He thought he knew that there was no point in heading any further in that direction, and, as Socrates never tired of pointing out, thinking that you know when you don't is the main cause of philosophical paralysis.
-- Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea
I don't see the necessity. Can you expand on that?
I think you're right not to see it. Valuing happiness is a relatively recent development in human thought. Much of ethics prior to the enlightenment dealt more with duties and following rules. In fact, seeking pleasure or happiness (particularly from food, sex, etc.) was generally looked down or actively disapproved. People may generally do what they calculate to be best, but best need not mean maximizing anything related to happiness.
Ultra-orthodox adherence to religion is probably the most obvious example of this principle, particularly Judaism, since there's no infinitely-good-heaven to obfuscate the matter. You don't follow the rules because they'll make you or others happy, you follow them because you believe it's the right thing to do.
My reading of that sentence was that Kaj_Sotala focused not on the happiness part of utilitarianism, but on the expected utility calculation part. That is, that everyone needs to make an expected utility calculation to make moral decisions. I don't think any particular type of utility was meant to be implied as necessary.
If you pay me just one penny, I'll replace your 80% chance of living for 10^(10^10) years, with a 79.99992% chance of living 10^(10^(10^10)) years.
I've read too many articles here, I saw where you were going before I finished this sentence...
I still don't buy the 3^^^3 dust specks dilemma; I think it's because a dust speck in the eye doesn't actually register on the "bad" scale for me. Why not switch it out for 3^^^3 people getting hangnails?
The point is to imagine the event that is the least bad, but still bad. If dust specks doesn't do it for you, imagine something else. What event you choose is not supposed to be the crucial part of the dilemma.
It is better to have an approximate answer to the right question than an exact answer to the wrong question.
-- John Tukey
Multicellularity seems to have evolved multiple times independently
This isn't really true. Only organisms with mitochondria developed multicellularity. Mitochondria are the hard part.
eusociality developed in aphids, thrips, mole rats, termites, and at least 11 times in Hymenoptera
Similarly, it would be more informative to say that Hymenoptera developed a particular pattern of chromosomal inheritance once, and that led to 11 different types of eusocialism.
This isn't really true. Only organisms with mitochondria developed multicellularity. Mitochondria are the hard part.
Multicellularity is widely viewed as a unique attribute of eukaryotes, somehow made possible by the origin of a more complex cellular architecture and, without question, with the assistance of natural selection. However, it is difficult to defend this assertion in any formal way. Complex, multicellularity has only arisen twice, once in animals and once in vascular plants. One might add fungi to the list, although the number of fungal cell types is not large, and there is some question as to whether multicellularity was ancestral to the phylogenetic group that contains animals, fungi, and slime molds. In any event, the probability that two or three origins of multicellularity simply arose by chance within eukaryotes as opposed to prokaryotes is somewhere on the order of 1/4 to 1/2, well below the general standards of statistical validity. Of course, many other eukaryotes are capable of producing a few different cell types, but the same is true for prokaryotes, some of which produce radically different cell morphologies.
"We have tried to do this in a hypothesis-independent manner because there is nothing more dangerous in life than a good hypothesis."
--Kári Stefánsson, deCODE Genetics
"Although the first solution is the one usually given, I prefer this second one because it reduces the need to think, replacing it by the automatic calculus. Thinking is hard, so only use it where essential."
--Dennis Lindley, Understanding Uncertainty
How does everyone feel about posts not consisting of info, advice or reflection, but only of request for help or the pointing out of problems and difficult questions? So far on LW the former kind of posts have been dominating, with the general feel, inherited from OB, that posts should be high-quality contributions from the poster to the community. But could there also be room for posts just consisting of "I have this problem (relevant to our topic) and I need help" or straight-forward questions without much complementary reflection from the poster?
Maybe this latter kind of material would be better placed in comment form in threads intended for this kind of thing (such as the recent The ideas you're not ready to post ). Maybe there could even be a "General Help and Advice Thread". This kind of set-up would keep the quality of posts at a high level - but would also mean that potentially good problems/questions would get little attention, buried away in obscure corners of the site.
On several occasions I've wanted to introduce people to Eliezer's writings (and OB/LW aswell), but due to its disorganized and heavily-dependent-on-other-material-in-a-great-messy-web-like nature, I have feared that just a "hey check this guy out" would most likely just result in the person reading a few random essays, saying "yeah I guess that's pretty interesting" and then forgetting about it. Right before LW launched, I seem to recall Eliezer talking about how the LW architecture would allow better organization and that maybe he would do something to make his material more accessible. I haven't heard anything since then, but if something like that would be done I think that would be great.
(sorry if I'm being rude by focusing on just Eliezer's material when we're discussing the greater LW picture, but this is just a situation that I've found myself in a few times and I think it's still relevant to this topic. I also second ciphergoth's point about the elephant)
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-- John Maynard Smith (The Causes of Extinction, 1989)