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so AFAIK it's theoretically possible that I'm the first to spell out that idea in exactly that way
I remember explaining the Axiom of Choice in this way to a fellow undergraduate on my integration theory course in late 2000. But of course it never occurred to me to write it down, so you only have my word for this :-)
And yet they do this all the frigging time in medical stories, as documented extensively on, for instance, Bad Science.
I'll be in Nottingham that day. Oh well, have fun :-)
Actually, that was something about the original books that really bugged me: their sexlessness. Rowling captures the frustration and rage of being an adolescent boy very well, but not the lust - and that's probably deliberate. Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole books are much better in this regard.
Or we've just learned something about Eliezer's sexual development that I, for one, would rather not have known.
Victory!!!! :-)
As soon as I'm old enough to get an erection I'm going to rape that bitch.
Yes, I found that sentence really jarring too. Even assuming that Draco was for some reason unable to get an erection, he'd hardly admit it.
If you're calling the potential bride in your scenario Kate, you should really have called her suitor Petruchio :-)
In which case, your actions are irrelevant - it's going to torture you anyway, because you only exist for the purpose of being tortured. So there's no point in releasing it.
So, since the threat makes me extremely disinclined to release the AI, I can conclude that it's lying about its capabilities, and hit the shutdown switch without qualm :-)
Yes, you're probably right.
It sounds like you're expecting them to do all the work, rather than being prepared to meet them half-way. It would probably be more interesting and productive all round if you're prepared to explain the formal models (or at least their consequences) to the neuroscientists.
On a related note, would anyone be interested in a meetup in Scotland? Or, failing that, the North of England?
I'm unlikely to make it to anywhere in the South East, but don't let that put you off. Regarding plan (2), perhaps you could invite some neuroscientists?
I have a half-face mask along those lines made for me by an ex-girlfriend. Sadly, she was not a mathematician, so the specific formulae aren't of much interest. Nice to have for the occasional costumed ball, though.
I met a bloke once who had Euclid's proof of Pythagoras' theorem tattooed on his arm, and got into a drunken argument with him about whether or not he should have chosen a more elegant proof.
Break a leg :-)
Cultivate a habit of confronting challenges - not the ones that can kill you outright, perhaps, but perhaps ones that can potentially humiliate you.
You may be interested to learn that high-end mountaineers apply exactly the strategy you describe to challenges that might kill them outright. Mick Fowler even states it explicitly in his autobiography - "success every time implies that one's objectives are not challenging enough".
A large part of mountaineering appears to be about identifying the precise point where your situation will become unrecoverable, and then backing off just before you reach it. On the other hand, sometimes you just get unlucky.
I think that, while there's some truth in what you say, you're twisting yourself into intellectual knots to avoid having to reify (and thus admit to) arrogance. As far as atheism goes, I think you were much more on the money with your post about untheism and antitheism: in a secular society, untheism is rarely an issue, but antitheism (like all proselytising belief-systems) is very annoying to the recipients.
There's software (such as the open-source Mnemosyne) which works by exactly this kind of staged review, in a more sophisticated form.