It probably comes down to frequency of use, as Eliezer alludes in the next couple of sentences. Shorter words are easier to use and likely to be preferred, but independently of that, the need to refer to an object sized and designed for one person to comfortably sit on it will likely come up more often than the need for a word for "personal recuperation armature, padded interface surfaces, overstuffed, with position-activated leg supports". There's no Platonic ideal of chairness of which reclinerness is a subclass, but there are facts of the social and physical environment in which language evolves.

The category breakdown is arbitrary at some level, but the tendency to prefer more general to more specific categories is real, and so is the association with length. Japanese aoi covers more ground than English blue, but both languages have analogs of "sky blue" -- and they're both longer than the base word.

I'm confused. What makes "chair" the basic category? I mean, obviously more basic categories will have shorter words -- but who decided that "solid object taking up roughly a cubic meter designed to support the weight of a single sitting human" was a basic category?

and I would never amuse myself at a cocktail party in ways that I thought had more than an infinitesimal chance of harming them.

Your ethical intent sounds fine but that is of limited use without competence. The sort of casual disclosure described in the ancestor anecdote would make me slightly downgrade my evaluation of the trustworthiness and social competence of any professional that works with sensitive information. Much like those observed casually gossiping about other people at inappropriate times will be silently downgraded as potential confidants.

If you prefer your advocates to go beyond a principle of 'do no harm'

The overwhelming majority of minor ethical transgressions that we make will "do no harm". Some do. If the consequences were that easy to predict we wouldn't need ethical inhibitions in the first place.

It seems to me that educated people should know something about the 13-billion-year prehistory of our species and the basic laws governing the physical and living world, including our bodies and brains. They should grasp the timeline of human history from the dawn of agriculture to the present. They should be exposed to the diversity of human cultures, and the major systems of belief and value with which they have made sense of their lives. They should know about the formative events in human history, including the blunders we can hope not to repeat. They should understand the principles behind democratic governance and the rule of law. They should know how to appreciate works of fiction and art as sources of aesthetic pleasure and as impetuses to reflect on the human condition.

On top of this knowledge, a liberal education should make certain habits of rationality second nature. Educated people should be able to express complex ideas in clear writing and speech. They should appreciate that objective knowledge is a precious commodity, and know how to distinguish vetted fact from superstition, rumor, and unexamined conventional wisdom. They should know how to reason logically and statistically, avoiding the fallacies and biases to which the untutored human mind is vulnerable. They should think causally rather than magically, and know what it takes to distinguish causation from correlation and coincidence. They should be acutely aware of human fallibility, most notably their own, and appreciate that people who disagree with them are not stupid or evil. Accordingly, they should appreciate the value of trying to change minds by persuasion rather than intimidation or demagoguery.

Steven Pinker, The New Republic 9/4/14

I will take you at your word that you could get away with making such disclosures. You are the lawyer and so the expert at judging what ethical violations people can technically get away with.

I have to thank you for allowing me to update my expectations regarding the ethical standards I can expect from an average legal representative. I now know I will need to filter more aggressively myself and not rely on the system to provide what I would otherwise have taken to be the most rudimentary standards of integrity I need from someone in that role. (That's a sincere thankyou, not snide pettiness. I really was confused about what that social rules the legal subculture would at least enforce lip-service to adherence to.)

I don't think it undermines the justice system to admit as much in the abstract.

'Abstract' does not mean what you think it means. You are revealing concrete information that is slightly vague. You believe this is OK and as such can be trusted much less with private information. I still may (hypothetically) recommend someone use the services of someone with your beliefs about what constitutes acceptable disclosure of confidential information, but only if their fees are sufficiently low relative to their other competencies as to offset this liability.

Under those conditions, it'd be alarming if I told you that 100 out of 100 were telling the truth

It wouldn't be alarming at all. It would sound exactly equivalent to "No comment". It'd sound like you were doing your job (albeit more awkwardly than if you had just shut your mouth and signaled tact). If you choose to speak about the guilt of your clients and choose to reveal anything less than the token "My clients are Resistance, not Spies" then you are disclosing personal information. Because mathematics.

I usually abhor bullshit (advocacy with casual indifference to epistemic accuracy). Lawyers represent a notable exception, where unabashed advocacy for each side is the least bad option I know of for minimising injustice.

He told another table that he was defending a murder suspect whom he was convinced was guilty, and got, "Oh, that's sounds interesting. Tell me more."

My shock as an observer would have been the gross breach of confidentiality. Is that revelation grounds for a lawsuit, a criminal offense or merely grounds for disbarment? Regardless, it would have been a gross ethical violation on the same order of either of the other two offenses. Undermining the justice system like that is Evil (just an evil that is on the other end of the visceral disgust spectrum than the molestation.)

No; it's standard to set the threshold for your statistical test for 95% confidence. Studies with larger samples can detect smaller differences between groups with that same statistical power.

It is possible, though unlikely given his increasing zombieness, that "Quirrell" has found a way around Voldemort's curse. The one that comes to mind is that Voldemort cursed the Defense against the Dark Arts position. Quirrell is teaching Battle Magic, not Defense against the Dark Arts, so he may be immune. Similarly, if Quirrell is Voldemort, he may be able to counter his own curse (or have put a check for himself or a loophole on the curse); if Canon!Voldemort had thought of that, he may have been able to successfully steal the Stone.

Puzzle:

Who is ultimately in control of the person who calls himself Quirrell?

• Voldemort

If Voldemort is possessing the-person-pretending-to-be-Quirrell using the path Dumbledore & co. are familiar with, or for that matter by drinking unicorn blood, then why isn't Voldy's magic noticeably weaker than before? Quirrell seems like he could at least hold his own against Dumbledore, and possibly defeat him.

