I don't follow. How can consumption increase economic growth when it comes at the cost of investment? Investment is what creates economic output.

To provide a concrete example, this seems to suggest that a person who favours the Republicans over the Democrats and expects the Republicans to do well in the midterms should vote for a Libertarian, thereby making the Republicans more dependent on the Tea Party. This is counterintuitive, to say the least.

Is it? Again, I haven't done the math, but look at the behavior of minor parties in parliamentary systems. They typically demand a price for their support. If the Republican will get your vote regardless why should they care about you?

I am assuming that all the old sad hermits are of this world are being systematically chopped for spare parts granted to deserving and happy young people, while good meaning utilitarians hide this sad truth from us, so that I don't become upset about those atrocities that are currently being committed in my name?

We are not even close to utility monster, and personally I know very few people who I would consider actual utilitarians.

Another consideration is the effects of your decision criteria on the lesser evil itself. All else being equal, and assuming your politics aren't so unbelievably unimaginative that you see yourself somewhere between the two mainstream alternatives, you should prefer the lesser evil to be more beholden to its base. The logic of this should be most evident in parliamentary systems, where third party voters can explicitly coordinate and sometimes back and sometimes withdraw support from their nearest mainstream parties, depending on policy concessions.

It is true, I wasn't specific enough, but I wanted to emphasize the opinion part, and the suffering part was meant to emphasize his life condition.

He was, presumably - killed without his consent, and therefore the whole affair seems so morally icky from a non-utilitarian perspective.

If your utility function does not penalize for making bad things as long as net result is correct, you are likely to end up in a world full of utility monsters.

Well, why do you think socialism is so horribly wrong? During the 20th century socialists more or less won and got what they wanted. Things like social security, govermental control over business and redistribution of wealth in general are all socialist. This all may be bad from some point of view, but it is in no way mainstream opinion.

Then, those guys whom you mention in your article called themselves communists and marxists. At most, they considered socialism as some intermediate stage for building communism. And communism went bad because it was founded on wrong assumptions about how both economy and human psychology work. So, which MIRI/Lesswrong assumptions can be wrong and cause a lot of harm? Well, here are some examples.

1) Building FAI is possible, and there is a reliable way to tell if it is truly FAI before launching it. Result if wrong: paperclips.

2) Building FAI is much more difficult than AI. Launching a random AI is civilization-level suicide. Result if this idea becomes widespread: we don't launch any AI before civilization runs out of resources or collapses for some other reason.

3) Consciousness is sort of optional feature, intelligence can work just well without it. We can reliably say if given intelligence is a person. In other words, real world works the same way as in Peter Watts "Blindsight". Results if wrong: many, among them classic sci-fi AI rebellion.

4) Subscribing for cryonics is generally a good idea. Result if widespread: these costs significantly contribute to worldwide economic collapse.

A query about threads:

I posted a query in discussion because I didn't know this thread exists. I got my answer and was told that I should have used the Open Thread, so I deleted the main post, which the FAQ seems to be saying will remove it from the list of viewable posts. Is this sufficient?

I also didn't see my post appear under discussion/new before I deleted it. Where did it appear so that other people could look at it?

If she is paid for each correct guess, for example, she'll say that she thinks the coin came up tails (this way she gets $2 half the time instead of $1 half the time for heads). If she’s paid only on Monday, she’s indifferent between the options, as she should be.

This clicked so hard it almost hurt. Indeed Bayesians should be willing to bet on their beliefs; so the rational belief depends on how specifically the bet is resolved. In other words, what specifically happens to the Sleeping Beauty based on her beliefs? (And if the beliefs have absolutely no consequence, what's the point of getting them right?)

Downvoted because I think that queries like this one should be posted to the Open Thread, instead of cluttering Discussion.

Did you intend to schedule it to begin at two in the morning?