I don't understand what (1) means, can you explain ?

Why do we think that suffering is a necessary feature of human experience? Suffering's presence throughout human history can be more easily explained by society's unwillingness or inability (lack of appropriate knowledge) to take necessary steps, rather than the thesis that humans must suffer to be human.

Again, as far as I understand, Konkvistador believes that humans are driven primarily by their desire to achieve a higher status, and that this is in fact one of our terminal goals. If we assume that this is true, then I believe my comments are correct.

Is that actually true, though ? Are humans driven primarily by their desire to achieve a higher status (in addition to the desires directly related to physical survival, of course) ? I don't know, but maybe Konkvistador has some evidence for the proposition -- assuming, of course, that I'm not misinterpreting his viewpoint.

That is true, but narrowing the status differences would severely penalize anyone whose status is higher than the minimum (or possibly only those with above-average status, depending on the scale you're using). If we measure quality of life solely in terms of status, then such an action would be undesirable.

Granted, if we include other measures in our calculation, then it all depends on what weights we place on each measure, status included.

So this is where (one of the inspirations for) Eliezer's meta-ethics comes from! :)

A quick refresher from a former comment:

Cognitivism: Yes, moral propositions have truth-value, but not all people are talking about the same facts when they use words like "should", thus creating the illusion of disagreement.

... and now from this post:

Some people might dispute whether unicorns must be attracted to virgins, but since unicorns aren't real - since we aren't locating them within our universe using a causal reference - they'd just be talking about different models, rather than arguing about the properties of a known, fixed mathematical model.

(This little realization also holds a key to resolving the last meditation, I suppose.)

I've heard people say the meta-ethics sequence was more or less a failure since not that many people really understood it, but if these last posts were taken as a perequisite reading, it would be at least a bit easier to understand where Eliezer's coming from.

"Because they were hypocrites," Finkle-McGraw said, after igniting his calabash and shooting a few tremendous fountains of smoke into the air, "the Victorians were despised in the late twentieth century. Many of the persons who held such opinions were, of course, guilty of the most nefandous conduct themselves, and yet saw no paradox in holding such views because they were not hypocrites themselves-they took no moral stances and lived by none."

"So they were morally superior to the Victorians-" Major Napier said, still a bit snowed under. "-even though-in fact, because-they had no morals at all." There was a moment of silent, bewildered head-shaking around the copper table.

"We take a somewhat different view of hypocrisy," Finkle-McGraw continued. "In the late-twentieth-century Weltanschauung, a hypocrite was someone who espoused high moral views as part of a planned campaign of deception-he never held these beliefs sincerely and routinely violated them in privacy. Of course, most hypocrites are not like that. Most of the time it's a spirit-is-willing, flesh-is-weak sort of thing."

"That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code," Major Napier said, working it through, "does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code."

"Of course not," Finkle-McGraw said. "It's perfectly obvious, really. No one ever said that it was easy to hew to a strict code of conduct. Really, the difficulties involved-the missteps we make along the way are what make it interesting. The internal, and eternal, struggle, between our base impulses and the rigorous demands of our own moral system is quintessentially human. It is how we conduct ourselves in that struggle that determines how we may in time be judged by a higher power."

— Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

the NYC LW/OB community had two babies and is expecting a third

This sounded a bit cultish. Babies aren't the property of LessWrong.

members of the NYC LW/OC have had two babies, and another is expecting a third

Sounds better.

I scored really low on everything - in fact, I got 4th percentile Agreeableness. Not over-correcting for self-importance is hard!

ETA: I do actually have reason to believe that I'm not an extremely disagreeable person; I'm concerned that failing to acknowledge that or present those reasons made it look like I failed to consider that possibility.

The "income" question doesn't state pre- or post-tax — you should say you intend one or the other.

a 15 minute break every 90 minutes

People can work for 90 minutes?! Like... without stopping?