What's the political impact of millions of rats/EA withholding being politically active so that maybe a couple of them can obtain a government policy position they wouldn't have otherwise? 

Wait, why do you think "additive" is acceptable and "chemical" isn't? I hereby force you to state your criteria for what substances count as additives so that I can contest them.

It's not symbolic or else the campaigns wouldn't ask for it.

I actually think people concerned about AI should be more politically involved, not less politically involved.

I think the thesis should be "everyone has an opinion on how conflicts should be handled that miraculously works out so they're right in any given conflict."

I think analyzing different types of actors with different goals isn't elucidating. Bad actors are explicitly self-serving; good actors are probably still a little biased and petty. Being right shouldn't be the main thing but it probably is. It's also easier to remember everyone self-serve biases than "this is one of 5 different types of people whose interest in conflict resolution benefits 5 different goal categories they might have."

Yeah you can totally try to force them to have a conversation about how to define chemical and you might even get into the meta about what constitutes proper rules of debate a bit. You can also say something like "by chemical you probably mean pesticides or GMOs, is that what you mean? why do you think they're harmful?" I think the latter sounds more useful and fun.

So don't use the definition if it's useless. The object level conversation is very easy to access here. Say something like "do you mean GMOs?" and then ask them why they think GMOs are harmful. If their answer is "because GMOs are chemicals" then you say "why do you think chemicals are harmful?" and then you can continue conversing about whether GMOs are harmful. 

Honestly I think it's net virtuous to track other people's definitions and let them modify them whenever they feel a need to. Aligning on definitions is expensive and always involves talking about edge cases that are rarely important to the subject at hand. (They're important when you're authoring laws or doing math, which I would count as expensive situations.) I'd just focus on object level like "GMOs are not harmful" and not concern myself with whether they take this to mean GMOs are not chemicals or chemicals are not always harmful.

Nobody has an internally consistent definition of anything, but it works out because people are usually talking about "typical X" not "edge case X." Bouba is probably thinking of pesticides or GMOs. So ask them why they think those things are harmful. By "not chemicals" they're probably thinking of water and apples. If you want their opinion of alcohol you can say "do you think alcohol is bad for you?" not "do you think alcohol counts as a chemical?"

You don't actually have to live your life by making every conversation one about hammering down definitions.

Yeah I agree you derive "water unsafe, beer safe" from the "old things good" heuristic. I think OP's main point is that being like "well actually" can be pretty obtuse, and the example is fine, it's just that Bouba's opinion happens to be debatable.

I think they're saying opposite things.

Chipmonk: progress = bad days become sparse
Kaj: progress = have your first good day

Kaj really doesn't address what progress looks like after that "1%" is achieved. It's "the beginning of the point where you can make it progressively less" with "more time and work." Okay -- so should we look at progress like the sawtooth graph or like Chipmonk's polkadots calendar? Kaj doesn't answer that all so they can't really take credit for Chipmonk's piece.

You can view them as a complement but I think there's other flaws in Kaj's piece.

• all the examples given, e.g. procrastination and anger, are problems people who have them usually have < 100% of the time anyway
• very unclear what all the hard work you're supposed to do is after you get to your 1%. Presumably that's the hard part, or there wouldn't exist people who get angry 99% of the time but not 100% of the time.
• unclear the role of time/frequency -- is the idea to give it 100 days to try to get 1 good day, then commence the rapid personal growth phase immediately? do you give it another 100 days to see if you're growing?
• also like doesn't Kaj's first paragraph invalidate the rest? If you're working better but only because you were sleeping better and now you have to wake up earlier I don't see why we would say we made "1% progress but were yet unaware our true problem was sleep health." The problem won't get easier until you get your root cause.