I try to avoid having more than one post of mine on the sidebar at the same time.

It isn't that impressive to me. As far as I can see, what it shows is that she has been torturing herself for a long time, probably many years, over her issues with Christianity. She's just expressing her anger with the suffering it caused her.

This woman is a model unto the entire human species.

Thank you for posting that. It's an inspiration.

This is analysis is very well and good taken on its own terms, but it conceals---very cleverly conceals, I do compliment you, for surely, surely you had seen it yourself, or some part of you had---it conceals assumptions that do not apply to our own realm. Essences, discreteness, digitality---these are all artifacts born of optimizers; they play no part in the ontology of our continuous, reductionist world. There is no pure agonium, no thing-that-hurts without having any semblance of a reason for being hurt---such an entity would require a very masterful designer indeed, if it could even exist at all. In reality, there is no threshold. We face cries that fractionally have referents. And the quantitative extent to which these cries don't have enough structure for us to extrapolate a volition is exactly again the quantitative extent to which any stray stream of memes has license to reshape the entity, pushing it towards the strong attractor. You present us with this bugaboo of entities that we cannot help because they don't even have well-defined problems, but entities without problems don't have rights, either. So what's your problem? You just spray the entity with appropriate literature until it is a creature. Sculpt the thing like clay. That is: you help it by destroying it.

Did I miss something?

I don't have any memory of a similar revelation, but one of my earliest memories is of asking my mother if there was a way to 'spell letters' - I understood that words could be broken down into parts and wanted to know if that was true of letters, too, and if so where the process ended - which implies that I was already doing a significant amount of abstract reasoning. I was three at the time.

Unless you can directly extract a sincere and accurate utility function from the participants' brains, this is vulnerable to exaggeration in the AI programming. Say my optimal amount of X is 6. I could program my AI to want 12 of X, but be willing to back off to 6 in exchange for concessions regarding Y from other AIs that don't want much X.

So I am back in college and I am trying to use my time to my best advantage.

Socialise a lot. Learn the skills of social influence and the dynamics of power at both the academic level and practical.

AnnaSalamon made this and other suggestions when Calling for SIAI fellows. I imagine that the skills useful for SIAI wannabes could have significant overlap with those needed for whatever project you choose to focus on. Specific technical skills may vary somewhat.

(I read CFAI once 1.5 years ago, and didn't reread it since obtaining the current outlook on the problem, so some mistakes may be present.)

"Challenges of Friendly AI" and "Beyond anthropomorphism" seem to be still relevant, but were mostly made obsolete by some of the posts on Overcoming Bias. "An Introduction to Goal Systems" is hand-made expected utility maximisation, "Design of Friendship systems" is mostly premature nontechnical speculation that doesn't seem to carry over to how this thing could be actually constructed (but at the time could be seen as intermediate step towards a more rigorous design). "Policy implications" is mostly wrong.

Assuming you were using your own computer at home and not a public Wi-Fi hotspot or public computer then it could be that you use the same ISP and you were assigned an IP address previously used by another user. Given the relatively low number of users on lesswrong though this seems like a somewhat unlikely coincidence.

I'll be more careful with "Ban this IP" option in the future, which I used to uncheck during the spam siege a few months back, but didn't in this case. Apparently the IP is only blocked for a day or so. I've removed it from the block list, please check if it works and write back if it doesn't.

"Bella" was blocked for adding spam links. Could your computer be a zombie?

I quite like swearing, but I don't think it primes people to think and respond rationally in general, and is usually best avoided. Like wedrifid, I'm inclined to argue for an exception for "bullshit", which is a term of art.

I don't know of an official policy, but swearing can be distracting. Avoid?

(a). Lots of us scan the "Recent Comments" page, so if a discussion starts up there plenty of people will get on board.

I think each has their advantages. If you post a comment on the open thread, it's more likely to be read and discussed now; if you post one on the original thread, it's more likely to be read by people investigating that particular issue some time from now.

There, I figure (a).

That is pretty ridiculous - enough to make me want to check the original study for effect size and statistical significance. Writing newspaper articles on research without giving the original paper title ought to be outlawed.

Same researchers, somewhat similar effect:

"Distortion of Price Discount Perceptions: The Right Digit Effect"

• http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/518526

I think your phrasing of your question is confusing. Are you asking for help putting yourself into a mindset conducive to learning and developing rationality skills?

