Infanticide of one’s own children should be legal (if done for some reason other than sadism) for up to ten months after birth. Reason: extremely young babies aren’t yet people.
I would recommend against expressing this opinion in your OKCupid profile.
Using Noom Weight Loss Coach for integrated food logging, workout tracking, and weight loss plan management. I’m more aware of the quality of the food I’m eating and of how calorie content and exercise are contributing to my weight loss goals. Highly recommended.
Thanks, I’m always looking for sneaky ways to reduce inferential distances with my Facebook friends. My subversive anti-faith sermon posted with this article was:
On Christmas day, 1861, Lincoln’s ability to be skeptical of his own intuitions helped him avert war with Britain.
It is easy to assert, without evidence, what we believe, hope, or wish to be true. It is more difficult, as our human biases compel us to dismiss dissenting voices, to properly doubt, to give reality a fair hearing, and to come to a conclusion at odds with who we were the day before.
EDIT: Typo correction; Lincoln ≠ 1961.
I find I have very little access to my own motivation algorithms, so that things I think I want to do and things I actually end up doing do not always align very well. External deadlines (as opposed to self-imposed ones) are some of the only things that consistently motivate me, but they don’t work very well for personal goals.
but somehow miss the intended target site.
...and miss rather badly, at that.
The Aliens solution seems a bit harsh, though probably effective. I estimate P(wart comes back|wart nuked from orbit) < .1
Radical phalangectomy; it’s the only way to be sure.
I was thinking that the downvotes were a reaction to the last sentence, though like prase I had a hard time figuring out what you were asking for. I’m reading “capable of forming empirical conjectures for mathematics” as capable of using evidence to make reasonable guesses about the answers to math problems and “discover the principle of mathematical proof” as figure out that mathematics principles can be proven. Is this close to your intended meaning?
My experience with similar groups bears this out, although I think I’d loosely construe “obviously useful” as things that make us better/stronger and things that are fun to do.
English isn’t C++, a form is pretty much defined as acceptable by usage.
This is certainly true; primary considerations should be comprehensibility and consistency. They in this context is perfectly understandable, if not yet considered strictly “correct.”
Frankly, I’ve forgotten what my intention was in pointing it out in the first place.
I might be interested as well.
Though widely used, it’s technically improper. In fact, English lacks a generic singular personal pronoun. The best way to get around this might be to make the subject plural:
If the moderators think this post is more appropriate for main they can move it there.
EDIT—removed irrelevant links and snarky comment about downvoters, plus:
Researched further, my judgement was hasty: Although some usage writers condemn the use of the “singular they” when the gender is unknown or unimportant, this is often used, both in speech and in writing (e.g. “If a customer requires help, they should contact...”). In fact, a consistent pattern of usage can be traced at least as far back as Shakespeare, and possibly even back to Middle English. It avoids awkward constructions such as he or she. This usage is authorised and preferred by the Australian Government Manual of Style for official usage in government documents. See Singular they. The use of the “singular they” can often be avoided by thinking ahead and rephrasing the whole sentence (e.g. “For assistance, customers should contact...”).
From this Wikipedia article.
I am neither the grammar police nor the editor of an English language style guide.
Not at the moment of reading, possibly because I had no standard of comparison. In retrospect, the line “Beyond the reach of God” doesn’t reinforce the vision of transcendent humanity quite as powerfully as the original. I think it was the unexpected contrast of moving from the discussion of evolutionary psychology to this futuristic vision of humanity that gave the ending its power.
I read this version, then the comments, then Eliezer’s version. I had a similar reaction to both.
Surprise, frisson, and tears; I’d never read the original.
I agree with your argument in the sense that you meant it, though I interpreted the question differently.
That particular turn of phrase (configuration of quarks) was borrowed from Eliezer’s description of reductionism in Luke’s “Pale Blue Dot” podcast #88. It left an impression.
Morality is a very real part of the universe as it can be observed in the functioning of the human brain.
I try, of late, not to create sections of map that don’t correspond to any territory. What if we taboo the word morality? Is there brain function that corresponds to morality and that is distinct from preferences, beliefs, emotions, and goals? It seems that positing the existence of something called morality creates something additional and unnecessary.
I had fun doing the background research to be able to give a number to the P(Aliens) questions.
I enjoyed this too. Tried to calibrate Aliens 1 with Aliens 2, and found that what seemed like a modest estimate for Aliens 2 (still a shot in the dark due to too many Drake unknowns, but what the hell) created an enormous probability estimate for Aliens 1. More convinced than ever that we are not alone.
Please let me know if I’ve missed a discussion of this point; it seems important, but I haven’t seen it answered.
What is the particular and demonstrable quality of personhood that defines this okay to kill/not okay to kill threshold? In short, what is blicket?