What would be a non-friendly goal that isn't dead-end? (N.B. Not a rhetorical question.)

I was having similar thoughts the other day while watching a reality TV show where designers competed for a job from Philippe Starck. Some of them spent ages trying to think of a suitable project, and then didn't have enough time to complete it; some of them launched into the first plan they had and it turned out rubbish. Clearly they needed some meta-planning. But how much? Well, they'll need to do some meta-meta planning...

I'd be happy to give your post a read through.

ETA: The buck stops immediately, of course.

Me neither. :(

Heh, serve me right for not paying attention.

I dislike all examples involving omniscient beings.

I would also prefer to assume that natural selection endowed us with sub-conscious body language and other cues which make us very bad at lying.

The only thing Omega uses its omniscience for is to detect if you're lying, so if humans are bad at convincing lying you don't need omniscience.

Also, "prefer to assume" indicates extreme irrationallity, you can't be rational if you are choosing what to believe based on anything other than the evidence, see Robin Hanson's post You Are Never Entitled to Your Opinion. Of course you probably didn't mean that, you probably just meant:

Natural selection endowed us with sub-conscious body language and other cues which make us very bad at lying.

Say what you mean, otherwise you end up with Belief in Belief.

Well, specialisation has benefits, and since the sorting is done by magic most people should end up happy where they are put. It's not like they get different curricula or anything.

I find the same thing. Climbing isn't scary at all when you're tied on.

I think a theme of LessWrong is that statistical analysis goes wrong by default, and it requires work to keep it right.

Apparantly

I much prefer the new version.