That there is reason to believe that it is "relatively easy" (say if we survive x-risk and get a good singleton within a million years) to colonize billions of galaxies. That makes the expected (ignoring possibility of discovering new useful physics, creating universes etc) hedonic utility of x-risk reduction up to some 9-orders of magnitude greater than I had previously thought.
In general: an unhealthy lifestyle. In the relevant context the overwhelming majority of people die of diseases when relatively old (and not accidents or violence).
Other than that: suicide is often underrated - it is often the main non-disease cause of death for males.
(Eg when checking the stats for my own demographic I had about a 6.55% risk of death the next 30 years. Out of this some 10% were from suicide, 5% from accidents and only 1.5% from infectious diseases but over 50% from malignant neoplasms and circulatory system diseases.)
Useful statistics: ht...
I was assuming you meant something like "willing to go against the dominant norms in one's society" by it, which is close related to Openness.
I'd expect those people joining/starting new religions to be more open, thus the operalization of your hypothesis in terms of big5-Openness. There should probably be studies on smaller religions, such as new age, which might aptly be called new.
For some reason I've never understood consequentialist philosophers also often/usually collapse that cardinal ranking into the right (usualy one) action and all the other wrong actions, see this. Presumably they wouldn't worry too much about this problem.
"Weirdness" is closely related to a high score in the psychological trait openness in the big5.
According to this meta-analysis the correlations between religiosity and openness are somewhat mixed:
"while Openness is negatively related to religious fundamentalism (weighted mean r=−0.14, P<0.01) and, to some extent, intrinsic-general religiosity (r=−0.06, P<0.01), it is positively related to measures of open or mature religiosity and spirituality (r=0.22, P<0.0001)."
It seems you are talking about high-functioning psychopaths, rather than psychopaths according to the diagnostic DSM-IV criteria. Thus the prior should be different from 0.03. Assuming a high-functioning psychopath is necessarily a psychopath then it seems it should be far lower than 0.03, at least from looking at the criteria:
...A) There is a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others occurring since age 15 years, as >indicated by three or more of the following: failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful beha
Nice post with much interesting material.
I wonder when I read the following:
"Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy has a highly successful approach for breaking habits, which requires only a very subtle alteration to this process. You notice that you are biting your nails...."
Do you know of any studies on this, or could you link me to some other source of further reading? (eg on the specifics of the method, on the evidence for them, whether there are any high-quality meta-reviews, etc)
Here's a review of meta-analyses on CBT:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735805001005
Generally, to me, a cross-linking dedicated x-risk-forum, a literature list and perhaps also a wiki seem like useful things which don't already exist.
There are several small organizations which are created by one person and limited to a small website that nobody reads.
Seems like a good idea to write a discussing post gathering the names and links to the websites of such groups (or persons), as well as more well-known groups, aiming to get a comprehensive list. In addition to being useful in itself such a list could provide a starting point for people t...
I'm curious about your musings on the connection between masturbation and risk-taking. Would it be mediated by testosterone levels?
I've heard several people mention the idea that frequent masturbation would lower testosterone levels. But after a very brief search, I found claims that no studies supporting such a relationship exists, and a study (admittedly with few subjects) which failed to find any effects from sexual activity on blood plasma testosterone levels. Know any results to the contrary?
Nice post. It seems like a good summary of important results from happiness science, with interesting ideas about how to increase one's social skills added. Some comments:
So which personality traits tend to correlate most with happiness? Extroversion is >among the best predictors of happiness,22 as are conscientiousness, >agreeableness, self-esteem, and optimism.23
I'm surprised that you don't mention the trait neuroticism, which in many studies has the strongest correlation with happiness. (see eg) In general, neuroticism and extraversion are far...
Some support for hypothesis 4 (assuming a correlation between status and age):
Not only do studies show that fluid intelligence decreases with age but the psychological trait Openness to experience also declines with age. Openness is related to characteristics like curiosity, independence of mind and broad interests, which should facilitate the possibility of having an "intelligent conversation".
Although the hellish world scenario seems unlikely it might be important to consider. At least according to my own values things like being confined to children's books and being injected with heroin would contribute very little negative utility (if negative at all) compared to even 1 in 1000 of enduring the worst psychologically possible torture for, say, a billion years.