Your sockpuppet: "There is a shortage of good philosophers." Me: "Here is a good philosophy book." You: "That's not philosophy." Also you: "How is Ayn Rand so right about everything." Also you: "I don't like mainstream stuff." Also you: "Have you heard that I exchanged some correspondence with DAVID DEUTSCH!?" Also you: "What if you are, hypothetically, wrong? What if you are, hypothetically, wrong? What if you are, hypothetically, wrong?" x1000 ---------------------------------------- Part of rationality is properly dealing with people-as-they-are. What your approach to spreading your good word among people-as-they-are led to is them laughing at you. It is possible that they are laughing at you because they are some combination of stupid and insane. But then it's on you to first issue a patch into their brain that will be accepted, such that they can parse your proselytizing, before proceeding to proselytize. This is what Yudkowsky sort of tried to do. ---------------------------------------- How you read to me is a smart young adult who has the same problem Yudkowsky has (although Yudkowsky is not so young anymore) -- someone who has been the smartest person in the room for too long in their intellectual development, and lacks the sense of scale and context to see where he stands in the larger intellectual community.