I 95% agree with this argument.
The one exception I'd make is... I think you under-estimate Behe. He already had a paper debate with Ken Miller, a professor flush with accolades, where Behe argued that the TTSC descended from the flagellum and Miller argued for the reverse.
Additional research conducted after their debate seems to support Behe. Now granted, Miller really should have known enough to realize that an adaptation for parasitizing complex plants would not have evolved before complex plants, themselves, did. But he didn't and Behe score...
[block]<quote>"There are also a host of other well-respected exceptions to free speech, like shouting "fire" in a crowded theater."</quote>[/block]
The case that this quote came from was overturned 40 years ago. If you intend to continue using the analogy, please read the attached link first. It makes a good argument for retiring the phrase.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/
Scheduling issues fixed. Please let me know if you're coming on the new date. (Oct 1st)
Gwern:
"Remember how heritability works. If environments improve, genetics will explain more and more of variance. It's Liebig's barrel. Shared-environment in the USA is very small."
I'm not sure that this can be assumed true (and forgive me if the point is addressed elsewhere. I have mostly only read this comment). If someone is phenylketoneuric, improved environment will eliminate what would otherwise be a profound difference between them and their cohort.
Harsh environments tend to accentuate differences, including genetic differenc...
What's our standard for intelligence? Evolution has, with a planet and a few billion years, produced many, many things that humans have not yet been able to replicate. Or which we can't replicate efficiently. That's starting to change. But a process that can outperform a few billion people with a few thousand years of accumulated knowledge is still pretty formidable.
I <i>do</i> think that there are many people in the biological sciences who portray evolution as being more 'stupid' than it is. And that is a problem beca...
I really do like dxu's "If you harm me greatly, the universe will end" or something similar in Parseltounge, though. (Since it will end with or without Harry's intervention, this is still true.) It seems the most elegant solution and would buy time to implement some other solution. hm. This system ate my previous post.
I'll have to rewrite it.
While this might be a little deus ex machina for Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry can create a doppleganger of himself. He's recently learned more complex transfigurations. Dumbledore had access to the Philosopher...
Here's my idea, which I've posted as a review on FF.net. Harry has advanced transfiguration. The Philosopher's Stone can make transfiguration permanent. Harry can bring life to dead things. This is very close to Harry being able to create copies of himself, which would surely be attractive to Harry. The question, then, is; when did Harry first realize this capacity?The possibility of creating a body double might very well have been enough to have persuaded Dumbledore to let Harry use the Philosopher's stone, which he seems to have access to. Or Harry might...
"We should put more trust in larger scale organizations who are doing exploring, like GiveWell, and pool our resources."
I wonder about the notion of scalability, because with any information provider there's the possible issue of corruption. Is it better to have a large organization which is easy to track? (Goodwill and the Red Cross seem to give their CEOs pretty high salaries, considering that they're charities.) Or is it better to have a system which is more robust to corruption and tunnel vision due to multiple redundancies? Do larger organiz...
"Simplest; The goblins, and wizard society just do not approve of outright theft, even from muggles, and there are magics that will reliably mark stolen goods"
This makes a lot of sense. In a society where theft from even most wizards should be theoretically pretty easy, blanket 'anti-theft' measures seem most workable. Which, of course, implies that ownership is an intrinsic property of matter in the wizarding verse. Ayn Rand would squee.
Alternative; HPMOR is a sometimes a sideways critique of the Rowling universe, and should, perhaps, sometimes ...
I feel like the most likely implementation, given human nature, would be a castrated genie. The genie gives negative weight to common destructive problems. Living things moving at high speeds or being exposed to dangerous levels of heat are bad. No living things falling long distances. If such things are unavoidable, then it may just refuse to operate, avoiding complicity even at the cost of seeing someone dead who might have lived. Most wishes fizzle. But wishing is, at least, seen as a not harmful activity. Lowest common denominator values and 'thin skul... (read more)