I still see martial arts and athletics existing, extrapolation from our present situation. Ignoring artificial handicaps and rules, these could well end up being status symbols (depending on the economic system) with people who have the resources to be able to juggle planets being seethingly envious of those rich bastards who can afford bodies and cerebrums strong enough to juggle stars.
Civilizations based on the irrational revelations of prophets have proven themselves to be more successful and appealing over a longer period of time than any rationalist society to date.
Depends what you mean by "based on" (and to a lesser extent "prophet" if you want to argue about North Korea, China and the old USSR). People seem to prefer, for example, America over Iran as a place to live.
...As we speak, the vast majority of humans being born are not adopting, and never will adopt, a rational belief system in place of religion. Ra
I don't know whether DFW is different to the people I know who attempted or commited suicide, or if I'm different to Franzen, but I didn't feel those sorts of emotions when a friend killed herself or my dad was in hospital on a pill overdose. I've got depression and have occasional suicidal urges, so maybe I assume they're like me and were just suffering from anhedonia and pessimism about their future enjoyment of life rather than anything to do with people they know. I feel bad that I didn't realise and couldn't have tried to help in some way, but more in that I would rather it not have happened rather than feeling ashamed and betrayed.
When I saw the title, I thought this post would be about rationalist Phoenix Wright fanfiction. Quite possibly that would lead to Phoenix leading a campaign for legal reform due to their stupid "Three day trial, guilty until another is proven guilty, no chain of custody laws" legal system, or at least having that incompetent judge fired.
The obvious response is to include in the trigger warning a statement for any sufficiently advanced intelligence or humans with philosophical reservations about imagining other conscious beings that the story includes suffering, descriptions of suffering, and people reflecting on the suffering of others in detail.
I get the problem with (2), although mostly because I haven't thought about quantum mechanics enough to have an opinion, but (1) is no more dogma than "DNA is transcribed to mRNA which is then translated as an amino acid sequence". There are lots of good reasons to investigate the actual likelihood of the null and alternative hypotheses rather than just assuming it's about 95% likely it's all just a coincidence Of course, until this becomes fairly standard doing so would mean turning your paper into a meta-analysis as well as the actual experiment, which is probably hard work and fairly boring.
What about Futurama? Or is that not suitable because, as a comedy, it's more cynical and brings up both the way the future would be somewhat disturbing for us and that it's likely our descendents would be more interested in only reviving famous historical figures and sticking their heads in museums.
The comic Transmetropolitan also brings up the issue of cryogenics "revivals" effectively being confined to nursing homes out of our total shock at the weirdness of the future and inability to cope. It's an interesting series for transhumanists, given ...
...The idea that you are alive “now” but will be dead “later” is irrational. Time is just a persistent illusion according to relativistic physics. You are alive and dead, period. A little knowledge is a dangerous etcetera. For one, it's like saying that relativistic spacetime proves New York isn't east of LA, but instead there are NY and LA, period. For another, if he really believed this then he wouldn't be able to function in society or make any plans at all.
Ditto a meat replica But aren't you always a meat replica of any past version of you? If he feels t
To my mind the issue with copies is that it's copies who remain exactly the same that "don't matter", whereas once you've got a bunch of copies being tortured, they're no longer identical copies and so are different people. Maybe I'm just having trouble with Sleeping Beauty-like problems, but that's only a subjective issue for decision making (plus I'd rather spend time learning interesting things that won't require me to bite the bullet of admitting anyone with a suitable sick and twisted mind could Pascal Mug me). Morally, I much prefer 5,000 i...
Surely Mill and the like can be seen as having some influence on liberalism? I certainly don't think our current society is so bad as to be comparable to the Nazis or USSR.
I'm also a little unhappy with your characterisation of both Nietzsche and Alexander. For one, Nietzsche's link to the Nazis was more due to his proto-nazi sister and brother in law who edited and published The Will to Power, using his name and extracts of his notes to support their political ideology. I also think Alexander wasn't so bad for his time. True, imperialism isn't a good thin...
