Open Thread, May 26 - June 1, 2014

I would bet that the gains from practicing the SATs are relatively high for people who have strong verbal abilities but are not proficient in English.

Also, since the SATs are optimized for U.S. students it might be the case that there are question types which U.S. students have seen thousands of times and so because of diminishing marginal returns would gain little by additional study, yet a Chinese student might never have encountered a similar problem and so would massively gain from practicing it.

SAT is very g-loaded, so it would be susceptible to the same practice effect that IQ tests in general are susceptible to. If you look at SAT/IQ tables, the 20-40 point increase Tyler cites corresponds to about 1.5-3 IQ points. This is consistent with the typical magnitude (< 5 points) of the practice effects on IQ test scores. Your "hundreds of points" are wildly inconsistent with this. The only way I could see that happen is if quite a bit of the SAT would test for skills that can be practiced but don't correlate with g. Not very likely.

The way to reconcile your experience with the evidence is to note that the score on a low-stakes practice test is just not comparable to the score on the real thing (with or without test prep). It's not that implausible to believe that, say, 10% of people (more than enough to account for your anecdotes) will score at least 100 points less on an early practice test than they could score on the real thing at the same level of preparation. It's hard to trick your brain into believing that something is high-stakes when it isn't.

ETA: On reflection, the low-stakes hypothesis probably doesn't account for too much of the puzzle. In particular, it doesn't explain any gain between consecutive low-stakes practice tests. I think James Miller's explanation takes the cake. The SAT-g correlation is likely a lot lower for a population not proficient in English.

I am just throwing out a few thoughts here though this example can serve as an excellent case study.

The first is availability and selection bias. It is only the students that actually get an apparent benefit that come to your mind as examples and it is only the students that actually get a benefit from learning that will continue to do so. Why learn even more when through testing you see that there is virtually no benefit?

Another effect is that repeatedly testing on the SAT may be the only part of the intervention actually having an effect. This might be through gaining confidence in test taking and/or reducing test anxiety. Also there might be some weird psychological effect going on where people subconsciously do worse until they receive tutoring to justify the expense.

And a last thing is status quo bias. For any piece of evidence that says that conventional wisdom is wrong, people will tend to disregard the evidence and this shows as an apparent chasm. That is why I personally tend to dislike the sentence "The burden of proof is on you.".

Are the American methods of test preparation different from the methods you observed to be effective?

Where do they get the old test papers? In America, it is common for the cram schools to supply "old test papers" that are actually considerably more difficult.

This paper has some interesting information and proposes the idea that the tests are designed to be resistant to short-term test prep:

A principal justification for the use of the SAT I and ACT in the admissions process is that such tests are designed to be insensitive to the high school curriculum and to short- term test preparation. If short term preparatory activities prior to taking the SAT I or ACT can have the effect of significantly boosting the scores of students above those they would have received without the preparation, both the validity and reliability of the tests as indicators of college readiness might be called into question.

It also alludes to there being multiple studies that have failed to find large effect sizes from test-prep courses. However, I'm not sure I quite believe that test prep is that ineffective. I never did test-prep for the SAT because I got a good enough score my first time to get into the university I wanted, but I did use test-prep books for AP tests, a few times for classes that I didn't even take, and I got 5/5 on most of those. I'm sure those were intended to be "cram-resistant" too, but they clearly weren't.

It's possible that the confusion here on LW comes from the systemic bias of the majority of people here being of above-average intelligence, though I don't know what the mechanism for that would be. I'll just add that "I notice that I am confused" as well, so something that we believe must be false...

When uncertain what to do, keep your options open.

Right, I recall having the same thought, if fleeting. "Measure twice and cut once" and all that.

My main gripe with the story was actually the universal (across species) desire to impose one's morality on alien intelligences. This premise challenged my suspension of disbelief more than anything else in the story.

I feel like there's a better answer here: "Because it's hard to un-shoot them later if we decide it was a bad idea." When uncertain what to do, keep your options open.

