That was a type of savant that I thought couldn't happen before AGI.

This interests me (as someone professionally involved in the creation of savants, though not linguistic ones). Can you articulate why you thought that?

...Mormons? I don't wanna.

Eh, it seems worth investigating to me.

It seems to me that the requirement to list assumptions for basic sensory data (absent a strong prior as in e.g. "I swallowed a strong psychoactive ten minutes ago") is rather pointless.

It's not clear to me why you think this. Repeating it every time is tiresome, sure, and so that's why the assumptions should be implicitly stated rather than explicitly stated, unless explicitly stating them helps in that situation.

But the central claim is that "all data is theory-laden," which is an important point. It applies to what we perceive "directly" just as well as it applies to the chemical composition of photographs of distant galaxies (to use David Deutsch's example), and so I don't see how a Johnsonian objection would apply.

You mean, "if matter exists and I can sense it, then I will sense the collision of real objects"?

Johnson's refutation was of "the world doesn't exist," with "I can sense it." Coombs' statement is "interpretation of facts rest upon theories, which rest upon assumptions." This holds true for sense data- "if I am not hallucinating, there is a monitor in front of me."

Unless we believe that the expanding circle of compassion is likely to contract, IMO a strong case can be made that rational agents will tend to phase out the biology of suffering in their forward light-cone.

This reads to me as "unless we believe conclusion ~X, a strong case can be made for X," which makes me suspect that I made a parse error.

that superintelligent biological posthumans will not be prey to the egocentric illusion that was fitness-enhancing on the African savannah

This is a negative statement: "synthetic superintelligences will not have property A, because they did not come from the savanna." I don't think negative statements are as convincing as positive statements: "synthetic superintelligences will have property ~A, because ~A will be rewarded in the future more than A."

I suspect that a moral "view from here" will be better at accumulating resources than a moral "view from nowhere," both now and in the future, for reasons I can elaborate on if they aren't obvious.

FWIW, if I met an Asian guy with a WASPy name like John Adams I would think either he is adopted or changed his name/identity, which might send me negative signals such as duplicity, cunning, and cowardice.

Lots of Asian Americans are adopted, or are mixed European/Asians. European male / Asian female pairings (which would lead to a European last name) are about three times as common as European female / Asian male pairings.

In general, first name assimilation is seen positively by most Americans I know, and has been very common in the Asian American community, both for first-generation immigrants and their descendants. (Last name assimilation is less common, but I think still seen positively.)

Of the Eastern Asian grad students I know, it is common to adopt a Western first name (especially if they're Chinese; the transliteration from Chinese to English was clearly not designed by an English-speaker, as Chowchew can attest).

The recommendation I saw was "accept the input of all members," which is the primary thing that separates a benevolent dictatorship from a malevolent ones (in the eyes of the ruled). Yes, doing things by vote often doesn't help and so shouldn't be part of that recommendation, but having open lines of communication upwards is an important feature.

I have had few discussions with Objectivists and read few other discussions where Objectivists took part and I haven't seen particularly high level of rationality there. Objectivism as actually practiced is a political ideology with all downsides - fallacious arguments of all kinds, tight connection between beliefs and personal identity, regarding any opposition as a threat to morality by default and so on.

Agreed. I'll also note that several of the Objectivists who I've shown LW have reacted positively, often saying things along the lines of "this is what I wanted out of Objectivism."

I hope the irony was intentional. (Here's the post, btw.)

As they say in the Ekumenical School, when action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.