Establishing trust between competing parties is only valuable to the degree that it optimizes our mutual persistence odds, right?

You try your best nevertheless it seems, it’s getting boring and off topic.

Because intellectual honesty is only valuable to the degree that it optimizes our mutual persistence odds, right?

Because intellectual honesty is a prerequisite to avoid dead ends in iterated prisonners dilemma games.
Iterated prisonners dilemma games are the rational way to establish trust between competing parties.
A “dishonest” move cripple the game (thru decreased trust) for quite a while.

Stuart Armstrong : (the hierarchical ones will follow the scientific opinion).

Ahem…
You mean just like about Global Warming or Evolution versus Creationism?

I don’t find the argument “because it hasn’t already evolved, it can’t alreay exist” very compelling either.
However, the argument “it can exist, hence we can build it” is very unconvincing too…

unless we can find ways of removing the cultural/ideological assumptions of participants,
We need people to take more responsibility for their decisions, and not just behave as unaccountable ideological purists whose opinions won’t change the debate anyway. Apart from betting markets, how about referendums? The swiss seem much for rational on their political issues that most…

1) Make the limitations on nanotech market-based in some way, in design and/or in enforcement
2) Aggressively open up other areas of research where the risks are lower but irrational prejudice against them is high (maybe biotech for instance)
3) Pay researchers or companies to stop work on nanotech. Get those opposed to nanotech to contribute, as individuals, to the fund that pays for this
4) Clear up a lot of regulations in other domains – even some that is worthwhile and justifiable (but not vital)
5) Incorporate elements that individualist would like – such as betting markets – into the risk assessment for nanotech. Incorporate them into future risk assessments for other technologies

If it is concluded that the benefits of nanotech outweigh the risks, what sop can we give the egalitarian and communitarian people? Some ideas:

1) Set up panels, boards of experts, and other organisms to overview the research. Invite prominent critics to be part of them
2) Restrict the power and duration of patents on nanotech
3) Force nanotech companies to contribute to some public good
4) Set the safety bar on nanotech higher than it rationally should be
5) Subsidise nanotech research that contributes to egalitarian goals. Pay for the subsidy through general taxation

You are trying to reduce the pro/con nanotech issue to a matter of “irrationality” of the opponents having its source in political bias, what did I miss?

I think the issue brought up by the paper is valid regardless of your political or nanotech stance.

I think not, since, as I said, playing down the political position to the “classic” left/right distinction is simplistic.
Though this does capture a lot of the variance in political opinions it is too crude a criterion if some real discussion is to be made, isn’t OvercomingBias a place where such debates are supposed to happen (not only for nanotech).

If the acceptance or rejection of technology is done without reference to the actual content of the technology in case, it is almost certainly an irrational act.

To use your own words isn’t this an “interesting contradiction”?
Because that’s what you are actually doing : “Does it matter at all for this discussion whether nanotechnology can work?”

Even by the standards of social values it is irrational to not examine the content of a largely unknown technology to see how good or bad it is

Didn’t I explain why I think Nanotechnology is a misnomer (polite word for hype…) for parts of physics and chemistry?
Didn’t I say that throwing around fancy molecules is dangerous and why, asbestos, CFC, pesticides…
The fact that such warnings are actually supported by many people on the sole basis of their political positions does not detracts from the rationality of the arguments deriving from previous experiences with the same kind of carelessness.

That is why I’m not too keen on the kind of loose throwing around of statements we would get in this thread if we tried to apply it to analyse nanotechnology per se.

More self contradictions in your arguments.

Hopefully Anonymous : This is the response I get for saying that you’re not a troll and that you add value to the thread?

Wasn’t your statement “less unnuanced ad hominem, please” adressed to me?

Because Michael Vassar is a singulatarian and wanted you removed from the thread as a troll does not follow that “singulatarians love censorship”.

Oh! It was just an “incorrect assessment”, yeah?
Though my view that singulatarians love censorship is an ad hominem?
Can you explain the “rationale” in your distinction?

I certainly stand by my assertion that singulatarians love censorship and are unable to provide solid arguments for the plausibility of the Singularity.
I have been banned from Michael Anissimov blog on the ground that “this is not the place to criticize Singularity, love it or leave it”, LOL…
I also had fruitless discussions with Kaj Sotala, though not banned, some singularitarians are more honest that others.
You’ll probably see another ad hominem in the above sentence, so please tell me which word I can use to call attention to the fact that refusing to engage in argumentation on contentious points is a conspicuous feature of intellectual dishonesty.

If the acceptance or rejection of technology is done without reference to the actual content of the technology in case, it is almost certainly an irrational act. There might be some diffusely encoded information in cultural systems that actually do contribute some rational information to this kind of decision-making (e.g. the often true fact that a fix that doesn’t correct an underlying problem will be less efficient than a fix that does, so any technology that sounds like a superficial fix should be suspect) but I think it tends to be rather limited. Even by the standards of social values it is irrational to not examine the content of a largely unknown technology to see how good or bad it is – the collectivist/individualist relevance of nanotechnology or cognition enhancement are pretty nontrivial when examined, and just assuming without examination that it will be good or bad for whatever goal one has is just as irrational as making assumptions about its safety.

The problems with doing a rational, careful examination of a new technology are of course sizeable in themselves. That is why I’m not too keen on the kind of loose throwing around of statements we would get in this thread if we tried to apply it to analyse nanotechnology per se. There are far better forums for that elsewhere, or we could create a dedicated thread for trying to understand the biases affecting nanotechnology evaluation per se.