At Mt. Obaku temple in the Ko district, Yudkowksy-Sensei was approached by an Individualist during morning meditation.

"All of us are ultimately selfish; we care only about our own states of mind. The mother who claims to care about her son's welfare, really wants to believe that her son is doing well - this belief is what makes the mother happy. She helps him for the sake of her own happiness, not his." said the Individualist.

Yudkowsky-Sensei remained sitting on his zafu, and said nothing.

The Individualist continued: "She did it because she valued that choice above others - because of the feeling of importance she attached to that decision."

Yudkowksy-Sensei stood up and walked out of the temple to his car, where he proceeded to open and close the driver-side door several times before saying:

"There is no chocolate at the supermarket."

Kaj: By jingo you may be right. But the question is, if the population of trolls is falling between The Hobbit and LoTR, is this an example of species-level selection? Because I can see that coming in handy. Imagine:

Johnny Creationist: "The Bible says God created the Earth in six days!"

Me: "Well the Lord of The Rings says we evolved by punctuated equilibrium!"

Johnny Creationist: "Damn! Your logic is unassailable! Well, I'm an atheist now."

*shake hands*

Jacob Stein:

"Are religious societies better? Cannibals and Satanists, perhaps not, but it's a tough call. Orthodox Jews, Quakers, Mennonites, probably yes."

Well Jacob it's just such a coincidence that you'd say that, because I am a cannibal satanist! Cool, right?

Anyway, the reason I bring it up is you say that Orthodox Jews and the like have better societies, but you are a jew, aren't you? (There's probably a bias or something there, I dunno). But since I think (to paraphrase Selfreferencing) that we're naturally motivated to seek Satan and that those who are not have been corrupted by sin and rebellion, I would much rather live among fine, upstanding flesh-eating devil-fearing folks like myself.

You see, Satan is the source of good as the south pole is the source of southness. Without him, I would just have to copy the morality of the rest of society or use my own faculties of reason and intuition - but then I wouldn't know that it was good to eat babies and have sex with goats! It hardly bears thinking about. I mean, it's a matter of faith, isn't it? Can't argue with that.

This thread has more trolls than The Lord Of The Rings.

"Congratulations, Paris. I look forward to meeting you someday.

Posted by Eliezer Yudkowsky"

Pffff hahahaha

Greatest OB discussion thread ever.

Irrationality by Stuart Sutherland is pretty much this blog in book form.

This is all very zen. Do you have buddhist sympathies, Eliezer?

I would say:

"To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion."

Find the meta level in that, Chronophone!

I would make an argument for the importance of space exploration and colonisation, on the assumption that in Archimedes' time this would be heard as an argument in favour of naval expansion. Since the greeks were seafaring people anyway, Archimedes might be convinced to push for a great greek colonisation program. Who knows? They could reach the far east, or even the americas. The age of global trade might begin two thousand years earlier.