I'll save it until asked.

Consider yourself asked!

Where's the scam in this story?

So I've recently decided to change my real name from an oriental one to John Adams. I am not white.

There’s a significant amount of evidence that shows that

(1) Common names have better reception in many areas, especially publication and job interviews.

(2) White names do significantly better than non-white names

(3) Last names that begin with the early letters of the alphabet have a significant advantage over last names beginning with the latter letters of the alphabet.

Source :

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19020207 http://blog.simplejustice.us/files/66432-58232/SSQUKalistFinal.pdf http://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/sunrpe/2006_0013.html http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873.pdf?new_window=1 http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html

Therefore if I were to use "John", one of the most common 'white' first names, along with Adams, a 'white' surname that also begins with the letter A, it should stand that I would be conferred a number of advantages.

Furthermore, I have very little attachment to my family heritage. Switching names doesn’t cost me anything beyond a minor inconvenience of having to do paperwork. For some people, changing your name may be extremely worthwhile, depending on your current name, and how attached you are to it. At least, it may be worthwhile to consider it, and depending on the person, may be a very cheap optimization with significant benefits.

This brings to mind the dollar-coin-frequent-flyer-miles scam a few years ago. Where basically, the US treasury started making dollar coins and no one used them. To encourage their circulation, they would sell boxes of coins online with free shipping. Munchkins started buying them with credit cards that gave frequent flier miles, then would deposit the coins at their bank and pay off the credit card. Result: millions of frequent flier miles for free.

The US treasury no longer accepts credit cards for online dollar coin purchases.

I would add artificially extending the wait time to purchase. Some time ago I read a study (that I can no longer find) that correlated a decline in consumer satisfaction with an increase in credit based purchases. We no longer pine at the store window for months saving up to buy X. Which probably has two effects: when you finally get it, it feels much more satisfying (like the first meal after starving for a week is probably the best meal you have ever had), also, in the three months it takes you to save up to buy a super-left-handed-water-redehydrator, you might have the chance to use one at a friend's house and realize you don't really like it.

My top three satisfying purchases (which happen to all be vehicles) were all acquired after protracted waiting periods, one of which was nearly three years.

But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being, and who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

If only it were a line. Or even a vague boundary between clearly defined good and clearly defined evil. Or if good and evil were objectively verifiable notions.

If B, C, D, and E throw A overboard then C, D, and E are in a position to throw B overboard and any argument B, C, D, and E can come up with for throwing A overboard is just as strong an argument as C, D, and E can come up with for throwing B overboard. In fact, with fewer pirates an even split would be even more advantageous to C, D, and E. So B will always vote for A's split out of self-preservation. If C throws A overboard he will end up in the same situation as B was originally; needing to support the highest ranking pirate to avoid being the next one up for going overboard. Since the second in command will always vote for the first in command out of self preservation he or she will accept a split with zero coins for themselves. Therefore A only has to offer C 1 coin to get C's vote. A, B, and C's majority rules.

In real life I imagine the pirate who is best at up-to-5-way fights is left with 100 coins. If the other pirates were truly rational then they would never have boarded a pirate ship with a pirate who is better at an up-to-5-way fight than them.

Welcome to the Earth where ethanol is made from corn and environmentalists oppose nuclear power.

I find this to be a very attention grabbing comparison, so much so that I had to re-read this post 5+ times before I could see the forest through the trees (or tree as the case may be).

The reason these two examples strike me so is that I once held both of the underlying beliefs (ie that corn ethanol is bad and so is nuclear power). While I reversed both of these beliefs many years ago (prior to discovering HPMOR and lesswrong) I now see them as "belief as attire" (tree huggers think nuclear is bad, I'm a tree hugger, therefore I think nuclear is bad) and "password guessing" (why is corn ethanol a bad idea?... thermodynamics....Gold Star!)

After gathering more information about these two "controversies" than can be gathered from Mother Jones or Popular Mechanics, I firmly support nuclear power expansion and think it is quite insane that we don't make more ethanol from corn. I would be happy to support my positions, the former would be rather concise, the later would be considerably longer, so I'll save it until asked.

Perhaps this would have been less distracting:

Welcome to the Earth where 46% of Americans believe in creationist origins of humans and only 15% believe in evolutionary origins of humans.

Not directly related to the book, but a question I've been thinking about lately is: If I don't feel any desire to raise children and I believe it would have a strongly negative impact on my quality of life, are there any reasons why I should still consider doing so? Either moral reasons or self-interested ones (ie. the possibility that I'm wrong about the net utility to me). Another factor is that it's quite likely that I could end up in a long-term relationship with a (female) partner that does want children, and refusing could either result in the end of the relationship or a decrease in the partner's life satisfaction.

Resistance to herbicide doesn't present an obvious fitness benefit to a wild hybrid, but not being eaten by bugs certainly does. How would said pesticide affect bee populations if all the wild relatives of a given GMO crop now produced its own pesticide?

I agree that could become a problem.

Admitting that I am at best a fledgling rationalist, I think its unreasonable to believe that GMOs are safe. Why does one believe that they are? Because researchers paid by or funded by the company that own the products have yet to find that they are unsafe. I'm not suggesting a big conspiracy or anything, but cognitive biases are not trivial to overcome. But the belief that they are inherently safe because all we did was move some genes around is naive considering the current knowledge base of DNA.

What do you think is an potential health hazard? Since GMO DNA is not fundamentally different from any other DNA. On that level I dare say our understanding is quite suffice. What might pose as a potential health risk is if we introduce genes that are exotic in the respect that the code for something that have never occurred in a our diet and have strange properties.

How about looking at it this way, P(not eating GMO food is bad for me)=0, P(eating GMO food is bad for me)>=0. GMO offers me (personally) no utility (U=0)so is U<P if (P>=0 )?

Yeah sure, I get your point. But that goes for anything you do in your life. That which you reap form GMO probably greater than that you reap just using breed plants (pun intended).