adrih

Can't we directly conclude from your argument that the obesity epidemy can be entirely solved by fixing the environment, which is probably easier than fixing the genes ?

Heroin harms us because of our genetic makeup, yet we don't talk about how heroin-induced illness has genetic causes. We simply try to keep people away from heroin.

Don't these questions hint at "death" being a leaky abstraction?

It seems that people have their own definition of death with details added to the general concept. Then, when exposed to these hypothetical scenarios, they either say "it is murder" or "it isn't murder", depending on what their personal definition of "death" is.

The problem is that if we redefine death as "no chance of ever coming back", some people would still not be ok with being temporarily disintegrated because they believe it would be someone else who would come back.

So the concept of death should actually be split in two: death as in "I believe it would not be me anymore", and death as in "the functional unit defined as you would not be operational anymore".

No, I meant that the argument is legitimate in Chinese courts. It wouldn't be in Europe or in the US.

Does this mean some form of mystery about oneself must always remain? Assume complete self-referentiality of a being. Then the ultimate source of one's goals is no longer the black box called "my nature". What is it then? And would it be the same for two completely self-referential being?

(By self-referential I mean one who understands oneself absolutely; one who possess a perfectly accurate map of oneself. There probably is a better word.)

"That Alien Message" read like a science fiction short story at first, and then delivered a number of abnormally deep insights. Ideas so new (or ways of seeing so new) get to my brain 5-6 times a year top.

"Twelve virtues" however... well, I started skimming at the fourth virtue. Most of the content was a restatement of things I already agree with.

Maybe your audience (HN, Reddit) is enough into rationality to care more about very rational discussions (like the AI-Box problem) than about discussions of rationality itself (like "Twelve Virtues").