The only aspect of immortality I don't like is the population problem, and I have no reply for that

I used to worry a lot about overpopulation, but not so much anymore. We don't have an overpopulation problem, we have a resource overconsumption problem. This is most likely easier to engineer around than death is; it's not like we haven't jacked up the human carrying capacity of the earth several times already.

Yes, that's what I mean.

Why nothing about opioids?

Some quick facts about opioids, including heroin. I have written up a version of this with sources if so desired.

0.) Opioids cause feelings of well-being and euphoria, and usually some sedation (though some can be stimulating). They do not generally cause mental impairment, unless enough are taken to cause one to nod off. Negative side-effects are rare at low doses, but increase as dose does, and can include nausea and constipation.

1.) Most opioids - again, including heroin - are not toxic in any manner*. (Meperidine is a notable exception.) One could be on morphine, for instance, one's entire life, and not suffer ill health effects beyond constipation (usually easily fixed with magnesium).

2.) Opioids are very addictive. No qualifiers here.

3.) Heroin addicts are usually so unhealthy because of drug prohibition, not because of the drug itself. Some of the things heroin is cut with are dangerous in combination with it (like quinine), or just plain dangerous; its manufacture is illegal and there is no quality control; and it is expensive, so addicts engage in behaviors like injection or theft.

4.) Opioid withdrawal will not kill you, and opioids are usually fairly hard to overdose on accidentally. Most heroin "overdoses" are actually due either to what is thought to be a contaminant in the heroin, or due to mixing drugs to make a limited supply of heroin last longer (see #3).

*I have read an article stating they can cause dopaminergic toxicity, which is what rewires your brain to require opioids after using them for a long time. As far as I know, this is reversible, however.

I have a theory that most opioid addicts are actually self-medicating for psychological pain. Opioids been found to be efficacious in the treatment of depression and anxiety, but concerns over addiction prevent them from being marketed for these uses. I find this odd, because benzodiazepines are used for psychiatric purposes, but are also (less, admittedly) addictive, and their withdrawal symptoms are much worse.

I would start with a computer science or software engineering program, trim a bit, and fill the remaining space with custom-built rationality courses.

I would also reserve at least one course-slot per semester reserved for presentation of miscellaneous of topics that are too small to fill a whole semester, and allow any professor to claim a short block of that time, and assign readings and exercises for it. The best lessons are those with a high value-to-length ratio, which means a short length, which means not being long enough to fill a course.

I'm not sure I'm getting the point of the exercise qua exercise. If this were a real-life opportunity my first inclination would be to explore how far I could stray from conventions and normal habits of thought. E.g. give the students themselves the task of designing the program for optimal results (which is why it'd help to define the results sought). So maybe the first thing they'd study would be the psychology of learning; math and probability theory would take a back seat to that, or would be taken as tools to understand the research on learning.

There are things it is rational to want, no matter what else you want. If you do not precisely know what you want, then the first thing you want is self-knowledge.

I like how you think!

Thanks.

Since we're taking students from varied and heterogeneous backgrounds and it's an advanced degree, I'd have a list of required topics, with the students being able to place out of the area of their undergraduate study (if their undergrad major covered one of the topics).

Core areas would include:

• Probability/statistics

• Mathematics (at least through basic calc and linear algebra)

• Computer science (at least basic programming, algorithms, and software architecture)

• Natural science (chemistry OR biology OR physics)

• Research experience in a natural science or engineering lab of choice

• Psychology (emphasis on cognitive biases and memory)

• Anthropology

• Philosophy (overview course on historical perspectives)

Also, added seminar courses with mini-units to tie subjects together and place them in context.

Electives would be open-ended, pending an essay to justify their selection.

Anyone have thoughts on whether a business or economics course should be included? I considered that, but I have not taken a formal course in those topics myself, and so don't have a good estimate of their actual utility.

There have been literally thousands of confirmations of gravitational lensing - hell cosmologists have created a 3D map of dark matter based on gravitational lensing observed by the Hubble Space Telescope. It's a phenomena that does not occur with Newtonian gravity, but absolutely must occur if General Relativity is correct.

It is one of those side-effects of the theory that can be used to disprove it if the side-effect does not occur. GR specifically demands this effect exist, because gravity is literally the bending of space-time, which affects the straight-line path of anything traveling across space-time. Light travels across space-time just as much as matter with mass, so its path must be affected by any curvature caused by a massive object. It's the same kind of test as bouncing a ping-pong ball straight up and down on a train going 90mph - if the ball falls off the table (as Aristotelian motion suggested) instead of bouncing in the same spot, Newton's laws of motion are worthless.

See Wikipedia for more on gravitational lensing.

This also happens to be how cosmologists expect to see the first direct observational evidence of black holes. My understanding is that there is not currently a radio-telescope large enough to discern such an effect yet, but one cosmologist is connecting radio-telescopes across the US to create a massive virtual telescope that would have the resolution required. Pretty cool stuff.

Looks like the interview may be fake:

http://english.pravda.ru/society/stories/06-05-2011/117816-grigori_perelman-0/

Also from Pravda.

The following paragraph is a quote, but I can't figure out how to make them in replies:

Moreover, it seemed "impossible and bizarre" for the blogger that Perelman was speaking about the "Poincare conjecture" in the interview. "He solved the conjecture, so it becomes a theorem," the blogger wrote on his webpage. "All those thoughts about nanotechnologies and the ideas of filling hollowness look like rabbi's thoughts about pork flavor properties." The critic stressed out that fundamental science prefers to say that all of that does not have applied relevance, which is the point of it all."

Looks also like there are some aspects of the "interview" not shared in Pravda, like this stuff about nanotechnology.

I'm not sure if that last sentence (of the quoted paragraph) is true or not.

AndrewHickey's comment notwithstanding, it wouldn't surprise me if he did say that, and if he meant it very literally, like in the batshit crazy sense. Famous mathematicians have a long and celebrated history of going off the deep end. Cf. Georg Cantor, Kurt Gödel, Alexander Grothendieck.

It's Pravda. Never the most reliable source, but for a decade or so it's been roughly the Russian equivalent of the Weekly World News. If the story has any relation to reality it's purely coincidental.