I had ambitious plans for a much longer post, but I dont feel like wri — Wei Dai

"I think a highly rational person would have high moral uncertainty at this point and not necessarily be described as "altruistic"."

"[By the way], since you are advising high school students and undergrads, I suggest that you mention to them that they can start being independent researchers before they graduate from college. For example I came up with my b-money idea (a precursor to Bitcoin) as an undergrad, and was also already thinking about some of the questions that would eventually lead to [updateless decision theory]."

"I think status is in fact a significant motivation even for me, and even the more "pure" motivations like intellectual curiosity can in some sense be traced back to status. It seems unlikely that [updateless decision theory] would have been developed without the existence of forums like extropians, everything-list, and LW, for reasons of both motivation and feedback/collaboration."

"I dont like playing politics, I dont like having bosses and being told what to do, I dont like competition, I have no desire to manage other people, so Ive instinctively avoided or quickly left any places that were even remotely maze-like."

"In other words, when I say "whats the evidence for that?", its not that I dont trust your rationality (although of course I dont trust your rationality either), but I just cant deduce what evidence you must have observed from your probability declaration alone even if you were fully rational."

"Does anyone not have any problems with taking ideas seriously? I think Im in this category because ideas like cryonics, the Singularity, [unfriendly artificial intelligence], and Tegmarks mathematical universe were all immediately obvious to me as ideas to take seriously, and I did so without much conscious effort or deliberation."