What expert timing, Luke! Just two days ago, I came across the fascinating practice of clicker training for horses - http://www.theclickercenter.com, while reading Kathy Sierra's old blog - http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/03/clicker_trained.html.

My only problem is that I need to train my own behaviour rather than someone else's. I'm going to try to use these techniques on myself, although I'm not sure if that's supposed to work.

...you have to make a conscious effort to keep your ideas about what you want from being contaminated by what seems possible.This is isomorphic to the principle that you should prevent your beliefs about how things are from being contaminated by how you wish they were. Most people let them mix pretty promiscuously. The continuing popularity of religion is the most visible index of that.

-- pg

I can come this Sunday.

Some questions about the site:

1) How come there's no place for a user profile? Or am I just too stupid to find it? I know there was a thread a while back to post about yourself, and I joined LW on facebook, but it would be much easier for people to see a profile when they click on someone's name.

2) What's with the default settings for what comments "float to the top" of the comment list? Not to whine or anything, but I made a comment that got modded to 11 on the last Perceptual Control theory thread, followed up on by a few other highly-modded comments, and a rather fruitful discussion that involved input from someone who had tried some of the "conclusive" demos pjeby linked to. But the thread got buried under the rest.

I have preference for later hours, as in the mornings people tend to be rather sleepy, but I'll go with whatever majority wants.

If you'd like one, we could even do one this Sunday at the usual venue. Anyone else interested?

I am trying to contextualize this discussion, given that my background in rhetoric and ethos is far removed from the background of the author.

So, I'm going to ask this simply (pun intended) to hopefully generate some useful complexity.

Is the goal of this analysis to systematize the implementation of pre-established ethical guidelines, or, as implied by Soulless Automaton's comment, to derive the ethical guidelines themselves?

Also, does this assume that ethics are derived from observing behavior and then selecting the best behavior given observed results? (If so, I would have to suggest most ethical choices are trained into people before they have enough experience to act outside of the ethical systems developed through our history. In effect, is this discussion assuming a tabula rosa that doesn't exist?)

Thanks Yvain, you have inspired me to commit to some important things for the next month. I have written them down.

I promise to write about my achievements here on LW on the 18th July.

When giving a security clearance, for example, you would rather give it to someone who loved his country emotionally, than to someone who loved his country rationally;

Can you clarify how you distinguish between loving one's country emotionally as opposed to rationally?

...voted up for the beauty with which the interpretation of this particular quote, depends on knowing the time in which it was written.