rationalnewsletter

Issue #195

Extraordinary rate of progress in image generation from text, able to do "client revisions". // twitter.com

# Coronavirus

Omicron Post #7 // Zvi, 15 min

Omicron Post #6 // Zvi, 9 min

Covid 12/16: On Your Marks // Zvi, 11 min

Understand the exponential function: R0 of the COVID // yandong-zhang, 1 min

Immune senescence, Christian theology, and the Spike protein // Josh Mitteldorf, 9 min

# Instrumental

How I became a person who wakes up early // Alex_Altair, 4 min

Blog Respectably // lsusr, 1 min

# Epistemic

Perishable Knowledge // lsusr, 3 min

Is "gears-level" just a synonym for "mechanistic"? // capybaralet, 1 min

The "Other" Option // jsteinhardt, 8 min

How the Equivalent Bet Test Actually Works // Erich_Grunewald, 5 min

The Phrase "No Evidence" Is A Red Flag For Bad Science Communication // Scott Alexander, 5 min

# Ai

Teaser: Hard-coding Transformer Models // MadHatter, 1 min

Where can one learn deep intuitions about information theory? // Valentine, 2 min

My Overview of the AI Alignment Landscape: A Bird's Eye View // neel-nanda-1, 18 min

ARC's first technical report: Eliciting Latent Knowledge // paulfchristiano, 1 min

Some abstract, non-technical reasons to be non-maximally-pessimistic about AI alignment // RobbBB, 8 min

# Meta-ethics

Universal counterargument against “badness of death” is wrong // avturchin, 1 min

# Anthropic

Nuclear war anthropics // smountjoy, 1 min

Why do governments refer to existential risks primarily in terms of national security? // Evan_Gaensbauer, 1 min

We Don’t Have To Die // Robin Hanson, 5 min

# Decision theory

More power to you // jasoncrawford, 1 min

For and Against Lotteries in Elite University Admissions // sam-enright, 3 min

Housing Markets, Satisficers, and One-Track Goodhart // Jemist, 2 min

Decision Theory Breakdown—Personal Attempt at a Review // Jake Arft-Guatelli, 10 min

Venture Granters, The VCs of public goods, incentivizing good dreams // MakoYass, 13 min

# Ea

Zvi’s Thoughts on the Survival and Flourishing Fund (SFF) // Zvi, 77 min

# Community

Occupational Infohazards // jessica.liu.taylor, 57 min

Enabling More Feedback for AI Safety Researchers // frances_lorenz, 3 min

Mystery Hunt 2022 // Scott Garrabrant, 1 min

In Defense of Attempting Hard Things, and my story of the Leverage ecosystem // Cathleen

# Culture war

We'll Always Have Crazy // Duncan_Sabien, 15 min

# Misc

Leverage // lsusr, 1 min

What Caplan’s "Missing Mood" Heuristic Is Really For // AllAmericanBreakfast, 4 min

How Group Minds Differ // Robin Hanson, 3 min

Ancient Plagues // Scott Alexander, 6 min

What Hypocrisy Feels Like // Robin Hanson, 3 min

# Podcasts

#118 - Jaime Yassif on safeguarding bioscience to prevent catastrophic lab accidents and bioweapons development // , 135 min

YANSS 221 – How a science educator in Oklahoma uses a portable planetarium to convert flat earthers //

EP 149 Joshua Vial on Enspiral // The Jim Rutt Show, 86 min

# Rational fiction

Analysis of Bird Box (2018) // TekhneMakre, 5 min

# Videos of the week

The Enduring Mystery of the Creator of Bitcoin // Jake Tran, 20 min