rationalnewsletter

Issue #164

Meta-analysis shows that self-reports are rarely an accurate reflection of logged media use, raising concerns about the validity of findings relying solely on self-reported measures of media use. // www.nature.com

# Coronavirus

Covid 5/13: Moving On // Zvi, 21 min

Vaccine Rollout as Wheeled-Luggage Problem // AllAmericanBreakfast, 4 min

Louisiana Gets Vaccine Passports Right // gabriel-holmes, 1 min

Unthinkable Thoughts // Josh Mitteldorf, 8 min

# Instrumental

Is driving worth the risk? // adamzerner, 8 min

Under Pressure // Alex Hollow, 1 min

Meditations on Kotzebue // adaminoue, 1 min

# Epistemic

Deliberately Vague Language is Bullshit // lsusr, 1 min

The case for hypocrisy // aaronb50, 6 min

Zvi's Law of No Evidence // lsusr, 1 min

Does butterfly affect? // pchvykov, 2 min

How Can One Tell What Is Beautiful? // Erich_Grunewald, 18 min

# Ai

Agency in Conway’s Game of Life // alexflint, 11 min

Challenge: know everything that the best go bot knows about go // DanielFilan, 2 min

Formal Inner Alignment, Prospectus // abramdemski, 19 min

Understanding the Lottery Ticket Hypothesis // alexflint, 9 min

Suppose $1 billion is given to AI Safety. How should it be spent? // hunterglenn, 1 min

# Meta-ethics

What is the strongest argument you know for antirealism? // Michele Campolo, 1 min

Restricted Antinatalism on Subagents // Josephine, 2 min

# Anthropic

When The Tabooed Taboo // Robin Hanson, 6 min

Parsing Pictures of Mars Muck // Robin Hanson, 4 min

# Decision theory

Academia as Company Hierarchy // Virgil Kurkjian, 21 min Favorite

Technocratic Plimsoll Line // sustrik, 6 min

Do you think TDT/FDT imply magic is real? // emmab, 1 min

Why Democracy? // sxae, 17 min

Can Bitcoin transition from PoW to PoS? // adrian-arellano-davin, 1 min

# Math and cs

How to compute the probability you are flipping a trick coin // lsusr, 1 min

Testing the FLEDGE Prototype // jkaufman, 1 min

Hypothesis Space Entropy // lsusr, 2 min

# Books

What is the best chemistry textbook? // maxwell-peterson, 1 min

Your Book Review: Addiction By Design // Scott Alexander, 21 min

# Community

Concerning not getting lost // alexflint, 5 min

# Culture war

Sympathy for the ferryman of Hades, or why we should keep Trump off Twitter // CraigMichael, 8 min

Theses On The Current Moment // Scott Alexander, 9 min

The Rise And Fall Of Online Culture Wars // Scott Alexander, 37 min

# Misc

Peekskill Lyme Incidence // jkaufman, 1 min

Utopic Nightmares // Jozdien, 6 min

Massachusetts Tick-Borne Disease Distribution // jkaufman, 1 min

Biological Holism: A New Paradigm? // Waddington, 24 min

Welcome To The Terrible World Of Prescription-Only Apps // Scott Alexander, 10 min

# Podcasts

AXRP Episode 7 - Side Effects with Victoria Krakovna // DanielFilan, 53 min

#99 – Leah Garcés on turning adversaries into allies to change the chicken industry // , 146 min

EP125 Samo Burja on Societal Decline: Part 2 // The Jim Rutt Show, 80 min

# Rational fiction

The Nuclear Energy Alignment Problem // lsusr, 1 min

# Videos of the week

AI made this music video | What happens when OpenAI's CLIP meets BigGAN? // Yannic Kilcher, 13 min