Does anyone not have any problems with taking ideas seriously? I think I'm in this category because ideas like cryonics, the Singularity, <nowiki>[</… - Wei Dai

I think status is in fact a significant motivation even for me, and even the more "pure" motivations like intellectual curiosity can in some sense be traced back to status. It seems unlikely that <nowiki>[</nowiki>updateless decision theory<nowiki>]</nowiki> would have been developed without the existence of forums like extropians, everything-list, and LW, for reasons of both motivation and feedback/collaboration.

I typically find myself wanting to verify every single fact or idea that I hadn't heard of before, and say either "hold on, I need to think about that for a few minutes" or "let me check that on Google/Wikipedia". In actual conversation I'd suppress this because I suspect the other person will quickly find it extremely annoying. I just think to myself "I'll try to remember what he's saying and check it out later", but of course I don't have such a good memory.

I think a highly rational person would have high moral uncertainty at this point and not necessarily be described as "altruistic".