I don't have any previous experience with this sort of thing, but judging from what I hear and read, I'm supposed to be asking why all this is happening, and why it's happening to me. Honestly, those questions are about the farthest thing from my mind.

Partly, that’s because they aren't hard questions. Why does our world have gravity? Why does the sun rise in the East? There are technical answers, but the metaphysical answer is simple: that’s how reality works. So too here. Only in the richest parts of the rich world of the twenty-first century could anyone entertain the thought that we should expect long, pain-free lives. Suffering and premature death (an odd phrase: what does it mean to call death "premature"?) are constant presences in the lives of most of the peoples of the Earth, and were routine parts of life for generations of our predecessors in this country—as they still are today, for those with their eyes open. Stage 4 cancers happen to middle-aged men and women, seemingly out of the blue, because that's how reality works.

As for why this is happening to me in particular, the implicit point of the question is an argument: I deserve better than this. There are two responses. First, I don't—I have no greater moral claim to be free from unwanted pain and loss than anyone else. Plenty of people more virtuous than I am suffer worse than I have, and some who don't seem virtuous at all skate through life with surprising ease. Welcome to the world. Once again, it seems to me that this claim arises from the incredibly unusual experience of a small class of wealthy professionals in the wealthiest parts of the world today. We think we live in a world governed by merit and moral desert. It isn't so. Luck, fortune, fate, providence—call it what you will, but whatever your preferred label, it has far more to do with the successes of the successful than what any of us deserves. Aristocracies of the past awarded wealth and position based on the accident of birth. Today's meritocracies award wealth and position based on the accident of being in the right place at the right time. The difference is smaller than we tend to think. Once you understand that, it’s hard to maintain a sense of grievance in the face of even the ugliest medical news. I’ve won more than my share of life's lotteries. It would seem churlish to rail at the unfairness of losing this one—if indeed I do lose it: which I may not.

The second response is simpler; it comes from the movie "Unforgiven." Gene Hackman is dying, and says to Clint Eastwood: "I don't deserve this. To die like this. I was building a house." Eastwood responds: "Deserve’s got nothing to do with it."

That gets it right, I think. It's a messed-up world, upside-down as often as it's rightside up. Bad things happen; future plans (that house Hackman was building) come to naught. Deserve's got nothing to do with it.

--William J. Stuntz, discussing his cancer diagnosis

Apologies for the length, but I wanted to include the full substantive point and hated to snip lines here and there. For what it's worth, Prof. Stuntz was a devout Christian, and the linked post went on to discuss his theological views on why "something deep within us expects, even demands moral order—in a world that shouts from the rooftops that no such order exists." Obviously I draw a different conclusion about this conflict, but I still respect that he could take such an unflinching view of how morally empty nature really is.

I think your discussions of metaethics might be improved by rigorously avoiding words like "fair," "right," "better," "moral," "good," etc. I like the idea that "fair" points to a logical algorithm whose properties we can discuss objectively, but when you insist on using the word "fair," and no other word, as your pointer to this algorithm, people inevitably get confused. It seems like you are insisting that words have objective meanings, or that your morality is universally compelling, or something. You can and do explicitly deny these, but when you continue to rely exclusively on the word "fair" as if there is only one concept that that word can possibly point to, it's not clear what your alternative is.

Whereas if you use different symbols as pointers to your algorithms, the message (as I understand it) becomes much clearer. Translate something like:

Fair is dividing up food equally. Now, is dividing up the pie equally objectively fair? Yes: someone who wants to divide up the pie differently is talking about something other than fairness. So the assertion "dividing the pie equally is fair" is objectively true.

into

Define XYZZY as the algorithm "divide up food equally." Now, is dividing up the pie equally objectively XYZZY? Of course it is: that's a direct logical consequence of how I just defined XYZZY. Someone who wants to divide the pie differently is using an algorithm that is not XYZZY. The assertion "dividing up the pie equally is XYZZY" is as objective as the assertion "S0+S0=SS0"--someone who rejects the latter is not doing Peano arithmetic. By the way, when I personally say the word "fair," I mean "XYZZY."

I suspect that wording things like this has less potential to trip people up: it's much easier to reason logically about XYZZY than about fairness, even if both words are supposed to be pointers to the same concept.

I realise I answered Question 1 (the marriage one) incorrectly. This is because I did not think of married/unmarried as exhaustive:

• unmarried : has never been married
• married : is married right now
• divorced : was married, no longer married due to divorce
• widow : was married , no longer married due to the partner's death

the intent of the question was to consider unmarried = all possibilities other than married.

Is this a language issue? Wikipedia indicates there's at least some controversy on the use of "unmarried"

edit : Ok, no, that's actually controversy on the use of "single".

Hail the heav'n-born Prince of Peace! Hail the Son of Righteousness! Light and life to all He brings, Ris'n with healing in His wings. Mild He lays His glory by, Born that man no more may die; Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth.

