the questions where this seems to be most pronounced are mathematical questions that are close to my area of expertise (such as whether P = NP)

On a tangential note, exactly how close is this to your area of expertise? In my experience it tends to be mathematicians who are in related areas but don't actually work on complexity theory directly who insist on being agnostic about P vs NP - almost all complexity theorists are pretty much completely convinced of even stronger complexity theoretic assumptions (eg, I bet Scott Aaronson would give pretty good odds on BQP != NP).

I'm not entirely sure how tangential this is, as it seems to suggest that there may be some sort of sweet point of expertise (at least on this question) - any layman would take my word for it that P != NP, most non-CS mathematicians would refuse to have an opinion and most complexity theorists are convinced of its truth for their own reasons. I guess this might be something that's unique to mathematics, with its insistence on formal proof as a standard of truth, can anyone thing of anything similar in other fields?

from a retributive perspective I expect any punishment to be proportional to the mental harm caused to others by the crime, which once again is small in comparison to the potential lifespans here.

Depends, if the crime is murder how do you count the harm caused by ending someone's near-infinite life?

I'm not sure what the effects on deterrence would be, though.

I haven't fully worked out my theory of deterrence, but the crude first approximation, as briefly discussed here, is that the disutility to the criminal of the punishment should be greater than the utility they received from committing the crime, adjusted for things like probability of getting caught.

Germany, NRW, Gütersloh

At least the first part could be said word-by-word for modern-day astrophysics, except that this is socially accepted and the guys and gals doing it are (in most cases) being paid for (and even the people seeing fundamental knowledge over the universe as goal in itself will agree that there are far more important things to divert workforce to)

I don't want to conclude that lottery might be rational, but I don't think it is self-evident that the right way for deciding between different probability distributions of utility is to compare the expectation value. We are not living a large number of times, we are living once (and, even if we did, bare summated value would neglect justice).

Seconded. It seems to be a rather unfortunate video game meme in itself that MMOs (WoW particularly since it somewhat defines the genre currently) Massively reward time spent over skill. No amount of grinding low level content will make you capable of taking down say the Lich King in heroic mode (both skill- and gearwise) and to claim otherwise just shows that the extent of the knowledge of the person making the claim is limited to a single South Park episode. The most "celebrated" players are exactly the people who master the most difficult content first without the benefit of shared tactics (and usually with the highest gear handicap), not the the first guy who kills a billion sewer rats (even if there were such an Achievement).

It has been said by WoW developers responsible for generating new high-difficulty content that most of the challenge come from the fact that the best players are much, MUCH better than the average player (even more so that actual player community is aware of) that making content which is not trivial to the top guilds but is also beatable for the average joe has become somewhat impossible without certain gimmicks. Certainly, you can become say the richest player on your server just by investing massive amounts of time (though actually manipulating the Auction House seems nowadays a better strategy than grinding), but that just means that you'll be known as the guy who spent the most time gaming the AH (we actually have just such a player on our realm). If anyone think that's the game rewarding you for time spent instead of skill, I seriously suggest they spent a little more time researching the subject before pontificating on it.

Finally I apologize for the slightly combative tone of my first post, but I hope it's an excusable reaction, especially on this site, to a nearly "accepted wisdom" that doesn't really even survive the slightest scrutiny.

And that great mathematical analysis is being directed at solving meaningless made-up problems that generate no value for the world. It's pure consumption, zero production. Yet it's complicated, goal-oriented consumption, it feels like doing work, and hence scratches the productive itch for many people...without actually doing any good in the world.

It's a powerful opiate (a drug which makes the time pass pleasantly and users wish to use all the time, as opposed to psychedelics which are used occasionally and make the rest of your life better). Which, I believe, makes it on the side of evil not of good.