1. Kudos to Schwarzennegar for successfully getting rid of gerrymandered districts in California state races. I'd like to see a list of the top technocrats ineligable for the presidency due to foreign citizenship at birth. As Governor of the largest state, and one of the few only one order of magnitude smaller than the country, he's earned shortlist status of people most qualified to be president.
2. I think it's a sin to reply to an optimization question with a functionality reply. I think it's one of the more annoying things TGGP does, though a lot of people do it, not just him.
3. Et tu? How can you tell when people are conspiring against you? I think it's an interesting game theory/decision theory question. Would be surprised if it hasn't been worked on.
4. Nonhuman life as genetic free riders? They're not engaging in any thought work to minimize existential risk.
5. Leading bioengineering experts at leading institutions: in a rational world some of them would be among the leading cryonics innovation figures.
6. To reduce nontransparently mythical first principles in discussion of race in the social sciences we should watch out for scope shifts and suspect conflations when talking about (1) genetic composition, (2) separable phenotype subelements (complexion, hair texture, facial features), (3) cultures and subcultures, (4) terminology to maximize evo psych oomph (the black/white substitution for african/european), (5) one dropedness, (6) ancestral history. Even the more rigorous social science published "research" touching on race tends to bounce around fast and loose with racial definitions, how race is determined, and how conclusions should be drawn.
I think you need some faith in democracy to say that gerrymandered districts are better than non-gerrymandered ones. Election campaigning could be considered a giant waste of resources (I think the same has been said of advertising).
I guess I should try to be more conscious of number 2. One time I was jolted out of complacence by someone shifting from functionality to optimality was here.
Funny, I usually hear people portraying humanity as parasitic or destructive of the rest of life on earth. A similar story is sometimes made about carnivors vs herbivores or animals vs plants (in energy terms). I don't know how much humans actually have reduced existential risk, although we've been great for domesticated animals and scavengers off our refuse.
Posted by: TGGP | January 01, 2009 at 07:06 PM