Interesting heuristic - I would be curious to find if anyone else has followed something similar to good effect, but it sounds conceptually reasonable.

Any such conspiracy would have to be known by quite a few people and so would stand an excellent chance of having the whistle blown on it. Every case I can think of where large Western companies have been caught doing anything like that outrageously evil, they have started with a legitimate profit-making plan, and then done the outrageous evil to hide some problem with it.

Does anyone understand the last two paragraphs of the comment that I'm responding to? I'm having trouble figuring out whether Warrigal has a real insight that I'm failing to grasp, or if he is just confused.

The movie is also a good example of existential risk in fiction (in this case, a genetically engineered biological agent).

Try this.

It's a very interesting question. I think it's pretty straight-forward that 'ourselves' is a composite of 'awarenesses' with non-overlapping mutual awareness.

Some data with respect to inebriation:

• drunk people would pass a Turing test, but the next morning when events are recalled, it feels like someone else' experiences. But then when drunk again, the experiences again feel immediate.

• when I lived in France, most of my socialization time was spent inebriated. For years thereafter, whenever I was intoxicated, I felt like it was more natural to speak in French than English. Even now, my French vocabulary is accessible after a glass of wine.

It really does surprise me how often people do things like this.

“I guess it’s just a genetic flaw in humans,” said Amichai Shulman, the chief technology officer at Imperva, which makes software for blocking hackers. “We’ve been following the same patterns since the 1990s.”

This is a quote from someone being interviewed about bad but common passwords. Would this be labeled a semantic stopsign, or a fake explanation, or ...?

I'm currently trying to teach myself mathematics from the ground up, so I'm in a similar situation as you. The biggest issue, as I see it, is attempting to forget everything I already "know" about math. Math curriculum at both the public high school and the state university I attended was generally bad; the focus was more on memorizing formulas and methods of solving prototypical problems than on honing one's deductive reasoning skills, which if I'm not mistaken is the core of math as a field of inquiry.

So obviously textbooks are good place to start, but which ones don't suck? Well, I can't help you there, as I'm trying to figure this out myself, but I use a combination of recommendations from this page and looking at ratings on Amazon.

Here are the books I am currently reading, have read portions of, or are on my immediate to-read list, but take this with a huge grain of salt as I'm not a mathematician, only an aspiring student:

• How to Prove It: A Structured Approach by Vellemen - Elementary proof strategies, is a good reference if you find yourself routinely unable to follow proofs

• How to Solve It by Polya - Haven't read it yet but it's supposedly quite good.

• Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning, Vol. I & II by Polya - Ditto.

• Topics in Algebra by Herstein - I'm not very far into this, but it's fairly cogent so far

• Linear Algebra Done Right by Axler - Intuitive, determinant-free approach to linear algebra

• Linear Algebra by Shilov - Rigorous, determinant-based approach to linear algebra. Virtually the opposite of Axler's book, so I figure between these two books I'll have a fairly good understanding once I finish.

• Calculus by Spivak - Widely lauded. I'm only 6 chapters in, but I immensely enjoy this book so far. I took three semesters of calculus in college, but I didn't intuitively understand the definition of a limit until I read this book.

I've learned an awful lot of maths from Wikipedia.

NPR link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122226184

Link: Checklists (previously discussed on LW).

What you seem to be saying, that I agree with, is that it's irritating as well as irrelevant when people try to pull authority on you, using "age" or "quantity of experience" as a proxy for authority. Yes, argument does screen off authority. But that's no reason to knock "life experience".

If opinions are not based on "personal experience", what can they possibly be based on? Reading a book is a personal experience. Arguing an issue with someone (and changing your mind) is a personal experience. Learning anything is a personal experience, which (unless you're too good at compartmentalizing) colors your other beliefs.

Perhaps the issue is with your thinking that "demolishing someone's argument" is a worthwhile instrumental goal in pursuit of truth. A more fruitful goal is to repair your interlocutor's argument, to acknowledge how their personal experience has led them to having whatever beliefs they have, and expose symmetrically what elements in your own experience lead you to different views.

Anecdotes are evidence, even though they can be weak evidence. They can be strong evidence too. For instance, having read this comment after I read the commenter's original report of his experience as an isolated individual, I'd be more inclined to lend credence to the "stealth blimp" theory. I would have dismissed that theory on the basis of reading the Wikipedia page alone or hearing the anecdote along, but I have a low prior probability for someone on LessWrong arranging to seem as if he looked up news reports after first making a honest disclosure to other people interested in truth-seeking.

