How to Be Happy

Where have Drexler's nanobots been credibly discredited?

Play fair.

> His core beliefs include that the obvious goal of the human race is immortality

"We should be allowed to live as long as we want to." Emphasis on the want. I don't find that very controversial.

> that it is justifiable to kill a man if it would remove a spec of dust from the eye of every other person on Earth

No, the setup was one person's torture for 50 years (not death), or specks of dust in the eyes of 3^^^3 people. How much is 3^^^3 people?

  * 3^3 = 27.
  * 3^^3 = (3^(3^3)) = 3^27 = 7625597484987.
  * 3^^^3 = (3^^(3^^3)) = 3^^7625597484987 = (3^(3^(3^(... 7625597484987 times ...)))).

"3^^^3 is an exponential tower of 3s which is 7,625,597,484,987 layers tall. You start with 1; raise 3 to the power of 1 to get 3; raise 3 to the power of 3 to get 27; raise 3 to the power of 27 to get 7625597484987; raise 3 to the power of 7625597484987 to get a number much larger than the number of atoms in the universe, but which could still be written down in base 10, on 100 square kilometers of paper; then raise 3 to that power; and continue until you've exponentiated 7625597484987 times. That's 3^^^3. It's the smallest simple inconceivably huge number I know." [1]

That's a monumentally different setup than mere 7 billion humans on Earth. And it's making a point about the cold cruel calculus of moral utilitarianism, a very common and popular ethical position. Your disgust is precisely his rhetorical point...

(Edit: ...about human heuristics and biases getting in the way of the moral calculus of utilitarianism. If you are a utilitarianist, there is some cutoff of X independent people -- for some very large X -- for which it is better to save that many people a slight inconvenience at the expense of 50 years of torture for one individual. This follows straight from the math of finite utilitarianism. Yudkowsky's position of trusting the math over intuition may not be intuitive for most people, but I'd be surprised if a HN reader did not agree at least with the methodology.)

[1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/kn/torture_vs_dust_specks/

The assumption is that the researchers accounted for any sort of selection bias in who participates in the study. But that's an interesting point; maybe that assumption needs to be questioned further.

I am an introvert who masquerades as an extrovert fairly well most of the time. There is, of course, nothing at all wrong with taking joy and comfort in being alone. However, it turns out that a lot of the factors which are correlated with happiness (the article points at love/relationship satisfaction and work satisfaction, for example) are easier to improve when adopting some of the skills and habits associated with extroversion. That doesn't mean learning to enjoy going to the club every night; it means learning how to make very good first impressions and getting along well with co-workers. If an introverted person is already satisfied with their life, then of course they don't "need" to be comfortable with social company, but this article seems to be written for people who are not as satisfied as they could be.

>LessWrong is a site devoted to the cult of the "singularity."

LessWrong is a discussion forum mostly pertaining to psychology, philosophy, cognitive biases, etc,. A frequent topic of discussion is artificial intelligence, but it is hardly centric. Saying that LessWrong is a hangout spot for "singularity cult members" (as you call them) is simply incorrect on multiple levels. Technological singularity is no more than a scientific hypothesis, and it's slightly dramatic to say it perhaps has cult members worshiping and breeding its realism. In actuality technological singularity just has scientists and researches observing/theorizing its stepping stones and outcomes. Maybe you meant transhumanists rather than "singularity cult members", which I suppose makes more since from your other statements.

>Eliezer Yudkowsky, is a secular humanist who is probably most well-known for his Harry Potter fanfiction

Yudkowsky is also a prominent researcher of a variety of artificial intelligence topics which is enhancing the field. Primarily he focuses not on developing a Strong AI (AGI), but rather focusing on safety issues that such a technology would pose.

>the most important thing we could possibly be doing right now is devoting all of our time developing a mathematical model of a "safe AI."

"friendly AI"* and I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say mathematical model, you should do more research it's mostly hypotheses and ideas for system transparency.

>But I tend to take everything I read there with a massive grain of salt.

Maybe you should visit LessWrong and read some articles about cognitive biases so you understand why someone saying "massive grain of salt" makes me want to kill innocent puppies.