[whatusername]

So I'm not sure if I agree with this argument.. And I'm going to link to the ultra-layman's version here: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/39/Harry_Potter_and_the_... but why celebrate at someone dying at 85 when we can/should be able to make them live till 170. Or longer.

On a related note -- for anyone who hasn't read "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" -- It's brilliant.

[palish]

Oh, certainly. And people living until 85/100 has become common only recently (relatively speaking).

I'm merely mourning the emotional complex of otherwise-logical humans. I happened to have a frustrating week due to coworkers being unwilling to think about logical benefits of proposed solutions, letting their emotions overwhelm their judgement. "Schedule feature requests? Schedules cause pain, anguish, and suffering; also monsters will materialize and devour your soul. Your whole soul. Scheduling is out of the question. P.S. I assigned you a bug to get done before tomorrow evening (seriously). Drop your multi-week project and work on that, now. Don't worry, I cleared it with the lead programmer."

So when I read the top comment of the top article on HN, and realized it was negatively charged with emotion, I suppose I got a little cynical. :)

[natep]

I'm catching up on my HN 100 feed, and want to thank you for recommending that work...it's amazing!

In case anyone else is as skeptical as I am ("another Harry Potter fan fic? Why is it special?), I want to point out that this work is by Eliezer Yudkowsky, a major contributor to Less Wrong (lesswrong.com).

He has a remarkable ability to define and express rational ideas. He takes concepts and terms that I've only encountered in a classroom, and puts them in the middle of a sentence like they're ordinary ideas, and it makes sense. I know I'm not doing a very good job of expressing why I like his writing so much, but I do.