This is especially true for antidepressants because some are only effective on more severe cases (eg Zoloft); self-selection will yield a body of faux-depressed and mildly depressed people on whom the drug has no result.

EDIT: Apparently I was thinking of a different drug.

I feel like it may have even obscured the point...I spent more time wading through the math than I did thinking about the bias shield effect. Since it didn't really clarify anything, it came across as some kind of signalling...not sure if that's what it was, but it's certainly what it looks like.

That must be why underinformed nuclear programs require so little testing to develop a functional warhead. Oh, wait...

LW needs a (Funny) tag like Slashdot. I'm saving this for future use in dispelling the correlation/causation fallacy.

This seems like a sensible decision to me, comparable to the practice of withholding certain details about the technology used to make nuclear weaponry. No sense making it easy to duplicate hazardous research!

Well no, but an AI could figure things out and then not tell the physicists. Same thing as when you let a kid take apart a toaster to find out how it works instead of just telling them...or was that only my parents that did that?

Excellent story! I second the idea that this belongs in Main.

Also, I particularly liked your idea of physics being left to humans so as not to spoil the fun. It's both an unusual idea and one of my personal requirements for a utopia...spoilers are so boring.

A lot of of events, like lightning and the origin of species, were once mysterious magic tricks, but now have been fully explained by naturalism.

Minor nitpick, but neither of those phenomena is fully explainable by naturalism yet. Last I checked there was still a good deal of debate about the rate at which evolution occurs and how gradual it is, and no physicist I've talked to is sure why lightning generates antimatter

Perhaps a better example would be something better-understood, like rain or magnetism.

EDIT: I found an unrelated, but nonetheless cool article about stimulating lightning

Ron Paul has stated opposition to the act in the past, but I've been unable to find any evidence of recent activity on his part, so I classed him as a non-active opponent of the bill. I seem to remember there being a whopping ten representatives signing an anti-SOPA pledge a while back, which is probably a decent estimate of how many representatives oppose the bill (certainly it would indicate a supermajority in favor of the bill).