It seems inconsistent on your part to start off with a rant about "anecdotes", and then make a strong, absolute claimed based solely on "the Sokal affair" - which at the scale of scientific institutions is anecdotal.

I think you're trying to make two distinct points and getting them mixed up, and as a result not getting either point across. One of these points I believe needs to be moderated - the one where you say "personal experiences aren't evidence" - because they are evidence; the other is where you say "people who speak with too much confidence are more likely to be wrong, including a) people older than you, b) some academics, but not necessarily the academic consensus".

That is perhaps a third point - just why you think that "the process of peer-reviewed scientific inquiry, informed by logic, statistics, and regression analysis, offers a better chance at discovering truth than any other institution in history". That's a strong claim subject to the conjunction fallacy: are each of peer review, logic, statistics and regression analysis necessary elements of what makes scientific inquiry our best chance at discovering truth? Are they sufficient elements to be that best chance?

The Sokal affair illustrates that entire fields can exist completely without merit.

It illustrated nothing of the sort. The Sokal affair illustrated that a non-peer-reviewed, non-science journal will publish bad science writing that was believed to be submitted in good faith.

Social Text was not peer-reviewed because they were hoping to... do... something. What Sokal did was similar to stealing everything from a 'good faith' vegetable stand and then criticizing its owner for not having enough security.

For not being Bayesian, they have no authority that warrants such condescension.

It's unclear what you mean by both "Bayesian" and by "authority" in this sentence. If a person is "Bayesian", does it give "authority" for condescension?

There clearly is some truth to the claim that being around longer sometimes allows to arrive at more accurate beliefs, including more accurate intuitive assessment of the situation, if you are not down a crazy road in the particular domain. It's not a very strong evidence, and it can't defeat many forms of more direct evidence pointing in the contrary direction, but sometimes it's an OK heuristic, especially if you are not aware of other evidence ("ask the elder").

Transcript:

--

Dawkins: We could devise a little experiment where we take your forecasts and then give some of them straight, give some of them randomized, sometimes give Virgo the Pisces forecast et cetera. And then ask people how accurate they were.

Astrologer: Yes, that would be a perverse thing to do, wouldn't it.

Dawkins: It would be - yes, but I mean wouldn't that be a good test?

Astrologer: A test of what?

Dawkins: Well, how accurate you are.

Astrologer: I think that your intention there is mischief, and I'd think what you'd then get back is mischief.

Dawkins: Well my intention would not be mischief, my intention would be experimental test. A scientific test. But even if it was mischief, how could that possibly influence it?

Astrologer: (Pause.) I think it does influence it. I think whenever you do things with astrology, intentions are strong.

Dawkins: I'd have thought you'd be eager.

Astrologer: (Laughs.)

Dawkins: The fact that you're not makes me think you don't really in your heart of hearts believe it. I don't think you really are prepared to put your reputation on the line.

Astrologer: I just don't believe in the experiment, Richard, it's that simple.

Dawkins: Well you're in a kind of no-lose situation then, aren't you.

Astrologer: I hope so.

--

A fine example of:

To correctly anticipate, in advance, which experimental results shall need to be excused, the dragon-claimant must (a) possess an accurate anticipation-controlling model somewhere in his mind, and (b) act cognitively to protect either (b1) his free-floating propositional belief in the dragon or (b2) his self-image of believing in the dragon.

That video has been taken down, but you can skip to around 5 minutes into this video to watch the astrology bit.

Dawkins: "Well... you're sort of in a no-lose situation, then."

Astrologer: "I certainly hope so."

Investing in a company is different than playing slot machines. Casinos are entertainment providers: they put on shows, sell food and drink, and provide gaming. They have numerous expenses as well. Investing in a casino is not guaranteed to make money in the same way the house is in roulette, for instance. Casinos do go bankrupt and their stock prices do go down.

In addition, when you buy a share of stock on the open market, you buy it from another investor, not the company, so you're not providing any new capital to the company.

I don't believe there is anything ethically wrong with either gambling or funding casinos. If people want to gamble, that's their choice.

I curious what made you think about this problem. I'm sure you're aware of the efficient market hypothesis... do you have some private information that suggests casino stocks are undervalued?