As someone who actually does have ADD, I'd like to point out that if you take amphetamines often you need to pay more attention to dental hygene. Amphetamines inhibit saliva production (presumably this has something to do with its effects on appetite) which can promote cavities if you skip brushing your teeth. Since it can give you dry mouth, maybe a good way to ensure you eat is to make a nice soup so you'll eat it when you feel thirsty? If that doesn't work (I've never needed to try it) then maybe drinking milk instead of water could be good since at least you get some nutrition out of it (although being South Australian I do come from a culture where iced coffee is supposedly more popular than coca cola)
So why is bisexuality so common in women? Why don't you think female bisexuals are lesbians in denial, or under duress to sleep with women? I just don't see how women who have sex with both men and women enjoy it but men who have sex with both men and women are clearly just keeping up appearances.
I think the difficulty is that in English "You" is used for "A hypothetical person". In German they use the word "Man" which is completely distinct from "Du". It might be easier to parse as "Man should_Raemon maximize Raemon's preferences, but of course man should_Matt maximize Matt's preferences."
On the jargon itself, Should_X means "Should, as X would understand it".
I think you're just being parochial in your assumption that having an orange for a head is a "bad" thing.
Can you imagine the horror of a universe filled with people eternally yearning for oranges as heads, but being unable to do so because of your actions? That would make you history's greatest monster.
I'm tangentially reminded of the khepri from Perdido Street Station, a fantasy race who are described by humans as having the body of a human but a giant scarab beetle in place of a head.
They, of course, consider this an absurdly parochial description, and instead describe humans as having the body of a khepri and the head of a shaved gibbon.
Exactly, but I think the parodistic element is important as well. We expect (both from all the similar stories about genies and all the less wrong posts about what genies can be trusted) that he made a seemingly useful wish that backfired, presumably in a humourous manner (like how "The building explodes and your elderly mum is blown into the sky" is humourous, in a slapstick manner). We think he's going to ask for something he wants, but instead gets something he doesn't want, when he instead asks for something he doesn't want and gets it.
Also, ...
Given that "Why did the chicken cross the road?" is considered the prototypical joke, anti-humour is pretty popular. You may say that a man with an orange for a head is more inherently funny than a chicken, but I would refer you to D Zongker 2006
Hang on a minute though
1 box then 2 box = $1,001,000 1 box then 1 box = $1,000,000 2 box then 2 box = $1,000 2 box then 1 box = $0
$2,002,000 divided by 4 is $500,500. Effectively you're betting a million dollars on two coinflips, the first to get your money back (1-box on the first day) and the second to get $1000 (2-box on the second day). Omega could just use a randomizer if it thinks you will, in which case people would say "Omega always guesses right, unless you use a randomizer. But it's stupid to use one anyway."
Where p is the probability o...
Filamentous prokaryotes, unicellular eukaryotes: Meh, so what.
Now I don't know about fliamentous prokaryotes, but according to Pharyngula the introduction of mitochondria allowed eukaryotes to have much larger genomes. As mitochondria contain nothing but the essentials to generate ATP, the cell has enough power to synthesize many different proteins and RNA strands, allowing a big and complex genome. This both increases the rate and searchable area of evolution, and makes it possible for multicellular eukaryotes to evolve. From Lane and Martin (2010):
...
Yes, like all strategies it depends on the economic, geopolitical, and technological situation you find yourself in. If the enemy is willing to depopulate the land so that they can colonise it, then of course you're not going to be able to win through non-cooperation but if they need you as workers then there comes a point where your willingness to sustain losses is so great that in order to blackmail you into submission they have to expend so many resources and destroy so much of their potential labour force that it's not worth doing. That is, unless thei...
According to Peter Watt's blog toxoplasmosis doesn't actually reduce fear in rats, but instead causes the odor of cat urine to activate sexual arousal pathways as well as fear pathways. The overall effect causes them to approach the smell of cat urine.