A "grand mistake" in philosophy has little ill effects.

Um, they've been known to result in up to a quarter of the world's population living under totalitarian dictatorships.

The version of Windows following 8.1 will be Windows 10, not Windows 9. Apparently this is because Microsoft knows that a lot of software naively looks at the first digit of the version number, concluding that it must be Windows 95 or Windows 98 if it starts with 9.

Many think this is stupid. They say that Microsoft should call the next version Windows 9, and if somebody’s dumb code breaks, it’s their own fault.

People who think that way aren’t billionaires. Microsoft got where it is, in part, because they have enough business savvy to take responsibility for problems that are not their fault but that would be perceived as being their fault.

-John D. Cook

But that this not enough; you should actively seek out opportunities to make grand mistakes; just so you can recover from them.

Think he's a bit too enthusiastic about that X-D

Making more grand mistakes in addition to my usual number doesn't look appealing to me :-/

The chief trick to making good mistakes is not hide them -- especially not from yourself. Instead of turning away in denial when you make a mistake, you should become a connoisseur of your own mistakes, turning them over in your mind as if they were works of art, which in a way they are. The fundamental reaction to any mistake ought to be this: "Well, I won't do that again!" Natural selection doesn't actually think this thought; it just wipes out the goofers before they can reproduce; natural selection won't do that again, at least not as often. Animals that can learn -- learn not to make that noise, touch that wire, eat that food -- have something with a similar selective force in their brains. We human beings carry matters to a much more swift and efficient level. We can actually think that thought, reflecting on what we have just done: "Well, I won't do that again!" And when we reflect, we confront directly the problem that must be solved by any mistake-maker: what, exactly, is that? What was it about what I just did that got me into all this trouble? The trick is to take advantage of the particular details of the mess you've made, so that your next attempt will be informed by it and not just another blind stab in the dark.... The natural human reaction to making a mistake is embarrassment and anger (we are never angrier than when are angry at ourselves), and you to work hard to overcome these emotional reactions. Try to acquire the weird practice of savoring your mistakes, delighting in uncovering the strange quirks that led you astray. Then once you have sucked out all the goodness to be gained from having made them, you can cheerfully set them behind you, and go on to the next big opportunity. But that this not enough; you should actively seek out opportunities to make grand mistakes; just so you can recover from them.

-Daniel Dennett, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking

Some points:

• This is classic costless analysis. A quarantine would have prevented some transmissions of the disease, but would have severely limited the life quality of those quarantined. It would also have made it more difficult to detect HIV (if having HIV means compulsory quarantine, then if I suspect I have the disease I am less likely to get tested). Any proposal looks good under a benefit analysis; you are supposed to weigh those against the costs.
• This kind of costless analysis is especially beloved by medicine and health professionals, whose only measure of value is health (e.g. their "quality of life" measure is essentially just health integrated over lifespan). I would have hoped rationalists would better recognise the complexity of human value.
• The fact that the quarantine is compulsory ought to give the game away that it's not in the interests of the HIV sufferers. Let's call indefinite compulsory quarantine what it is - prison. It might well be in the interest of the rest of the population for HIV sufferers to be indefinitely imprisoned to stop the spread of the disease, but depending on your ethical theory, it is not obvious that the majority should have their way here.
• "What gives the government the moral right to imprison people on grounds of public health?" and "Why should we trust the government to make wise decisions on this matter?" seem like the default questions to ask, and the post doesn't even begin to address them. See (2) above regarding the deformation professionelle.
• How about instead of quarantine, we had instead tattooed all HIV sufferers across the forehead? This would be a less coercive method of achieving substantially the same result. Yet I'm guessing Cochran wouldn't sign up for that. Can phrases like "rights" and "human dignity" now begin to wend their way into the conversation?

Cochran is fond of calling people dimwits and pinheads, but I have rarely read such a tone-deaf post.

$30 donated. It may become quasi-regular, monthly.

Thanks for letting us know. I wanted to donate to x-risk, but I didn't really want to give to MIRI (even though I like their goals and the people) because I worry that MIRI's approach is too narrow. FHI's broader approach, I feel, is more appropriate given our current ignorance about the vast possible varieties of existential threats.

Snowden revelations causes people to reduce sensitive Google searches. (HT: Yvain)

I must say that I called it.

Wait, I think the link is missing.

What award does the recipient get if they actually accomplish "something important"?

I think Bostrom puts it nicely in his new book "Superintelligence":

A colleague of mine likes to point out that a Fields Medal (the highest honor in mathematics) indicates two things about the recipient: that he was capable of accomplishing something important, and that he didn't.