rational
Issue #177: Full List
15 August, 2021 // View curated list
Why parents should be more relaxed about the risk of their child missing school: An Essay by Scott Alexander. // astralcodexten.substack.com
# Coronavirus
Covid 8/12: The Worst Is Over // Zvi, 32 min
Is microCOVID "badness" superlinear? // Optimization Process, 1 min
# Instrumental
Eight Hundred Slightly Poisoned Word Games // Yvain, 4 min
For God's sake, Google it. // aaronb50, 4 min
Framing Practicum: Stable Equilibrium // johnswentworth, 4 min
Calculated Clairvoyance // TheTrueSquidward, 1 min
Great Negotiation MOOC on Coursera // eg, 1 min
Fermi Fingers // Optimization Process, 1 min
# Epistemic
The two-headed bacterium // Elmer of Malmesbury, 8 min Favorite
Staying Grounded // johnswentworth, 4 min
The Future: Where are the Colors and the Sports? // rogersbacon, 9 min
Implicature Conflation // abramdemski, 8 min
Framing Practicum: Bistability // johnswentworth, 5 min
Fudging Work and Rationalization // Jemist, 2 min
The Reductionist Trap // Jemist, 4 min
Request for comment on a novel reference work of understanding // ender, 10 min
Jaynes-Cox Probability: Are plausibilities objective? // haziq-muhammad, 1 min
What is the name of this fallacy? // adrian-arellano-davin, 1 min
Don't walk through the fire! Walk through the fire! // Icarus Gallagher, 1 min
# Ai
OpenAI Codex: First Impressions // rishit-vora, 4 min
New GPT-3 competitor // quintin-pope, 1 min
Automating Auditing: An ambitious concrete technical research proposal // evhub, 17 min
Technical Predictions Related to AI Safety // lsusr, 10 min
Approaches to gradient hacking // adamShimi, 8 min
Some criteria for sandwiching projects // DMZ, 4 min
When Most VNM-Coherent Preference Orderings Have Convergent Instrumental Incentives // TurnTrout, 5 min
Applications for Deconfusing Goal-Directedness // adamShimi, 6 min
A review of "Agents and Devices" // adamShimi, 4 min
How would the Scaling Hypothesis change things? // alenglander, 1 min
Power-seeking for successive choices // adamShimi, 5 min
What is the problem? // carlos-ramirez, 6 min
Dopamine-supervised learning in mammals & fruit flies // steve2152, 9 min
A new definition of "optimizer" // Chantiel, 8 min
Instrumental Convergence: Power as Rademacher Complexity // zachary-robertson, 3 min
Free course review — Reliable and Interpretable Artificial Intelligence (ETH Zurich) // przemyslaw-czechowski, 3 min
Goal-Directedness and Behavior, Redux // adamShimi, 2 min
Question about Test-sets and Bayesian machine learning // haziq-muhammad, 1 min
# Longevity
A Response to A Contamination Theory of the Obesity Epidemic // skot523, 12 min Favorite
Perhaps vastly more people should be on FDA-approved weight loss medication // aaron-kaufman, 9 min
Obesity Epidemic Explained in 0.9 Subway Cookies // aaron-teetor, 1 min
# Anthropic
Absent-Minded Driver and Self-Locating Probabilities // dadadarren, 5 min
# Decision theory
In Most Markets, Lower Risk Means Higher Reward // dawangy, 5 min
A deeper look at doxepin and the FDA // AllAmericanBreakfast, 4 min
Combining the best of Georgian and Harberger taxes // yair-halberstadt, 12 min
Predictions about the state of crypto in ten years // mike_hawke, 2 min
A Qualitative and Intuitive Explanation of Expected Value // adamzerner, 10 min
# Books
Outline of Galef's "Scout Mindset" // RobbBB, 15 min Favorite
Book Review: The Beginning of Infinity // sam-enright, 38 min
Book review: Knowledge and Decisions by Thomas Sowell // victorsintnicolaas, 6 min
# Relationships
Coase's "Nature of the Firm" on Polyamory // 1a3orn, 1 min
# Community
You are invited to apply to the Guild of the ROSE // moridinamael, 1 min
Interest in Biostasis: Much More Than You Wanted to Know. (Results from the ACX 2021 Biostasis/Cryonics Survey) // Synaptic, 1 min
D&D.Sci August 2021: The Oracle and the Monk // abstractapplic, 2 min
Founding a rationalist group at the University of Michigan // AllAmericanBreakfast, 1 min
Guild of the ROSE Mixer // moridinamael, 1 min
What should rationalists call themselves? // Nathan Young, 1 min
Effective Altruism Virtual Programs Sep-Oct 2021 // yiyang, 1 min
# Culture war
Transitive Tolerance Means Intolerance // orthonormal, 3 min
# Misc
Against "blankfaces" // philh, 5 min Favorite
Halpern’s paper - A refutation of Cox’s theorem? // haziq-muhammad, 1 min
Might intelligence decrease among humanity? // throwawayaccount111, 3 min
NJ Still Has Silly Rotary Rules // jkaufman, 1 min
Blindness, Schizophrenia, and Autism // Scott Alexander, 3 min
Why Does Reason’s Reach Vary? // Robin Hanson, 1 min
Seeking Status Fashion Stats // Robin Hanson, 1 min
Contra Drum On The Fish Oil Story // Scott Alexander, 14 min
# Podcasts
#108 - Chris Olah on working at top AI labs without an undergrad degree // , 93 min
143 – Crazy Like Us // The Bayesian Conspiracy, 156 min
Currents 041: Jonathan Rowson on Our Metacrisis Pickle // The Jim Rutt Show, 62 min
See YANSS live in-person or streaming at Caveat in NYC on August 13th //
# Rational fiction
Purple Lipstick // lsusr, 2 min
# Videos of the week
There are transparent monsters in the world - part 1 // Writer, 5 min
How Apple scans your phone (and how to evade it) - NeuralHash CSAM Detection Algorithm Explained // Yannic Kilcher, 50 min