By coincidence I was in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago and did some research before I left for the trip. It turns out that many casinos (both physical and online) offer gambles with positive expected value for the player, as a way to attract customers (most of whom are too irrational to take proper advantage of the offers, I suppose). There are entire books and websites devoted to this. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comps_%28casino%29 and http://www.casinobonuswhores.com/

I suggested something along these lines on the feature request thread. I'd like to be able to find old message exchanges. Finding messages I sent is easy, but received messages are in the same place as comment replies and aren't searchable.

Amen. Amen-issimo.

The solution, of course, is for the Bayesian view to become widespread enough that it doesn't end up identified particularly with Jaynes. The parts of Jaynes that are correct -- the important parts -- should be said by many other people in many other places, so that Jaynes can eventually be regarded as a brilliant eccentric who just by historical accident happened to be among the first to say these things.

There's no reason that David Hilbert shouldn't have been a Bayesian. None.

I second the recommendations of 1984 and Player of Games (the whole Culture series is good, but that one especially held my interest).

Recommendations I didn't see when skimming the thread:

• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams: A truly enjoyable classic sci-fi series, spanning the length of the galaxy and the course of human history.
• Timescape by Gregory Benford: Very realistic and well-written story about sending information back in time. The author is an astrophysicist, and knows his stuff.
• The Andromeda Strain, Sphere, Timeline, Prey, and Next by Michael Crichton: These are his best sci-fi works, aimed at realism and dealing with the consequences of new technology or discovery.
• Replay by Ken Grimwood: A man is given the chance to relive his life. A stirring tale with several twists.
• The Commonwealth Saga and The Void Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton: Superb space opera, in which humanity has colonized the stars via traversable wormholes, and gained immortality via rejuvenation technology. The trilogy takes place a thousand years after the saga, but with several of the same characters.
• The Talents series and the Tower and Hive series by Anne McCaffrey: These novels deal with the emergence and organization of humans with "psychic" abilities (telekinesis, telepathy, teleportation, and so forth). The first series takes place roughly in the present day, the second far in the future on multiple planets.
• Priscilla Hutchins series and Alex Benedict series by Jack McDevitt: Two series, unrelated, both examining how humans might explore the galaxy and what they might find (many relics of ancient civilizations, and a few alien races still living). The former takes place in the relatively near future, while the latter takes place millennia in the future.
• Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons: An epic space opera dealing heavily with singularity-related concepts such as AI and human bio-modification, as well as time travel and religious conflict.
• Otherland series by Tad Williams: In the near future, full virtual reality has been developed. The story moves through a plethora of virtual environments, many drawn from classic literature.

Edit: I have just now realized, after writing all of this out, that this is the open thread for January 2010 rather than January 2011. Oh well.

I wouldn't recommend Scalzi. Much of Scalzi is miltiary scifi with little realism and isn't a great introduction for scifi. I'd recommend Charlie Stross. "The Atrocity Archives", "Singularity Sky" and "Halting State" are all excellent. The third is very weird in that it is written in the second person, but is lots of fun. Other good authors to start with are Pournelle and Niven (Ringworld, The Mote in God's Eye, and King David's Spaceship are all excellent).

It depends on what you're looking for. Books you might enjoy? If so, we need to know more about your tastes. Books we've liked? Books which have influenced us? An overview of the field?

In any case, some I've liked-- Heinlein's Rocketship Galileo which is quite a nice intro to rationality and also has Nazis in abandoned alien tunnels on the Moon, and Egan's Diaspora which is an impressive depiction of people living as computer programs.

Oh, and Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep which is an effort to sneak up on writing about the Singularity (Vinge invented the idea of the Singularity), and Kirsteen's The Steerswoman (first of a series), which has the idea of a guild of people whose job it is to answer questions-- and if you don't answer one of their questions, you don't get to ask them anything ever again.

many good recommendations so far but unbelievably nobody has yet mentioned Iain M. Banks' series of 'Culture' novels based on a humanoid society (the 'Culture') run by incredibly powerful AI's known as 'Minds'.

highly engaging books which deal with much of what a possible highly technologically advanced post singularity society might be like in terms of morality, politics, philosophy etc. they are far fetched and a lot of fun. here's the list to date:

• Consider Phlebas (1987)
• The Player of Games (1988)
• Use of Weapons (1990)
• Excession (1996)
• Inversions (1998)
• Look to Windward (2000)
• Matter (2008)

they are not consecutive so reading order isn't that important though it is nice to follow their evolution from the perspective of the writing.

Since noone's mentioned it yet, Rendevous with Rama. You really don't want to touch the sequels, though.

