While I find Venkatesh Rao to be insightful, his writing can be quite frustrating. He seems to be allergic towards speaking plainly. Here is a possible re-write of the above quote:

Slytherin-adepts use human ideals -- like justice, fairness, equality, talent -- to deceive people. They employ these ideals in rhetoric, often to turn attention away from conflicting evidence.

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.

-Isaac Asimov

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and common sense.

-Buddha

This article reminds me of a question one of my favorite teachers asked his classes. Are you learning to enrich your life or to avoid pain? What he wanted us students to question was our motivations for sitting in his class and taking notes and memorizing curriculum. Was it because we wanted to do what society tells us we need to do (get good grades, go to college, make a lot of money) or because we genuinely wanted to learn? Obviously the answer for the vast majority of student is the former. The same could be said of the scientists who operate differently outside the lab. Society tells them the right way to act inside a lab to avoid pain (ie the scientific method, control groups) but when they leave the lab they leave all the scientific stuff behind.

Great article. One statement that really caught my eye was the reccomendation to not clutter your life. That's exactly how I would describe my life at this point. Cluttered. If anybody was any advice on how to declutter and refocus your life that would be greatly appreciated.

"Memory is the framework of reality" This quote just popped into my head recently and I can't stop thinking about it.

There are a lot of games that can be played with a standard deck of playing cards, but it has occurred to me that I've never heard of a skill-based strategy game that minimizes luck-of-the-draw, meant for ordinary playing cards.

So, I tried my hand at inventing such a game.

Unfortunately, I have no practical way to play-test it, so I'm putting it out there for other people to try.

Suggestions on a name for the game are welcome. I have considered and dismissed "Card Chess" as derivative and inaccurate.

Just wanted to say you're off to a great start posting to LW -- asking very good questions!

(Also, please break posts like this into more than one paragraph.)

What is the importance of finding a perfect decision theory?

Three motivations are common around here:

1. Building a Friendly AI that is based on decision theory.
2. Understanding what ideal rationality looks like, so we have a better idea of what to aim for as far as improving our own rationality.
3. Curiosity. If we knew what the perfect decision theory was, many philosophical questions may be answered or would be closer to being answered.

For some relevant posts, see 1 and 2.

I think luminosity is very important as making conscious and self aware decisions instead of simply responding to external stimuli mindlessly is what seperates humans from being a very complex robot. The more conscious we are the better decisions we can make as we can analyze our thought processes and eliminate biases and emotional flaws in our thinking. In my opinion, consciousness and rationality are directly proportional in humans. In short, any human who wants to become a more rational thinker would be well advised to take steps to increase their consciousness or luminosity if you want to call it that. That is certainly what I am trying to do. Great series by the way.