rationalnewsletter

Issue #181

New paper in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition argues that obesity is not a result of consuming too many calories. It's what you eat that matters, not how much. The main culprit is highly processed carbs. // academic.oup.com

# Coronavirus

Covid 9/9: Passing the Peak // Zvi, 21 min

How do you decide when to change N95/FFP-2 masks? // ChristianKl, 1 min

Cliffs Notes: How much should fully vaccinated people care about Long COVID? // Sameerishere, 10 min

# Instrumental

The Best Software For Every Need // Bjartur Tómas, 1 min

Three Principles to Writing Original Nonfiction // lsusr, 5 min

Prefer the English Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American // Erich_Grunewald, 1 min

Pack a travel bathroom bag // Alex Hollow, 1 min

How does your data backup solution setup work? // ChristianKl, 1 min

# Epistemic

Assigning probabilities to metaphysical ideas // Jotto999, 1 min

[Link post] When pooling forecasts, use the geometric mean of odds // Jsevillamol, 1 min

A Taxonomy of Research // Jemist, 2 min

How to Find a Problem // Jemist, 2 min

# Ai

The alignment problem in different capability regimes // Buck, 5 min

Paths To High-Level Machine Intelligence // Daniel_Eth, 40 min

Measurement, Optimization, and Take-off Speed // jsteinhardt, 15 min

Gradient descent is not just more efficient genetic algorithms // leogao, 1 min

Countable Factored Spaces // Diffractor, 27 min

# Meta-ethics

Pleasure and Pain are Long-Tailed // lsusr, 4 min

A Primer on the Symmetry Theory of Valence // michael-edward-johnson, 8 min

# Longevity

How much should we value life? // adamzerner, 45 min Favorite

Conflict in Kriorus becomes hot today, updated, update 2 // avturchin, 1 min

The Unbearable Semiheaviness Of Being // Scott Alexander, 6 min

A New Approach to Methylation Clocks // Josh Mitteldorf, 9 min

# Anthropic

The Duplicator: Instant Cloning Would Make the World Economy Explode // HoldenKarnofsky, 8 min

The Insular Fertile Future // Robin Hanson, 2 min

Think of the (Alien) Children! // Robin Hanson, 1 min

# Decision theory

Acausal Trade and the Ultimatum Game // yair-halberstadt, 3 min

Decision theory question: Is it possible to acausally blackmail the universe into telling you how time travel works? // dxu, 3 min

Framing Practicum: Comparative Advantage // johnswentworth, 5 min

# Math and cs

The Blackwell order as a formalization of knowledge // alexflint, 12 min

# Books

I read “White Fragility” so you don’t have to (but maybe you should) // David_Gross, 8 min

# Community

What Motte and Baileys are rationalists most likely to engage in? // Chris_Leong, 1 min

Why there are no online CFAR workshops? // Just Learning, 1 min

# Culture war

Does Diverse News Decrease Polarization? // jsteinhardt, 10 min

Too Good To Check: A Play In Three Acts // Scott Alexander, 8 min

# Misc

Kids Learn by Copying // lsusr, 1 min

# Podcasts

145 – You Are In Newcomb’s IQ Shredder // The Bayesian Conspiracy, 133 min

# Rational fiction

Bayeswatch 7: Wildfire // lsusr, 4 min

Bayeswatch 9: Zombies // lsusr, 3 min

Bayeswatch 8: Antimatter // lsusr, 3 min

# Videos of the week

GPT-X, DALL-E, and our Multimodal Future [video series] // bakztfuture, 1 min

Simulating the Evolution of Sacrificing for Family // Primer, 22 min