And yet, I get the sentiment that Valentine seems to have been trying to communicate—it sure seems like there are epistemic rationality techniques that seem incredibly valuable and neglected, and one could discover them in the course of doing something about as useless as paperwork, and talking about how you became more efficient at paperwork would seem like a waste of time to everyone involved.

Is this a real example or one that you’ve made up? That is, do you actually have cases in mind where someone discovered valuable and neglected epistemic rationality techniques in the course of doing paperwork?

And maybe the argument is genuinely so right that most humans upon hearing it would agree to not exist, something like collectively sacrificing ourselves for our collective children.

This describes an argument that is persuasive; your described scenario does not require the argument to be right. (Indeed my view is that the argument would obviously be wrong, as it would be arguing for a false conclusion.)

Strongly agreed. Capitalization conventions are part of standard English-language orthography for a very good reason; they make it much easier to read text.

Such things as “stylistic choices” and “to make my formal writing more representative of my casual chatting” do not even begin to approach sufficient justification for imposing such a dramatic cost on your readers.

Writing like this sends a very strong signal that you do not care about your readers’ time or cognitive resources, which in turn implies that you’re uninterested in whether you’re successfully communicating your ideas. (Of course, if that’s your intent, then fair enough. But then why post at all?)

What aspect of things are you testing?

My ability to post comments!

Look, I have to ask: is there some reason why you’re refusing to give me a straightforward “yes” or “no” answer to a yes-or-no question?

I ask because this is making it very difficult to follow what you’re saying. I would like to understand your comments, but it would really be much easier for me to do that if the commentary accompanied the direct answers, rather than replacing them!

I’m sorry, perhaps I’m being dense, but: yes, playing against bots in Unreal Tournament or StarCraft is “authentically challenging”? Is that right?

That’s fascinating, but it seems like your reply to my comment answered none of the questions I asked. Was that intentional, or an oversight, or… what? To clarify, those questions were not rhetorical. I would like to know what your answers are.

Suppose that the AI opponents actually shot more, with superhuman accuracy. (Are there difficulty settings in Halo?) Would the challenge then be “authentic”?

Is playing against bots in Unreal Tournament “authentically challenging”? How about in StarCraft?

Are high-level PVE encounters in World of Warcraft “authentically challenging”?

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