Aleksander

Can't you ask her to tutor you?

3) Digital blueprints of preserved brains are made available for anyone to download. Large numbers of simulations are run by kids learning how to use the simulation APIs, folks testing poker bots, web search companies making me read every page on the Internet to generate a ranking signal, etc. etc.

And even if you do, then the only viewpoint you will have really falsified is one which postulates that (a) the state vector collapse is caused by consciousness, and (b) concludes that therefore any consciousness has to do the trick, even one simulated on a quantum computer. I have met exactly zero physicists who'd treat (a) seriously, but even if you believe in (a), (b) still doesn't need to follow (someone could believe that only real human brain makes the magic happen).

(I assume you were referring to experiment 3. from Deutsch's "Three experimental implications of the Everett interpretation in Quantum Concepts in Space and Time.")

I know quite a lot of people who didn't, all I'm saying if you do, chances are you might like Fargo as well.

(If on the other hand you preferred The Wire, then you should try True Detective.)

If you enjoyed Breaking Bad, try Fargo. The two are best TV shows I watched in years and in my mind have a certain common flavor.

Military power of EU was not enough to stop or seriously inconvenience Milosevic.

Hey it's a good question. I'd pick Happiness.

When I was much younger I might have said Truth. I was a student of physics once and loved to repeat the quote that the end of man is knowledge. But since then I have been happy, and I have been unhappy, and the difference between the two is just too large.

Wow thanks, I believed this one until five minutes ago.

I think both questions are informative, they just test a different thing.

To give an analogy from copmputer science, the question about hydrogen atom is similar in spirit to, "Would you be able to implement quicksort?", whereas the one about Bell theorem is more like, "Would you be able to reconstruct the halting problem proof?" The latter seems like a much higher bar. I'm curious, do you think there exist many people who can actually reconstruct the proof of Bell's theorem, but who can't solve the Schrodinger equation for the hydrogen a... (read more)

I liked this short story on that topic, which I believe was written by Yvain: http://raikoth.net/Stuff/story1.html

Freud's psychoanalysis has been often put in the same category of "Copernican" things as heliocentrism and evolution.

The article makes it even more worse by conflating joy and happiness.

Many articles that talk about happiness do that, including the often cited paper about how supposedly the connection between income and happiness breaks down at a certain level.

I don't think that means you are smarter than that Harvard professor. He is a very successful person and has reached heights coveted by many very smart people. It just means that the game he is playing is not one where you get ahead by saying things that make sense.

For example, if you listen to a successful politician and spot a false statement he utters, that does not mean that you are smarter than that politician.

This is why we can't have social science. Not because the subject is not amenable to the scientific method -- it obviously is. People are conducting controlled experiments and other people are attempting to replicate the results. So far, so good.

So, you say people are trying the scientific approach. My guess is, the nature of the problem is such that nothing much came out of these attempts. No great insights were gained, no theories were discovered. Real scientists had nothing to show for their efforts, and this is why the these fields are now not owned by... (read more)

Motl with his immature style and his political extremism is very easy to mock, but I don't think he's intentionally contrarian. When he writes about physics at least his opinions agree with the mainstream view as far as I can tell. Three examples

• Some time around 2005 Motl frequently exchanged hostilities with another blogger, Peter Woit of Not Even Wrong (that's actually how I first heard of LM: I was following NEW which frequently linked to Molt's blog to mock him). The disagreement was that Woit was a critic of the String Theory whereas Motl was a defe

I don't disagree with any of that. Who knows, could be even one and the same experience which people raised in one culture interpret as God's presence, and in another as enlightenment.

So while the original quotation talked about not thinking at all, your revised version urges that we think as little as possible. How does it qualify as a "rationality quote"?

While we are quoting Perelandra

"How far does it go? Would you still obey the Life-Force if you found it prompting you to murder me?"
"Yes."
"Or to sell England to the Germans?"
"Yes."
"Or to print lies as serious research in a scientific periodical?"
"Yes."
"God help you!" said Ransom.

There are also people who claim that they feel God's presence in their heart, you know.