IffThen

America should take up the metric system.

Speaking of crazy ideas.... sitting around Googling methods of terrorism may not be the best way to stay of the CIA's watch-list.

That was sort of my point. Most people are going to imagine it as a more perfect world. But if they were to think through all of the implications, they would see that it probably involves massive taxation and a very very strong central government, with less motivation for people to do dirty and difficult jobs.

They want something they can't, or don't, accurately imagine.

Most people can't imagine what a world without ageing would be like, and they can't want what they can't imagine.

I have to agree with Lumifer -- most people can imagine (and want) a world without aging, because they would not bother to think about the demographic trends. I would compare this to asking someone to imagine a world in which no one was living below the average income level; I think most people would agree that this is easy to conceive of, and desirable. It's only the select few who would think this through and wonder how the powers that be are going to achieve this without doing something very drastic to a lot of people.

Your real world clone would take 20 years to "make" and be a separate person, like you would be if you grew up when they did.

This is partially missing the point. The goal is to make a separate body, compatible with your biology. There is no need to grow a clone with a functioning brain -- any medical science sufficient to clone a human would be able to clone an acephalic human (WARNING, NSFL, fetus with head damage), and growing a clone with a fully functioning brain (i.e., not driven insane by being grown in a de facto sensory deprivation cha... (read more)

This is consistent with 27chaos's statement, though. If you get a body transplant at 65, you have solved a number of medical problems, and the chance of living the next 30 years without having to worry about Alzheimer's is ~70%. Of course, Alzheimer's disease accounts for only 60-80% of cases of dementia. But still, I think there would be a market.

It is also worth noting that cardiovascular factors, physical fitness, and diet contribute to the risk of dementia, including Alzheimer's. These are not the greatest risk factors (as you might have guessed, age ... (read more)

From the Freakonomics blog: "FDA prohibits any gifts to blood donors in excess of $25 in cumulative value".

Various articles give different amounts for the price per pint that hospitals pay, but it looks like it's in the range of $125 in most cases.

I'm not sure where you got the 3 month figure from; in America we store the blood for less than that, no more than 6 weeks. It is true that the value of your donation is dependent on your blood type, and you may find that your local organization asks you to change your donation type (platelets, plasma, whole blood) if you have a blood type that is less convenient. I do acknowledge that this question is much more relevant for those of us who are typo O-.

I think you are often right about the marginal utility of blood. However, it is worth noting that the Red Cross both pesters people to give blood (a lot, even if you request them directly not to multiple times), and that they offer rewards for blood -- usually a t-shirt or a hat, but recently I've been getting $5 gift cards. Obviously, this is not intended to directly indicate the worth of the blood, but these factors do indicate that bribery and coercion is alive and well.

EDIT: The FDA prohibits any gifts to blood donors in excess of $25 in cumulative va... (read more)

"Chalmers argues that since such zombies are conceivable to us, they must therefore be logically possible. Since they are logically possible, then qualia and sentience are not fully explained by physical properties alone."

This is shorthand for "in the two decades that Chalmers has been working on this problem, he has been defending the argument that..." You might look at his arguments and find them lacking, but he has spent much longer than five minutes on the problem.

It is definitely a necessary question to ask. You need to have a prediction of how effective your solutions will be. You also need predictions of how practical they are, and it may be that something very effective is not practical -- e.g. banning Islam. You could make a list of things you should ask: how efficient, effective, sustainable, scalable, etc. But effective certainly has a place on the list.

FWIW, I have been a long time reader of SF, have long been a believer of strong AI, am familiar with friendly and unfriendly AIs and the idea of the singularity, but hadn't heard much serious discussion on development of superintelligence. My experience and beliefs are probably not entirely normal, but arose from a context close to normal.

My thought process until I started reading LessWrong and related sites was basically split between "scientists are developing bigger and bigger supercomputers, but they are all assigned to narrow tasks -- playing che... (read more)

I suspect you already know this, but just in case, in philosophy, a zombie is an object that can pass the Turing test but does not have internal experiences or self-awareness. Traditionally, zombies are also physically indistinguishable from humans.

Logically possible just means that "it works in theory" -- that there is no logical contradiction. It is possible to have an idea that is logically possible but not physically possible, e.g., a physicist might come up with a internally consistent theory of a universe that hold that the speed of light in a vacuum is 3mph.

These are in contrast to logically impossible worlds, the classic example being a world that contains both an unstoppable force and an unmovable object; these elements contradict each other, so cannot both occur in the same universe.

I'd like a quick peer review of some low-hanging fruit in the area of effective altruism.

I see that donating blood is rarely talked about in effective altruism articles; in fact, I've only found one reference to it on Less Wrong.

I am also told by those organizations that want me to donate blood that each donation (one pint) will save "up to three lives". For all I know all sites are parroting information provided by the Red Cross, and of course the Red Cross is highly motivated to exaggerate the benefit of donating blood; "up to three"... (read more)

I would re-frame the issue slightly; the process that philosophy/ethics goes through is something more like this:

If given A, B, and C we get D, and if not-A is unacceptable and not-B is unacceptable and not-C is unacceptable and D is unacceptable, then we do not fully understand the question. So lets play around with all the possibilities and see what interesting results pop up!

Playing around should involve frequent revisits to the differential and integral inspections of the argument; if you are doing just one type of inspection, you are doing it wrong.

B... (read more)

Slightly off from what you asked, but the CFAR list looks suboptimal. I would add The Invisible Gorilla (And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us) by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons. It is more thorough and more generally applicable than Predictably Irrational.

If people have other recommendations for books that are better than (or highly complementary to) the books on the CFAR lists, I would be interested in hearing them.

That's because the distinction doesn't actually exist. In particular, to the extent gender refers to a real concept and not an pure XML tag, it refers to what is commonly called sex.

This is an interesting claim. Things that are often lumped into 'gender' includes things like dress, pronouns, and bathrooms, and these things are very important to people. Maybe they shouldn't be, but they are.

You are very unclear as to what you are suggesting. One obvious interpretation is that caring if you wear a dress or a tie is the same as hallucinating, and we should... (read more)

There are two things here, if we care to stick to the discussion of edge cases (which is theoretically the point of this thread...)

The first is sex, in which case we should be talking about things like Turner's syndrome and XYY syndrome; sex is not binary. It is only usually binary.

The second would be coming up with a definition of gender, and seeing if it matches our definition of sex. It is safe to say that 1) the use of 'gender' to mean the same as 'sex' is within the usual range of common usage, and 2) completely wrong under certain 'domains' (sociolo... (read more)

Since you appear to be new here, let me explain the local social norms. Around here people are expected to provide arguments for their positions.

Okay... People who are seeking to change social norms in general are not usually considered insane in the same way as someone who is making claims that their sensory input is showing them something different from everyone else.

For example, social norms would not allow women to walk topless outside except in exceptional situations, even where it is legal. This is often a problem... for example, even the edge c... (read more)