Given mandatory donation, it seems reasonable to me that opting out of it would be standard part of the paperwork involved with signing up for cryonics.

This is one of my, perhaps the, best justification for being mostly vegetarian rather than strictly vegetarian.

Well, but unlike the atom-cooling example, becoming a strict vegetarian doesn't cut off your communication with non-vegetarians.

I suppose being just mostly vegetarian might make a vegetarian lifestyle seem more approachable to others, but I'd have to see evidence to go either way on that question. Off the cuff, it also seems plausible that being a strict vegetarian would make the possibility of strict vegetarianism seem more attainable to others.

The language-learning case is an interesting example. There are some things you can do.

One is that, if you're extraverted, instead of studying Swahili by hunching over books of grammar, you can study Swahili by talking to cute Kenyan exchange students. This way, the actual process of learning itself is enjoyable. (Mostly. You'll still be embarrassed frequently, and it's in your interest to turn the embarrassment dial up further by asking them to correct your grammatical errors.)

Another is that you actually can make the decision to study Swahili "in aggregate," rather than every night. Just go to rural Tanzania for six months and don't take any books or English-speaking friends with you, keep your internet access to a minimum.

This strategy has worked reasonably well for me in learning Spanish, although my Spanish is still pretty unidiomatic. I still speak English often with my wife, and I work online.

To generalize the principles a bit, if you can find a fun way to achieve your approved-of goal, a way that you enjoy, you're more likely to do it; and if you can find a way to make the decision once instead of numerous times, you're more likely to do it.

Squared differences is just what is involved when you are calculating things like standard deviation

Never mind that; just parse the damn phrase! All you need to know is what a "difference" is, and what "to square" means.

Why, I wonder, do people assume that words lose their individual meanings when combined, so that something like "squared differences" registers as "[unknown vocabulary item]" rather than "differences that have been squared"?

What is the cipher here?

• We actually live in hyperspace: our universe really has four spacial dimensions. However, our bodies are fully four dimensional; we are not wafer thin slices a la flatland. We don't perceive there to be four dimensions because our visual cortexes have a defect somewhat like that of people who can't notice anything on the right side of their visual field.

• Not only do we have an absolute denial macro, but it is a programmable absolute denial macro and there are things much like computer viruses which use it and spread through human population. That is, if you modulated your voice in a certain way at someone, it would cause them (and you) to acquire a brand new self deception, and start transmitting it to others.

• Some of the people you believe are dead are actually alive, but no matter how hard they try to get other people to notice them, their actions are immediately forgotten and any changes caused by those actions are rationalized away.

• There are transparent contradictions inherent in all current mathematical systems for reasoning about real numbers, but no human mathematician/physicist can notice them because they rely heavily on visuospacial reasoning to construct real analysis proofs.

Not that I know of offhand. I'm vastly curious as to whether I could beat it, of course - but wouldn't dare try to find out, even if there were a simulating drug that was supposedly strictly temporary, any more than I dare ride a motorcycle or go skydiving.

The AI tells me that I believe something with 100% certainty, but I can't for the life of me figure out what it is. I ask it to explain, and I get: "ksjdflasj7543897502ijweofjoishjfoiow02u5".

I don't know if I'd believe this, but it would definitely be the strangest and scariest thing to hear.

Since when do RC Catholics venerate rationality?

ETA: I have tried and failed to find, through Google, any mention of a special connection between RC belief and rationality. Possibly they accept rationality, but that they venerate it is a much stronger claim. Could someone please give a ref and not just downvote?