Christopher Hitchens and Cryonics

The question of whether waterboarding is torture has at least a little bit of factual underpinning-- that's why it's possible for the experience to change people's minds about it.

In particular, people who say that waterboarding isn't torture are apt to claim that it isn't painful enough for anyone reasonable to object to it being used.

Wait. "waterboarding isn't torture" is not a question on which changing one's belief is evidence of rationalism. Asking or answering the question at all is a political ploy only. The rationalist reaction is to taboo the word "torture" and reduce the question to something physical and testable.

Tabooing a word isn't the only response that's rational, especially because that is a not even well-known technique. In this circumstance, what Hitchens change of mind essentially meant is that he agreed afterwords that the experience was so unpleasant that any definition of "torture" that captured his intuition of the term would have to include waterboarding. Cyphergoth's point stands: Hitchens was willing to change his mind when confronted with evidence. Whether there might be a marginally more rationalist thing to do is somewhat besides the point.

I agree with your proposal to taboo the word "torture" here in order to properly understand the situation, and that its use is essentially political. Nonetheless Hitchens's expectation of what it might be like as an experience was very much violated, and instead of just giving us all bravura to appear consistent, knowing that he wouldn't have to do it again, he said so, and I respect that.

If I taboo the word "torture", I get: people would rather face the humiliation of a climbdown over their public statements on it than do it a second time.

Adult neurogenesis is a recent discovery, but it seem to change either that much.

What, compared to plate tectonics? What utility exactly does plate tectonics have? That seems about as useful as finding the Higgs boson: providing an explanation for well-characterized and predictable phenomenon like continental drift. You can't even predict earthquakes knowing plate tectonics.

The fact that an exercise repeated regularly through many years leads to measurable anatomical differences isn't exactly a paradigm shift related to our understanding of human physiology either.

Here I think we have a paradigm shift over time that makes it hard to understand*. Try to put yourself back in the '60s or '70s - the age of Timothy O'Leary, of talking to dolphins, the Age of Aquarius, the Beatles going to India. The mind is separate from the body. Stress is just a word, not a known killer from countless studies (see the Wired article). Schizophrenia seems to be caused by mothers not loving their children. IQ is not hereditary.

How could a bunch of neurons possibly mess with the subtle chemical balances that rule the rest of the body? Are there little neurons connected to levers in glands which only fire when strange foreign syllables are repeated a lot? For that matter, how could sitting down and doing nothing whatsoever or reciting some mantra like a Buddhist monk improve your health and happiness?

If that isn't counterintuitive, I don't know what is.

* For a Reddit comment, I was looking up Kevin Kelly's Maes-Garreau Law about biases of futorology toward dramatic change by the end of the futorologist's life, and the introduction strikes me as relevant:

"Forecasts of future events are heavily influenced by present circumstances. That’s why predictions are usually wrong. It’s hard to transcend current assumptions. Over time, these assumptions erode, which leads to surprise. Everybody “knew” that people won’t work for free, and if they did that it would not be quality work. So the common assumption that a reliable encyclopedia could not be constructed upon volunteer labor blinded us to the total surprise of a Wikipedia."

Neuroplasticity. A few episodes of the brainsciencepodcast deal with them, and the book of Norman Doidge: the brain that changes itself. Nutrition is a topic that is still up for grabs.

I am impressed by someone who changes their position for majoritarian reasons and says so explicitly.

...and is, in fact, correct. Otherwise that could lead you to being impressed by those impressed by majoritarianism enough to become theists.