@Richard I agree with you, of course. I meant there exists no objective, built-into-the-fabric-of-the-universe morality which we can compute using an idealised philosopher program (without programming in our own intuitions that is).

I share neither of those intuitions. Why not stick with the obvious option of morality as the set of evolved (and evolving) norms? This *is* it, looking for the "ideal" morality would be passing the recursive buck.

This does not compel me to abandon the notion of moral progress though; one of our deepest moral intuitions is that our morality should be (internally) consistent, and moral progress, in my view, consists of better reasoning to make our morality more and more consistent.

"Rationalisation of a predetermined bottom-line" is not always be a bad thing. It is common enough in Mathematics that you intuitively feel a result is right, and you work backwards from the result to see how you can prove it. The real mistake is if you do not take care in working it out backwards, and make wrong inferential steps in the chain. You may (legitimately) point out failures of this strategy, but there are also successes that you need to acknowledge.

"Yet the most fearsome aspect of contamination is that it serves as yet another of the thousand faces of confirmation bias. Once an idea gets into your head, it primes information compatible with it - and thereby ensures its continued existence."

I am not sure I understand this. Once an idea gets into my head, my brain should prime all information *related* to the idea, not just information that is compatible with the idea. I am of course not denying the existence of confirmation bias, just trying to understand how priming in particular can promote it.

Eliezer:'Probability theory and the structure of the real world exploited by tractable cognitive algorithms: Judea Pearl, "Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems"'

Is the use of the phrase "cognitive algorithms" intended to mean that these algorithms are plausibly implemented in our own brains?

".. but technological change feeds on itself, and therefore has a positive second derivative."

Nitpick: If technological progress were merely quadratic in time, then too it would have a positive second derivative. Kurzweil of course claims something much stronger - that technological progress is exponential in time, which means the first derivative and all succeeding derivatives are also exponential.

Why does statistical hypothesis testing continue to be used in many research fields despite its very many flaws? Are there biases at work here in that the widespread rejection of hypothesis testing would lead to the trashing of many senior researchers' works? How skeptical should we be of science in general if such shaky methodology is so widely adopted?