Superhappies don't act symmetrically with just anyone. Only with other symmetrists. If humans decided not to shoot them for the reason you gave, and the Superhappies found out, the human's interests would have been ignored.

Species-wide self-modification on that scale probably isn't something you should do unless you are certain that 1. it will work as intended, 2. you can reverse it if it doesn't, and 3. the change itself doesn't screw up your ability to determine whether it was a good idea.

I agree (at least with 1 and perhaps 2), but this answer seems like a cop-out. I think the point of that theme of Three Worlds Collide is about self-modification in principle, not just about it being safe and working as intended. The true rejection is not "We'd like to, we're just being cautious", it's "This modification repels us and we wouldn't do it even if we knew it would work as intended".

Metafilter has a classic thread on "What book is the best introduction to your field?". There are multiple recommendations there for both law and biology.

Law Comic -- not a book, but very easy to read.

Can we extend this question to virtually any major field?

A good introductory textbook.

I'm thinking of applying to Berkley next year for grad school, and I'd be up for that!

"Again and again, I’ve undergone the humbling experience of first lamenting how badly something sucks, then only much later having the crucial insight that its not sucking wouldn’t have been a Nash equilibrium." --Scott Aaronson

What you are observing is part of the phenomenon of meta-contrarianism. Like everything Yvain writes, the aforementioned post is well worth a read.

The status quo actually exists. The status quo is the result of the only experiment we've managed to observe.

Understanding this is far more important than any theoretical behaviors.

It reminded me of this article:

When a single experiment seems to show that subjects are guilty of some horrifying sinful bias (...) people may try to dismiss (not defy) the experimental data. Most commonly, by questioning whether the subjects interpreted the experimental instructions in some unexpected fashion (...) Experiments are not beyond questioning; on the other hand, there should always exist some mountain of evidence which suffices to convince you. It's not impossible for researchers to make mistakes. It's also not impossible for experimental subjects to be really genuinely and truly biased. It happens. On both sides, it happens. We're all only human here. If you think to extend a hand of charity toward experimental subjects, casting them in a better light, you should also consider thinking charitably of scientists. They're not stupid, you know. If you can see an alternative interpretation, they can see it too. This is especially important to keep in mind when you read about a bias and one or two illustrative experiments in a blog post. Yes, if the few experiments you saw were all the evidence, then indeed you might wonder. But you might also wonder if you're seeing all the evidence that supports the standard interpretation. Especially if the experiments have dates on them like "1982" and are prefaced with adjectives like "famous" or "classic".

The belief in correctness of status quo is very strong. Even if people don't literally believe in "just world", they still want to believe that at least some parts of the world are the way thay are for a reason. Maybe there is no god creating the balance, but couldn't evolution or economy have the same outcome?

There is also the "Chesterton's fence" concept, that if you don't understand how X makes sense, that may be a fact about you, not a fact about X.

Perhaps it would be better to solve each case separately. What is the evidence for rationality of the given behavior? What is the evidence for its irrationality?

If you want to change the status quo it's very important to understand the reasons for why the status quo exists. If you don't you are unlikely to be able to change anything.

Can you point to a specific example of this? Or maybe give an example from what you've seen personally?

As far as I know we can categorise known biases in three categories: Those that we don't know how to deal with, those where merely knowing them is enough and those where some exercise or action helps to deal with them.

I think lukeprog had a post on the two latter categories. Trying to find it.

Also you could contact CFAR, they do this kind of stuff. Though they might be unwilling to share their untested material.

Edit: This article by by crazy88 and this article by lukeprog should get you started.

I've experienced not being able to adjust for biases in real emotionally-charged situations, even after knowing about them. However, after reflecting on those real life situations and deciding what I should have done, I found that it became easier to notice them in the future. And after successfully noticing when biases are at play in emotionally charged circumstances and making the rational decision, I've gotten even better at it.

For example, I had the sunk costs fallacy bite me really hard in a situation with an ex-girlfriend. But after finally looking at it in those terms and making the rational decision, I was happier which gave me positive reinforcement.

