I think you're making too many separate points (how to resurrect past people using all the information you can, simulation argument, some religious undertone) and the text is pretty long, many will not read it to the end. Also even if someone agrees with some part of it, it's likely they'll disagree with another (which often results in downvoting the whole post in my experience). I think you'd be better off rewriting this as several different posts.

First off, I'd like to say, I have met Christians who similarly were very open to rationality and applying it to the premises of their religion, especially the ethics. In practice, one of these was the only person who directly recognized me as an immortalist a few sentences into our first discussion, where no one else around me even knew what that is. I find that admirable, and fascinating.

I also think it likely that human beings as they are now need some sort of comfort, reassurance, that their universe is not that universe of cold mathematics.

So I'm not sure I should point this out, but, in the end, you're still trying to find a God of the gaps. In the end, you're still basing your view of the universe on a very special premise, that is, God.

Eventually, this can only be resolved in a few ways : either God exists, or He doesn't, or using its existence as a premise doesn't make a difference, and a theist would eventually come to the same understanding of the universe as a down-to-earth, reductionist atheistic rationalist.

But I also began to feel depressed, and then sort of hollow inside. I had no attachment to young-earth creationism, but I suppose I was trying to keep a sort of "God of the gaps" with regard to the beginning and development of intelligent life on Earth. Having seen why there were considerably fewer gaps than I had thought, I couldn't un-see it. A little part of me had been booted out of Eden.

I don't think God exists, and I'm still puzzled by how anyone could come to believe it does. Here I mean believe in that sense where you don't just "like to pretend something is real for the comfort it brings", which I do too, but rather in the sense where you think "stop kidding yourself now, you need a real, practical, useable answer now".

Both are different, the first is fine and necessary for many people, but if you use God in the latter I'm worried you're going to be up for a few disappointing experiences for the next few decades.

I have not voted on it, but if I were downvoting, my reasoning would run that this is a single link which many of us heard about at the time, and Gerard is not providing any context, real commentary, or comprehensiveness, and to some extent, he's focusing on uninteresting things: iodine is way cheaper than parasite prevention, as effective, and comes with nifty bonuses like 'increases the IQ of females more than males'. As well, the appeal to sanity waterline is a little misplaced without any reference to any of the papers I've been collating in http://lesswrong.com/lw/7e1/rationality_quotes_september_2011/4r01

Discussion has low standards, of course, but 1 link and 3 sentences is a bit low.

Suppose that SI now activates its AGI, unleashing it to reshape the world as it sees fit. What will be the outcome? I believe that the probability of an unfavorable outcome - by which I mean an outcome essentially equivalent to what a UFAI would bring about - exceeds 90% in such a scenario. I believe the goal of designing a "Friendly" utility function is likely to be beyond the abilities even of the best team of humans willing to design such a function. I do not have a tight argument for why I believe this.

My immediate reaction to this was "as opposed to doing what?" In this segment it seems like it is argued that SI's work, raising awareness that not all paths to AI are safe, and that we should strive to find safer paths towards AI, is actually making it more likely that an undesirable AI / Singularity will be spawned in the future. Can someone explain me how not discussing such issues and not working on them would be safer?

Just having that bottom line unresolved in Holden's post makes me reluctant to accept the rest of the argument.

Eliezer also wrote multiple times that he's an "infinite set atheist". I'm not sure that's actually compatible with mathematical Platonism. (The way I understand it, at least.)

The mind I've probably gained the most by exploring is Eliezer's, both because so much of his thinking is available online, and because out of many useful habits and qualities I didn't have, he seemed to have those qualities to the greatest extent. I'm not referring to the explicit points he's made in his writing (though I've gained by those as well), but the overall way he thinks and feels about the world.

Well, as Eliezer said

I have striven for a long time now to convey, pass on, share a piece of the strange thing I touched, which seems to me so precious. And I'm not sure that I ever said the central rhythm into words. Maybe you can find it by listening to the notes. I can say these words but not the rule that generates them, or the rule behind the rule; one can only hope that by using the ideas, perhaps, similar machinery might be born inside you.

I don't think it was clear from the context that you were arguing against the practice of community moderation in general. I also don't think you supported your case anywhere near well enough to justify your verbal vehemence. Was this a test/demonstration of Wei Dai's point about intolerance of overconfident newcomers with different ideas?

People optimizing for "more like this" eventually downgrades content into lolcats and porn.

More so than "vote up"? You've made a statement here that looks like it should be supported by evidence. What sites do you know of this happening from going from "vote up" to "more of this"?

Don't you technically need at least two bits ? There are three states: "downvoted", "upvoted", and "not voted at all".

Change the mouseovers on the thumbs-up/thumbs-down icons from "Vote up"/"Vote down" to "More like this"/"Less like this". I've suggested this before and it got upvotes, I suggest now it might be time to implement it.