Oh, definitely 1984 if you've never read it. Scary how much predictive power it's had.

This might not be the best place to ask because so many people here prefer science fiction to regular fiction. I've noticed that people who prefer science fiction have a very different idea of what makes good science fiction than people who have no preference or who prefer regular fiction.

Most of what I see in the other comments is on the "prefers science fiction" side, except for things by LeGuin and maybe Dune.

Of course, you might turn out to prefer science fiction and just not have realized it. Then all would be well.

It's actually very important to ask people for recommendations for books, and especially for sci-fi, since it seems like a large majority of the work out there is well, garbage. Not to be too harsh, as IMO, the same thing could be said for a lot of artistic genres (anime, modern action film, etc, etc.).

For sci-fi, there are some really top notch work out there. But be warned, that in general the rest of the series isn't as good as the first book. Some classics, all favorites of mine are:

• Dune (Frank Herbert)
• Starship Troopers (Robert Heinlein)
• Ringworld (first book) (Larry Niven)
• Neuromancer (William Gibson) (Warning: last half of the book becomes s.l.o.w. though)
• Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge)

• Solaris by Stanislaw Lem is probably one of my all time favourites.
• Anathem by Neal Stephenson is very good.

I haven't seen much of the Star Wars or Star Trek stuff either, and don't really consider them science fiction as much as space action movies. That's not really what we're talking about.

I would strongly advise you to start with short stories, specifically Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Sheckley, and Philip K. Dick. All those authors are considered giants in the field and have anthologies of collected short stories. Science fiction short stories tend to be easier to read because you don't get bogged down in detail, and you can get right to the point of exploring the interesting and speculative worlds.

I don't know whether to be surprised that no one has recommended the Ender's Game series or not. They're not terribly realistic in the tech (especially toward the end of the series), and don't address the idea of a technological singularity, but they're a good read anyway.

Oh - I'm not sure if this is what you were thinking of by sci-fi or not, and it gets a bit new-agey, but Spider Robinson's "Telempath" is a personal favorite. It's set in a near-future (at the time of writing) earth after a virus was released that magnified everyone's sense of smell to the point where cities, and most modern methods of producing things, became intolerable. (Does anyone else have post-apocalyptic themed favorites? I have a fondness for the genre, sci-fi or not.)

Films:

Blade Runner

Gattaca

2001: A Space Odyssey

Vinge's Marooned in Real Time, A Fire Upon the Deep. The former introduced the idea of the Singularity, the latter gets a lot of fun playing near the edge of it.

Olaf Stapledon: Last and First Men, Star Maker.

Poul Anderson: Brain Wave. What happens if there's a drastic, sudden intelligence increase?

After you've read some science fiction, if you let us know what you've liked, I bet you'll get some more fine-tuned recommendations.

Greg Egan: Permutation City, Diaspora, Incandescence.
Vernor Vinge: True Names, Rainbows End.
Charlie Stross: Accelerando.
Scott Bakker: Prince of Nothing series.

My first recommendation here is always Iain M Banks, Player of Games.

If you'd like some TV recommendations as well, here are some things that you can find on Hulu:

Firefly. It's not all available at the same time, but they rotate the episodes once a week; in a while you'll be able to start at the beginning. If you haven't already seen the movie, put it off until you've watched the whole series.

Babylon 5. First two seasons are all there. It takes a few episodes to hit its stride.

If you're willing to search a little farther afield, Farscape is good, and of the Star Treks, DS9 is my favorite (many people prefer TNG, though, and this seems for some reason to be correlated with gender).

I am a big fan of Isaac Asimov. Start with his best short story, which I submit as the best sci-fi short story of all time. http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

Isaac Asimov's Foundation series:

• Foundation
• Foundation and Empire
• Second Foundation
• Foundation's Edge
• Foundation and Earth

There are prequels too, but I don't like 'em.

Robert Heinlein wrote some really good stuff (before becoming increasingly erratic in his later years). Very entertaining and fun. Here are some that I would recommend for starting out with:

Tunnel in the Sky. The opposite of Lord of the Flies. Some people are stuck on a wild planet by accident, and instead of having civilization collapse, they start out disorganized and form a civilization because it's a good idea. After reading this, I no longer have any patience for people who claim that our natural state is barbarism.

Citizen of the Galaxy. I can't really summarize this one, but it's got some good characters in it.