I suspect that applying your knowledge of biases in high-stakes or emotionally-charged situations makes it easier to do so in the future. So maybe try starting with doing retrospectives or postmortems and then build up from there.

(Of course there's always the possibility that I'm no better at it at all and I just think I am because of the availability bias... but I don't think so)

Transfer of learning is the more general keyword that's relevant here: getting knowledge that has been taught in one context to transfer to different contexts and actually become widely applicable is a difficult task in general.

How do I put bookmark in a toolbar? I would like to, as I don't use Bookmarks Toolbar.

Not on topic, but the javascript code seems to go way outside the page. (fixed)

fixed

how probabilities of events feel like

Gut feelings have pretty bad resolution. In particular, I don't think gut feelings can differentiate between, say, 2% and 3%.

As a rough approximation (and, possibly, subject to the typical mind fallacy :-D), I think the gut thinks in these categories, assuming the probability is of something bad happening:

• Too low-probability to even think about it.
• Too low-probability to worry about it unless the consequences are really bad.
• Not likely, but worrisome -- worth guarding against unless prevention is expensive/unpleasant.
• Feels dangerous, there is motivation to do something about it.
• It's coming my way, active measures are called for.
• I'm fucked.

For fine resolution you can train your mind. I'm not sure how trainable your gut is.

I'd advice you to avoid choosing examples, which might have a different perceived probability than the real one in most people - the usual example would be things which often get reported on the news (which leads to them being are perceived as more likely than they are). Alternatively, use those examples but only in conjunction with other [hopefully] less distorted ones.

I'd personally mostly use examples that relate to sports, games and so on - e.g. chance to draw 2 aces in a row from a pack of cards.

Nice idea, but I'm not sure the examples are that illustrative. People who haven't been to Greece have no idea of how common blue eyed people are there, for instance. What you want is something that people have a good grasp of so that they can develop their intuitions. I don't have an alternative suggestions (apart from things like dice throws, but I guess that's not what you want) off the top of my head, though.

I think something that touches closely to what you're trying to do is Rational Poker, which is using poker to train your bias overcoming skill. Specifically the This is what 5% feels like. exercise. The idea is that you can combine your explicitly calculated chance of winning a hand with your gut feeling enough times that they begin matching up. You'll eventually understand what 5%, 10%, 50%, or 90% actually feel like from the inside. Unfortunately, Im uncertain how well this gut feeling generalizes, so using it to determine probabilities outside of areas you've trained it for may be less successful.

Chance of a rolling a double six is ~2.8%, and something that comes up in quite a few games.

Sounds like an xkcd comic. Maybe borrow from his charts?

I was hallucinating a pink-furred rabbit-woman puttering around at the head of my bed, and was barely able to pay enough attention to the fact that she was naked to try to remember the more aesthetic details when I could properly appreciate them...

So he's a furry. Also, I am now picturing your character's body as Babs Bunny.

I love Convoy. He's adorable.

There was still transport, and even communication, for a short time. We have records of a piece of news: the cryonics company headquartered there was attacked by survivors and burned to the ground. However, nearly all the... patients?... had already been moved to a private compound. More defensible, and manned by people who seemed intent on defending themselves, and their frozen associates.

Is this a reference to the Timeship?

Your writing has improved much since the early days of your rational cow fic. You've polished your minimalist, abrupt style to the point where it is easy to follow while still leaving only the fun and interesting parts of the story.

Is every protagonist you write based on you? I've noticed that Missy, Safe Guard, and Bunny are very similar. They all get turned into female animals at some point, as well.

The value of humility depends very much on the culture in which you are operating.

A ghetto kid you behaves humble will have a hard time. On the other hand in Japan being humble is very important and there's social punishment from deviating from that standard.

Overconfidence in your hand is okay when you play poker. It costs you games when you play go.

First, people remember their first impressions and usually don't update.

I think you underrate the effect of broken promises and failing to deliver.

