because creating sexual variety is so much more difficult than sprinkling cinnamon on an apple.

A friend of mine, who shall rename nameless, likened monogamy to eating chocolate cake and nothing else for the rest of your life. . .

Laugh. Your whole body's sense of touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing are part of sexual experience, at least good sex. . .

This is off topic, but bestselling author and OB reader and occasional commenter Michael Crichton has died.

Vladimir,

Excellent comments and insight.

The biggest problem with being religious, in the way you have defined, is that your "oughts" start to influence your perception of what "is". We see exactly the same thing happening with traditional religions, with political religions, and here with Singularitarian religion.

The one true worthy action is to perceive the "is" without blurring our vision with the distorting filters of "oughts". This is the true "Way". But, of course, it is not nearly as popular as promising salvation, whether religious or technological.

Eliezer, I suspect the coalition in control of your fingers is not as coherent or stable as it appears. Ruling coalitions like to give the impression that they have little effective opposition and are unified without internal dissent, but the truth is usually otherwise.

That comment was quintessentially Hanson, and an observation whose insight gives me much cause to believe that the coalition in control of those fingers has travelled across many a Rubicon. . .

I'm a bit dismayed, however, by the obvious emotional response and meanness from someone who prides himself on sharpening the blade of his rationality by testing it against criticism.

Let's be fair. All "someones" operate according to the same basic Darwinian principles, which involve the subsumption of some ideas and rejection of others into a self-concept which then defends "itself" against any perceived threat. And the biggest threat, of course, is the truth that the self is not fundamentally *real*. When that is clearly seen, the gig is up.

Expecting "someones" to operate according to principles of integrity and truth-seeking is like expecting foxes to babysit chickens without indulging their appetites. Sure, there is an (at first) fun and interesting game of status seeking to be played called "I'm more honest (and smarter BTW) than you". But it's all in the service of covering up the truth about the imagined "I" who is playing that game.

When reality is actually engaged with an approach of genuine inquiry rather than an chest-expanded assumption that the "someone" is well along the "straight and narrow path" and treading "the way", then the "someone" is seen to be insubstantial, unimportant and essentially unreal, and displays of self-importance, pomposity and grandiosity fade away. And many of the activities and goals that seemed oh-so-important to the "someone", are smiled at, and put away on the shelf like the other outgrown toys of childhood.

There is no actual "you" in the way that it seems to be. A persistent thought pattern / meme complex got mistaken for a "you" by awareness and, sooner or later, awareness can see through the "you", which is a tremendous relief when it occurs.

As Einstein put it:

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us, "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.

This delusion is a kind of prison for us. . .

Excellent post, Eliezer. Along with your comments on MR about the financial crisis, definitely good stuff worth reading.

I would submit that, for you, the belief you are unable to question is materialistic reductionism. I would suggest reading Irreducible Mind which will acquaint you with a great deal of evidence that reality is different from the current model of it you hold in your mind. I would suggest that you begin with chapter 3 which presents a vast body of observational and research evidence from medicine that simply doesn't fit into your current belief system. Start with the introduction, read the entire introduction (which is very good and fits with many of the more conceptual posts you have made here about avoiding pitfalls along the path of rationality), and then read chapter 3 about empirical findings of the relationship between mind and body.

Hence the complete lack of interest on the part of reductionists in impartially examining the accumulated body of evidence for psi phenomena, rivalled only by the lack of interest of young-earth creationists in impartially examining the accumulated body of evidence from geology and paleontology.

It can't possibly exist, therefore any evidence must be poorly controlled, fake, delusional, etc., thus not we're not interested in hearing about it. . .

"a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest. . ." - Paul Simon, The Boxer

One of the strongest lines of evidence is, indeed, that we have successfully reduced minds. . .

Just what exactly are you referring to here?