Did you try GNU Go? That should be hard enough for most beginners.

Side-note, Wikipedia has a nice article on computer-Go; it's gotten a lot better, but still... with all the discussions on AGI on LW, it's sobering to see how difficult even a constrained well-understood domain like Go can be dealt with using today's methods.

Hmmm... I'd say that the problem is formulated in a way that allows for some maths, but in the process loses some of its essence.

For example, the 'proof' only talks about the length of the hypothesis, because that can be easily quantified. However, that does not rule out very short pseudo-explanations like 'god did it' or 'it's magic'. To rule out those, in practice one would need to introduce some non-mathematical language about what language is acceptable -- but that would make it very hard to reason about it mathematically.

Well, then that is, in fact, a method that finds good ideas!

I sometimes use the debonoesque 'lateral thinking' tricks like association with a random dictionary word to come with some creative solution for a problem. I does not work for all classes of problems, but it can be useful.

There are some methods that consistently do not work well for me when trying to find good ideas / solutions; for example, sitting at my desk and looking at the screen.

Collapse is good as well, yes. The only small issue I had with GG&S is how it goes a bit too eagerly from a plausible cause for differences in the world to ruling out any other, say ethnic or cultural influences. The writer may or may not be right about that, but it seemed he was a bit too committed to what he wanted to show. Anyway, only a small thing, the book is great still.

Wow, can't wait for the unknown gems this discussion will bring up!

Anyway, some of my own; these are all non-fiction.

• Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene is such a magnificent book, introducing all the wonderful solutions that evolution has come up with, and the insight that the battle for the 'survival of the fittest' takes place at the level of individual genes (or is at least a powerful model for understanding things)
• Jared Diamonds' Guns, germs and steel which suggests that there are non-racial/non-ethnic reasons for the differences in wealth and power amongst various regions in the world. I think the writer's claims go a bit further than his evidence warrants, but nevertheless a good way to look into this field, and provides a lot of food for thought
• As mentioned already, Hofstadters Gödel/Escher/Bach and The Mind's I (bundle of essays of various writers, redacted together with Daniel Dennett) are playing with all these interesting concepts like conciousness, AI, meta, self-reference.
• Also Richard Feynman's work is fantastic -- the auto-biographic (You must be joking, Mr. Feynman and What do you care what other people think) are inspiring. I plan on going through some of his real physics works (like the Feynman lectures on Physics). Just seeing some of the interviews on Youtube show how well Feynman is able to make both complex and simple things understandable, at all levels; such a towering intellect.
• For computer science stuff, earlier I mentioned SICP, which I am currently re-reading.
• Then, Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming; I have read much too little of it, but it's such a rewarding experience to (slowly!) go through a few pages and finally the 'click' of understanding. I plan to read more of this. Knuth is truly the master of the field of programming and algorithms, and while reading it, I can almost feel how it sharpens my brain.
• Finally, a lot of bad things can be said about pop-psy, but I really liked Dan Ariely's books (Predictably irrational and The upside of irrationality) that show where the classical picture of people being rational, homo economicus, has its limitations, and all the weird biases we have. He has some interesting TED-talks as well.

Elevated burden of proof. As if cryonics demands more than a small amount of evidence to be worth trying.

Well, maybe from a Pascal's Wager's perspective -- but since cryonics cost a significant amount of money and chances of success are, as far as I know, small at best, one could argue that there may be better returns-on-investment elsewhere. One could give money to, say, the SENS Foundation. Or to researchers on brain-uploading, or other such efforts. Their chances of success may not be very big either, but overall it's not clear that the expected-extra-life-expectancy-per-dollar (EELEPD) is worse than that for cryonics.

Superstition produces bad luck

-- Anonymous

Indeed, many of the of the 'zero sum games' we see in reality are actually more like negative sum games, as one man's gain is less than the other man's loss. However, I wouldn't say there's bias for that - in fact, it seems the negative sum is often not recognized. Or?

Regarding the revenge bias, one reason sometimes mentioned for the worth some cultures (past, and somewhat less, present) cultures put on revenge comes from our pastoral past, where protecting your prestige, your honor would be of crucial value, so other will not steal your sheep that you can only loosely guard. The story then goes that the more closely connected a culture is connected to some pastoral past, the more value it will but on vendetta and revenge. Seems somewhat plausible, but hard to proof of course.

Interesting topic, interesting quote. However, I am not sure we should regard the third-world rebels as victims of zero-sum bias -- they might understand that their country would be a better place if people worked together on building it up, but the chances of that happening soon, are rather low.

I'd say it's more of a tragedy-of-the-commons problem, where people are less interested in the negative sum of rebellion or piracy or ..., but are more interested in how much they personally gain. Which is of course not so much different from the developed world on the individual level, the difference being that the developed world has structures that are capable of channeling this in positive-sum directions.

Hmm.. i can't remember the specific reference to Thucydides from the book, and I don't have it handy right now... did the book mention him? I just found the parallel quite interesting.

Regarding the other point, I meant 'aligned with LW themes', that is discusses many of the same things that are discussed here -- and in many cases seems to agree. Not always - but apart from the parallel universe mixups which are a bit... suspect, I got the idea that NS has been lookin at LW (well, OB) and similar sources.