When a potential competitor rises his head, don't stay quiet, but destroy him. When he sufficiently shows that he learned his lesson, you may show some mercy again.

Outside of the ghetto where people value civilised society that's not a good strategy. You frequently do lose social status when you destroy another person. There the phrase of giving someone the ropes to hang themselves. Everyone likes the king's death but nobody likes the king's slayer.

In one review of the scientific evidence on LW there's the conclusion that modesty increases career success while efforts at self-promotion and being assertive rather diminish it. Especially if you see yourself as someone who's not good at navigating social interactions you should bring a better argument if you want to contradict the published papers.

This seems to assume that the only possible purpose of humility is as a means to improve one's status. That seems, to put it mildly, not obviously correct. For example, you might attempt to be humble because ...

• ... you think humble people are nicer to be around, and you want to make other people's lives nicer.
• ... you think most people overestimate their own merits, see no reason why you should be an exception, and want to correct for this.
• ... you belong to a religion that commands (or at least commends) it.
• ... you have psychological hangups that make you feel bad when others regard you "too" positively.

There are arguments to be made against each of those, but none of them looks much like "you probably think that being humble will make others think better of you, but actually it likely won't".

(Side note: I get from Viliam's comment the same impression as I do from some of Robin Hanson's posts: a wilful refusal to consider any but the most cynical interpretation of something, where of course everyone is simply acting (or attempting to act) in their own selfish interests, where anything that looks like kindness or generosity is really a self-regarding status manoeuvre, etc., and where all this cynicism is too obvious to merit any kind of justification, but simply assumed as if everyone worth paying attention to will already agree. My instinctive reaction to this kind of stuff is to see it as a self-regarding status manoeuvre in its own right ("see how independent-minded and fearless I am!") and move the author's credibility down a notch or two. That's probably not a fair reaction, but I suspect I'm not alone in having it.)

(One other pedantic note. It seems clear that "humility" here is being used to mean something like "self-deprecation". I have seen the word used in other ways -- e.g., to denote an attempt to have the exact same attitude to one's own merits and demerits as to those of other people. Perhaps some other term might be less ambiguous.)

What would be the point?

I suppose you've already checked the usuals like coursera, udacity, youtube courses etc.? "Medicine" is exteremely broad, but you can find some interesting intro courses to some of its aspects, e.g.:

https://www.coursera.org/courses?orderby=upcoming&search=medicine

Just some more general courses that sound interesting/useful:

Clinical Terminology for International and U.S. Students https://www.coursera.org/course/clinicalterminology

Understanding Research: An Overview for Health Professionals (looks extremely useful!) https://www.coursera.org/course/researchforhealth

Vital Signs: Understanding What the Body Is Telling Us https://www.coursera.org/course/vitalsigns

Clinical Problem Solving https://www.coursera.org/course/clinprobsolv

Introduction to Pharmacy https://www.coursera.org/course/intropharma

Introductory Human Physiology https://www.coursera.org/course/humanphysio

Plus many intro courses on genetics, neuropsychology etc.

Buy a subscription to Elsevier's Clinical Key website. Lots of books, updated clinical guidelines, and an endless flow of journal articles. You'll need to pay extra if you want to specialize.

In my experience, people pay way too much attention to credit scores, relative to the underlying cash flows. Suggest you concentrate on building up savings, which you control to a much greater extent, instead of trying to optimise a mostly opaque system that has, in any case, at most a second-order effect on your prosperity.

I wouldn't worry about having too many inquiries right now. That's just a temporary mark and it has a low impact on your credit score.

Here are some tips to help build a good credit score:

1. Credit Cart Utilization: Keep your total % of credit used at under 30%. 10-20% is probably ideal. Also, try not to max out any individual cards. Raising the total amount of credit you have available is a good thing and it allows you to charge more while still staying in the sweet spot of card utilization.

2. Credit History Length: If you're young, I would recommend applying for a new card every 6 - 12 months. This will pay off down the line as you'll have a longer "average age of credit cards" and a higher "total amount of available credit". Having 10-20 credit cards is not a bad thing. They all contribute to the age of your credit history and to your total credit limit.

