I've left most of the probability questions blank, because I don't think it is meaningfully possible to assign numbers to events I have little or no quantitative information about. For instance, I'll try P(Aliens) when we've looked at several thousand planets closely enough to be reasonably sure of answers about them.

I left them blank myself because I haven't developed the skill to do it, but the obvious other interpretation ... are you saying it's in-principle impossible to operate rationally under uncertainty?

No, I just don't think I can assign probability numbers to a guess. If forced to make a real-life decision based on such a question then I'll guess.

In addition, I don't think some of the questions can have meaningful answers. For example, the "Many Worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics, if true, would have no testable (falsifiable) effect on the observable universe, and therefore I consider the question to be objectively meaningless. The same goes for P(Simulation), and probably P(God).

Do you usually consider statements you don't anticipate being able to verify meaningless?

No, and I discussed that in another reply.

The obvious next question would be to ask if you're OK with your family being tortured uner the various circumstances this would suggest you would be.

I've lost the context to understand this question.

The singularity is vague, too. (And as I usually hear it described, I would see it as a catastrophe if it happened. The SF story "With Folded Hands" explains why.)

I believe I've read that story. Azimov-style robots prevent humans from interacting with the environment because they might be harmed and that would violate the First Law, right?

Yes. Eventually most human activity is banned. Any research or exploration that might make it possible for a human to get out from under the bots' rule is especially banned.

Could you go into more detail regarding how as you "usually hear it described" it would be a "catastrophe if it happened"? I can imagine a few possibilities but I'd like to be clearer on the thoughts behind this before commenting.

The usual version of this I hear is from people who've read Minsky and/or Moravec, and feel we should treat any entity that can pass some reasonable Turing test as legally and morally human. I disagree because I believe a self-aware entity can be simulated -- maybe not perfectly, but to an arbitrarily high difficulty of disproving it -- by a program that is not self-aware. And if such a standard were enacted, interest groups would use it to manufacture a large supply of these fakes and have them vote and/or fight for their side of political questions.

The stagnation is because of "progressive" politics, especially both the welfare state and overregulation/nanny-statism, which destroy most people's opportunities to innovate and profit by it.

Hmm. On the one hand, political stupidity does seem like a very serious problem that needs fixing and imposes massive opportunity costs on humanity. On the other hand, this sounds like a tribal battle-cry rather than a rational, non-mindkilled discussion.

It is. At some point I have trouble justifying the one without invoking the other. Some things are just so obvious to me, and so senselessly not-believed by many, that I see no peaceful way out other than dismissing those people. How do you argue with someone who isn't open to reason? You need the sales skill of a demagogue, which I haven't got.

Certainly the environmental movement, including its best known "scientists", have discredited themselves this way.

I don't know, I find most people don't identify such a pattern and thus avoid a BWCW effect;

What's that?

while most people above a certain standard of rationality are able to take advantage of evidence, public-spirited debunkers and patterns to screen out most of the noise. Your milage may vary, of course; I tend not to may much attention to environmental issues except when they impinge on something I'm already interested in, so perhaps this is harder at a higher volume of traffic.

One of the ways in which the demagogues have taken control of politics is to multiply political entities and the various debates, hearings, and elections they hold until no non-demagogue can hope to influence more than a vanishingly small fraction of them. This is another very common, nasty tactic that ought to have a name, although "Think globally, act locally" seems to be the slogan driving it.