--Hark! The Herald Angels Sing (traditionally, the third verse -- starts at 2:52 in the linked video)

An unusual choice, to be sure. But notwithstanding the obvious religious content, I actually find this piece of the hymn to be a beautiful expression of genuine transhumanist sentiment. We've previously discussed how rationalism doesn't seem to leave much room for "Glory be to Gauss in the Highest!", but even if the sentiment of "highest praise" is a little Dark Artsy, I find myself thinking of something like a Friendly AI Singularity when I hear these lines. Sung in the right way, the song can actually give me chills to a degree rivaling HP:MoR -- you know, that chapter. Just listen to it from that perspective see if you don't find it inspiring.

I will note that I had a hard time finding a version of the song sung exactly how I wanted. It's usually performed slow, often by a choir, whereas I imagine it brisk, sung by one person with a deep voice, and with strong accenting -- as in, "Mild he lays his glory by/Born that man no more may die/Born to raise the sons of earth . . ."

Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.

-Epicurus

I need help on this: I'm torn between finding this argument to be preposterous, and being unable to deny the premises or call the argument invalid.

There appear to be two major strains of response to this post:

1. There is no PR disadvantage to having an OKCupid profile like this
2. To the extent that there is such a tradeoff, the freedom to broadcast sexual weirdness is a deontological good ("can't we just let him date in peace?") and weighing it against institutional effectiveness is a taboo tradeoff.

The first response seems a case of wishful thinking - as though by believing really hardthat others share our local values, and outgroupping those who disagree with us, we could make it a PR positive.

The second is exactly analogous to an anti-abortion activist who opposes teaching birth control. It's not incoherent, really, but it does demonstrate that we place a higher value on loud sexual weirdness than our nominal goals, at this margin.

I'm pretty uncomfortable with... well, just about everything in this post.

First, even assuming that lots of commenters at Marginal Revolution "reacted negatively" to the profile, I find it hard to believe that it could really have much effect on the general LW project of "raising the sanity waterline." Fine, Eliezer talks about some personal things that most people wouldn't mention publicly and, surprise surprise, some people have a sharp reaction to that. But how many out there are really going to think "oh my, this 'rationality' business sounded okay, but now that I've seen this dating profile, not so much." Yes, I realize that's an exaggeration, and yes, I understand there can be small, even unconscious effects at the margins. But come on, anyone seriously put off by something this harmless probably wasn't a very promising rationalist anyway.

Second, who's to say whether the net effect is negative? This is just speculation on my part, but I imagine a lot of people who read something like this (even some of those who purport to act "shocked" or whatever) would actually think "wow, that sounds pretty cool -- wish my life were more like that." Just looking at the anecdotal evidence from the four comments quoted above, the first suggests he doesn't get laid, the second suggests he does, and the fourth notes that reading the profile helped uncover a source of pleasure the person hadn't notice before. Only the third comment -- invoking the "cult leader" concept -- redounds to the detriment of the community itself. And lots of people are going to think that anyway, so I don't see much in the way of an additional problem here. If anything, maybe this makes us look cool and into kinky stuff?

Third, come on, is this really something that needs to get hashed out on a LW post? To whatever extent Eliezer wants privacy, can't we just let him date in peace? A sexual fetish isn't the kind of thing that truth can destroy (let's be honest, that section is 90% of the "controversy" here), and presumably, most of us are fighting for a world that's more open, more tolerant, and just straight-up more fun when it comes to sex and relationships. It would be pretty sad if, in pursuit of that goal, our community required its more prolific members to pretend to the contrary. If my expectations are wrong and this OKCupid profile really becomes a major problem, well, I guess Eliezer will have to decide how to deal with it. But I seriously doubt we're at that point, and I kind of hope we can just drop it.

Took basically all of the survey except for the extra IQ tests. Thanks, Yvain! Looking forward to seeing the results.

It's been a few years since I heard this pronounced aloud, but my old undergrad prof's pronunciation of "3^^^3" was "3 hyper5 3". The "hyper5" part refers to the fact that three up-arrows is pentation. Similarly, "x^^y" is "x hyper4 y", because two up-arrows indicate tetration.

In general, add 2 to the number of up-arrows, and that's the hyper number you'd use.

(I should mention that I've never heard it used by anyone other than him, so it might have been just his way of saying it, as opposed to the way of saying it.)

This is a random question, and I have poked around a bit on Google looking for the answer: what's the convention for pronouncing particular instances of Knuth's up-arrow notation? Like, if you had 3^^^3, how would you actually say that out loud? I always find myself stumbling through something like "three three-up-arrows three," but that seems terribly clunky. I also read somewhere that "3^^^3" would read as "three threes," which is more elegant, but doesn't seem to work when the numbers are different -- e.g., how would you say "3^^^4"? Anyway, I figured someone here would know.