This is intended to eventually be a Main post and part of sequences on free will and religion.  It will be part of the Free Will sequence.

Please comment if you do or do not think this post is ready for Main.  I intend to move it there eventually.  As with any post at LessWrong, I'm completely open to criticism, but I hope it's directed at improving the quality of the thinking here rather than kneejerk opposition to my ideas.

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The main point of this post is that I intend to convince every rationalist here, and every causal reader, to commit to allowing others to have free will.

First a bit of background.  I'm a conservative christian.  Growing up I considered myself a rationalist.  Now that I've known about Less Wrong for several years and have read the sequences, I no longer think I can classify myself that way <grin>.  Nowdays I usually consider myself a pragmatist.  "Being a rationalist" now carries with it a significant weight in my mind of formal Bayes Theorem and such that I've never had time to fully follow through and practice.  I also have a little fear that completely committing to be Bayesian would eventually put a huge conflict between my faith and Bayesian reasoning - just a little fear.  I've been reading Less Wrong for years now, they've all been resolve to my satisfaction.  I also haven't simply because looking at the math that gets thrown around here in Bayes Theorem discussion seems like it would take too much time for me to understand, and I'm already very busy (and, being an engineer and not a math major, a bit intimidating).

The main reason I come here is because this community thinks about thinking, which so few people around me do.  I crave that introspection that happens here, and so I'm drawn back to it.  Not always often, but enough to generally stay abreast of what's going on.  (I also have to admit to myself that I come back because you people are very smart, and I want you to think of me as smart too, and have your approval, but I try to keep that in check <grin>)

Now that I've been here (online only - no meetups yet) and learned with you over the years, another reason I stay here is because of the clear success of Evolutionary Psychology in predicting human behavior.  The clearest example I've ever had is this:

My children and I love to chase each other around the house.  It drives my wife crazy, especially when it happens right at bedtime.  At some point after I read about evolutionary psychology, this chain of logic dawned on me: The natural genetic behavior that's successful gets reinforced over generations -> Things you love to do naturally are joyful to you -> You pass those things on to your children through play the way lions play hunt with cubs ->  Human parents and children get true joy from chasing each other because their ancestors loved the hunt and were successful at it!

Now THAT was an eye opener!  It was the answer to a question I'd never known I had, which was this.  Why do children love to chase, and why do I love to chase them?  Because their ancestors survived that way and it was passed to them genetically.  I even like to playfully almost-catch-them-and-let-them-escape.  I even playfully let them catch me, too.  And we love it.

Religion has no answer to this question.  Religion doesn't even know how to ask this question.  But it flowed naturally out of Evolutionary Psychology just by my knowing that the concept existed!  Powerful!  Now, this post isn't really about religion so I won't go into why that doesn't break my faith.  I'll handle that it other posts.  The reason why I'm talking about it now is to get you to recognize that you are a tribal hunter by ancestry, even more fundamentally than you are the descendant of conquerors.  And knowing that Politics Is The Mind Killer, you'll listen to this next part, and take it seriously.

Less Wrong rationalists are growing, and being recognized by the religious community.  As militant Atheists.  It's reported that this is a new thing among atheists, this new desire to spread atheist philosophies as strongly as any religion spreads it's beliefs.  I've seen it in a couple places now, in about the last year.

I have a huge, scary concern for the future of our world.  It's not atheism.  And it's not religion.  I fear future wars.  As a military history enthusiast and a veteran I've learned a lot about war.  A lot.  And the principle is true that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.  Knowing that we are tribal animals I see aetheists as one tribe and religionists as another.  Now that I see the of growth and success of LW I see a future pattern emerging in the United States:

Few atheists among overwhelming Christians -> shrinking Christianity, growing Atheism -> atheism tribalness growing well connected and strong -> Natural tribal impulse to not tolerate different voices -> war between atheists and Christians.

Don't try to say this won't happen, and that Rationalists will always allow other people to believe differently.  Coherent Extrapolated Volition, Politics is the Mind Killer, and Eliezar' success in creating the LW and rationalist movement say otherwise.  Now, today, the commitment to altruism seems like a solution, but it isn't.  You all here are so very intelligent and you seriously look down on those of faith.  I see it all over the place.  It's a real blind spot that you can't see because it's inside your mental algorithms.  Altruism is very easily perverted into forcing other people because you know what is best for them.  It's not enough by itself.  It needs something else attached.

