Slavoj Zizek has talked a lot about the missing term in Rumsfeld's taxonomy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x0eyNkNpL0#t=4m20s

I'm sure there is modern art that is bullshit. There may also be modern art that isn't. (There may even be ways to look at a single artwork and say that it's bullshit on one dimension, but great art on another dimension.)

"Modern art is either a noble activity, or bullshit." <= If there is some noble and useful aspect to modern art, then this is a false dichotomy.

| rich people have to buy sculptures made of human dung just to keep up.

This explanation of modern art seems incomplete. For many artists now, bleeding edge art is an exercise in "conceptual" problem solving and game-playing. (For discussion see, e.g., Kosuth 1969.) The economic forces described by Bell/Pinker do put selection pressure on which art gets distributed, displayed and, to a small extent, produced. But to describe these pressures without some reference to the noble and useful productions behind them seems to imply the common error of dismissing modern art as a bluff, a bullshit or some other mostly-useless activity.

since most of them have incoherent explicit metaethics

Is there a coherent metaethical theory specified in a single document somewhere on the Internet? Or does the theory have to be compiled from multiple blog posts? I guess I'm not sure what you're talking about...

thanks for the link to videolectures.net

The full quote is even better:

"That's the way Max Power is, Marge. Decisive. Uncompromising! And rude!"

Would you all please recommend books on many-worlds? I liked The End of Time but I thought the treatment of MWI was too cursory.

Andrew W.K. (musician)

He's outside of your field but is a breakout in his own field. He's open minded and sensitive to argument. But he seems to believe in some kind of weird solipsism. Talking with Andrew W.K. would let you expound upon your materialism and reductionism. You would also reach well beyond your geek readership to the armies of slightly confused, self-conscious, college educated Americans called 'hipsters'---a lot of these people are standing around waiting for the next movement to happen, and your ideas could be very seductive to them.

Finally, Andrew W.K. would probably do it. Despite acting like a badass, he is fundamentally a nerd (a music nerd) and I think he would respect you and try hard to understand you. He also seems to have the intelligence and honesty for arguments about future technologies.

Andrew W.K. article in the New York Times

Kevin Kelly.

He has some interesting singularity opinions.