In his exposition of the felicific calculus, Bentham proposed a classification of 12 pains and 14 pleasures, by which we might test the “happiness factor” of any action.

In no former period of my life had I ever raised my hat in the presence of beauty, but at this moment, and in such a presence, I took it off.  I was entirely fascinated, charmed, spell-bound now.  I stopped my horse; and there I sat, to take a fuller glance at the fair reality.

(J. G. Wood, describing an encounter with a beautiful woman, 1870)

In no former period of my life had I ever raised my hat in the presence of beauty, but at this moment,  in such a presence, I took it off.  I was entirely fascinated, charmed, spell bound now.  I stopped my horse and there I sat, to take a further glance at the fair reality.  Half human being, half dragon.

(Henry Darger, in The Realms, using a modified version of the Wood passage to describe a Blengiglomenean serpent)

Although Robert Towne supposedly did some polish work on this script, Steve Buscemi contracts “space dementia” at a certain point in this movie, for no apparent reason, and with no real consequences.

The Judge Samson always knew what kind of shape his face was in.

No one can disturb his composure: a man who never loses his temper: a man of tranquility; the apotheosis of snobbery.

A Problem in Dynamics

An inextensible heavy chain
Lies on a smooth horizontal plane,
An impulsive force is applied at A,
Required the initial motion of K.

Let ds be the infinitesimal link,
Of which for the present we’ve only to think;
Let T be the tension, and T + dT
The same for the end that is nearest to B.
Let a be put, by a common convention,
For the angle at M ‘twixt OX and the tension;
Let V_t and V_n be ds’s velocities,
Of which Vt along and Vn across it is;
Then V_n/V_t the tangent will equal,
Of the angle of starting worked out in the sequel.

In working the problem the first thing of course is
To equate the impressed and effectual forces.
K is tugged by two tensions, whose difference dT
Must equal the element’s mass into V_t.
V_n must be due to the force perpendicular
To ds’s direction, which shows the particular
Advantage of using da to serve at your
Pleasure to estimate ds’s curvature.
For V_n into mass of a unit of chain
Must equal the curvature into the strain.

Thus managing cause and effect to discriminate,
The student must fruitlessly try to eliminate,
And painfully learn, that in order to do it, he
Must find the Equation of Continuity.
The reason is this, that the tough little element,
Which the force of impulsion to beat to a jelly meant,
Was endowed with a property incomprehensible,
And was “given,” in the language of Shop, “inexten-sible.”
It therefore with such pertinacity odd defied
The force which the length of the chain should have modified,
That its stubborn example may possibly yet recall
These overgrown rhymes to their prosody metrical.
The condition is got by resolving again,
According to axes assumed in the plane.
If then you reduce to the tangent and normal,
You will find the equation more neat tho’ less formal.
The condition thus found after these preparations,
When duly combined with the former equations,
Will give you another, in which differentials
(When the chain forms a circle), become in essentials
No harder than those that we easily solve
In the time a T totum would take to revolve.

Now joyfully leaving ds to itself, a-
Ttend to the values of T and of a.
The chain undergoes a distorting convulsion,
Produced first at A by the force of impulsion.
In magnitude R, in direction tangential,
Equating this R to the form exponential,
Obtained for the tension when a is zero,
It will measure the tug, such a tug as the “hero
Plume-waving” experienced, tied to the chariot.
But when dragged by the heels his grim head could not carry aught,
So give a its due at the end of the chain,
And the tension ought there to be zero again.
From these two conditions we get three equations,
Which serve to determine the proper relations
Between the first impulse and each coefficient
In the form for the tension, and this is sufficient
To work out the problem, and then, if you choose,
You may turn it and twist it the Dons to amuse.

(A poem written by James Clerk Maxwell of “Maxwell’s equations” fame)

They themselves had read the Torah, but they didn’t find it so enjoyable.  This feeling is similar to walking into a 3-D movie without the little plastic glasses.

Exponential discounting and, more generally, time-consistent preferences are often assumed in rational choice theory, since they imply that all of a decision-maker’s selves will agree with the choices made by each self.

the road to damascus

During this research, I kept stumbling upon web articles on this one website that articulated what I was trying to express, only better. That website was LessWrong, and those articles were the Sequences.

…

It seemed like a good way to learn how to think better, to learn from someone who had had similar insights. I didn’t even consider the possibility that this author, too, had some grand agenda. The idea that Eliezer’s agenda could be more pressing than my own never even crossed my mind.

At this point, you may be able to empathize with how I felt when I first realized the importance of an intelligence explosion.

It was like getting ten years worth of wind knocked out of me.

…

Everything clicked. I was already thoroughly convinced of civilizational inadequacy. I had long since concluded that there’s not much that can hold a strong intelligence down. I had a sort of vague idea that an AI would seek out “good” values, but such illusions were easily dispelled — I was a moral relativist. And the stakes were as high as stakes go. Artificial intelligence was a problem more pressing than my own.

The realization that shook me to my core. It wasn’t even the intelligence explosion idea that scared me, it was the revelation of a fatal flaw at the foundation of my beliefs. Poorly designed governments had awoken my fear that society can’t handle coordination problems, but I never — not once in nearly a decade — stopped to consider whether designing better social systems was actually the best way to optimize the world.

I professed a desire to save the world, but had misunderstood the playing field so badly that existential risk had never even crossed my mind. Somehow, I had missed the most important problems, and they should have been obvious. Something was very wrong.

It was time to halt, melt, and catch fire.

(Nate Soares, “On saving the world”)

(There are a number of quite dramatic LW conversion narratives out there.  See also this one: “The person I am now is unrecognizable to the me of 2007, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”)