Well, All Right Then
So I guess Robin Hanson is a male. And it turns out that this scathing critic of wasting society's resources on medicine is a believer in cryogenics (link courtesy of Wikipedia). The mind boggles.
posted by James | 9:49 PM
3 Comments:
You're just playing for cheapshots. The positions are easily reconcilable.
. . .
You knew that I guess. I'll wait for you to get onto a topic that you think is governed by the principle of charity.
So what is the charitable way to construe the argument that medicine is mainly a wasteful signal? I mean, yes, there is cosmetic surgery, but what fraction of medical resources does that consume? And how likely is it that the hospital wing named after Alex Grass is devoted to face-lifts?
Dave -- I would _actually_ be interested to hear the charitably interpreted version of Hanson. To me he seems like a crackpot, and his ideas sound like the sillier and more nebulous kinds of conspiracy theory. Part of the problem is that his blog is preaching to the choir, so he doesn't feel obliged to justify himself, with the consequence that to the unconverted (like me, James, and e.g. Andrew Gelman) he mostly sounds batshit insane. I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise, but someone's got to try and persuade me.
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