This was a delightful chapter. I very much look forward to the next one.

Idle curiosity / possibility of post being deleted:

At one point in LessWrong's past (some time in the last year, I think), I seem to recall replying to a post regarding matters of a basilisk nature. I believe that the post I replied to was along these lines:

Given that the information has been leaked, what is the point of continuing to post discussions of this matter?

I believe my response was long the lines of:

I hate to use silly reflective humor, but given that the information has been leaked, what is the point of censoring discussions of this matter?

At this time, I am unable to find these posts. Am I being paranoid, or was perhaps this thread deleted?

Has anyone tried e-cigarettes as a method to quit smoking or at least ameliorate the effects of smoking?

I smoke about a pack or two a week (3 a day minimum, sometimes binging once a week) and would like to reduce that in order to increase my chances of living longer. Anyone have experience they can share?

I would say that's a typical case of an antiprediction. Humans differ in all sorts of things (IQ, height, sexual orientation), so why shouldn't they differ in relationship-preferences?

Yeah, I took a look at After Man and Man After Man, and neither is the book I was thinking of, although they are similar.

Make it expressed personal opinions, then.

How should I know?

How does one best optimize personal opinions for purposes of status-acquisition?

Some fraction of the population is naturally poly, some naturally mono, some can go either way depending on circumstances. In the general population many naturally poly people are 'conformed' into being mono the same way they might be conformed into being religious. Thus 'people who want to be poly can be' would reasonably be expected to correlate with elements of the Correct Contrarian Cluster, and you would expect to find more polyamorous atheists or (he predicted more boldly) polyamorous endorsers of no-collapse quantum mechanics than in the general population, even outside LW. There are also specifically cognitive-rationality skills like 'resist Asch's conformity' and 'be Munchkin', and community effects like 'Be around people who will listen with interest to long chains of reasoning instead of immediately shunning you.'

You could legalize eating tiger. This will prevent tiger extinction in the same way it prevented cow extinction, result in sending some guys with rifles into the jungle that you don't even pay for, and if that's not enough, you can still send guys with rifles to finish off the wild population, and they still will be less likely to go extinct than if you do nothing.