But another approach would be to create a mechanism that serves thesame function as pain without being painful. Imagine an “exoskin”: alayer of nanotech sensors so thin that we can’t feel it or see it,but which monitors our skin surface for noxious stimuli. If we put ourhand on a hot plate, … the mechanism contracts our muscle fibers soas to make our hand withdraw

I recommend Gwern’s discussion of pain to anyone who finds this sort of proposal intriguing (or anyone who is simply interested in the subject).

I would go further, and say that replacing human civilization with “a monoculture of healthy, happy, well-fed people living in peace and harmony” does in fact sound very bad. Never mind these aliens (who cares what they think?); from our perspective, this seems like a bad outcome. Not by any means the worst imaginable outcome… but still bad.

If they’re merely opining, then why should we be appalled? Why would we even care? Let them opine to one another; it doesn’t affect us.

If they’re intervening (without our consent), then obviously this is a violation of our sovereignty and we should treat it as an act of war.

In any case, one “preserves” what one owns. These hypothetical advanced aliens are speaking as if they own us and our planet. This is obviously unacceptable as far as we’re concerned, and it would behoove us in this case to disabuse these aliens of such a notion at our earliest convenience.

Conversely, it makes perfect sense to speak of humans as collectively owning the natural resources of the Earth, including all the animals and so on. As such, wishing to preserve some aspects of it is entirely reasonable. (Whether we ultimately choose to do so is another question—but that it’s a question for us to answer, according to our preferences, is clear enough.)

Uhm… what is the typical Ashkenazi diet?

It’s delicious, is what it is.

Similarly, the lab leak theory—one of the more widely accepted and plausible contrarian views—also doesn’t survive careful scrutiny. It’s easy to think it’s probably right when your perception is that the disagreement is between people like Saar Wilf and government bureaucrats like Fauci. But when you realize that some of the anti-lab leak people are obsessive autists who have studied the topic a truly mind-boggling amount, and don’t have any social or financial stake in the outcome, it’s hard to be confident that they’re wrong.

This is a very poor conclusion to draw from the Rootclaim debate. If you have not yet read Gwern’s commentary on the debate, I suggest that you do so. In short, the correct conclusion here is that the debate was a very poor format for evaluating questions like this, and that the “obsessive autists” in question cannot be relied on. (This is especially so because in this case, there absolutely was a financial stake—$100,000 of financial stake, to be precise!)

Hmm, this sounds like an awfully contrarian take to me.

I think “packaged bread and other bakery products” this is referring to stuff like Wonder bread, which contains a whole bunch of stuff^[1] beyond the proverbial “flour, water, yeast, salt” that goes into homemade or artisanal-bakery bread.

This seems solvable by using multiple recordings and averaging, yes?

Also, if the transcription to sheet-music form is accurate w.r.t. the recording, and the recording is acceptable w.r.t. the intended notes, then the transcription ought to be close enough to the intended notes. Or am I misunderstanding?

Yes, I meant specifically the Bay Area scene, since that’s the only part of the LW community that’s accused of excluding e/acc-ers.

In that case, I request that you edit your post to clarify this, please.

Hmm… I suppose that depends on what you mean by “the scene”. If you’re including only the Bay Area “scene” in that phrase, then I’m familiar with it only by hearsay. If you mean the broader LW-and-adjacent community, then my familiarity is certainly greater (I’ve been around for well over a decade, and have periodic contact with various happenings here in NYC).