rationalnewsletter

Issue #108: Full List

Estimations suggest that acting one week earlier would have saved more than half the lives that will be lost to the coronavirus in the US, exhibiting that the timing of social distancing can have an enormous impact on death tolls. // www.nytimes.com

# Coronavirus

My Covid-19 Thinking: 4/17 // Zvi, 20 min

Coronavirus: Justified Key Insights Thread // Ben Pace, 2 min

Far-Ultraviolet Light in Public Spaces to Fight Pandemic is a Good Idea but Premature // Kirby Sikes, 15 min

My stumble on COVID-19 // AllAmericanBreakfast, 3 min

Hammer and Mask - Wide spread use of reusable particle filtering masks as a SARS-CoV-2 eradication strategy // EGI, 15 min

COVID-19: An opportunity to help by modelling testing and tracing to inform the UK government // JustinShovelain, 2 min

Why don't we tape surgical masks to the face to seal them airtight? // ChristianKl, 1 min

Alarm bell for the next pandemic, V.2 // AllAmericanBreakfast, 7 min

What does the curve look like for coronavirus on a surface? // eapache, 1 min

Are there any prediction markets for Covid-19? // devas, 1 min

A Perfect Storm of Inflexibility // Robin Hanson, 4 min

A Failure, But Not Of Prediction // Scott Alexander, 15 min

Covid19 Pizza-Risk Estimator // Robin Hanson, 1 min

Peter Doherty on Variolation // Robin Hanson, 7 min

# Instrumental

College advice for people who are exactly like me // benkuhn, 8 min

# Epistemic

Evaluating Predictions in Hindsight // Zvi, 34 min

Treatments correlated with harm // Connor_Flexman, 3 min

Better name for "Heavy-tailedness of the world?" // Daniel Kokotajlo, 2 min

How superforecasting could be manipulated // AllAmericanBreakfast, 6 min

# Ai

"How conservative" should the partial maximisers be? // Stuart_Armstrong, 2 min

# Meta-ethics

Deminatalist Total Utilitarianism // Vanessa Kosoy, 6 min

# Anthropic

Discontinuous progress in history: an update // KatjaGrace, 29 min Favorite

Three Futures // Robin Hanson, 1 min

# Decision theory

The Unilateralist’s “Curse” Is Mostly Good // David Hornbein, 2 min

# Math and cs

Integrating Hidden Variables Improves Approximation // johnswentworth, 1 min

Mathematical Intuitionism and the Flow of Time // Polytopos, 7 min

# Books

Review of "Lifecycle Investing" // JessRiedel, 15 min Favorite

# Ea

Leaving Things For Others // jkaufman, 2 min

# Community

Helping the kids post // jkaufman, 1 min

The World According to Dominic Cummings // Chris_Leong, 7 min

In my culture: the responsibilities of open source maintainers // philh, 10 min

How much motivation do you derive from curiosity alone in your work/research? // NaiveTortoise, 1 min

One Hundred Billion Children’s Sky // Hivewired, 1 min

Narrative Direction and Rebellion // eapache, 3 min

Doors and Corners // Hivewired, 1 min

Looking for a Team to Participate on a Competition // Filipe Marchesini, 1 min

# Culture war

Predictable Identities 27: Craving and the Pill // Jacob Falkovich, 1 min

# Fun

The one where Quirrell is an egg // Ben Pace, 1 min

# Misc

Is this viable physics? // Daniel Kokotajlo, 1 min Favorite

The History of Color in Chinese // lsusr, 1 min

Probabilistic Blue-Eyed Islanders // johnswentworth, 1 min

Noise Simplifies // johnswentworth, 2 min

How should we model complex systems? // OxDoc, 1 min

Are there any naturally occurring heat pumps? // FactorialCode, 1 min

Brief Response to Suspended Reason on Parallels Between Skyrms on Signaling and Yudkowsky on Language and Evidence // Zack_M_Davis, 2 min

The Archetypal Rational and Post-Rational // Ouroborus, 2 min

Premature death // bfinn, 3 min

Just Top Post // jkaufman, 1 min

Are there any active play-money prediction markets online? // wilf, 1 min

Depression: The Olfactory Perspective // Scott Alexander, 6 min

Liminality?…Well, there’s a free sample! // Venkatesh Rao, 7 min

# Podcasts

AI Alignment Podcast: An Overview of Technical AI Alignment in 2018 and 2019 with Buck Shlegeris and Rohin Shah // Palus Astra, 112 min

#74 - Dr Greg Lewis on COVID-19 & catastrophic biological risks // The 80000 Hours team, 157 min

#198 — April 16, 2020 // Waking up with Sam Harris, 58 min

Article: Reducing global catastrophic biological risks // The 80000 Hours team, 64 min

The Mind Killer Episode 2 // The Bayesian Conspiracy, 85 min

#197 — April 12, 2020 // Waking up with Sam Harris, 30 min

# Videos of the week

Stanford HAI - COVID-19 and AI: A Virtual Conference // Stanford, 374 min