There are few places, and certainly not the US, where too little of society's resources are consumed by politics.

But therefore, in the US at least, action to remove parts of society from politics can be very effective altruism. E.g., the citizen watchdog group NHLA in New Hampshire that targets corporate welfare and other parasitic programs (e.g. the Drug War). They spend very little money (about 40K per year), but have an outsize effect on policy.

nhliberty.org

Less Wrong comes to ManchVegas... I'll have to make one of these when I'm rich and famous.

Does modafinal literally eliminate akrasia for you? I need to get me some of that.

I think that was one factor Yvain mentioned. The other two I think are more damning to the whole idea of rationality as winning.

One is that most people who are successful are rational when they need to be in their field, without having to make a formal study and be rational all the time.

The other idea is that rationality is only a small small slice of what makes you successful, and that there are probably a ton of other factors that help even more.

One idea that Yvain didn't mention (and actually wrote a blog post arguing against) is that maybe rationality is a red queen game. The more you study it, the more tricky your mind gets at rationalizing it's irrationalities. That view is explored here: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2014/06/bias-is-a-red-queen-game.html

I think the lumping of various disciplines into "science" is unhelpful in this context. It is reasonable to trust the results of the last round of experiments at the LHC far more than the occasional psychology paper that makes the news.

I've not seen this distinction made as starkly as I think it really needs to be made -- there is a lot of difference between physics and chemistry, where one can usually design experiments to test hypotheses; to geology and atmospheric science, where one mostly fits models to data that happens to be available; to psychology, where the results of experiments seem to be very inconsistent and publication bias is a major cause of false research results.

Buy this one for urban environments... it shows that you're not afraid of anything:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/f108/?itm=126623447805custom0t-shirts_%26_apparel%26custom1hats_scarves_belts_%26_more%26id0f108&rkgid=1844237170&cpg=ogpla&source=google_pla&adpos=1o2&creative=50718226725&device=c&matchtype=&network=g&gclid=Cj0KEQjw0ZauBRDOnoGQ2PTb9YoBEiQAQ6m_7BzWFvSEFsXhhP8kj260lo2WR3bEuAtlyd0MpIUIfYAaAlXP8P8HAQ

Yvain wrote an article on this: http://lesswrong.com/lw/9p/extreme_rationality_its_not_that_great/

What do you mean 'we,' Paleface?

Mostly because "we" are young -- the median LWer aged between 25 and 34 makes more money than the median American in that age range, and the median American LWer in that age range makes even more, but only 50% of LWers are older than 26 and only 25% are older than 31.

There is an Indian mosquito species whose larva eat other mosquito larva. Developing more variants (e.g. cold hardy) of that species could suppress other mosquitoes to a degree.

To generate political support for exterminating mosquitoes that bite people, we should spread a rumor that besides killing 725,000 humans each year, this insect also threatens a few cute Zimbabwe lions.