3. Payment History and Derogatory Marks: Always pay on time. This has a big impact on your credit score. Set up a savings or checking account with some money in it as a buffer and set all of your credit cards to auto-pay the minimum from this account and set up overdraft protection using this account. I do this to avoid getting any bad marks on my card, but usually end up making a manual payment for the whole account balance before it has a chance to accumulate any interest. With this in place, you can use a credit card for most purchases to get the rewards and to contribute to your credit history. 0 late payments out of a small number of purchases is good, but 0 late payments out of a large number of purchases is better.

4. Total Accounts and Account Mix: This has a lower impact on your credit score, but having more accounts is better and having a mix of account types is better (mortgage, car loan, credit cards, student loans, etc.). It shows that you have been granted credit by many institutions and that you are equally reliable at different forms of credit.

5. Increase the credit limits of cards you've already been issued. Many banks will allow you to make a request to raise your credit limit without reporting it as a credit inquiry, you just have to ask them. It can increase the average size of your cards, increase your total available credit, and make it easier to stay under the 30% mark on each card.

Hope this was helpful.

Set your bills to auto-pay from your bank account. Then you can treat your credit card like it's effectively a debit card and make your everyday purchases with it in order to collect the rewards. (Though, I think I remember reading that you'll still build your credit rating holding a credit card you don't use.)

I once read "I will Teach you to be Rich" by Ramit Sethi. It went into a fair bit of detail on this.

I didn't finish the book and can't really recommend it, since most of the advice was very US-centric (e.g. optimizing credit scores isn't relevant for me). But it might be a starting place.

This is just your skin starting to sweat. I complained about this to an extremely fit friend and his somewhat disdainful advice was that I needed to exercise more. Perhaps this answer is not at the level of rigor you wanted, but I think everyone experiences this, and the more you sweat, the less uncomfortable sweating becomes.

I'd like to tack on to this question by asking about itching and the onset of sleeping. Someone I know has a serious enough problem of getting very itchy right before sleeping, to the point of not being able to sleep. My first guess was dust mites, but freshly laundered sheets do not stop the itching, and no itching occurs when wearing days old jeans.

For a while I've had mysteriously itchy skin which seems triggered by hot showers, temperature changes, and time-of-day. I was told antihistamine tablets (sold over-the-counter for hay-fever) can help, but I have haven't tried it yet.

(Another common cause of itchy skin is being too dry => apply moisturizing lotion twice daily. It doesn't sound like what you have, but I guess you could try).

Holding yourself just outside a large, powerful, controversial social alignment is a pretty uncomfortable thing to do; people in the ingroup aren't going to think of you as an ally, they're going to think of you as a heretic. And thanks to outgroup homogenity, you're going to find it very hard to distinguish yourself from X from the perspective of people outside it. (Insert your own examples here; I'd add some, but all the ones I can think of are politically sensitive.)

If you're loud enough and can get enough people on board early, you might be able to establish yourself as a sustainable group mutually distinguished from X. But I don't think it's possible to reliably keep the groups straight as far as people outside them are concerned: once you've defined your ideology you can't pick and choose the criteria people will be using to make those judgments, so they'll correctly note the similarities more often than not.

I've been having this problem a lot lately - I find myself defending various right-wing groups and positions from leftist attacks and end up tarred with the same brush even though I'm far from agreeing with every aspect of the right-wing positions. At the same time there's a strong psychological push toward political polarisation where I find myself agreeing more strongly with the right-wingers than I would have if I hadn't been arguing about it.

So far my solution has been to try to reduce my exposure to political arguments, since they don't do me much good anyway. But if you're on the internet a lot that's easier said than done.

Possibly you can exploit the Central Category Fallacy. You copy the whole memeplex X, change what you want and declare it to be an entirely different thing, with its own name, ideology, etc.
If someone challenges you that it is the same thing as X, you just point to the different things and say "See? Xers believe this and that, but I most emphatically DON'T!"
If someone is interested/pedantic enough to point out the similarities, you can concede that sometimes Xers think like you do. Granted, screening for pattern matching means also no Halo Effect from X-ers and their friends.

