These seem like low probability concerns

• Beck is on the air hours a day, and he has put out about 20 books, with no end in sight. He was a wild-morning radio disc jokey and still uses that bombastic style, and never scrips out what he is going to say. His opponents just cut out tiny samples- the least politically correct stuff, to slam him with. Its very unlikely that Blue team commentators would ever get around to something this serious, when there are far more juicy bits.

• This section mentions Kurzweil enough times (over 10 times), with other names, to make it very clear to anyone that this isn't 'beck's' idea.

• Beck's main 'sciencey' project he constantly promotes, funds, and fundraisers for is a cancer treatment where the patient is injected with metal nano particles that bond to the malignant tissue. The particles heat up under radio waves, bursting theses cells, leaving the rest of the body untouched. I've seen no evidence of other media outlets connecting this project with him, or any mention of this association at all.

It is my prediction that this will be ignored, as his critics have more to gain by ignoring any pro-sciencey Beck association.

You're pretty close to an optimized cryonics sales-pitch for Objectivists.

"Do that and you'll wind up with the universe tiled with paperclips" cracks me up. Even hearing it out of context, its overly familiar, but to a bystander its completely nonsensical. What makes it even better, there is no jargon or uncommon vocabulary that would make someone assume they misheard you, an outsider overhearing this would be forced into a state of complete bafflement. Kind of reminds me that old Lewis Black stand-up about overhearing a girl say "If it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college."

Maybe its all the talk about Unfriendly AI here, but Ellison's story was also my first thought to the question- What if its a bad future?

he was treated the same way most lower class drug users are. They receive no punishment and eventually grow up and do fine in life.

1) I think the op knows that, and maybe what he's saying is more like: isn't that people don't care about drug use, they like their tribal leaders to be "effective" rule breakers. An Obama who never did drugs might be less popular and less cool.

2) I assume you're saying that 'treated the same way' means not caught. Most poor and rich escape being caught, but that is very different than equal treatment once caught.

I can feel this post triggering a little BlueVsGreen thinking habits. Instead I'm going to attempt to stay Bruce Banner, and simply ask for clarification, but if my comments appear frustrated/insulting- please forgive me.

Can someone, OP or otherwise, explain to me, directly, the connection being made between Penn's rant and rationalists loving hedonism? Even if I accept each assertion, the materials don't construct a train-track capable of being traveled for my brain:

• What does Penn's rant have to do with the nature of the goals we choose and should choose?
• Winning short term goals can be destructive to long term goals; I got it. Again though, not seeing the connection to prior prior paragraphs. The seduction of short term, even wanting seemingly human-long(years) instead of generations-long goals. Got it. Important topic. However, again: how does this relate to previous paragraphs of Obama/Penn/society/elites/etc?

My inklings-

• There is a lot of talk about Penn- or is this a hidden discussion of high-utility Obama and HIS hedonistic behavior? Not accusing, but when I supported a color team, I found it difficult to directly associate faults the team leader.
• Am I over analyzing due to repeated pattern-exposure/anchoring to difficult not-how-homo-sapians-were-evolved-to-think bias Articles of Truth+3? Should this instead be taken as a loose interior monologue to explain how one event (the video) sparked a series of associations to bring up a topic worthy of further discussion (devilish attraction of short-term/winnable goals)?

Again, ending topic is very worthy of discussion- but I'm not seeing how it fits together

Edit: fixed link error with a bigger error, then fixed again.

This is a great post full of low investment methods with potentially high payoffs.

Yet, I find the structure of this post to be personally hilarious! My favorite technique/provocation is not listed: randomly matching successful systems(or their principles) into new pairs. While effective, this notion is commonly rejected- that a new combination of old ideas/principles is not new, unworthy of respect, and furthermore can be considered criminal behavior(a violation of intellectual ownership). I find the absence here understandable and even defensible- but the irony of starting the post with a quote from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is too much.

Seems like a lot words to express:

• Akrasia is an adaptive response to conserve energy while in an exploiting hierarchy.

Mental Health

• Just my opinion, but I think for those with anxiety, depression, or habitual negative thinking, measuring aspects of life can be very detrimental. The siren call of self-help pulls on those who feel inadequacy, this is similar, "if I track 'things' I can find what's wrong with me and fix it." But turning a spotlight on one's life without treatment(like CBT), will just provide evidence to feed a bias.

Motivation

• I'm more likely to do a project I'm tracking in detail. I find I vastly overestimate my ability to remember tasks, and even simple charts are great reminders. However, this is very different than the claims that tracking a goal increases motivation. It 'seems' reasonable, but it hasn't worked for me. If anything tracking details of a task I'm unmotivated for makes the problem worse by adding complexity.

Oh, okay, well I've only read Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead. Damn it and here I thought I was being moderately insightful pointing out that theme, but he went and made it the whole plot of a prequel.

Oh well, I still thinks its a rather silly selection for a pre-teen girl.