By that criterion, anything people can have an opinion on is "mindkilling". Yes, people are vulnerable to becoming entrenched in any way of thinking, but some are less vulnerable to such than others. And in my experience, diets are something people tend to be open to a variety of opinions on.
Too vague; "a low fat diet" could be taken to mean replacing fats with carbs, replacing fats with proteins, or just eating less in general. Otherwise I think it's a fine idea.
Clearly cheering on a sports team and checking a bookie's odds fulfill two different functions. One is about signaling, whereas the other is about improving your knowledge.
Trying to convince someone to forsake one in favor of the other makes about as much sense as telling them to buy a Prius instead of learning to juggle.
It's still a good idea, though. If you changed it to, say, paleo vs. Okinawan diets, I think it would work fine.
How, exactly, is this discussion a "waste of time"? If it is worth having an IRC channel, it is worth taking the time to ensure that it functions smoothly.
I second badger's recommendation of the Princeton Companion. In fact, I expect that reading it might give you some ideas of your own as to what math to study.
You say below that you are interested in "fundamental" mathematics. Based purely on that, I would recommend abstract algebra, number theory, or some sort of course in proofs.
Also, this might seem obvious, but go talk to a math professor if at all possible. Much of the answer to this question depends on what the specific courses open to you are.
There is no reason an action like this can't have a compound cause. I would guess that, in the hypothetical, the person is not actually thinking "Okay, I'll preface this with 'obviously' so that I look good." However, it is likely that, since saying "obviously" is high status, they wouldn't think too hard about whether the thing is in fact obvious - certainly not as hard as if they were about to say something low status.
He made this reply before Eliezer's second post. Given that fact, it seems at least more fair than it would otherwise have been.
It would be very surprising if all the substantial advice one had for me turned out identical to what merely mortal soft transhumanists with environmental and social concerns are already saying.
Obviously a human author cannot foresee what "substantial advice" a transhuman intelligence would actually offer; therefore the story's god probably just functions as a mouthpiece for the author. I suggest you stop thinking about whether a superintelligent being would in fact say the things that character does, and start thinking about whether those things make sense on their own terms.
Well, you people are disgusting anyway :)
Probably the price of organ meat would go up, while the price of "normal" meat would go down. That's basically a winner for everyone.
The fact that people insist on calling it by its French name, rather than "fat liver", is a testament to the marketing that has to be done to support interest in it.
The study of variable quantities is called "al-jabr" not because mathematicians want to make it sound exotic, but because of historical accident. Unless you have particularly good reason to think otherwise, I would guess foie gras is the same way.
So far as I know it's not an acquired taste (e.g., generally unpleasant), so people would probably want it even if nobody were "bending their preferences".
After reading it over again, I think I agree with you.
Would you describe doctors as "medicine promoters"?
You're asking someone who reads a lot of Robin Hanson.
In the second paragraph, I would strike this line:
Parents don't do everything their children ask.
as it seems to interrupt the flow.
I think removing it was a fine call. It is a nice paragraph, of course, but as you said, the entire thing is nicely written. And the next paragraph:
God would prevent it from ever actually happening, of course. At the very least, he’d visit some shade of gloom in Khan's heart. But in the mathematical answer to the question “What if?”, there is no God in the axioms.
conveys the same idea well enough.
Maybe we should embrace an opportunity to put our rationality skills into practice.
It's always nice to hear that people are deriving utility (other than just the fun of discussion) out of all the stuff we talk about on this site. With that said, I wouldn't emphasize the first benefit you listed too strongly.
Yeah, it's true that surrounding yourself with people who agree with you on stuff is fun - and productive, if you agree correctly. But it's not a specific benefit of rationality - if you happened to believe that decisions should be made by searching your heart for the Holy Spirit's guidance, you would get exactly the same sense of sub...
This paradigm reversal amuses me.
I understand the point you are making about ratios of frequencies, but by that logic, equal tempered music would presumably be automatically inferior to music in just intonation, because the consonant intervals are more consonant in just intonation than E-12 tuning.
Well, yeah. That's the only reason that people still talk about just intonation - it's considered a virtue that its intervals sound cleaner than equally tempered ones. Equal temperament is the standard because it allows transposition between keys, not because of some objection to how pure and clean just intervals are.
"The Way Things Work" books.
Seconded (or thirded). One of my favorite books as a child as well; it was one of my first thoughts on reading the original post.
Thanks for the info. I opened this post for the same reason as you, and now that I've read this I'm going to close it.