What function is that? I thought human utility over money was roughly logarithmic, in which case loss of utility per cent lost would grow until (theoretically) hitting an asymptote. (Also, why would it make sense for it to eventually start falling?)

For every non-duplicate comment replying to this one praising me for my right action, I will donate $10 to SIAI, up to a cap of $1010, with the count ending on 1 June 2011. Also accepting private messages.

Edit: The cap was met on 30 May. Donation of $1010 made.

In what sense are you using the word imagine, and how hard have you tried to imagine a billion years?

I have a really poor intuition for time, so I"m the wrong person to ask.

I can imagine a thousand things as a 10x10x10 cube. I can imagine a million things as a 10x10x10 arrangements of 1K cubes. My visualization for a billion looks just like my visualization for a million, and a year seems like a long time to start with, so I can't imagine a billion years.

In order to have desires about something, you have to have a compelling internal representation of that something so you can have a desire about it.

X didn't say "I can too imagine a billion years!", so none of this pertains to my point.

For someone [with at least a shade of Asperger's Syndrome], it may be important to get in touch with their inner moralizer!

Agreed, although I don't know that I have any Asperger's. Here's a sample dialogue I actually had that would have gone better if I had been in touch with my inner moralizer. I didn't record it, so it's paraphrased from memory:

X: It's really important to me what happens to the species a billion years from now. (X actually made a much longer statement, with examples.)

Me: Well, you're human, so I don't think you can really have concerns about what happens a billion years from now because you can't imagine that period of time. It seems much more likely that you perceive talking about things a billion years off to be high status, and what you really want is the short term status gain from saying you have impressive plans. People aren't really that altruistic.

X: I hate it when people point out that there are two of me. The status-gaming part is separate from the long-term planning part.

Me: There are only one of you, and only one of me.

X: You're selfish! (This actually made more sense in the real conversation than it does here. This was some time ago and my memory has faded.)

Me: (I exited the conversation at this point. I don't remember how.)

I exited because I judged that X was making something he perceived to be an ad-hominem argument, and I knew that X knew that ad-hominem arguments were fallacious, and I couldn't deal with the apparent dishonesty. It is actually true that I am selfish, in the sense that I acknowledge no authority over my behavior higher than my own preferences. This isn't so bad given that some of my preferences are that other people get things they probably want. Today I'm not sure X was intending to make an ad-hominem argument. This alternative for my last step would have been better:

Me if I were in touch with my inner moralizer: Do I correctly understand that you are trying to make an ad-hominem argument?

If I had taken that path, I would either have clear evidence that X is dishonest, or a more interesting conversation if he wasn't; either way would have been better.

When I visualize myself taking the alternative I presently prefer, I also imagine myself stepping back so I would be just out of X's reach. I really don't like physical confrontation.

My original purpose here was give an example, but the point at the end is interesting: if you're going to denounce, there's a small chance that things might escalate, so you need to get clear on what you want to do if things escalate.

I suspect how well this works probably depends on exactly how hetero- or homosexual one was from the beginning. (I'm basing that on personal experience with regard to both bisexuality and various fetishes.)

Instead of a strict straight/bi/gay split, I prefer to think of it as a spectrum where 0 is completely straight, 5 is completely bisexual and 10 is completely gay. I'm guessing it's possible for you to shift yourself a couple of points towards the middle of the spectrum, but not an arbitrary amount. E.g. if you started off at 0 you might shift yourself to 2, or if you started off at 8 you could shift yourself to 6.

I'd also note that there's a difference between sexual attraction and emotional compatibility. I'm rather mildly bisexual and using these techniques, could probably become a bit more so. But my main issue with pursuing same-sex relationships is not the sexual attraction as such, but the fact that I find it a lot easier to relate and connect to women on an emotional level. These techniques probably wouldn't help in that.

I'm unsure of what more I could have done, to be honest. The math involved is just Taylor's formula, and I pointed at its exact form in Wikipedia. Would it be better if I wrote out the exact result of substituting n=1 into the equation? I figured anyone who knows what a partial derivative is can do that on their own, and I wouldn't be helping much to those who don't know that, so it'd just be a token effort.

I voted this post down. You claim to have done math, and you tell a narrative of doing math, but for the most part your math is not shown. This makes it difficult for someone to form an opinion of your work without redoing the work from scratch.

[Edit: I was unnecessarily rude here, and I've removed the downvote.]

Weirdtopia: sex is private. Your own memories of sex are only accessible while having sex. People having sex in public will be noticed but forgotten. Your knowledge of who your sex partners are is only accessible when it is needed to arrange sex. You will generally have warm feelings towards your sex partners, but you will not know the reason for these feelings most of the time, nor will you be curious. When you have sex, you will take great joy in realizing/remembering that this person you love is your sex partner.

OK. I just fail to see the utility of this concept of 'prototypical human intelligence' for issues touched on in the OP.

I don't get this. Surely the variance is on both sides of the mean. I'm guessing the prototype is not the mean, but then I don't see how the variance relates to the prototype being smarter than most humans. What determines the prototype? Wouldn't it make more sense for us to model others on the mean? That ideal prototype seems a silly prior.

Incidentally, intelligence is a bell-curve. This paper says its variance is from mutation-selection balance. I.e. it is a highly polygenic trait giving it a huge mutational target size, which makes it hard for natural selection to remove its variance.