um... why isn't it? There's a logically possible chance of revival someday, yeah. But with no way to estimate how likely it is, you're blowing money on mere possibility.

We don't normally make bets that depend on the future development of currently unknown technologies. We aren't all investing in cold fusion just because it would be really awesome if it panned out.

Sorry, I know this is a cryonics-friendly site, but somebody's got to say it.

Interesting tidbit from the article:

One avenue may involve self-esteem. Nyhan worked on one study in which he showed that people who were given a self-affirmation exercise were more likely to consider new information than people who had not. In other words, if you feel good about yourself, you’ll listen — and if you feel insecure or threatened, you won’t.

I have long been thinking that the openly aggressive approach some display in promoting atheism / political ideas / whatever seems counterproductive, and more likely to make the other people not listen than it is to make them listen. These results seem to support that, though there have also been contradictory reports from people saying that the very aggressiveness was what made them actually think.

"Killing is wrong, no matter what," is a very powerful and standard meme for heroes.

It is counter intuitive for someone who "loves people" to kill someone. It requires a less-biased assessment of expected utility than is typically performed. That's why I enjoyed the original quote; in the context of the movie, it made sense in the way of typical human failings for him to say no, and his body language and tone highly suggested he would do so right until the end.

David: But you're a doctor--you help people!

Dr. Mordin Solus: Lots of ways to help people. Sometimes heal patients; sometimes execute dangerous people. Either way helps.

-- Mass Effect 2

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.

-- Often attributed to Pablo Picasso, but I can't find a reliable source.

I'm quite curious to hear what LW thinks of this one.

Okay, I'll choose my own way.

What else does Auditore say I should do?

Information theory challenge: A few posters have mentioned here that the average entropy of a character in English is about one bit. This carries an interesting implication: you should be able to create an interface using only two of the keyboards keys, such that composing an English message requires just as many keystrokes, on average, as it takes on a regular keyboard.

To do so, you'd have to exploit all the regularities of English to offer suggestions that save the user from having to specify individual letters. Most of the entropy is in the intial charaters of a word or message, so you would probably spend more strokes on specifying those, but then make it up with some "autocomplete" feature for large portions of the message.

If that's too hard, it should be a lot easier to do a 3-input method, which only requires your message set to have an entropy of less than ~1.5 bits per character.

Just thought I'd point that out, as it might be something worth thinking about.

We don't need anyone to tell us what to do. Not Savonarola, not the Medici. We are free to follow our own path. There are those who will take that freedom from us, and too many of you gladly give it. But it is our ability to choose- whatever you think is true- that makes us human...There is no book or teacher to give you the answers, to show you the way. Choose your own way! Do not follow me, or anyone else.

(Assassin's Creed II, Ezio Auditore's speech)

Rationalists should win

I hate to see this clever statement to be taken out of context and being reinterpreted as a moralizing slogan.

If you trace it back, this was originally a desideratum on rational thinking, not some general moral imperative.

It plainly says that if your supposedly "rational" strategy leads to a demonstrably inferior solution or gets beaten by some stupider looking agent, then the strategy must be reevaluated as you have no right to call it rational anymore.

Chimps copy high status individuals in their groups