No matter how obvious your reasoning may appear to you, there is someone out there stupid enough to have thought the contrary. Believe it or not, this series goes a long way towards dissipating my pessimism about the world. My subconscious really believed it is a fact that on average, nature tends to destroy our mortal ambitions, and that's why it is dangerous to Tempt Fate.

I have always known this is a theological outlook, but I tried to deal with it by avoiding thoughts like that rather than marshaling positive arguments against it. After reading this, I consciously understand, to a significantly greater degree, why it doesn't actually make sense to generalize those thought processes for use in reasoning. I like this much better than just intuitively labeling them as low status. Thank you.

The cynical economist's position would be that if utilitarianism leads to good results, and being antisocial leads to utilitarianism, then that is a positive side to being antisocial. For example, English social theories, which have lead to the most progressive societies, is intuitively utilitarian. Only valid to a certain extent, of course, but you might say that if you want to live in a progressive society, then you should be slightly antisocial.

I would also like to know whether this definition of "antisocial" covers the Buddha as well. Moreover, might not having non-mainstream tastes or opinions also be correlated with "antisocial" behavior?

But this is entirely irrelevant to the correctness or incorrectness of utilitarian positions. Tremble all you like, but do the right thing.

Does this pseudocode resemble any particular programming language?

Can I use Rule 110 as an extensional definition pointing to what is arguably the central insight of computation? "Rigorously analyze the relationship between the consequential patterns and initial conditions if, for each row of black and white stones, the next row is arranged such that a black stone is placed beneath a white stone if the stone to the right of the white stone is black, a white stone is placed beneath a black stone if the stones to either side of the black stone are also black, and a stone of the same color is placed beneath the stone in the preceding row otherwise."

I can tell I won't like Bill Joy's article. He can do what he wants to, but I don't see how "humanity" is a good argument against a robotic future. Isn't it a bit presumptuous to assume that all humans are content to remain human, assuming they even like being human all that much?

AAAAARRRGH! I am sick to death of this damned topic. It has been done to death.

I have become fully convinced that even bringing it up is actively harmful. It reminds me of a discussion on IRC, about how painstakingly and meticulously Eliezer idiot-proofed the sequences, and it didn't work because people still manage to be idiots about it. It's because of the Death Spirals and the Cult Attractor sequence that people bring the stupid "LW is a cult hur hur" meme, which would be great dramatic irony if you were reading a fictional version of the history of Less Wrong, since it's exactly what Eliezer was trying to combat by writing it. Does anyone else see this? Is anyone else bothered by:

Eliezer: Please, learn what turns good ideas into cults, and avoid it!
Barely-aware public: Huh, wah? Cults? Cults! Less Wrong is a cult!

&

Eliezer: Do not worship a hero! Do not trust!
Rationalwiki et al: LW is a personality cult around Eliezer because of so-and-so.

Really, am I the only one seeing the problem with this?

People thinking about this topic just seem to instantaneously fail basic sanity checks. I find it hard to believe that people even know what they're saying when they parrot out "LW looks kinda culty to me" or whatever. It's like people only want to convey pure connotation. Remember sneaking in connotations, and how you're not supposed to do that? How about, instead of saying "LW is a cult", "LW is bad for its members"? This is an actual message, one that speaks negatively of LW but contains more information than negative affective valence. Speaking of which, one of the primary indicators of culthood is being unresponsive or dismissal of criticism. People regularly accuse LW of this, which is outright batshit. XiXiDu regularly posts SIAI criticism, and it always gets upvoted, no matter how wrong. Not to mention all the other posts (more) disagreeing with claims in what are usually called the Sequences, all highly upvoted by Less Wrong members.

The more people at Less Wrong naively wax speculatively on how the community appears from the outside, throwing around vague negative-affective-valence words and phrases like "cult" and "telling people exactly how they should be", the worse this community will be perceived, and the worse this community will be. I reiterate: I am sick to death of people playing color politics on "whether LW is a cult" without doing any of making the discussion precise and explicit rather than vague and implicit, taking into account that dissent is not only tolerated but encouraged here, remembering that their brains instantly mark "cult" as being associated to wherever it's seen, and any of a million other factors. The "million other factors" is, I admit, a poor excuse, but I am out of breath and emotionally exhausted; forgive the laziness.

Everything that should have needed to be said about this has been said in the Cult Attractor sequence, and, from the Less Wrong wiki FAQ:

We have a general community policy of not pretending to be open-minded on long-settled issues for the sake of not offending people. If we spent our time debating the basics, we would never get to the advanced stuff at all. Yes, some of the results that fall out of these basics sound weird if you haven't seen the reasoning behind them, but there's nothing in the laws of physics that prevents reality from sounding weird.

Talking about this all the time makes it worse, and worse every time someone talks about it.

What the bleeding fuck.

Bella's character (and most everything else about the story) improves over the course of the book. I also think the narrator of book two probably has more raw likeability than Bella.

Have I understood you properly?

Nope, I guess it's yet another misunderstanding. I have no problem with "I haven't read this and mean to keep it that way", either. It's the part "an improvement on the original" that I (mis)took as passing judgment on the (unread) original.

"She was not Jeffreyssai."

Actually, I have a question: Why do there seem to be no Viharts in fiction? Admittedly, she herself is pretty unique and awesome that way, but I haven't come across even one character displaying that type of intelligent, feminine charisma in any vaguely consistent manner. In fact, there seem to be very few genuinely smart, curious and independent-thinking women in fiction, in contrast to very many who we are TOLD are smart and charismatic. (Some even have the balls to preach that, in reality, intelligence and charisma exclude each other. If I believed that, I'd "come out of the closet" as asexual.)

I hope this is due to my own inexperience. If not, I suspect this is mainly because, like in ancient cultures, over 90% of modern fiction consists of a handful of Great Themes worked and reworked into every story. And these "ready-made art powder, just add water" plot points only have roles reserved for traditional innocent types, self-righteous bitches who exist to force the author's vision of just norms down everyone's throats, their negative stereotypes, femme fatales, etc. However, I personally haven't discovered Vihart-like characters even in creative and original works; not that I've read many of those. I hope our culture, at large, isn't simply unconscious of (or insensible to :( ) this kind of beauty.

Tragically, I just realized that I've encountered no more than a handful of attractive women of any kind in fiction. And that includes none from HPMOR, which definitely isn't recycled gunk. I have read a few chapters of Luminosity. Bella may be an improvement on the original, which I haven't read and mean to keep it that way, but no, she's not particularly charismatic yet. (I must confess, I don't like her at all because she's way too stuffy. That's not a great failing or anything; most people are.)