rationalnewsletter

Issue #215

The first large-scale assessment of ravens' cognitive abilities suggests that, by four months of age, ravens do about as well as adult chimps and orangutans on tests of causal reasoning, social learning, theory of mind, etc. // www.nature.com

# Instrumental

Ceiling Air Purifier // jkaufman, 2 min

Another Calming Example // jkaufman, 2 min

What do you do to deliberately practice? // hath, 2 min

Fact post: project-based learning // dominicq, 3 min

# Epistemic

Public beliefs vs. Private beliefs // elityre, 5 min Favorite

A short conceptual explainer of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason // jessica.liu.taylor, 20 min

The horror of what must, yet cannot, be true // Kaj_Sotala, 2 min

The Burden of Worldbuilding // lsusr, 1 min

# Ai

Six Dimensions of Operational Adequacy in AGI Projects // Eliezer_Yudkowsky, 16 min

Intergenerational trauma impeding cooperative existential safety efforts // Andrew_Critch, 4 min

Deep Learning Systems Are Not Less Interpretable Than Logic/Probability/Etc // johnswentworth, 2 min

The prototypical catastrophic AI action is getting root access to its datacenter // Buck, 2 min

Confused why a "capabilities research is good for alignment progress" position isn't discussed more // Kaj_Sotala, 5 min

# Meta-ethics

Just Say No to Utilitarianism // arjun-panickssery

Eternal youth as eternal suffering // shminux, 1 min

# Longevity

Quick Look: Asymptomatic Herpes Shedding // pktechgirl, 2 min

# Anthropic

A terrifying variant of Boltzmann's brains problem // Zeruel017, 5 min

Longtermist Consequences of a New Dark Age? // David Udell, 1 min

Formation via nucleation of boltzmann brains // Zeruel017, 1 min

Birth Order Effects: Nature vs. Nurture // Scott Alexander, 10 min

# Decision theory

[Repost] Non-Nashian Game Theory: A Normal-Form Primer // gfourny, 10 min

# Books

Book Review: Talent // Zvi, 97 min

Your Book Review: The Castrato // Scott Alexander, 36 min

I recommend this book for every life extensionist // Josh Mitteldorf, 6 min

# Ea

On effective altruism, utilitarianism and localness // david-hugh-jones, 6 min

Revisiting "Why Global Poverty" // jkaufman, 3 min

# Culture war

Rationalism in an Age of Egregores // David Udell, 2 min

Probability that the President would win election against a random adult citizen? // daniel-kokotajlo, 1 min

Storytelling: Mediocre Metamodernism // Venkatesh Rao, 13 min

# Misc

Reinventing the wheel // jasoncrawford, 2 min

Wielding civilization // dominicq, 2 min

How would you build Dath Ilan on earth? // yair-halberstadt, 1 min

On The Spectrum, On The Guest List: (iii) Etiquette // party-girl, 9 min

Is there any formal argument that climate change needs to more extreme weather events? // ChristianKl, 1 min

# Podcasts

#131 - Lewis Dartnell on getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world // , 65 min

163 – Effective Aesthetics // The Bayesian Conspiracy, 98 min

YANSS 234 – How to create better online environments in which arguing and deliberation is more likely to change people’s minds //

# Rational fiction

Passable Puppet // burmesetheaterwide, 3 min

# Videos of the week

Breaking down my seduction bodylanguage // Aella, 9 min