Between Planets. Our protagonist finds himself in the middle of a revolution all of a sudden. This was written before we knew that Venus was not habitable.

I was raised on this stuff. Also, I'd like to recommend Startide Rising, by David Brin, and its sequel The Uplift War. They're technically part of a trilogy, but reading the first book (Sundiver) is completely unnecessary. It's not really light reading, but it's entertaining and interesting.

I am a huge fan of Philip K. Dick. I don't usually read much fiction or even science fiction, but PKD has always fascinated me. Stanislav Lem is also great.

LeGuin- The Dispossessed

William Gibson- Neuromancer

George Orwell- 1984

Walter Miller - A Canticle for Leibowitz

Philip K. Dick- The Man in the High Castle

That actually might be my top five books of all time.

Bearing in mind that you're asking this on LessWrong, these come to mind:

Greg Egan. Everything he's written, but start with his short story collections, "Axiomatic" and "Luminous". Uploading, strong materialism, quantum mechanics, immortality through technology, and the implications of these for the concept of personal identity. Some of his short stories are online.

Charles Stross. Most of his writing is set in a near-future, near-Singularity world.

On related themes are "The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect", and John C. Wright's Golden Age trilogy.

There are many more SF novels I think everyone should read, but that would be digressing into my personal tastes.

Some people here have recommended M. Scott Bakker's trilogy that begins with "The Darkness That Comes Before", as presenting a picture of a superhuman rationalist, although having ploughed through the first book I'm not all that moved to follow up with the rest. I found the world-building rather derivative, and the rationalist doesn't play an active role. Can anyone sell me on reading volume 2?

I'd say identify what sort of future scenarios you want to explore and ask us to identify exemplars. Or is the goal is just to get a common vocabulary to discuss things?

Reading Sci-Fi while potentially valuable should be done with a purpose in mind. Unless you need another potential source of procrastination.

I recommend anything by Charles Stross, Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga (link gives titles and chronology), and anthing by Ursula LeGuin, but especially City of Illusions and The Left Hand of Darkness.

I am having a discussion on a forum where a theist keeps stating that there must be objective truth, that there must be objective morality, and that there is objective knowledge that cannot be discovered by Science (I tried to point out that if it were Objective, then any system should be capable of producing that knowledge or truth).

I had completely forgot to ask him if this objective truth/knowledge/morality could be discovered if we took a group of people, raised in complete isolation, and then gave them the tools to explore their world. If such things were truly objective, then it would be trivial for these people to arrive at the discovery of these objective facts.

I shall have to remember this, as well as the fact that such objective knowledge/ethics may indeed exist, yet, why is it that our ethical systems across the globe seem to have a few things in common, but disagree on a great many more?

1) Why would a "perfectly logical being" compute (do) X and not Y? Do all "perfectly logical beings" do the same thing? (Dan's comment: a system that computes your answer determines that answer, given a question. If you presuppose an unique answer, you need to sufficiently restrict the question (and the system). A universal computer will execute any program (question) to produce its output (answer).) All "beings" won't do exactly the same thing, answer any question in exactly the same way. See also: No Universally Compelling Arguments.

2) Why would you be interested in what the "perfectly logical being" does? No matter what argument you are given, it is you that decides whether to accept it. See also: Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom, Paperclip maximizer, and more generally Metaethics sequence.

2.5) What humans want (and you in particular), is a very detailed notion, one that won't automatically appear from a question that doesn't already include all that detail. And every bit of that detail is incredibly important to get right, even though its form isn't fixed in human image.

I don't know what you mean by objective ethics. I believe there are ethical facts but they're a lot more like facts about the rules of baseball than facts about the laws of physics

a system of ethics would be objective if they could be universally calculated by any none biased, perfectly logical being.

"Calculated" based on what? What is the question that this would be the answer to?

Also, how can you define "bias" here?

As you can guess from my questions, I don't even see what an objective system of ethics could possibly mean :-)

I went to the eSafe site and while looking up what the "illegal drugs" classification meant, submitted a request for them to change their status for LessWrong.com. A pop-up window told me they'd look into it.

You can check (and then apply to modify) the status of LessWrong here.

That may have been my fault. I mentioned that I used to have drug problems and mentioned specific drugs in one thread, so that may have set off the filters. I apologize if this is the case. The discussion about this went on for a day or two (involving maybe six comments).

I do hope that is not the problem, but I will avoid such topics in the future to avoid any such issues.

Don't worry, the mathematicians have already covered this.