I think the issue is not as much as unconsciously exploiting it, but more like the amount of pain felt depends on the absence or presence of "training". More here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/59i/offense_versus_harm_minimization/c8u7

Mathematician here. I wanted to agree with @pianoforte611 - just because you have infinite time doesn't mean that every event will repeat over and over.

For those interested in some reading, the general question is basically the question of Transience in Markov Chains; I also have some examples. :)

Let us say that we have a particle moving along a line. In each unit of time, it moves a unit of distance either left or right, with probability 1/10 of the former and 9/10 of the latter. How often can we expect the particle to have returned to its starting point? Well, to return to the origin, we must have moved left and right an equal number of times. At odd times, this is impossible; at time 2n, the probability of this is (this is not difficult to derive, and a simple explanation is given here). Summing this over all n, we get that the expected number of returns is one in four - in other words, we have no guarantee of returning even once, much less an infinite number times!

If this example strikes you as somewhat asymmetric, worry not - if the point was moving in three dimensions instead of one (so it could up, down, forward, or back as well as left or right), then a weighing of 1/6 to each direction means that you won't return to the starting point infinitely often. If you don't like having a fixed origin, use two particles, and have them moving independently in 3 dimensions. They will meet after time zero with less-than-unit-probability (actually, the same probability as in the previous problem, since the problems are equivalent after you apply a transformation).

I hope this helps!

To Bob, I would point out that:

1. Contrary to C, it is easy to prove that you have an ear or mental condition that makes you sensitive to noise; a note from a doctor or something suffices.

2. Contrary to D, in case such a condition exists, "toughening up and growing a thicker skin" is not actually a possible response. In some cases, it appears that loud noises make the condition worse. Even when this is not the case, random exposure to noises at the whim of the environment doesn't help.

I realize that you are appealing to a metaphor, but I think that these points often apply to the unmetaphored things as well.

Regarding criticism of my writing: inspired by Karl Popper, I seek out criticism that will help me be, well, less wrong.

Regarding argument by analogy: I do a bit, but I've seen worse. It has its place. I don't care for Harry Potter in the original, film or Yudkowsky versions. The later perhaps being slightly longer yet slightly more up-voted than my post.

Regarding my style: many philosophies have both a function and a form. In writing, some philosophies have a message to convey and a style that it is often conveyed in. There is a style to objectivist essays, Maoist essays, Buddhist essays, and often there is a style to less wrong essays. I wrote my egoist essay in the egoist style, in honor of those egoists who led to me including Max Stirner, Dora Marsden, Apio Ludd and especially Malfew Seklew. Egoism - it's not for everybody.

Regarding April Fools' Day: please believe whatever invokes the strongest response in you, be it positive or negative.

Regarding solicitation of payment for goods and services: I checked, and there is no policy against it. I also waited, over a year, to see if in the lack of a policy there was a trend or tradition regarding links to commercial services. The trend is that such posts exist, and whatever criticism they get is never based on including a commercial link. This is true be the link for the author's own good or service, or for a different good or service. A few examples: 1 2 3. The difference is the tolerated and celebrated commercial links, the ones that do not lower the general level of discourse, that are not downvoted - those links are or claim to be altruistic. Mine is selfish, fitting even for a failed egoist such as myself. I don't say that maybe if you pay me to tutor your kids then maybe they will learn something. I don't say that maybe if you donate to my think tank then maybe I'll save the world from hostile AI. I say, guaranteed and without controversy, that two things will happen to those who buy my book. First, they will get a book. Second, I will earn several dozen pennies in royalties. Altruistic maybe is okay, egoistic promises no? I like the game of Less Wrong and am happy to play by the rules. If commercial links are allowed, or limited, or banned, I can go with it or go away. But it'll be more fun for me if I get to play by the same rules as everyone else.

• Trevor Blake is the author of a book. There is no such thing as a so-called "search engine" so don't even try to look for it.

I was thinking of the "feeling bad and reconsider" meaning. That is, you don't want regret to occur, so if you are systematically regretting your actions it might be time to try something new. Now, perhaps you were acting optimally already and when you changed you got even /more/ regret, but in that case you just switch back.

I actually like that line. There are a lot of people and organizations that are portrayed as rational and evil. Walmart sacrificing all soft values to maximize profit and the robot overlords systematically destroying or enslaving humanity are also views of rationality. They can be used as objections as much as Spock can. This quick joke shows that problems like this are considered, even if they aren't dealt with in depth here.

It not only results in unavoidable regret, it sometimes results in regretting the correct choice.

Given a choice between "$5000 if I roll a 6, $0 if I roll between 1 and 5" and "$5000 if I roll between 1 and 5, $0 if I roll a 6," the correct choice is the latter. If I regret my choice simply because the die came up 6, I run the risk of not noticing that my conception of "the right thing" was correct, and making the wrong choice next time around.

LW and related blogs are basically spoiling fantasy fiction to me. DAE have an experience like this? How to overcome it?

My formerly existing but weakly skeptical atheism and generic anti-supernaturalism got really strengthened here. I bought into the idea that the supernatural means the propositon that some mental things are are not reducible to nonmental things and from that it is only a small jump to say that mental things are entirely in the map, not in the terrain, it is a useful shorthand model to think of some things as mental but they are never irreducibly so in the terrain. So irreducibly mental things i.e. supernatural things are always, in principle, map-terrain mistakes. So we can on the map level think of medicine having healing properties, because the effect they have on a certain condition is what we put into a mental category of making us "healthier", but the medicine does not actually heal bodies, it just changes bodies. From this viewpoint, a Potion of Healing is map-terrain mistake, as it suggests a substance could have a real healing property. But healing is a mental property, a property of models, maps, not real things. You could say the same about a magic sword that has an bloodthirsty evil spirit in it. The real world has only change, certain things can effect certain changes, but it is entirely a mental model that we call that change helping, harming, healing, good, evil, cruel, nice, killing, purifying etc.

Sh1t, now it seems to me the single most important step from the medieval-alchemical world to the world of science was understanding the map-terrain problem! That a Philosopher's Stone (which does not simply turn lead to gold but improves everything) cannot exist in principle and not just empirically doesn't, because the idea of improvement itself is a mental category that does not exist in the terrain!

And now my beloved Dragonlance novels feel utterly stupid to me.

(Note: I haven't read HPMOR beyond the first few chapters, the conflation of the two worlds, rational and fantasy, made me feel uncomfortable and dizzy somehow.)

For fun, what is the worst fantasy or other fictional offender of mistaking mental phenomena for something essentially real? My proposal: the ideas that goodness or evil are substances and they can formed into magic objects such as sword made of pure evil. Not sure where I've read that but pretty sure some novels proposed something like that.

If you can recommend any further reading even if only tangentially relevant to what I wrote here I will be grateful. Am I no the first one to notice the all-improving Philosopher's Stone could not exist in principle because improvement is a mental category and not real, right?

Replace "Killing Joe", with say "not giving Joe a million dollars" in that argument, what changes?

Most atheists do think that there something wrong with rape and murder.

The problem is they have a hard time saying what.