It sounds like you just needed something to convince yourself with. TDT isn't special in this regard. With some inventiveness you could also have used quantum mechanics, evolutionary biology, extrapolated volition, or any number of other LW topics :-)

Despite the fact that your audience is familiar with the singularity, I would still insist on the potential power of an AGI.
You could say something about the AI spreading on the Internet (from a 1000 to 1,000,000 time increase in processing power), bootstrapping nanotech and rewriting its source code, and that all of this could happen very quickly.

Ask them what they think such an AI would do, and if they show signs of anthropomorphism explain them that they are biased (mind projection fallacy for example).
You can also ask them what goal they would give to such an AI and show what kind of disaster may follow.
That can lead you to the complexity of wishes (a computer does not have common sens) and the complexity of human values.

I would also choose a nice set of links to lesswrong.org and singinst.com that they could read after the presentation.

It would be great if you could give us some feedback after your presentation : What worked, what did they find odd, what was their reaction, what questions did they ask.

Yes, clearly in some counterfactuals such knowledge works.

The reason we cannot use the knowledge from this particular counterfactual is that we have no knowledge about how the counterfactual was selected.

What do you additionally need to know about the counterfactuals? Where is the ambiguity (among what two examples of possible interpretations that change the analysis)? What do you mean by "selected"?

When I hear a bad argument, it feels like listening to music and hearing a wrong note.
In one case it is the logical causality that is broken, in the other the interval between notes.
Actually it is worse because a pianist usually goes back on track.

I like the writing here: very clear and useful.

I have a very simple problem when doing mathematics.

I want to write a proof. But I also want to save time. And so I miss nuances and make false assumptions and often think the answer is simpler than it is. It's almost certainly motivated cognition, rather than inadequate preparation or "stupidity" or any other problem.

I know the answer is "Stop wanting to save time" -- but how do you manipulate your own unvoiced desires?

I'm considering continuing this sequence on an external blog. There's been some positive responses to these posts but there are also a lot of people who plainly consider that the quality of the posts aren't up to scratch. Moving them to an external site would let people follow them if they wanted to but would stop me from bombarding LW with another five or six posts.

Opinions?

LW database download?

I was wondering if it would be a good idea to offer a download of LW or at least the sequences and Wiki. In the manner that Wikipedia is providing it.

The idea behind it is to have a redundant backup in case of some catastrophe, for example if the same happens to EY that happened to John C. Wright. It could also provide the option to read LW offline.

Does anyone have any book recommendations for a gifted young teen? My nephew is 13, and he recently blew the lid off of a school-administered IQ test.

For his birthday, I want to give him some books that will inspire him to achieve great things and live a happy life full of hard work. At the very least, I want to give him some good math and science books. He has already has taken algebra, geometry and introductory calculus, so he knows some math already.

I am against cryonics, and here's why (though I would love to hear a rebuttal):

Cryonics seems inherently, and destructively, to the human race, grossly selfish. Not only is cryonics a huge cost that could be spent elsewhere helping others, nature and evolution thrive on the necessity of refreshing the population of each species. Though it's speculation, I would assign the probability of evolution continuing to work (and improve) on the human race as pretty high - what gain does the human species have in preserving humans from the 21st century indefinitely, when 23rd century or later humans are better?

Overall, in no way can I think of cryonics benefiting anyone other than the individual's (I think simply genetic) desire to avoid death (maybe it benefits future anthropologists I guess), and the cost of cryonics, given that, is what turns me off so much. I can understand people indulging themselves every once in a while, but since I tend to think gratuitous selfishness is a bad thing for the human race, I find myself understanding cryonic-phobic people more than cryonics-supporters.

Is this an invalid view?

Now that's interesting! I didn't know that the prospects for helium-3 fusion are allegedly that good. Still, given the previous history of controlled fusion research, I'm inclined to be skeptical. Do you know of any critical references about the present 3He fusion research? All the references I've seen from a casual googling appear to be pretty optmistic about it.