Let your body occupy little space in order to feel less confident and signal lack of status, thus compensating for typical but unfortunate human tendencies to think much more highly of their opinions than is actually justifiable and to prop up ubiquitous and costly signaling games. Harness the power of negative thinking!

As noted above, 50 years of torture WITHOUT ANY CONSEQUENCES is a fucking useless, contradictory definition that's part of an overzealous effort to confuse intuition. If, say, the victim's mental state was carefully patched to what it once used to be, 5 years after the experience, so that the enormous utility tax of the experience would disappear, then it wouldn't be so contradictory, and Eliezer would still make his point (which I vaguely agree with, although this doesn't imply agreement with this particular decision).

Or, he could call it "purgatory", or "missing the world's greatest orgy due to lethargic sleep", or whatever. If torture is a loaded definition, you switch to a different definition to describe a different thing, not complain about LW's collective blindness.

Yes, I think that's a nice selection of reasons. But I also think that when most people discuss political questions they aren't doing it to become better-informed voters. A strategy optimized for better voting wouldn't look like constantly discussing political questions, it would look like maybe setting aside a few weeks before election day to do a lot of research. A strategy optimized for influencing the votes of others would look like a grassroots campaign or something.

But do you want the Soviet Union to have a written, explicit policy that says... "Anyone who ignores orders in a nuclear war scenario, who is later vindicated by events, will be rewarded and promoted"?

I don't see the catch, by the way. Could someone please explain? Unless "vindicated by events" includes "USSR having dominion over a blasted wasteland", this sounds good.