rationalnewsletter

Issue #138

Sunlight strongly protects against getting influenza: A 10% increase in relative sunlight decreases fall influenza by 1.1 out of 10 (Preprint). // drive.google.com

# Coronavirus

The 300-year journey to the covid vaccine // jasoncrawford, 6 min

Covid 11/12: The Winds of Winter // Zvi, 25 min

How can we lobby to get a vaccine distributed faster? // rockthecasbah, 2 min

Does there exist a detailed Bayesian COVID tracker? // Optimization Process, 1 min

Does BioNtech's vaccine result of 90% disease prevention mean that 90% of the vaccinated can't pass the virus to other people? // ChristianKl, 1 min

# Instrumental

Think in Terms of Actions, not Attributes // Collisteru, 1 min

# Epistemic

What are Examples of Great Distillers? // adamShimi, 1 min

A framework for thinking about single predictions // sil-ver, 15 min

Costs and benefits of metaphysics // George3d6, 14 min

On Arguments for God // Chris_Leong, 1 min

What are some good examples of fake beliefs? // adamzerner, 1 min

# Ai

Why those who care about catastrophic and existential risk should care about autonomous weapons // aaguirre, 22 min

Clarifying inner alignment terminology // evhub, 3 min

Why You Should Care About Goal-Directedness // adamShimi, 11 min

Early Thoughts on Ontology/Grounding Problems // johnswentworth, 5 min

Communication Prior as Alignment Strategy // johnswentworth, 8 min

# Meta-ethics

Notes on Temperance // David_Gross, 8 min

Notes on Respect-for-Others // David_Gross, 12 min

Notes on Wisdom // David_Gross, 4 min

My Confusion about Moral Philosophy // Nacruno96, 3 min

ALL Big Punishment Is “Cruel” // Robin Hanson, 6 min

# Anthropic

Sleeping Beauty, Cloning Beauty, and Frequentist Arguments In Anthropic Paradoxes // dadadarren, 4 min

# Decision theory

When Hindsight Isn't 20/20: Incentive Design With Imperfect Credit Allocation // johnswentworth, 7 min Favorite

Tweet markets for impersonal truth tracking? // KatjaGrace, 1 min

Incentive Problems With Current Forecasting Competitions. // Radamantis, 5 min

Time Travel Markets for Intellectual Accounting // abramdemski, 8 min

Ongoing free money at PredictIt // knite, 1 min

# Math and cs

Scoring 2020 U.S. Presidential Election Predictions // Zack_M_Davis, 4 min

Cartesian Frames Definitions // RobbBB, 9 min

Model Depth as Panacea and Obfuscator // abstractapplic, 19 min

# Community

The (Unofficial) Less Wrong Comment Challenge // adamShimi, 2 min

How to get the benefits of moving without moving (babble) // mingyuan, 10 min

The Darwin Game - Rounds 1 to 2 // lsusr, 1 min

Why I’m Writing A Book // Samo Burja, 3 min

Tips on organizing online meetups // JoshuaFox, 2 min

# Culture war

Two reasons to expect a peaceful change of power in the US // rockthecasbah, 2 min

Please steelman the accusations of election fraud // rockthecasbah, 1 min

Reading/listening list for the US failing or other significant shifts? // nicole-ross, 1 min

Did anybody calculate the Briers score for per-state election forecasts? // ChristianKl, 1 min

Universal Basic Dorms // Robin Hanson, 7 min

# Misc

Are the social sciences challenging because of fundamental difficulties or because of imposed ones? // ozziegooen, 13 min

What Would Advanced Social Technology Look Like? // johnswentworth, 1 min

Open Problems Create Paradigms // johnswentworth, 3 min

What could one do with truly unlimited computational power? // yitz, 2 min

Yes to Feature Requests, No to Entitlement // jkaufman, 2 min

# Podcasts

[Link] Digital Democracy Is Within Reach // Alexei, 1 min

EP92 Alexa Clay on Intentional Communities // The Jim Rutt Show, 72 min

Benjamin Todd on what the effective altruism community most needs (80k team chat #4) // The 80000 Hours team, 85 min

EP91 Joe Brewer on Applied Cultural Evolution // The Jim Rutt Show, 74 min

Are Boomers to blame for Millennials' struggles? // Rationally Speaking, 59 min

# Videos of the week

Making Talking Memes With Voice DeepFakes! // Two Minute Papers, 6 min