rationalnewsletter

Issue #113

Zero-Sum Thinking: Win–Win denial is pervasive, with buyers consistently seen as less likely to benefit from transactions than sellers. // www.econlib.org

# Coronavirus

Farrell On Who Pushes To Open // Robin Hanson, 3 min

Coronalinks 5/18/20: When All You Have Is A Hammer, Everything Starts Looking Like A Dance // Scott Alexander, 21 min

# Instrumental

What are objects that have made your life better? // Mark Xu, 1 min Favorite

Get It Done Now // Zvi, 1 min

Reflective Complaints // Raemon, 1 min

How to learn from a stronger rationalist in daily life? // Thomas Kwa, 1 min

Is taking bacopa good for life extension? // Mati_Roy, 1 min

# Epistemic

From self to craving (three characteristics series) // Kaj_Sotala, 13 min

# Ai

Learning and manipulating learning // Stuart_Armstrong, 12 min

AGIs as populations // ricraz, 5 min

Reward functions and updating assumptions can hide a multitude of sins // Stuart_Armstrong, 11 min

The Mechanistic and Normative Structure of Agency // G Gordon Worley III, 1 min

Probabilities, weights, sums: pretty much the same for reward functions // Stuart_Armstrong, 2 min

# Meta-ethics

Nihilism doesn't matter // Bob Jacobs, 1 min

A Problem With Patternism // Bob Jacobs, 1 min

# Longevity

In Search of Slack // Martin Sustrik, 7 min

# Anthropic

Highlights of Comparative and Evolutionary Aging // johnswentworth, 2 min

# Decision theory

The Oil Crisis of 1973 // Elizabeth, 3 min Favorite

Extracting Value from Inadequate Equilibria // eapache, 3 min

Isn't Tesla stock highly undervalued? // Liron, 2 min

Post-crash market efficiency 1696-2020 // bfinn, 3 min

Why you should minimax in two-player zero-sum games // Nisan, 1 min

# Math and cs

Comment on "Endogenous Epistemic Factionalization" // Zack_M_Davis, 6 min

Orthogonality // lsusr, 1 min

Haskenthetical // philh, 15 min

Replication Dynamics Bridge to RL in Thermodynamic Limit // Zachary Robertson, 3 min

# Ea

Effective altruism and criticism toward activism: Answer to a paradox // ArthurRainbow, 5 min

# Community

What aspects of the world emotionally bothers you on an immediate personal level on a daily basis? // Mati_Roy, 1 min

# Culture war

Wikipedia Edit War Update // jefftk, 2 min

What can currently be done about the "flooding the zone" issue? // lahwran, 1 min

# Misc

Why Artists Study Anatomy // Sisi Cheng, 2 min Favorite

Pointing to a Flower // johnswentworth, 11 min

How does publishing a paper work? // Liron, 1 min

English Bread Regulations // jefftk, 7 min

Signaling: Why People Have Conversations // liam_hinzman, 3 min

# Podcasts

#78 - Danny Hernandez on forecasting and the drivers of AI progress // The 80000 Hours team, 131 min

111 – Rational Practices in Everyday Living // The Bayesian Conspiracy, 125 min

#77 - Professor Marc Lipsitch on whether we're winning or losing against COVID-19 // The 80000 Hours team, 97 min

EP54 Robert Conan Ryan on Boom & Bust Cycles // . , 99 min

# Rational fiction

"Starwink" by Alicorn // Zack_M_Davis, 1 min

# Videos of the week

DeepMind Made A Superhuman AI For 57 Atari Games! ? // Two Minute Papers, 7 min