Did you speak with a professional counselor about your issues?

It's not exactly clear what propels your suicidal thoughts. The sufference given by your mental/physical condition? Or are the condition themselves that generate those thoughts?
I'm also curious about gambling away your money: why gambling instead of say, donating or spending them in drugs, prostitutes, etc.?

Why would it be any more dangerous than a computer?

If you're not going to increase the input or the rate, then I think all you have left to modify is the quality.

My experience is that modern speed-reading techniques don't lower comprehension unless you get extremely fast (say, 900-1500 wpm). The exception is the very early stages, so it's good to practice on, e.g., mildly interesting fiction. After a couple of weeks with ~30 minutes of focused practice daily, I was reading at double my previous pace with the same comprehension.

A practical solution that I use is to buy all the expansion packs and discard cards you don't like without regret (we remove any card that repeatedly requires explanation, or always goes unused). The expansions aren't very expensive. There are also third-party expansion sets, but I don't have any so can't vouch for their quality.

If you've been losing a significant amount of weight as result (and weren't overweight to begin with) I'd suggest seeing a doctor ASAP.

Marijuana is at least worth trying (if easily available).

I'd suggest "see a doctor" as the most obvious intervention.

I tried not eating when I wasn't hungry, assuming I'd wind up hungry, but this just resulted in my not eating at all for a day and a half.

And after that did you persist in not being hungry?

Were you suffering consequences of lack of food (low energy, irritability, etc.) while not feeling hungry?

If you're newly in love, that'll usually decrease appetite. The effect peters out after a few months, no intervention needed.

You don't say that this is causing you any problems. Is it? Do you find yourself as physically and mentally fit as previously?

I agree with Daniel_Burfoot about exercise. 20 minutes of low-intensity cardio exercise is usually enough to increase appetite. Bodybuidlers will often do a small amount of cardio on their off-days to keep appetite up.

You could also eat more foods that are less satiating. Fructose for example (while probably bad for you) doesn't trigger an insulin response and does not contribute to satiety, while fiber-rich foods are more filling. A google search can help you find the right kinds of foods.

The obvious suggestion is just to exercise more.

Try keeping food nearby? Have food in the house that's easy to prepare? Buy tastier food (even at the expense of healthiness)?

I tried not eating when I wasn't hungry, assuming I'd wind up hungry, but this just resulted in my not eating at all for a day and a half.

Well, fasting for a day is generally considered good for one's health.

"Will" (in the sense of future tense, and grandiose predictions thereof) is on that list, yet he closes with this (my emphasis):

Not only WILL biological, unmodified humans exist in the far future, they WILL ALWAYS reserve the right to stay that way. So-called transhumans and posthumans are likely to exist (whether they be genetically modified, cybernetic, or digital), but THEY'LL ALWAYS inhabit a world occupied by regular plain old Homo sapiens.

So it's ok to say that business WILL continue as usual, but not to say that it WILL be different?

Start a local EA meetup.

and political lobbying

Which political things do you want to lobby for?

There was something on the Effective Altruist facebook page (I think) about how political lobbying only really makes a difference if you have a lot of cash to burn.

At least one point of Three Worlds Collide is to help the reader appreciate what Irreconcilable Moral Differences feel like from the inside. Humanity revising its view of consent contributes to this goal, and has the benefit of being nearer. With immortality to keep past generations alive, sufficient cumulative moral progress will feel to them about as alien and terrible as legalizing rape.

The first advocates nonconsensual sadism; the second advocates sadism.

Creating a fictional society in which people do X does not imply advocating X.

" This is obviously and offensively wrong. Does the risk of robbery improve living conditions? Does the risk of death improve life? Also, a future society where consent is optional appears to be a terrible dystopia: assuming a free democratic government, lack of consent implies that advertisers and corporations could force consumers to buy things. This quote needs A LOT of additional justification and qualification (and ideally deletion) to avoid implying that "raising the sanity waterline" means "abolishing liberty and ethics.""

