rationalnewsletter

Issue #173: Full List

What google did for search, this does for proteins: This work by DeepMind is made fully available to the biomedical community and sets the foundation for accurately predicting virtually all protein structures, >100 million. // www.nature.com

# Coronavirus

Covid 7/15: Rates of Change // Zvi, 20 min

We have some evidence that masks work // technicalities, 6 min

# Instrumental

How to Sleep Better // marius-hobbhahn, 18 min Favorite

Reflecting on building my own tools from scratch and 'inventing on principle' // amir-gamil, 5 min

A new option for building lumenators // Alex_Altair, 4 min

Media Diet: Cultivating Voice, Deliberate Action, and Alive Time // Eh_Yo_Lexa, 2 min

# Epistemic

The Mountaineer's Fallacy // alex-power, 1 min

The inescapability of knowledge // alexflint, 6 min

A cognitive algorithm for "free will." // AllAmericanBreakfast, 3 min

# Ai

[Link] Musk's non-missing mood // jimrandomh, 1 min

What would it look like if it looked like AGI was very near? // Bjartur Tómas, 1 min

Fractional progress estimates for AI timelines and implied resource requirements // mark-xu, 8 min

Experimentation with AI-generated images (VQGAN+CLIP) | Solarpunk airships fleeing a dragon // Kaj_Sotala, 2 min

A closer look at chess scalings (into the past) // hippke, 5 min

Benchmarking an old chess engine on new hardware // hippke, 5 min

AlphaFold 2 paper released: "Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold", Jumper et al 2021 // gwern

(2009) Shane Legg - Funding safe AGI // Bjartur Tómas, 1 min

What will the twenties look like if AGI is 30 years away? // daniel-kokotajlo, 1 min

The More Power At Stake, The Stronger Instrumental Convergence Gets For Optimal Policies // TurnTrout, 6 min

Model-based RL, Desires, Brains, Wireheading // steve2152, 16 min

Equivalent of Information Theory but for Computation? // Jemist, 1 min

# Longevity

Longtermism vs short-termism for personal life extension // MathieuRoy, 2 min

# Anthropic

Anthropic decision theory for self-locating beliefs // Stuart_Armstrong, 1 min

Doing Intelligent Design Right // Robin Hanson, 4 min

# Decision theory

Large corporations can unilaterally ban/tax ransomware payments via bets // ryan_greenblatt, 2 min

Reasons for Punishment // yair-halberstadt, 2 min

Analyzing Punishment as Preventation // yair-halberstadt, 4 min

Use Prediction Markets To Fund Investigative Reporting // Scott Alexander, 4 min

# Math and cs

"If and Only If" Should Be Spelled "Ifeff" // jimrandomh, 1 min

Generalizing Koopman-Pitman-Darmois // johnswentworth, 13 min

Generalising Logic Gates // Jemist, 5 min

Underlying model of an imperfect morphism // Stuart_Armstrong, 3 min

The Additive Summary Equation // johnswentworth, 9 min

# Books

When beliefs become identities, truth-seeking becomes hard // Writer, 4 min

Book Review: Crazy Like Us // Scott Alexander, 24 min

# Ea

Open Philanthropy is seeking proposals for outreach projects // abergal, 12 min

# Community

Re: Competent Elites // lsusr, 3 min

Ideal College Education for an Aspiring Rationalist? // Collisteru, 1 min

How to make more people interested in rationality? // adrian-arellano-davin, 1 min

How to reach out to non-rationalists? // adrian-arellano-davin, 1 min

# Misc

Winston Churchill, futurist and EA // jasoncrawford, 5 min

(Brainstem, Neocortex) ≠ (Base Motivations, Honorable Motivations) // steve2152, 10 min

Typology of blog posts that don’t always add anything clear and insightful // KatjaGrace, 10 min

Imaginary reenactment to heal trauma – how and when does it work? // Kaj_Sotala, 3 min

Lafayette: traffic vessels // KatjaGrace, 1 min

Fixing the arbitrariness of game depth // cousin_it, 2 min

Lafayette: empty traffic signals // KatjaGrace, 2 min

What are some examples from history where a scientific theory predicted a significant experimental observation in advance? // Insub, 1 min

Is social theory our doom? // pchvykov, 2 min

Eponymous Laws Part 3: Miscellaneous // rogersbacon, 4 min

Seeking Samsara // jblue, 5 min

# Podcasts

YANSS 209 – Why the reason some people refuse to wear masks during a pandemic has little to do with the masks themselves //

YANSS 210 – How a psychologist convinced 70 percent of subjects they were guilty of a crime they didn’t commit, and other stories about the fallibility of memory //

Currents 038: Connor Leahy on Artificial Intelligence // The Jim Rutt Show, 65 min

141 – Raising Younglings // The Bayesian Conspiracy, 126 min

EP137 Ken Stanley on Neuroevolution // The Jim Rutt Show, 90 min

#105 - Alexander Berger on improving global health and wellbeing in clear and direct ways // , 174 min

# Videos of the week

AlphaFold Protein Structure Database // DeepMind, 1 min