Yvain's salmon analogy has drawn some criticism. I have to agree that it is not a perfect analogy. Analogies rarely are perfect. The best course, I find, is to offer a choice of analogies and let people choose the one with the most resonance. Pick one from this list:

Photoshop the Queen with a salmon day. We don't need to surgically alter the Brits. Just have a bit of fun with their national symbol. If insulting the Queen doesn't work, try Lady Di.

Tell an ethnic joke day. Stereotyping can be funny and is never physically harmful. If an ethnic group is capable of making fun of itself, then everyone should be able to make fun of them. It is all just in fun.

Use a bad word day. Isn't it ridiculous that people get offended at the use of certain four letter words - particularly those denoting body parts or normal biological functions. Isn't it clever to make people angry when they are unable to justify their anger rationally?

Let it all hang out day. And some people are offended not just by hearing about body parts, but also by seeing them. The occasional practice of public nudism (weather permitting) will help to make the world a better, less neurotic, place.

Use racial epithets day. Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never hurt you. Some people, though, don't seem to realize this. It is time to confront their irrational viewpoint that speech should not be completely free.

Desecrate a religious symbol day. Don't draw Mohammed - he already has a day. Instead, burn a Torah, feed a sacremental host to rats, pull the pins out of a voodoo doll. Lets show some imagination here. What can we do in Delhi to a sacred cow? Catapults can be fun.

Piss in someone's vegetable garden day. Some people have the uninformed impression that human urine is unsanitary. Not true, it is actually a sterile medium. People in India sometimes consume small quantities of their own urine much as people in the West drink herbal teas. Its time to dispell this anti-urine superstition.

Barbecue a cat day. Confront dietary prejudices head on, and also lend a hand to the Humane Society in addressing the cat overpopulation problem. Actually killing and butchering the cats publicly provides a more vivid demonstration. And as an added benefit, leading people to care less about kittens will make the internet a more productive environment and may even increase contributions to the SIAI.

I have to admit that if I actually encountered one of the protests on this list in real life, my initial reaction would be amusement. Repetition might change that to annoyance. But only one of those ideas actually offends me. Which one? I won't tell. YMMV.

"Say a random Christian kicked a Muslim in the face, and a few other Muslims got really angry, blew the whole thing out of proportion, and killed him and his entire family. This would be an inappropriately strong response, and certainly you could be upset about it, but the proper response wouldn't be to go kicking random Muslims in the face. "

Several times you seem to equate speech or illustration with a punch in the face. They don't seem interchangeable to me. The American founding fathers made a strong case for protecting speech, they argued that people should be able to say what they would without fear of violence in return. I'm pretty sure they never contemplated that face punching should be protected. I see the a bright line between the two behaviors.

Some of the people passing around pictures of Mohammed surely mean to insult. Others are demanding that a bright line between speech and physical harm be observed by all. They are appealing to more reasonable muslims to "police their area" and part of the plan is draw out the muslims who need policing.

I'm not defending that as an optimal plan but I sure think the bright line is a swell idea.

I'm slightly embarrassed. I actually thought I had been around 6 or 7 years old, but now found out that I had been nine. I found it out by "altruistically" wishing for world peace, which the all-powerful Santa should have been able to provide. I only got a game called Game of Peace (Looking it up right now, I found out that it was published in 1993, so I can't have been younger than 9 at the time). That's when I definitely stopped believing (Although my parents could have probably convinced me that Santa existed, but wasn't all-powerful, if they had bothered).

The oldest of six children, I felt good about being initiated into my first adult secret society. Had I been one of the younger children I might have resented older siblings who'd held out on me.

I was also a little saddened that the world might be a little less magical than I'd assumed.

On the whole I was cool with it.

I agree. When I hear people say the equivalent of "I can't self-modify" I always want to ask "what have you tried so far," and "how long have tried for." Normally that answer is not much(only a few approaches) and not very long. It often comes from lack of incentives and a belief equivalent to "thats just the way I am."

No, the key here is to distinguish between actual psychic stress not used for status maneuvers and actual psychic stress used for status maneuvers.

How about the classic "murder pill" test? If you could self-modify to no longer experience the psychic stress, would you?

I suspect the psychic-distress-via-salmon and rape victims would answer yes, whereas the Muslims would answer no.

I would like to believe the Klansman (I was considering changing this to Klansperson, but political correctness is probably inappropriate in this situation) doesn't feel anything like real suffering when he sees an interracial couple, but I have no evidence for this except my desire to sweep his feelings under the rug so I don't have to use them in ethical calculus.

For example, I am strongly pro gay rights and gay marriage, but I admit that seeing public displays of affection between gays gives me a negative visceral reaction more than the same displays among straights do. If I could self-modify to remove this feeling I'd do so in a second, but given that I can't self-modify it seems like this preference is worthy of utilitarian respect; eg insofar as they want to be nice to me, gay people should avoid PDAs around me when it's not too inconvenient for them (and if gay people have the same feeling in reverse, straight people who are nice should avoid hetero PDAs around them).

I have no reason to think I can model Klansmen well, but when I try, I imagine their feelings around an interracial couple as being a lot like my feeling around gay people having PDAs.

"You could argue Brits did not choose to have their abnormal sensitivity to salmon while Muslims might be considered to be choosing their sensitivity to Mohammed. But this requires a libertarian free will. "

Absent free will I don't understand why you'd be more critical the supposed offending parties than the offended ones.

"And if tomorrow I tried to "choose" to become angry every time someone showed me a picture of a salmon, I couldn't do it - I could pretend to be angry, but I couldn't make myself feel genuine rage."

Some people born and raised in America who freely take up Islam in adulthood and proceed to take offense at such things as pictures of Mohammed which they previously would not have taken offense at. One may not directly choose to take such offense but it's a consequence of choices and one may choose otherwise.

Out of a billion muslims I'd bet there are many who are not deeply offended when outsiders print such pictures. The choice to take less offense is there.

Growing up I had a strong and deeply ingrained aversion to homosexuality. I could feel physically ill at the description or depiction of men kissing, for instance. The aversion was so strong that I identified it as an instinctive part of my nature. Over time however I chose to discount the aversion. I was able to do so. Presumably you would not have thought gays should have refrained from acts which offended me.

I'm confident muslims are also capable of discounting irrational beliefs. If one didn't think people could do this then what would be the point of lesswrong?

"Now imagine I believe the Earth is flat, and you believe the earth is (roughly) spherical. Those two beliefs are mutually contradictory. Clearly, one of us is mistaken."

Nitpick: . The given beliefs are contradictory but not exhaustive. At least one of the disputants is mistaken, but both could be wrong. The earth could have another shape.

I think theist and atheist can reasonably be defined to be contradictory and exhaustive. Agnostics do not affirm an alternate opinion about whether God exists, they're simply undecided.

"It is, of course, totally unclear whether Moravec, Kurzweil, and their supporters are correct. Will robots become massively intelligent? Will human beings become highly intelligent cyborgs or upload our minds fully into machines and thereby live forever? Whether they are correct is probably less important than the fact that the faithful who believe they are has a growing membership. " - Robert M. Geraci

I am not surprised see someone assigning low probability to a technological singularity. But low importance?

This is not an anti-rational prescription like the Glenn Beck quote I offered, but I found it a striking example of irrational bias.