I would also like to know for next year. I have four older siblings on my father’s side, and two on my mother’s, and only spent any home time with one (from my mother’s side). So, I answered 6 for older, but depending on whether this was a socialization or uterine environment question, the best answer might have been either 1 or 2 for older.
randallsquared
Karma: 572
Especially if the builders are concerned about unintended consequences, the final goal might be relatively narrow and easily achieved, yet result in the wiping out of the builder species.
Most goals include “I will not tolerate any challenges to my power” as a subgoal. Tolerating challenges to power to execute goals reduces the likelihood of acheiving them.
I have seen people querulously quibbling, “ah, but suppose I find everything a user posts bad and I downvote each of them, is that a bannable offense and if not how are you going to tell, eh?” But I have not yet see anyone saying, Eugine was right to downvote everything that these people posted, regardless of what it was, and everyone else should do the same until they are driven away.
Ah, but it’s not clear that those are different activities, or if they are, whether there’s any way in the database or logs to tell the difference. So, when people “quibble” about the first, they’re implying (I think) that they believe that in the future someone might be right to downvote everything someone posts, because that person always posts terrible posts.
Part of the reason this is coming up is a lack or perceived lack of transparency as to exactly what patterns “convicted” Eugine_Nier.
In fact, people experience this all the time whenever we dream about being someone else, and wake up confused about who we are for a few seconds or whatever. It’s definitely important to me that the thread of consciousness of who I am survives, separately from my memories and preferences, since I’ve experienced being me without those, like everyone else, in dreams.
Russia is a poor counter-argument, given that the ruler of Russia was called Caesar.
It’s more that my definition of identity just is something like an internally-forward-flowing, indistinguishable-from-the-inside sequence of observer slices and the definition that other people are pushing just...isn’t.
Hm. Does “internally-forward-flowing” mean that stateA is a (primary? major? efficient? not sure if there’s a technical term, here) cause of stateB, or does it mean only that internally, stateB remembers “being” stateA?
If the former, then I think you and I actually agree.
Moby Dick is not a single physical manuscript somewhere.
“Moby Dick” can refer either to a specific object, or to a set. Your argument is that people are like a set, and Error’s argument is that they are like an object (or a process, possibly; that’s my own view). Conflating sets and objects assumes the conclusion.
People in the rationality community tend to believe that there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit to be had in thinking rationally, and that the average person and the average society is missing out on this. This is difficult to reconcile with arguments for tradition and being cautious about rapid change, which is the heart of (old school) conservatism.
What’s your evidence? I have some anecdotal evidence (based on waking from sleep, and on drinking alcohol) that seems to imply that consciousness and intelligence are quite strongly correlated, but perhaps you know of experiments in which they’ve been shown to vary separately?
Haha, no, sorry. I was referring to Child’s Jack Reacher, who starts off with a strong moral code and seems to lose track of it around book 12.
Not every specific question need have contributed to fitness.
You may, however, come to strongly dislike the protagonist later in the series.
I think “numerically identical” is just a stupid way of saying “they’re the same”.
In English, at least, there appears to be no good way to differentiate between “this is the same thing” and “this is an exactly similar thing (except that there are at least two of them)”. In programming, you can just test whether two objects have the same memory location, but the simplest way to indicate that in English about arbitrary objects is to point out that there’s only one item. Hence the need for phrasing like “numerically identical”.
Is there a better way?
3.1 ounces of very lean meat
That’s a very specific number. Why not just “about 3 ounces (85g)”?
We can imagine a world in which brains were highly efficient and people looked more like elephants, in which one could revolutionize physics every year or so but it takes a decade to push out a calf.
That’s not even required, though. What we’re looking for (blade-size-wise) is whether a million additional people produce enough innovation to support more than a million additional people, and even if innovators are one in a thousand, it’s not clear which way that swings in general.
subtle, feminine, discrete and firm
Probably you meant discreet, but if not, consider using “distinct” to avoid confusion.
If you prefer suffering to nonexistence, this ceases to be a problem. One could argue that this justifies raising animals for food (which would otherwise never have existed), but it’s not clear to me what the sign of the change is.
...but “argh” is pronounced that way… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOlKRMXvTiA :) Since the late 90s, at least.
May is missing from Birth Month.