If some or all abilities are hidden at the beginning, that forces the player to choose based on incomplete knowledge, and more often that not, leads to regrets: "I wish I purchased that ability which turned out to work in nice synergy with others, and not this one which turned out to be useless..". Especially if there's some finite pool of resources used to purchase these abilities. And that is not fun, even if surpising.

This seems to miss the point -- you're talking about a surprise that isn't a pleasant surprise. Suppose the game was designed so that after achieving a goal, you get an unexpected bonus ability with awesome synergy with the character, no matter how the character had been developed up to that point? As a game designer, ignoring the difficulty of realizing such a design, how would you say the Fun-theoretic potential of this scenario stacks up?

A rule of thumb in game design is to never make players make uninformed choices, as that only leads to frustration. This beats any possible pleasant surpise that might be there.

This rule of thumb is overly broad as stated. It would rule out poker, "fog of war" in RTS games, etc.

Utopia originally meant no-place, I have a hard time forgetting that meaning when people talk about them.

The term "utopia" was a deliberate pun on "outopia" meaning "no place" and "eutopia" meaning "good place". It seems doubtful that Thomas More actually intended to depict his personal ideal society, so one might say that Utopia is the original Weirdtopia.

I think we're looking at premature search-halts here.

I plead no contest.

Economic Weirdtopia: FAIth determines that the love of money actually is the root of ~75% of evil, so it's back to the barter system for us.

Sexual Weirdtopia: FAIth determines that the separatist feminists were right -- CEV requires segregation by sex. Homosexual men and lesbians laugh and laugh. Research on immersive VR becomes a preoccupation among the heterosexual majority in both segregated camps.

Not very plausible, but... "That's the thing about FAIth. If you don't have it, you can't understand it. And if you do, no explanation is necessary."

I don't yet see quantifiable arguments why from-scratch AI is easier [than human augmentation].

From-scratch AI could also be justified as yielding greater benefits even if it as difficult (or more difficult) than human augmentation.

Cyan, is that a standard hypothesis? I'm not sure how "practice" would account for a very gregarious child lacking an ordinary fear of strangers.

I don't know if it's a standard hypothesis -- it's just floating there in my brain as background knowledge sans citation. It's possible that read it in a popular science book on neuroplasticity. I'd agree that "practice" doesn't plausibly account for the lack of ordinary fear; it's intended as an explanation for the augmentations, not the deficits.

Nitpick for Doug S.: that's actually two coupled evolutionary limits. Babies' heads need to fit through the women's pelvises, which also have to be narrow enough for useful locomotion.

Deacon makes a case for some Williams Syndrome symptoms coming from a frontal cortex that is relatively too large for a human, with the result that prefrontal signals - including certain social emotions - dominate more than they should.

Having not read the book, I don't know if Deacon deals with any alternative hypotheses, but one alternative I know of is the idea that WSers get augmented verbal and social skills is because it is the only cognitive skill they are able to practice. In short, WSers are (postulated to be) geniuses at social interaction because of practice, not because of brain signal imbalance. This is analogous to the augmented leg and foot dexterity of people lacking arms.

How could we test these alternatives? I seem to recall that research has been done in the temporary suppression of brain activity using EM fields (carefully, one would hope). If I haven't misremembered, then effects of the brain signal imbalance might be subject to experimental investigation.

TGGP, I think it's supposed to. The General is quoted in the linked article.

Would it have been the moral thing to do to turn around and leave the Indians alone, instead of taking their land and using it to build an advancing civilization...?

False dichotomy.

If you invoke the unlimited power to create a quadrillion people, then why not a quadrillion?

One of these things is much like the other...