I am doing a Youtube playlist of transhumanist songs (with a particular quote from each song). Since there's not a lot of these, I also put songs that are only somewhat transhumanist (frankly I'm shocked at the ratio of transhumanist songs to love songs). So do you have suggestions for songs that are somewhat related to transhumanism (and/or rationality) (not necessarily in English) please?

For example, here are the ones that I have put in the playlist so far:

Turn It Around by Tim McMorris

Have you ever looked outside and didn’t like what you see

Or am I the only one who sees the things we could be

If we made more effort, then I think you’d agree

That we could make the world a better place, a place that is free

Another one is Hiro by Soprano: a song about someone who's saying what he would do if he could travel back in time. (it’s in French but with English subtitles) (it's inspired from the TV show Heroes which I also recommend).

Tellement de choses que j’aurais voulu changer ou voulu vivre (So many things that I would change or live)

Tellement de choses que j’aurais voulu effacer ou revivre (So many things that I would erase or live again)

The classic Imagine by John Lennon

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace…

The Future Soon by Jonathan Coulton

Well it's gonna be the future soon

And I won't always be this way

One that I saw recommended on LW: The Singularity by Dr. Steel (it's my favorite!)

Nanotechnology transcending biology

This is how the race is won

Another that I saw on LW: Singularity by The Lisps

You'd keep all the memories and feelings that you ever want,

And now you can commence your life as an uploaded extropian.

Singularity by Steve Aoki & Angger Dimas ft. My Name is Kay

We’re gonna live, we’ll never die

I am the very model of a singularitarian

I am a Transhuman, Immortalist, Extropian

I am the very model of a Singularitarian

Another World by Doug Bard

Sensing a freedom you've never known,

no limitation, only you can decide

Transhuman by Neurotech

The mutation is in our nature

Transhuman by Amaranthe

My adrenaline feeds my desire

To become an immortal machine

E.T. by Katy Perry ft. Kanye West

You're from a whole other world

A different dimension

You open my eyes

And I'm ready to go

Lead me into the light

Space Girl by Charmax

She told me never venture out among the asteroids, yet I did.

Agreed that making up the story only tells so much about the narrator. But so far we're only considering the narrator.

Believing the story is what will change you. Until the day the kid knows any better, he will seriously believe that the universe has a punishment system that kills people for staying up late. If he's upset at his little brother, he may try to trick him into not sleeping, hoping for him to be eaten. This may or may not poison their future relationship.

In a world where the kid grows up without being told the monster wasn't real, he will tell the same story to his own kids. The first scenario will repeat itself, but this time the adult will mean it.

Edit: I just noticed this scenario contradicts my previous argument, where I suggested the narrator was more to blame than his gullible listeners. I feel more inclined to think otherwise now.

What transhumanist and/or rationalist podcast/audiobook do you prefer beside hpmor which I just finished and really liked!!

It would be convenient if, when talking about utilitarianism, people would be more explicit about what they mean by it. For example, when saying "I am a utilitarian", does the writer mean "I follow a utility function", "My utility function includes the well-being of other beings", "I believe that moral agents should value the well-being of other beings", or "I believe that moral agents should value all utility equally, regardless of the source or who experiences it"? Traditionally, only the last of these is considered utilitarianism, but on LW I've seen the word used differently.

I try to use language economically, there's a precision trade-off. On a spectrum from centralized to decentralized, do you think it's more centralized now than it was in the middle ages?

Presidential candidate interview setup that would have more of an impact:

Candidates present their program to a panel of experts (mostly economists, some foreign policy experts). The experts are then asked to give a probability of various future events (unemployment goes up/down, enter a new war, etc.) in 1, 2, 4, 10 years after the election, conditional on either candidate being elected. Some of the question are "standard", but some come from a poll of the public (or more exactly of people watching the show). Then after the election, the same experts are brought back and their past predictions are evaluated. The worst performers aren't invited back for the next pre-election show.

I'm like 60% sure that its not that article I had in mind, but the idea is the same (incremental increases in rationality don't necessarily lead to incremental increases in winning), so I feel pretty satisfied regardless. Thanks!

The concept of an index fund is a tiny little piece of each and every thing that's on the market.

This is not true. An index fund holds a particular index which generally does not represent "every thing that's on the market".

For a simple example, consider the most common index -- the S&P 500. This index holds 500 largest-capitalization stocks in the US. If you invest in the S&P500 index you can be fairly described as investing into US large-cap stocks. The point is that you are NOT investing into small-cap stocks and neither you are investing in a large variety of other financial assets (e.g. bonds).

ordinary investors should use low fee index funds

Two questions:

• Doesn't this ignore the very important question of "which indices?"

• Is this advice different from the "hold a sufficiently diversified portfolio" one?

"I have been to several yoga classes. The last one I attended consisted of about thirty women, plus me (this was in Ireland; I don’t know if American yoga has a different gender balance).

We propose two different explanations for this obviously significant result.

First, these yoga classes are somehow driving men away. Maybe they say mean things about men (maybe without intending it! we’re not saying they’re intentionally misandrist!) or they talk about issues in a way exclusionary to male viewpoints. The yoga class should invite some men’s rights activists in to lecture the participants on what they can do to make men feel comfortable, and maybe spend some of every class discussing issues that matter deeply to men, like Truckasaurus.

Second, men just don’t like yoga as much as women. One could propose a probably hilarious evolutionary genetic explanation for this (how about women being gatherers in the ancestral environment, so they needed lots of flexibility so they could bend down and pick small plants?) but much more likely is just that men and women are socialized differently in a bunch of subtle ways and the interests and values they end up with are more pro-yoga in women and more anti-yoga in men. In this case a yoga class might still benefit by making it super-clear that men are welcome and removing a couple of things that might make men uncomfortable, but short of completely re-ordering society there’s not much they can do to get equal gender balance and it shouldn’t be held against them that they don’t.

The second explanation seems much more plausible for my yoga class, and honestly it seems much more plausible for the rationalist community as well."

A RESPONSE TO APOPHEMI ON TRIGGERS. Part IV.