In the absence of other evidence, could you not use some sort of complexity measure to estimate that, if our universe is being simulated, the simulating universe is more likely to have simpler laws than more complex ones? (And maybe even that having no simulating universe--meaning our universe is not a simulation--is even simpler, and therefore more likely?) But I have no idea what the actual difference in probabilities would be, if you could.

You're right, cake would have been more appropriate. :) (Except I love pie way more.)

Well, people usually enjoy yummy food even if they have no, uh... co-eating attraction? to the person they're eating it with. Something like "co-eating attraction" could exist, maybe there are people out there who have that, where they experience an arousal of their gustatory desires in response to another person, but I don't think that's typical. (I hope it's clear that what I'm talking about is different from the quite common phenomenon of food being more enjoyable when other factors, such as the company, ambiance, etc. are also enjoyable.)

Sexual attraction, on the other hand, is a common thing, and people's enjoyment of sex is often strongly related to their attraction to the person they're having sex with. Of course, it's also possible for some people to enjoy sex without being at all attracted to the person they're having sex with, but that's not the typical scenario, is it? If I tried really hard for a long time, maybe I could learn to enjoy sex with a woman despite being exclusively androsexual, but I'm not at all confident that I could.

So yes, sex can be non-attractional like pie, but it's more commonly thought of as being strongly attractional. It's that attraction part that my weirdtopia doesn't have. People in my weirdtopia could still enjoy sex, but why would they when they've got pie, I mean wire-heading?

My sexual weirdtopia is that the majority of people self-modify (using some sort of technology) to eliminate their sexual attractions and romantic attractions. They still feel other kinds of love and affection, and they still desire closeness with others. They might choose to enjoy pleasures* as intense as sex together with someone they love, but it's more like people eating delicious pie together; it's not driven by attraction. Sexual and romantic love only remain to a minority of people who chose not to follow the trend.

(*Intense pleasures delivered via a little light wire-heading, perhaps, but not to the level that would cause you to ignore the rest of life.)

It seems to me that you need to do more than just prefer immortality for all. Harry's happy thought is not just that he wants people to stop dying, but that he has a great deal of hope--confidence, even--that it will happen, one day.

Sometimes players like to feel they've stymied the DM, for instance by using a loophole to bypass a whole series of obstacles and jump straight to the win. As DM I would sometimes set up situations like that, hoping that they would think of the loophole, and then acting all chagrined when they did. :) But of course the win came with complications of its own, which led to the main plot I was actually trying to get to. (Or if they don't win, I'd have another way to get them there.) Anyway, the point is that it can be fun for the players to feel like they have a big impact on the plot. And hey, sometimes they actually do--players going off on tangents has led to some really cool plots that I had not planned for. Like when my plan was for them to defeat some druglords, but the swordmage decided to get addicted to the drug instead.

Some strangely common childhood beliefs:
Everyone except you is a robot
Your life is like the Truman Show

In the "Probability" section, you say:

Suppose you start out 85% confident that the one remaining enemy soldier is not a sniper. That leaves only 15% credence to the hypothesis that he is a sniper.

But in the next section, "The Problem of Priors", you say:

In the example above where you're a soldier in combat, I gave you your starting probabilities: 85% confidence that the enemy soldier was a sniper, and 15% confidence he was not.

Seems like you swapped the numbers.

Potential scenarios:

1: Alfred and Bob really do support the same agenda, but Alfred thinks Bob's tone makes him unpersuasive.

1. Alfred pretends to support Bob's agenda, but is just a concern troll.

2. Alfred is open about disagreeing with Bob's agenda, and directs his criticisms at Bob's tone rather than engaging with Bob's actual argument.

I interpret the opening sentence of that page as referring to scenarios 2 and 3, in that order:

sometimes by Concern trolls and sometimes as a Derailment

Here's some more stuff from that page which seems to describe scenario 3:

If you tread on someone's toes, and they tell you to get off, then get off their toes. Don't tell them to "ask nicely".

And:

some men label any feminist thought or speech as hostile or impolite

On that page I don't see much reference to scenario 1, which is what you seem to be talking about.

In my experience scenarios 2 and 3 are where tone arguments most often come up and are objected to.

HonoreDB created a way to embed polls here instead of using karma.