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Once you've assigned a super-exponentially small probability to an event, no amount of evidence in the visible universe can make you change your mind.

I don't see why this is necessarily a problem.

The claim that the mugger will torture 3^^^3 people, unless you give them $100, is so implausible that there should be no possible evidence that will convince you of it.

Any possible evidence is more plausibly explained by possibilities such as you being in a computer game, and the mugger being a player who's just being a dick because they find it funny.

He's rolling a die. As such, both "possibilities" are overwhelmingly improbable, as I have never seen a die labeled with heads and tails, and I spend a lot of time around dice.

There are arguments that valuing net-happiness IN OUR CURRENT WORLD means you'd want to increase the human population.

However, in an arbitrary world, where wealth-production correlates with human population, there's no reason to assume that net-happiness would also correlate with wealth-production.

IOW: his conclusion (it's not a shame) has a truth value that depends on value system, but his reasoning is true only if you have one, very specific, value system (you value near-future-wealth-production as your terminal value)

This is true IFF you value wealth above all other measures.

If you value net-happiness for example, it's not true.

The Oxford Dictionary definition you supply is the one I generally see in use:

a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

Thanks for the information, I might ask my GP about that possibility, and whether there are any options for finding out whether I'm having low-blood-pressure issues.

I suffer from a form of depression, which comes along with a symptom I call "brain-ache": it essentially consists of a sharp pain that feels as though it's internal to my brain (unlike headaches, which I also commonly get, which are focused in my skull).

Brain-ache is worsened by deliberate conscious thinking, and trying to focus on things, and it is generally accompanied by a "mental fog" which makes it hard for me to see my own thoughts, and therefore hard to think about anything complex.

I have a few other pecularities [photic sneeze reflex, I used to cough instead of crying (that was a conditioned reflex due to abuse) and occasional verbal tics] but most are relatively minor.

Oh, yes, I can have full conversations in my sleep, that I don't remember in the morning. This includes answering the phone. This is a recent symptom, probably due to my current medication.

One possible explanation is simply awareness.

If you naturally develop a technique, you may not be consciously aware of it at all. But take some training, and all of a sudden your conscious brain is butting in going "this is the way to do it".

And, well, your CPU is going to be less efficient than a well-optimised RPU (Reading Processing Unit)

Why would this apply to romantic forays but not other types of social overture?

The fact that chatting to random people merely means you're willing to let anyone be one of your acquaintances

In general, being someone's acquaintance cannot be considered an exclusive group to begin with, so there was no exclusivity to be lost.

It seems like it(becoming known as a person who tries to chat up random people) would happen no matter what you actually talked about.

If you only rarely* make a sexual or romantic pass it is unlikely that people would view you in such a way. Especially if you approach people who are not of your preferred gender, etc..

*[when you find someone who is actually particularly attractive to you, after you've gotten to know them a bit]

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