If Voldemort took control of the-person-pretending-to-be-Quirrell's body outright using incredibly Dark magic, then why would Quirrell openly suggest that possibility to the DMLE Auror in Taboo Tradeoffs I?

If Voldemort returned to life via the Philosopher's Stone, then how did he get past the 'legendary' and 'fantastic' wards on the forbidden corridor without so much as triggering an alarm?

• David Monroe

If Monroe disappeared on purpose in 1975, and has been having random other international adventures since then, and has only just now decided to teach Battle Magic at Hogwarts (thereby ensuring his demise, per the Dark Lord's curse on the position) because his zombie syndrome is worsening and he is worried about living out the year, then what is his purpose in teaching Battle Magic? Is it just for the fun of it? This seems unlikely; he is very serious about his subject and rarely indulges in jokes or in irrelevant scholastic diversions.

Is it because he expects that teaching the students Battle Magic will help them learn to fight back and resist Dark wizards? Then why did he plan so poorly for his big Yuletide speech about resistance and unity as to allow Harry to seriously disrupt it? Could someone as intelligent as Monroe, whose major goal is to sway political opinion, really only give one big political speech and then, at that speech, fail to prevent one (admittedly precocious) student from giving a moderately persuasive opposing speech? Why not, e.g., cast a silent, wandless Silencio charm on Harry? Or simply inform him that he has 30 words in which to state his backup wish, or else it is forfeit? Or pretend to honor the wish that he would teach Defense against the Dark Arts next year? All of these alternatives (plus others) seem obviously better to me than tolerating such blatant interference with his primary goal.

• Lucius Malfoy

If he had those kinds of powers, he would wield them openly and just take over Britain. Also, it's hard to imagine he wouldn't have been keeping a closer watch on his son, to the point where he would know if his son was involved in a duel and/or sitting around freezing for six to eight hours.

• Slytherin's Monster

It has mysteriously powerful lore from the ancient past, and there's no firm evidence that it was killed or locked back in the Chamber of Secrets after Voldy broke in. In fact, the person who claims that Voldy's last words to the Monster would have been Avada Kedavra is...Quirrell. Not exactly a trustworthy source if Quirrell is the Monster.

OTOH, this would be ludicrously under-foreshadowed -- canon!Monster was a non-sentient beast, and the only HPMOR foreshadowing for the Monster focused on its being very long lived and able to speak Parseltongue. It's not clear how a rationalist would deduce, from available information, that the Monster was responsible -- we have very little data on what the Monster is like, so it's very hard to strongly match the actions we observe to the actions we expect from the Monster.

• Albus Dumbledore

Lots of pieces of weak evidence point here; Dumbledore and Quirrell are two of the highest-powered wizards around, and are two of the weirdest wizards around, and have roughly the same power level, so the hypothesis that says they are both caused by the same phenomenon gets a simplicity bonus. Dumbledore is frequently absent without a good explanation; Quirrell is frequently zombie-ish without a good explanation; Quirrell is zombieish more often as Dumbledore starts to get more energetic and activate the Order of the Pheonix; I cannot think of any scenes where both Dumbledore and Quirrell are being very active at exactly the same time. Sometimes Dumbledore expresses skepticism at something Quirrell says, but I cannot think of any examples of them engaging in magical cooperation or confrontation. If they are the same person, then it is convenient that Quirrell made Dumbledore promise not to investigate who Quirrell is.

We know Dumbledore snuck into Harry's room (in his own person) and left messages for Harry warning Harry not to trust Dumbledore; perhaps Dumbledore also turns into Quirrell and warns Harry in Quirrell's body not to trust Dumbledore. It is a little unclear why Dumbledore would want to limit Harry's trust in him, but it could have to do with the idea of heroic responsibility (nihil supernum) or even just standard psychology -- if Quirrell and Dumbledore agree on something, even though Quirrell says not to trust Dumbledore, then Harry is very likely to believe it.

It is hard to imagine Dumbledore murdering Hermione in cold blood, but, as Harry has been musing, you can only say "that doesn't seem like his style" so many times before the style defense becomes extremely questionable. Dumbledore prevents Hermione from receiving a Time-Turner, was suspiciously absent at the time of the troll attack (but showed up immediately after it was complete, with just enough time in between to have obliviated Fred and George, who, conveniently, handed the Marauder's map over to the Headmaster and then forgot all about it).

OTOH, having Hermione attempt to kill Draco and then having the troll kill Hermione on school grounds is terrible for Dumbledore's political agenda -- he winds up losing support from the centrists over the attack on Draco, and losing support from everyone over incompetent security. The school, where he has been Headmaster for decades and where he must keep the Philosopher's Stone, might even be closed. It's hard to understand how putting his entire power base in grave jeopardy could be a deliberate plot on his part, nor is it easily explained in terms of feeling plot-appropriate (it doesn't) or Dumbledore's insanity (a fully general explanation).

There's kind of a growing movement around Rob Rhinehart's Soylent thing, dunno if you folks have heard of this.

Basically, he got tired of making food all the time and tried to figure out the absolute minimum required chemical compounds required for a healthy diet, and then posted the overall list, and has now been roughly food free for three months, along with a bunch of other people.

It seems awesome to me and I'm hoping this sort of idea becomes more prevalent. My favorite quote from him I can't now find, but it's something along the lines of "I enjoy going to the movie theater, but I don't particularly feel the need to go three times a day."

There's small reddit community/discourse groups around getting your own mixture.