I must say that, in fact, much of the nonprofit sector fits incredibly better into Prof. Hanson’s view of charity as “wasteful signaling” than into the traditional view of charity as helping.

Charity is largely about signalling. Often, signalling has to be expensive to be credible. The "traditional view of charity" seems like naive stupidity. That is not necessarily something to lament. It is great that people want to signal their goodness, wealth, and other virtues via making the world a better place! Surely it is best if everyone involved understands what is going on in this area - rather than living in denial of human nature.

This sort of brings to my mind Pirsig's discussions about problem solving in ZATAOMM. You get that feeling of confusion when you are looking at a new problem, but that feeling is actually a really natural, important part of the process. I think the strangest thing to me is that this feeling tends to occur in a kind of painful way -- there is some stress associated with the confusion. But as you say, and as Pirsig says, that stress is really a positive indication of the maturation of an understanding.

Some claims that Foucault's "Madness and Civilization" was a terrible example of scholarship from the mindhacks blog: http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/fifty-years-of-madness-and-civilisation/ http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/a-history-of-the-history-of-madness/

Some fiction....

1. The Color of Magic (Discworld series) -- Terry Pratchett -- pretty funny, top British author. The first book (this one) seems to be unmatched by at least the next five in the series, but there are like 30 in the series total, so...

2. Neutron star -- Larry Niven -- a collection of short stories in Larry Niven's fascinating future.

3. Fire upon the deep -- Vernor Vinge -- just the best picture of a future filled with GAI's that I have read.

4. Neuromancer -- William Gibson -- incredible action/cyberpunk story, incredible characters. Gets pretty boring at the end though.

Some nonfiction...

1. Madness and civilization -- Michael Foucault -- exquisite historical/philosophical writing. This book I think shows an example of what it means to be a real scholar.

2. Road to reality -- Roger Penrose -- an interesting attempt to delve into the exact sciences of physics/mathematics in one, singular drive. Not recommended without extensive prior experience in math/physics, since unfortunately it doesn't explain so much as shed new light on things you might have already learned. There needs to be more books like this.

3. Die nigger die -- H. Rap Brown -- this book is written with such passion and intelligent revolutionary spirit, it really had a major impact on me when I read it. (Brown was an important figure in the civil rights movements of the 60's. )

When I moved back to the US from Japan, I made an ordered list of the books I had to determine which ones to ship home. This is the top ten:

• Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
• Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery
• Taleb, The Black Swan
• Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
• Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
• Thomas & Turner, Clear and Simple as the Truth
• Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
• Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
• Wolferen, the Enigma of Japanese Power
• Chabon, The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

AFAIK there's currently no major projects attempting to send contact signals around the galaxy (let alone the universe). Our signals may be reaching Vega or some of the nearest star systems, but definitely not much farther. It's not prohibitively difficult to broadcast out to say, a 1000 lightyear radius ball around earth, but you're still talking about an antenna that's far larger than anything currently existing.

Right now the SETI program is essentially focused on detection, not broadcasting. Broadcasting is a much more expensive problem. Detection is favorable for us because if there are other broadcasting civilizations, they will tend to be more advanced, and broadcasting will be comparatively easier/cheaper for them.

Edit: If you're doing directional broadcasting, it's true that you can go much further. Of course, you are simply trading broadcasting distance for the amount of space covered by the signal. Wikipedia says that Arecibo broadcasted towards M13, around 25,000 light years away. That's about the same distance as us from the center of the Milky Way.

I was on Robert Wright's side towards the end of this debate when he claimed that there was a higher optimization process that created natural selection for a purpose.

The purpose of natural selection, fine-tuning of physical constants in our universe, and of countless other detailed coincidences (1) was to create me. (Or, for the readers of this comment, to create you)

The optimization process that optimized all these things is called anthropics. Its principle of operation is absurdly simple: you can't find yourself in a part of the universe that can't create you.

When Robert Wright looks at evolution and sees purpose in the existence of the process of evolution itself (and the particular way it happened to play out, including increasing complexity), he is seeing the evidence for anthropics and big worlds.

Once you take away all the meta-purpose that is caused by anthropics, then I really do think there is no more purpose left. Eli should re-do the debate with this insight on the table.

(note 1) (including that evolution on earth happened to create intelligence, which seems to be a highly unlikley outcome of a generic biochemical replicator process on a generic planet; we know this because earth managed to have life for 4 billion years -- half of its total viability as a place for life -- without intelligence emerging, and said intelligence seemed to depend in an essential way on a random asteroid impact at approximately the right moment )

Note that one could just as easily come up with a two page article about a "Futuristic Life Meme" which represents the cryonics supporters' sense of being threatened by death.

The analysis of a new, emerging science deserves critique. From what I can tell, this particular critique is essentially ad-hominem, in that it attempts to attack a belief based on the characteristics of the individuals, rather than their arguments.

It trivializes the fact that there are reasons for being reluctant to invest in cryonics. Lastly, this writing conflates cryonics skepticism with unwillingness to invest.

Thanks for reading it and giving me feedback. I'm interested in your claim:

It seems to me that many of these "Level 1 savants" as you call them are quite capable of fitting their understanding with the rest of reality.

Well, they can fit it in the sense that they (over a typical problem set) can match inputs with (what reality deems) the right outputs. But, as I've defined the level, they don't know how those inputs and outputs relate to more distantly-connected aspects of reality.

Yet many of these people who are bad teachers have a very nontrivial understanding -- else I don't think this would be such a common phenomena, for example, in academia.

I had a discussion with others about this point recently. My take is basically: if their understanding is so deep, why exactly is their teaching skill so brittle that no one can follow the inferential paths they trace out? Why can't they switch to the infinite other paths that a Level 2 understanding enables them to see? If they can't, that would suggest a lack of depth to their understanding.

And regarding the archetypal "deep understanding, poor teacher" you have in mind, do you envision that they could, say, trace out all the assumptions that could account for an anomalous result, starting with the most tenuous, and continuing outside their subfield? If not, I would call that falling short of Level 2.

A lot of the questions you pose, including the definition of the Level 2 formalism, are addressed in the article I linked (and wrote).

I classify those who can do something well but not explain or understand the connections from the inputs and outputs to the rest of the world, to be at a Level 1 understanding. It's certainly an accomplishment, but I agree with you that it's missing something: the ability to recognize where it fits in with the rest of reality (Level 2) and the command of a reliable truth-detecting procedure that can "repair" gaps in knowledge as they arise (Level 3).

"Level 1 savants" are certainly doing something very well, but that something is not a deep understanding. Rather, they are in the position of a computer that can transform inputs into the right outputs, but do nothing more with them. Or a cat, which can fall from great heights without injury, but not know why its method works.

(Yes, this comment seems a bit internally repetitive.)