Is there nothing of value here for you? Or is there something, but I said it poorly? It's possible that my desire to participate outweighs the potential quality of my contributions.

It's also possible that my "this is harmlessly funny" is your "this embarrasses me."

Do you think you had an aversion to repetition? Or a propensity for variety?

I catch your drift about the post deletion, and I think that there is a bit of neurosis in the way of secrecy and sometimes keeping order in questionable ways, but that wasn't what you brought up initially; you brought up the tendency to reason about moral dilemmas that are generally quite dark. I was merely pointing out that this seems like the norm in moral thought experiments, not just the norm on lesswrong. I might concede your point if you provide at least a few convincing counterexamples, I just haven't really seen any.

If anything, I worry more about the tendency to call deviations from lesswrong standards insane, as it seems to be more of an in-group/out-group bias than is usually admitted, though it might be improving.

It seems like moral problems get a negative phrasing more often than not in general, not just when Yudkowsky is writing them. I mean, you have the Trolley problem, the violinist, pretty much all of these, the list goes on. Have you ever looked at the morality subsections of any philosophy forums? Everything is about rape, torture, murder etc. I just assumed that fear is a bigger motivator than potential pleasantness and is a common aspect of rhetoric in general. I think that at least on some level it's just the name of the game, moral dilemma -> reasoning over hard decisions during very negative situations, not because ethicist are autistic, but because that is the hard part of morality for most humans. When I overhear people arguing over moral issues, I hear them talking about whether torture is ever justified or if murder is ever o.k.

Arguing about whether the tradeoff of killing one fat man to save five people is justified is more meaningful to us as humans than debating whether, say; we should give children bigger lollipops if it means there can't be as much raw material for puppy chow (ergo, we will end up with fewer puppies since we are all responsible and need to feed our puppies plenty, but we want as many puppies as possible because puppies are cute, but so are happy children).

This isn't to say that simply because this is how it's done currently means that it is the most rational way to carry on a moral dialogue, only that you seem to be committing a fundamental attribution error due to a lack of general exposure to moral dilemmas and the people arguing them.

Besides, it's not like I'm thinking about torture all the time just because I'm considering moral dilemmas in the abstract. I think that most people can differentiate between an illustration meant to show a certain sort of puzzle and reality. I don't get depressed or anxious after reading Lesswrong, if anything; I'm happier and more excited and revitalized. So I'm just not picking up on the neurosis angle at all, seems like it might be a mind projection fallacy?

I've found that I have the opposite problem. When given the opportunity to try something new, I take it, thinking "maybe this time", and invariably regret doing so.

Now I order the same food every time in restaurants, never go to shows, and am a happier person for it.

Where else on the internet are people willing to change their minds?

Many scientists are willing to change their minds. Even normal people change their minds often. People become atheists or start voting for a different party. How many members here can you actually name who changed their mind about something dramatic?

Someone who is rather cynical about Less Wrong could go a step further and conclude that Less Wrong appears to be about changing your mind, but that it mainly attracts people who already tend to agree with ideas put forth on Less Wrong, who take ideas seriously. Everyone else turns his back on it or gets filtered out quickly. And those that already agree are not going to change their mind again, because they are not entitled to the particular proof necessary to change their mind, as most of the controversial ideas are either framed as a prediction or logical implication that is not subject to empirical criticism. What is left over is too vague or unsubstantial to change your mind about it one way or the other.

If you try to do moral philosophy, you inevitably end up thinking a lot about people getting run over by trolleys and such. Also if you want to design good chairs, you need to understand people's butts really well. Though of course you're allowed to say it's a creepy job but still enjoy the results of that job :-)

One of the major goals of Less Wrong is to analyze our cognitive algorithms. When analyzing algorithms, it's very important to consider corner cases. Torture is an example of extreme disutility, so it naturally comes up as a test case for moral algorithms.

Creepily heavy reliance on torture-based what-if scenarios.

Please let us know how meditation is going for you once your retreat is over.