In your "Increasing population size", you put "Medium, Medium" as more valuable than "Medium", but that doesn't seem to derive from the premises you'd been using so far (apart from the "glue them together" part). I found that surprising, since you seem to go at bigger lengths to justify other things that seem more self-evident to me.

If the inequitable society has greater total utility, it must be at least as good as the equitable one.

No, the premises don't necessitate that. "A is at least as good as B", in our language, is ¬(A < B). But you've stated that the lack of an edge from A to B says nothing about whether A < B, now you're talking like if the premises don't conclude that A < B they must conclude ¬(A < B), which is kinda affirming the consequent.

It might have been a slip of the tongue, or it might be an indication that you're overestimating the significance of this alignment. These premises don't prove that a higher utility inequitable society is at least as good as a lower utility equitable one. They merely don't disagree.

I may be wrong here, but it looks as though, just as the premises support (A < B) ⇒ (utility(A) < utility(B)), they also support (A < B) ⇒ (normalizedU(A)) < normalizedU(B))), such that normalizedU(World) = sum(log(utility(life)) for life in elements(World)) a perfectly reasonable sort of population utilitarianism where utility monsters are fairly well seen to. In this case equality would usually yield greater betterness than inequality despite it being permitted by the premises.

I think whether reality checks make you more rational largely depends on what sorts of checks you are using. There are many checks that exploit "surface-level" features of dreams-- most commonly inconsistencies in clock faces and written text upon second looks-- in order to determine whether one is dreaming. These checks are useful for determining whether you're asleep but generally limited otherwise.

However, there is one somewhat deeper feature of dreams that IMO provides a more useful opportunity both for reality checks and for rationality practice. Dreams, by their very nature, lack a logical underpinning for events. We tend to find ourselves in the middle of a series of events without much explanation for how or why we arrived there.

Thus, one reality check that I find useful both in dreams and waking life is the thought "where am I, and how did I get here?" For instance, right now I am at my computer, typing a LessWrong post. I got here from waking up in my room and walking downstairs. I got to my room from driving my car after a party with friends last night.

Obviously, this type of reasoning can go on and on. The interesting part is that dreams lack this.

For instance, I recently dreamed that I was on an airplane. I thought to myself "How did I get on this airplane?" Realizing I had no memory of getting to the airport, I became lucid. You might wonder how this applies to rationality. The answer is that "Where am I and how did I get here" can easily apply not only to physical reality, but also to your mind and thoughts. Indeed, it is very similar to "What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it--" one of the classic questions of human rationality.

In my experience, internalizing the general form of this principle has been very useful both for dream checking and for improving rationality.

A frequently quoted one is to try to read or write text and pay attention to the individual words (rather than just the "general gist"). I don't lucid dream, but I've certainly had the experience of being frustrated during dreams by having text shift around as I try to read or write it. (I have no idea if I would have had this experience before being primed for it by being told to expect it.)

"You are a p-zombie."

Similar to couple comments before, but not so far in that direction:

Everything humans do is part of social games*, not of the values they claim. Transhumanism, too, is not something special but is just another subculture, with specific set of values that are thought to be “the true values” in that subculture.

(* Aside from survival, of course.)

Around here it is.

I love that people are still commenting on this post.

I feel like I am an inattentive, disenganged person, and nonagenty people do suck the life out of me. What changed in your case which made you see things differently?

Fortunately the title of the page gives it away: it's srdiamond, who I believe still posts occasionally as common_law.