How well do the "Twelve Virtues" really work as an introduction? After having devoured the entire Yudkowskian canon, I can reread the "Virtues," and it makes sense, and it's beautiful, and I love it, but I've experienced poor results on the two occasions that I can remember pointing others to the document. (One person, already a scientific-rationalist type, was turned off by the poetry; for example, he objected to "curiosity seeks to annihilate itself," saying that curiosity shouldn't be extinguished. I said he was misinterpreting the line, which clearly refers to the answering of a specific question rather than the end of curiosity-in-general; he said it was just poorly-written. The other person, a New-Age spiritual type, just horribly misinterpreted the entire document.)