“Even if 200 folks do the same sort of work in the same office, they don’t do the exact same work, and usually that person wouldn’t be there or be paid if no one thought their work made any difference.”
Obviously Robin has never worked in a typical office environment. This is a GREAT example of the theoretical framework which he uses to model the world being grossly wrong and honestly is a great example of why no-one should be allowed a PhD in ANY social science without having spent at least 5 years in at least 3 different communities, jobs, and industries.
“I’d like to see a study confirming that. The Internet is more addictive than television and I highly suspect it drains more life-force.”
On average, Americans spend far more hours watching TV than using the Internet. Obviously Eliezer’s sample-set is severely biased when he makes causal statements about what’s addictive. People who basically live on the internet will find that people THEY know are more addicted to internet than to TV.
But if human sociopaths lack sympathy that doesn’t prevent US from having sympathy for THEM at all. Likewise, it’s not at all obvious that we CAN have sympathy for aliens with completely different cognitive architecture even if they have sympathy for one another. An octopus is intelligent, but if I worry about it’s pain I think that I am probably purely anthropomorphizing.