How Doctors Die

I'm a medical doctor and I'll never forget what one of our respected (and elderly) liver specialists said when asked what he would do regarding a patient with a liver cancer with a particularly poor prognosis. During a roundtable discussion, various younger doctors came up with lengthy suggestions and lots of different chemotherapy regimens, tests, etc. When it was this doctor's turn to speak, he said: "Well, if I were to put myself in that man's shoes, I would go to the store, buy a case of fine liquor and drink myself happy for the next few weeks until I'm gone."

He had seen enough "therapies" to know enough when to forgo them.

1. Pascal's Wager isn't comparable here for a number of reasons. You're probably thinking of the reasoning some people give that a finite but humongous expected payoff justifies a finite but minuscule probability. I would agree that's a pretty stupid reason to do things; if it's worth doing there are probably better reasons.

2. It's not a guarantee, has anyone ever said it is? Hence my own estimate of at least 5%. (I believe I originally got that figure in my head back from http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/03/break-cryonics-down.ht... -- I don't think it's an unreasonable one.) It's still a better shot than being buried or cremated and worth it given the low prices available today.

3. I look forward to being shocked. I'm not going to touch your horrid comment that death is somehow necessary for progress.

4. Cryonics is a pretty poor business to be in if you're a charlatan. Where are you getting that vibe from?

While remembering that old post I linked I also found this comment I thought I'd share from a "Luke" ( http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/07/cryonics-as-charity.ht... ):

Cryophobia is pure evil. It makes people choose death instead of cryonics. It makes cryonics more of a struggle for those who are not wealthy; it deprives the poor of the scaling effects that would make it affordable. It deprives those who are courageous enough to try it of their dignity and attacks their character unjustly and without evidence. It splits up families. It diminishes the chance of the technology working to 5% of its potential. It is unfair to AIDS and cancer victims who must die an early death permanently because of this. It misrepresents facts, repeatedly, while masquarading as skepticism. It has no shame, no decency, and no honor.

I voted it down because it's an "argument from authority" and I found it slightly pretentious. It was also ironic, considering your other comment today defining "argumentum ad verecundiam". I didn't really like Kalid's statement either, but left it alone.

As you say, you are echoing a principle (which verges on a platitude), but not adding a lot to the discussion unless we are willing to trust your expertise without examples. Had you combined it with your more detailed followup, I wouldn't have felt this way.

I'm not really defending my vote, just explaining my thought process since you were asking. If it helps, I've evened out my actions up by upvoting this question.

This is my experience.

I've lost friends to sudden deaths -- usually accidents. It's a bolt out of the blue, but it's over quickly and there's rarely much suffering.

I've lost family "after a long illness" as the news reports say, and the roller-coaster of misdiagnoses, initial treatments, exploratory surgeries, continued uncertainty of diagnostic monitoring and procedures, hope for treatment advances, false hope from charlatans and quacks, relapses, remissions, and the final, inevitable, unstoppable, and increasingly debilitating decline, tears people, families, and communities to pieces.

I've also seen cases where the end was known, but treatment brought, at a relatively low cost and with little dread or pain, an extra six months of a life that was happy and full of love. In that case, not so bad.

> Pascal's Wager isn't comparable here for a number of reasons.

Please provide them.

> Hence my own estimate of at least 5%. (I believe I originally got that figure in my head back from http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/03/break-cryonics-down.ht.... -- I don't think it's an unreasonable one.)

I guess if you invent a few data figures and then do math on them, you can get an aggregate of your own opinion. It's like the Drake equation, except at least with the Drake equation there are some terms we actually know.

> It's still a better shot than being buried or cremated and worth it given the low prices available today.

Every dollar you pay for cryonics is a dollar that you're depriving your actual living children or family members, or it's a dollar you're depriving yourself of in the past modulo time value of money.

> Cryonics is a pretty poor business to be in if you're a charlatan. Where are you getting that vibe from?

It's the perfect business to be in if you're a charlatan! There's no way to tell if you're doing a good job or a bad job, you never have to provide any results (because those happen in the distant and undefined future), and your customers are already dead.

> I'm not going to touch your horrid comment that death is somehow necessary for progress.... Cryophobia is pure evil. It makes people choose death instead of cryonics.

Maybe it is horrid, but is it true? Ah, you don't even bother addressing that. Because as we all know, the most rational response to an argument is to accuse your opponent of "evil". It seems to me that even if you dress it up in science fiction and call it "rationality", religion is still religion.