Given the timeframe involved, I think it's likely we were typing at the same time...

I got the impression that Dave was asking what is the response that you get if you simply say "I reject the premise that all laws are constructed by some intelligence?". Was that not the case?

Sorry. I probably should have linked happy and sexy. I was saying that the "happy" component fit well with the topic. Sexy was just an added bonus.

To summarize:

If you take a number, sum the squares of its digits to make a new number, then do the same with the next number and it eventually reaches one through that process, it is a "happy" number. "Happy prime" just refers to those prime numbers which are happy.

Demonstration: 3^2+1^2=10 and 1^2+0^2=1

a sexy prime differs from another prime by 6 (in this case; 37).

Upvoting to 31, which is quite a fantastic number, since it is both (aptly) a "happy" prime, as well as a "sexy" prime.

(1) has come out of my mouth on a few occasions, albeit not in those exact words. It's normally after a few beers and I feel like playing the extreme skeptic a la David Hume, just to annoy everyone. I think the best way around it is to resort to the empirical argument and say that, in our experience, it is always right: Essentially the same thing Yudkowsky does with PA arithmetic here. Trying to find an argument against it which is truly "rationalist" in the continental sense has been a dead end in my experience.

(2) sort of depends on the pragmatics and what "tolerance" actually means to the persons involved in a given context. If you define tolerance as simply being tolerant of other viewpoints, then you can still be tolerant of the intolerant viewpoints. However, if you define it as freedom from bigotry, then that could indeed be called "intolerant" by the standards of the first definition.

I hope I'm making sense here.

Data accumulated using the scientific method perhaps? Once you have the data, you can make inferences to the best explanation. If the theory held to be the best explanation is falsified, that becomes part of the data. It then ceases to be the be the best explanation.

I'll take a wild stab in the dark and say that he probably meant that the method of reasoning was not as sophisticated back then. You could call the Aristotelean method of reasoning from empirical observation a "strengthening" of science. Nevertheless you could still say that "science" was much weaker back then compared to Popper's critical rationalism, with its emphasis on falsification.

Nevertheless, I'm sure I will be informed if this interpretation is wrong, which will hopefully help me be less wrong in the future.

"One needs to somehow gauge the 'fallaciousness' of opposite fallacies."

Isn't that exactly what the Hahn-Oaksford paper does? I doubt I'm as intelligent as most people on this site, but I was under the impression that this was all about using Bayesian methods to measure the probable "fallaciousness" of certain informal fallacies.

There are certainly many cases where Aristotle's definition of envy would adequately describe instances of zero-sum biases. In particular, when one observes the suffering of others in contrast to those with immense wealth. This can often be seen in comparisons to the west and the third world, as well as in the concepts of "core" and "periphery" in world systems theory. The problem with using the word envy, as I see it, is that the word in its currently accepted form leads people to assume that dissatisfaction is on behalf of the agent alone and not on the behalf of others. It would only reduce the clarity of language surrounding the subject.