My model of how liberals think, based on teaching at a left wing college, is that liberals find "politically incorrect" views disgusting.

Duh, hot water helps when something's frozen.

... I didn't realize my comment was so unclear as to need summarizing.

True. I think hardly anyone on either side would use the term "anti-science". The terms aren't important, but rather the article is referring to the "us-vs-them" mentality.

Also, I like the term "competitor priesthood."

I haven't seen Her yet, but this reminds me of something I've been wondering about.... one of the things people do is supply company for each other.

A reasonably competent FAI should be able to give you better friends, lovers, and family members then the human race can. I'm not talking about catgirls, I'm talking about intellectual stimulation and a good mix of emotional comfort and challenge and whatever other complex things you want from people.

Is this a problem?

Since we're already at the anecdote level: A friend of mine saw a LASIK surgeons conference at his university and he says they're all wearing glasses.

I'm occasionally still amazed that traffic works as well as it does. I must say I'm hesitant at using this example to claim that people are more capable than you might think. Driving is just something humans happen to be competent at. There are plenty of things roughly as complicated as driving a car that people aren't surprisingly good at.

This also reminded my of something people said at the latest meetup. At least two people told me they had deliberately tried to get more scared of driving, because they had noticed they had less fear in a car than on a plane despite planes being safer.

Yes, I'm an academic and I get a similar reaction from telling people I study the Singularity as when I say I've signed up for cryonics. Thankfully, I have tenure.

Thanks for writing this up.

this definitely seems like something that's worth researching more because it literally affects every single day of your life

Lots of things fall in to this category :)

"A person's body, during an average day in a temperate climate such as the United Kingdom, loses approximately 2.5 litres of water.[citation needed]"

In case it's not obvious: this probably means in the absence of food/fluid consumption. You can't go on losing 2.5 litres of water a day indefinitely.

Yes.

However, it might be that the ends towards which virtue is a means aren't ethical ends. Somebody might care about consequences, but reserve their moral judgement for the process by which people try to achieve their consequences. It might be that people are good or bad, but states of the world are just desirable or undesirable.

For example, let's suppose it's desirable to be wealthy. This can happen in several ways., One individual, A, got wealthy through hard work, thrift, and the proper amount of risk-taking. Another, B, got lucky and winning the lottery.

Both A and B wind up with the same amount of money, but A got there by exhibiting virtue, and B didn't. A virtue ethicist can say "A is a better person than B", even though the consequence was the same.

I suppose you could say "A and B's choices have the same consequence for their bank balance, but different consequences for their own personal identity, and we have ethical preferences about that" But at this point, you're doing virtue ethics and wrapping it in a consequentialist interface.

I suspect all these different strands of ethical thought are really disagreeing about what to emphasize and talk about, but can be made formally equivalent.