On philosophy, I think it's important to realize that most university philosophy classes don't assign textbooks in the traditional sense. They assign anthologies. So rather than read Russell's History of Western Philosophy or The Great Conversation (both of which I've read), I'd recommend something like The Norton Introduction to Philosophy.

As was first proposed on /r/rational (and EY has confirmed that he got the idea from that proposal)

Confirmation the prophecy isn't about Neville:

Neville Longbottom... who took this test in the Longbottom home... received a grade of Outstanding.

Harry raised the parchment with its EE+, still silent.

The Defense Professor smiled, and it went all the way to those tired eyes.

"It is the same grade... that I received in my own first year."

AND THE DARK LORD WILL MARK HIM AS HIS EQUAL

"Social democrat" and "liberal" have been given almost identical descriptions. Don't know if that's deliberate.

"Social democrat" and "liberal" have been given almost identical descriptions. Don't know if that's deliberate.

Is Anti-Agathics a strict superset of Cryonics? That is to say, would someone becoming cryonically frozen and then restored, and then living for 1000 years from that date, count as a success for the anti-agathics question?

Done, except for the digit ratio, because I do not have access to a photocopier or scanner.

Liberal here, I think my major heresy is being pro-free trade.

Also, I'm not sure if there's actually a standard liberal view of zoning policy, but it often feels like the standard view is that we need to keep restrictive zoning laws in place to keep out those evil gentrifiers, in which case my support for loser zoning regulations is another major heresy.

You could argue I should call myself a libertarian, because I agree the main thrust of Milton Friedman's book Capitalism and Freedom. However, I suspect a politician running on Friedman's platform today would be branded a socialist if a Democrat, and a RINO if a Republican.

(Friedman, among other things, supported a version of guaranteed basic income. To which today's GOP mainstream would probably say, "but if we do that, it will just make poor people even lazier!")

Political labels are weird.

You'd expect Silicon Valley working practices to be less optimal than those in mature industries, because, well, the industries aren't mature. The companies are often run by people with minimal management experience, and the companies themselves are too short-lived to develop the kind of institutional memory that would be able to determine whether such policies were good or bad. Heck, most of SV still follows interview practices that have been actively shown to be useless, to the extent that they've been abandoned by the company that originated them (Microsoft). Success is too random for these things to be noticeable; the truth is that in SV, being 50% less efficient probably has negligible effects on your odds of success, because the success or failure of a given company is massively overdetermined (in one direction or the other) by other factors.

The only people in a position to figure this kind of thing out, and then act on that knowledge, are the venture capitalists - and they're a long way removed from the action (and anyone smart has already left the business since it's not a good way of making money). Eventually I'd expect VCs to start insisting that companies adopt 40-hour policies, but it's going to take a long time for the signal to emerge from the noise.

I certainly believe Artificial Intelligence can and will perform many mundane jobs that are nothing more than mindless repetition and even in some instances create art, that said what about world leaders or position that require making decisions that affect segments of the population in unfair ways, such as storage of nuclear waste, transportation systems, etc?

To me, the answer is obvious, only a fool would trust an A.I. to make such high-level decisions. Without empathy, the A.I. could never provide a believable decision that any sane person should trust, no matter how many variables are used for its cost-benefit analysis.