Please help me find:

"When the Only Constant is Change," Negotiation, Vol. 8, No. 12, December 2005

Ployart, Robert E., Jonathan C. Ziegert, and Lynn A. McFarland. “Understanding Racial Differences on Cognitive Ability Test in Selection Contexts: An Integration of Stereotype Threat and Applicant Reactions Research." Human Performance 16 (2003): 231–259.

Social influence effects on automatic racial prejudice. By Lowery, Brian S.; Hardin, Curtis D.; Sinclair, Stacey Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 81(5), Nov 2001, 842-855.

Thank you.

Since my expectations sometimes conflict with my subsequent experiences, I need different names for the thingies that determine my experimental predictions and the thingy that determines my experimental results. I call the former thingies 'beliefs', and the latter thingy 'reality'.

I think it's apt but ironic that you find a definition of "truth" by comparing beliefs and reality. Beliefs are something that human beings, and maybe some animals have. Reality is vast in comparison, and generally not very animal-centric. Yet every one of these diagrams has a human being or brain in it.

With one interesting exception, the space of all possible worlds. Is truth more animal-centric that reality? Wouldn't "snow is white" be a true statement if people weren't around? Maybe not--who would be around to state it? But I find it easy to imagine a possible world with white snow but no people.

Edit: What would a hypothetical post titled "The Useful Idea of Reality" contain? Would it logically come before or after this post?

I'm not exactly sure how it applies here (it seems to fit between many of the items), but I put myself out there on CouchSurfing and have already hosted 2 sets of people. While there's nothing systematic about the learning experience, there are a lot of cool benefits to choosing your guests wisely. Want practice with a foreign language, host guests who speak that language. Want to learn about faraway places that you want to visit, pick people from those places. Want to have company as a motivation to cook/clean, seek out people who are arriving very soon. Want company doing activities in town that you've never gotten around to? Want to look at your location with fresher eyes? Want to learn foreign cooking? Want an impromptu guitar lesson (or a jam session)? There's all kinds of low-hanging fruit here!

Sure, there's the concern that you may end up as an axe-murder victim on the front page of the local newspaper, but we all know that strangers are usually less dangerous than friend/family. And the site has some pretty good vetting procedures in place.

I wanted to post on 7/23, when I finally decided to go for it, but now I actually know a bit about what I'm talking about. It's really great to host people. Maybe I'll try to see the world from the other side of the divide some time.

Some interesting things I've learned that surprised me:

• Living in a big city like Paris is about as expensive as living in the middle of nowhere like Fairbanks, Alaska
• Americans don't think about algae when we talk about seafood
• There is a movement of people dedicated to food called "microbiotics" that you'll have to read about for yourself for full effect
• Not being embarrassed is a great first-step for learning a foreign language

Yesterday I started an one-month plan. My course load in college this semester is going to be much heavier than I am used to- and I have the textbooks sitting at home, and I found one of the teacher's syllabus online. Based off of that, I'm planning on teaching myself some of the over-arching themes and concepts (up to the first exam is my goal) in three subjects, so I don't feel as stressed trying to learn it all at once in class. I figure I'll be able to enjoy the classes more without my usual stressing "Am I understanding this? Can I ask a question? I think I understand it, but I know when I get back to my dorm I won't!"

So far, being able to do the work at my own pace has been pretty relaxing, and the subject matter itself (chemistry, biology, Italian)? No problems comprehending it, and little to no stress involved.

That's a good point. In this version, the Avatar doesn't have to be a spiritual Chosen One - he/she could just be genetically lucky the way extremely high-IQ people are in our world.

Edit: However, I think that would defeat the point of fantasy rationalism, and might make the world too mundane. It would, however, be really interesting to see Aang go to the Spirit World and try to convince whatever spirits originally created the Avatar to make another one, possibly one with more raw intelligence to be more effective. (And then maybe deal with the fallout if this new Avatar is not as moral or noble as he is - FAI analogy, anyone?) The point of most of these rationalist fanfics is that one good rationalist can cause some Big Changes to their world, right? Multiple Avatars would be a Big Change.

It was just, in general, the thought that each family of traits has different times when they are most useful, and (at least in theory), a master of the art could bring the right ones to bear at those times.

Discuss this poll by replying to this comment.

Nature exerts selective pressure against organisms that have a poor perception of their surroundings, but there is no equivalent selective pressure when it comes to morality. This is the reason why the difference between the human eye and the lion eye is not as significant as the difference between the human intuitions about morality and the lion's intuitions about morality.

If evolution made the perception of the surroundings as wildly variable as that of morality across different species, I would have made an argument saying that we should not trust what we perceive and we should not bother to learn how our senses work. Similarly, if evolution had exerted selective pressure against immoral organisms, I would have agreed that we should trust our intuitions.

I am saying evolutionary morality as a whole is an invalid concept that is irrelevant to the subject of morality.

Actually, I can think of a minutely useful aspect of evolutionary morality: It tells us the evolutionary mechanism by which we got our current intuitions about morality is stupid because it is also the same mechanism that gave lions the intuition to (quoting the article I linked to) 'slaughter their step children, or to behead their mates and eat them, or to attack neighboring tribes and tear their members to bits (all of which occurs in the natural kingdom)'.

If the mechanism by which we got our intuitions about morality is stupid, then we learn that our intuitions are completely irrelevant to the subject of morality. We also learn that we should not waste our time studying such a stupid mechanism.

If Euthyphro's dilemma proves religious morality to be false, it also does the same to evolutionary morality: http://atheistethicist.blogspot.com/2009/02/euthyphro-and-evolutionary-ethics.html