might start chanting or something any moment

I don't necessarily see any reason we shouldn't start the day off with some pleasant chanting...

The third horn of the anthropic trilemma is to deny that there is any meaningful sense whatsoever in which you can anticipate being yourself in five seconds, rather than Britney Spears; to deny that selfishness is coherently possible; to assert that you can hurl yourself off a cliff without fear, because whoever hits the ground will be another person not particularly connected to you by any such ridiculous thing as a "thread of subjective experience".

http://lesswrong.com/lw/19d/the_anthropic_trilemma/

A question of rationality. Eliezer, I have talked to a few Less Wrongers about what horn they take on the anthropic trilemma; sometimes letting them know beforehand what my position was, sometimes giving no hint as to my predispositions. To a greater or lesser degree, the following people have all endorsed taking the third horn of the trilemma (and also see the part that goes from 'to deny selfishness as coherently possible' to the end of the bullet point as a non sequitur): Steve Rayhawk, Zack M. Davis, Marcello Herreshoff, and Justin Shovelain. I believe I've forgotten a few more, but I know that none endorsed any horn but the third. I don't want to argue for taking the third horn, but I do want to ask: to what extent does knowing that these people take the third horn cause you to update your expected probability of taking the third horn if you come to understand the matter more thoroughly? A few concepts that come to my mind are 'group think', majoritarianism, and conservation of expected evidence. I'm not sure there is a 'politically correct' answer to this question. I also suspect (perhaps wrongly) that you also favor the third horn but would rather withhold judgment until you understand the issue better; in which case, your expected probability would probably not change much.

[Added metaness: I would like to make it very especially clear that I am asking a question, not putting forth an argument.]

I read my mother your bit about how amazing it was that love was born out of the cruelty of natural selection, and even she thought it was sappy.

I, on the other hand, nearly started sobbing, so I guess it takes all kinds.

won't get on the airplane until after it arrives at the demonstration.

"destination"?

That's very interesting to read - I have the same trait and surely it must be fairly widespread and not particular to us. Essentially a trait to subject highly favoured, especially very trivial hypotheses to burdensome checking, for the sake of intellectual integrity or 'epistemic hygiene' which you intriguingly coin. Maybe this trait is called OCD.

For example, in the post above: it is referenced that the woman suggests magic exists because science does not know everything, it is replied that lack of knowledge does not imply non-existence, and the woman is said to have 'clicked' by concluding that magic is inconsistent. While this final conclusion sounds very reasonable, for completeness I still felt the need to question: "inconsistent with what?"

First let's lay out the reasonable premise: 1. I think the unspoken implied principle here here is that magic is defined to be what is unknown.

So we can test the consistency of this principle. If one person does not know something, and the other person does, then regarding this something, magic would have to exist for one but not exist for the other, respectively. Therefore there is a logical inconsistency in this principle (unless we accept solipsism, but then we would have difficulty talking about real 'other people', would we?)

However, I do suppose that if only one person existed, there would be no other person to create a logical inconsistency and in a strict sense magic would be consistent. It would merely constantly change based on your epistemological state, and you would probably need Occam's Razor to dispense with it.

There's also the valuable trait where, between being presented with an argument and going "click", one's brain cleanly goes "duhhh", rather than producing something that sounds superficially like reasoning.

"I'll pray for you."

"I'll think for you."

Is that original? GF and I both think it's awesome.

One of my favorite bits of writing ever, in part because it gave me the right answer to "Bo, I'm going to pray for you." "OK, and I will sacrifice a goat for you."

Oh, so that's what Eliezer looks like! I had imagined him as a wise old man with long white hair and beard. Like Tellah the sage, in Final Fantasy IV.

Of course, the real benefit of a "nice" atmosphere is that it attracts more people and grows the community. This could be worth sacrificing accuracy for: 100 people with 99% accurate beliefs is worth more (in reality) than 50 people with 100% accurate beliefs.