LessWrong 2.0 Reader

So, it sounds like you'd be in favor of a 1-year pause or slowdown then, but not a 10-year?

sure -- i agree that's why i said "something adjacent to" because it had enough overlap in properties. I think my comment completely stands with a different word choice, I'm just not sure what word choice would do a better job.

I mean to some extent, Dawkins isn't a historian of science, presentism, yadda yadda but from what I've seen he's right here. Not that Wallace is somehow worse, given that of all the people out there he was certainly closer than the rest. That's about it

I would highly recommend getting someone else to debug your subconscious for you.  At least it worked for me.  I don’t think it would be possible for me to have debugged myself.
 

My first therapist was highly directive.  He’d say stuff like “Try noticing when you think X, and asking yourself what happened immediately before that.  Report back next week.” And listing agenda items and drawing diagrams on a whiteboard.  As an engineer, I loved it.  My second therapist was more in the “providing supportive comments while I talk about my life” school.  I don’t think that helped much, at least subjectively from the inside.

Here‘s a possibly instructive anecdote about my first therapist.  Near the end of a session, I feel like my mind has been stretched in some heretofore-unknown direction.  It’s a sensation I’ve never had before.  So I say, “Wow, my mind feels like it’s been stretched in some heretofore-unknown direction.  How do you do that?”  He says, “Do you want me to explain?”  And I say, “Does it still work if I know what you’re doing?”  And he says, “Possibly not, but it’s important you feel I’m trustworthy, so I’ll explain if you want.”  So I say “Why mess with success?  Keep doing the thing. I trust you.”  That’s an example of a debugging procedure you can’t do to yourself.

The obsessive autists who have spent 10,000 hours researching the topic and writing boring articles in support of the mainstream position are left ignored.

It seems like you're spanning up three different categories of thinkers: Academics, public intellectuals, and "obsessive autists".

Notice that the examples you give overlap in those categories: Hanson and Caplan are academics (professors!), while the Natália Mendonça is not an academic, but is approaching being a public intellectual by now(?). Similarly, Scott Alexander strikes me as being in the "public intellectual" bucket much more than any other bucket.

So your conclusion, as far as I read the article, should be "read obsessive autists" instead of "read obsessive autists that support the mainstream view". This is my current best guess—"obsessive autists" are usually not under much strong pressure to say politically palatable things, very unlike professors.

The other problem is that MWI is up against various subjective and non-realist interpretations, so it's not it's not the case that you can build an ontological model of every interpretation.

Counterfactual means, that if something would not have happened something else would have happened. It's a key concept in Judea Pearl's work on causality. 

Sometimes a vague phrasing is not an inaccurate demarkation of a more precise concept, but an accurate demarkation of an imprecise concept

True. But for that you need there to exist another mind almost identical to yours except for that one thing. 

In the question "how much of my memories can I delete while retaining my thread of subjective experience?" I don't expect there to be an objective answer. 

I know a child who often has this reaction to negative consequences, natural or imposed. I'd welcome discussion on what works well for that mindset. I don't have any insight, it's not how my mind works.

It seems like very very small consequences can help a bit. Also trying to address the anxiety with OTC supplements like Magnesium Glycinate and lavender oil.