That part of the story wasn't trying to say "this is something that needs to happen to raise the sanity waterline". Remember, it's just a fictional story. Rather, it was trying to show an example of something that we today would find incredibly offensive and morally unjustifiable, and yet that became a part of humanity.

Remember that for someone 500 years ago, many of our current practices seem absolutely repugnant and morally unjustifiable, even though today they're just part of culture. Even 100 years ago, the idea of a black person sitting next to a white person on a bus was considered terrible, not to mention women having any kind of rights at home. In some parts of the world, a woman showing her hair is considered immoral and unjustifiable.

The story just wanted to give something that could happen but most people would think is wrong.

Consensual sadism isn't a goal of raising the sanity waterline any more than having better sex is, but many people consider both to be enjoyable things. We can't say anything that does not strictly raise the waterline is automatically bad, or even a neutral thing.

Inflicting pain for fun appears likely to harm empathy and sociability

In my experience, this is very much the opposite of what happens. As a sadist, I need to be more aware of what my bottoms are experiencing. In most cases, it isn't that people who are bottoming enjoy all pain, I had to learn to recognize the difference in reactions between pleasure, good pain, bad pain that they like, and bad pain that they don't like. This is much harder than in vanilla practices, which just needs to differentiate between any type of pain and pleasure.

As for sociability, the BDSM community is very much a social one, and I don't see how being in it would decrease this.

That part in Three Worlds Collide is intended to show that future humanity is as far removed from us as the Baby-Eaters and the Superhappies are from future humanity. It's not put forward as an example to follow. Shock and disgust are the intended reaction. (Also as a sidenote, I remember Yudkowsky saying that he probably should have put in a different example.)

I can't comment about rationalists and BDSM since I'm not a part of the latter community. What I do know is that subs tend to be just as happy with the arrangement as doms are and that a sub not being happy with the thing is seen as a bad thing.

Also, BDSM isn't just about inflicting (or receiving) pain for sexual pleasure. Aftercare is an important aspect of the relationships, from what I read.

I'm concerned (morally horrified as well as convinced of factual error) by quotes from two texts that are part of the "canon" here.

Neither is anything remotely resembling "canon". TWC is an early attempt at metaethics fiction, and the Confession was reposted from Facebook, by popular (but misguided) demand. While a fun reading in context, they do not represent anything more. The LW site is certainly not the intended audience for the "confession", as far as I understand, and this mismatch shows quite painfully.

If you feel like being "morally horrified" (whatever that might mean), at least consider looking at the Sequences.

For the rationalist goal of "raising the sanity waterline", being consensually sadistic appears to be a distraction at best.

You are not reading at a deep enough level to engage with the text. dath ilan is supposed to be a rationalist ideal world. It's a world without sadists. The text doesn't disagree with the claim that sadism is a distraction from following the rationalist goal.

Inflicting pain for fun appears likely to harm empathy and sociability. I don't know much about this community/practice.

I also don't know, but if you don't know, why are you making the claim in the first place instead of doing a bit of background research?

This part was a jarring note in Three Worlds Collide for me, but for a different reason. If these people grok evolutionary theory so much that they can infer the evolutionary reason for an alien species' Baby-eating behavior within the course of a day, and also evolutionary psychology concepts like "superstimulus" have permeated to be part of everyday language, then why do they have trouble understanding why unwanted sex might be a cause for discomfort? I can accept societal attitudes towards it changing given sufficiently advanced technology, but that people wouldn't UNDERSTAND why it was once proscribed just breaks immersion for me.

For the rationalist goal of "raising the sanity waterline", being consensually sadistic appears to be a distraction at best. Inflicting pain for fun appears likely to harm empathy and sociability.

This doesn't seem at all obvious to me. Source?

while BDSM is intended to be positive for all participants.

Or at least rationalized as such.