If pain were 'programmable', rather than delete it altogether, how about a shorter half-life ? Your finger still hurts when you stick it in the fire, but for hours or minutes afterwards rather than days ?

Why is daily posting a shibboleth ?

I would still read the site if EY posted once a week

Eliezer, For systematic approach to creativity you need to inform yourself about Genrich Altshuller's TRIZ - the easiest way to do that is to have a look at the TRIZ journal at www.aitriz.com (Altshuller's deepest book that has been translated from the Russian into English is 'Creativity as an Exact Science').

And, on reflection, since you want to build an autonomous optimiser in the form of self-improving AI - and now I understand your concern that it might become a paperclip maximiser since autonomy includes the ability to select ones own goals, and why would they be such as to permit us to pursue our human goals - you might want to look at another optimising system, Eli Goldratt's 'Theory of Constraints'

HTH

Boarding: 1. Rear window seats first, then middle windows, then front 2. Everyone asked to take their seat and sit down without stowing their hand luggage 3. Everyone asked to stow their luggage 4. Repeat for aisle seats

Reverse procedure for disembarking

"Fair division" is 1/3 each, but if I were in Zaire's position - ie particularly hungry, or greedy, or more in need of food generally - I would ask the others to voluntarily give to me some of their "fair share" now, in return for specified (or unspecified) favours in the future.