work. So what? Even a small chance is better than no chance. In either case, since I am not hurting anybody, it is my own decision to make and my own business. This is called “freedom”. My wife does not take cryonics seriously. I don’t try to “convert” her, and she does not try to “convert” me.
Most comments show the intolerance typical of a bigot and intolerant society, which is not surprising. And this has nothing to do with gender. The “feminism” of some comments is the idiotic and intolerant feminism of the 70s, even more bigot than the rest of society if you ask me.
[...] review of recent activity in the transhumanist scene. I’ll just note with disappointment Michael Anissimov’s stress on biological gender differences. As Zack and I have discussed, the evidence cannot sustain such strong claims. In particular, see [...]
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