I wasn't talking about Hawkings radiation. If I throw matter in a black hole just right, I can get half the mass to come out in low-entropy photons. That's why the brightest objects in the universe are black holes that are currently eating something.

I did some googling, but all I found was that they would be great at cooling computer systems in space.

When you're sufficiently advanced, cooling your systems, technically disposing of entropy, is one of the main limiting constraint on your system. Also if you throw matter into a black hole just right you can get its equivalent (or half its equivalent I forgot which) out in energy.

Edit: thinking about it, it is half the mass.

I like the way that the paper is structured! It contains the clearest motivation for studying logical counterfactuals that I've yet seen.

A possible typo:

"Consider what happens if A() = const Refuse: Then A() != s, and so A() = s implies anything"

I think you left out a "for all s != Refuse" or an equivalent. Actually, I'd just go with "if Provable(A() != s)".

Important typo in the Evidential Blackmail section:

"The researcher, knowing this, would send the message if there was a scandal"

should be

"The researcher, knowing this, would send the message if there was not a scandal"

Dammit, Randall. The first rule of basilisks is that you DO NOT CAUSE THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE TO GOOGLE FOR THEM.

In my opinion the "good stuff" in evans is in chapters 5-12. Evans is a pretty good into book on the modern "theory" of Linear and Non-linear PDEs. Strauss by comparison is a much less demanding book that is concerned with concrete examples and applications to physics. (less demanding is a good thing if the material covered is similar, but in this case its not).

Possibly Strass is overall the better book. And I really dislike Evan's chapter 1-4 (he does not use Fourier theory when it helps, his discussion of the underlying physics of some equations is very lacking, etc). But directly comparing Strauss and Evans seems odd to me. The books have very different goals and target audiences.

If the comparison is evans 1-4 vs strauss then I too would recommend Strauss. And this restricted comparison makes a ton of sense imo.

Do not tempt Eliezer to make the last chapter of HPMOR available only in the event of a positive Singularity.

Positive reinforcement for doing this!

I feel like everyone in this community has ridiculous standards for what the community should look like in order to be considered a success. Considering the demographics Less Wrong pulls from, I consider LW to be the experimental group where r/atheism is the control group.

Ouch. Well, I'm not sure you can say that anymore. I don't envy you your new position as Garden Keeper.