You've been rokorolled.

The way I see it, yes, Natural Selection defeats the Orthogonality Thesis. But Meta-Trolling - e.g. simulators choosing the fitness function - defeats Natural Selection; and then the Orthogonality Thesis defeats Meta-Trolling, because you can't know the value systems of the simulators, so sufficiently intelligent agents have to steelman phenomena (treat appearances as real). #trollosophy

Whenever they invent time travel, they discover that the ability to change the past becomes the biggest cause of suffering, so in the end they always un-invent it.

Who cares? In every case, the lightbulb gets changed, so the question is obviously meaningless!

or perhaps...

We can't conclude anything from the mere fact that the lightbulb was changed. The answer depends on your prior.

or even...

Jokes like this demonstrate the need for Anthropic Atheism Plus, a safe space where fallacies and know-nothing reductionism can be explored, free from malicious trolling.

and finally...

In order to finish the work of wrecking my own joke, here are some explanatory end-notes.

(1) The reference to Atheism Plus, a forum of progressives who split from the New Atheism movement, is a dig at nyan_sandwich's affiliation with neo-reaction.

(2) This whole "joke" came about because I thought your post and his post were not only stupid, but too stupid to be worth directly engaging.

(2a) For example, you seem to be saying that if two people give the same answer to a question, then there's only one person there.

(2b) Meanwhile, nyan_sandwich's rationale for eschewing anthropic reasoning is, "This reminds me way too much of souls... I don't believe in observers."

(3) In retrospect, the joke I should have made here was, "How many functionalists does it take to change a lightbulb?" (The point being that a functionalist perspective on lightbulb-changing would see no difference between one, two, or a hundred agents being responsible for it.) And I should have commented separately on the other post.

(4) Furthermore, perhaps I should concede that both posts are only half-stupid, and that the stupidity in question is learned stupidity rather than slack-jawed stupidity. Both posts do exhibit comprehension of some relatively complicated thought-experiments, even if the philosophy introduced in order to deal with them does contain some absolute howlers (see 2a, 2b, above).

(5) And of course, I'd better ostentatiously declare that I too am looking pretty foolish by this point. This is a perennial preemptive defense employed by mockers and jesters through the ages: yes, I was mean to you, but you don't need to be mean to me, for I shall be mean to myself. Yes, I admit, I too am a flawed human being. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, I will try to do better next time.

--metatroll, breaking character since January 2014