Scott Alexander surveys people's preferences between suffering and oblivion, finding split opinions and weak correlations between different scenarios and real-world beliefs. Longer summary

Scott Alexander conducts a survey to explore people's preferences between suffering and oblivion in various scenarios. He presents five hypotheses and tests them using the survey results. The survey includes questions about preferring death over a difficult life, choosing between long unhappy life and short happy life, and population ethics. The results show that people are indeed split on these issues, with strong feelings on both sides. There are weak correlations between answers to different questions, suggesting a general factor of oblivion-preference versus suffering-preference. However, this factor does not strongly predict views on population ethics. The study finds weak correlations between oblivion preference and support for euthanasia, interest in cryonics, and personal happiness. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander defends Less Wrong and Eliezer Yudkowsky against accusations of being anti-scientific, arguing that developing rational thinking skills beyond traditional scientific methods is valuable and necessary. Longer summary

Scott Alexander responds to Topher Hallquist's criticism of Less Wrong and Eliezer Yudkowsky as being 'anti-scientific rationality'. Scott argues that Hallquist's criticisms are often unfair or inaccurate, taking quotes out of context or misunderstanding Yudkowsky's positions. He defends the rationalist community's efforts to develop better thinking tools that go beyond traditional scientific methods, while still respecting science. Scott contends that developing an 'Art of Thinking Clearly' is valuable and necessary, especially for experts who have to make difficult judgments. He argues Less Wrong is not against science, but wants to strengthen and supplement it with additional rational thinking skills. Shorter summary