Downvoted because I hate you.

(Nothing personal; I'm using the anti-kibitzer.)

Just because $CELEBRITY uses it that way doesn't make it right. This usage is conflating two usefully distinct concepts.

It's only testable in one direction -- if you like, "never" is testable but "ever" isn't. I don't have a formal argument to hand, but it seems vaguely to me that a hypothesis preferably-ought to be falsifiable both ways.

The story is, in large part, about the structure of the story: Pluto's tragic flaw is that he's thinking about his real life in terms of story structure.

Consider the epistemic state of someone who knows that they have the attention of a vastly greater intelligence than themselves, but doesn't know whether that intelligence is Friendly. An even-slightly-wrong CAI will modify your utility function, and there's nothing you can do but watch it happen.

Not really relevant here, but I only just now got the pun in CFAR's acronym.

You may be right, but I don't trust a human to only arrive at that conclusion if it's true. I think we ought to refrain from pressing D, just in case.

Depending on how smart I feel today, anywhere from -10 to 40 decibans.

(edit: I remember how log odds work now.)

I think a more plausible scenario for the atomic theory being wrong would be that the scientific community -- and possibly the scientific method -- is somehow fundamentally borked up.

Humans have come up with -- and become strongly confident in -- vast, highly detailed, completely nowhere-remotely-near-true theories before, and it's pretty hard to tell from the inside whether you're the one who won the epistemic lottery. They all think they have excellent reasons for believing they're right.

You are way overconfident in your own sanity. What proportion of humans experience vivid, detailed hallucinations on a regular basis? (not counting dreams)