Someday there will come a time when new leaders will come up trough the rationalist movement who don't have Eliezar's  commitment to freedom.  And power corrupts even good, compassionate people.  So now I come to my request.

This principle needs to the rationalist movement.  A guarantee of free will for others that disagree with you, EVEN IF THEY ARE WRONG.  

I know religions have not always had this either.  Be better than the religions you despise.  Recognize that they also are tribal animals trying to become civilized tribal animals.  

I ask you personally to commit to making free will for all a part of your personal philosophy.  And I ask you to formalize that as part of Less Wrong, the Rationalist community, and your evangelical aetheism.  Plant the seed now so that is has time to grow. It is my fear that if you don't your children's children, and my childrens' children, will know a brutal war of philosophies unlike any we have ever seen.

In a future post I'll cover how religions are the empirically determined solution to problems that prevented civilization from arising,  and how rationalism is the modern, more specifically planned version.  And why religion is not evil like you think it is.

Sincerely,

Troshen

A reality of physics, and one that doesn't get much play in science fiction, is that as soon as humanity gains space travel, anyone in the asteroid mining or space travel business will have city-busting capabilities at their fingertips.

It's there in classic sci-fi, but not so much recently.

This discussion was started in the comments to:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/gln/a_brief_history_of_ethically_concerned_scientists/

In the "Ethically Concerned Scientists" post, Izeinwinter commented:

, I have given some thought to this specific problem - not just asteroids, but the fact that any spaceship is potentially a weapon, and as working conditions go, extended isolation does not have the best of records on the mental stability front.

Likely solutions: Full automation and one-time-pad locked command and control - This renders it a weapon as well controlled as nuclear arsenals, except with longer lead times on any strike, so even safer from a MAD perspective. (... and no fully private actor ever gets to run them. ) Or if full automation is not workable, a good deal of effort expended on maintaining crew sanity - Psyc/political officers - called something nice, fluffy, and utterly anodyne to make people forget just how much authority they have, backed up with a remote controlled self destruct. Again, one time pad com lock. It's not going to be a libertarian free for-all as industries go, more a case of "Extremely well paid, to make up for the conditions and the sword that will take your head if you crack under the pressure" Good story potential in that, though.

A great start to a discussion here. 

You've considered people going loons and some general security, but it would then become a hacker war along the lines of who could break the security and gain control of the space ships.

It doesn't address the problem of the leaders using the ships as threat weapons, since they have legitimate control, but can still make terrorist decisions.

And I'm terrified of your idea of turning spaceflight, which I see as the ultimate freedom, along the lines of Niven's Belters, into a state-controlled affair like the Soviet navy with political officers.

Now, one thing I think is a useful safety control that doesn't lead to worse problems is the destruct option.  All major rockets have them right now, since if it goes out of control it's a huge hazard for a great distance.  And although I don't like the idea of all personal spaceships being under a safety officers thumb, it might be better than the alternative of terrorist groups gaining control of asteroid mines and holding the world hostage.

You're right about great story potential though, in any of these scenarios.

NOTE - I mean the 3-body problem in orbital mechanics, not in atomic physics.

Hi there,

Some recent discussions here on LW have led me to ponder the 3-body problem again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem#General_considerations:_solving_the_n-body_problem

I wonder if new and novel methods that exist today might be applied to solving the "unsolvable" 3-body problem. 

Specifically I'm wondering "Can I create an evolutionary derived algorithm to solve equations of motion, and then can I continue on with it's evolution to solve the 3-body problem at the level of Sundman's slowly-converging series, and then can I continue on with it's evolution to come up with a closed-form solution to solve for the position of all the bodies in our solar system?

Another question is "What level of hyper-accurate model of the entire solar system would be needed?"

I think that Chaos Theory says this isn't possible.  Let's suppose for the moment that Chaos Theory only exists because our models of the universe aren't accurate enough to be use to predict far into the future.

Here's why I'm posting this to LW.  I don't really even know where to start with answering these questions, but I bet the LWers can point me in the right direction.