rationalnewsletter

Issue #217

A system that uses a smartwatch and smartphone to present sounds in deep sleep has shown benefits in spatial memory the same as Targeted Memory Reactivation in a lab. // twitter.com

# Instrumental

Perils of optimizing in social contexts // owencb, 2 min

Don't Over-Optimize Things // owencb, 5 min

Favourite new AI productivity tools? // gabe-mukobi, 1 min

The best 'free solo' (rock climbing) video // Kenny, 3 min

What's the goal in life? // k8n, 1 min

# Epistemic

Our mental building blocks are more different than I thought // marius-hobbhahn, 17 min

[Link] "The madness of reduced medical diagnostics" by Dynomight // Kenny, 1 min

[Link] New SEP article on Bayesian Epistemology // alenglander, 1 min

# Ai

Contra Hofstadter on GPT-3 Nonsense // rictic, 1 min

Humans are very reliable agents // alyssavance, 3 min

Slow motion videos as AI risk intuition pumps // Andrew_Critch, 1 min

Contra EY: Can AGI destroy us without trial & error? // nikita-sokolsky, 18 min

A central AI alignment problem: capabilities generalization, and the sharp left turn // So8res, 12 min

# Meta-ethics

Lifeguards // akash-wasil, 3 min

Pure Altruism // Matt Goldwater, 4 min

# Anthropic

Why don't we think we're in the simplest universe with intelligent life? // ADifferentAnonymous, 1 min

UFOs as USA PsychOp // Robin Hanson, 4 min

# Decision theory

Georgism, in theory // Stuart_Armstrong, 5 min

Was the Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution? // Davis Kedrosky, 14 min

Is there a worked example of Georgian taxes? // Dagon, 1 min

An Approach to Land Value Taxation // harsimony, 5 min

1689: Uncovering the World New Institutionalism Created // Davis Kedrosky, 11 min

# Math and cs

A Butterfly's View of Probability // gabriel-wu, 14 min

Crypto-fed Computation // aaguirre, 9 min

Intuitive Explanation of AIXI // thomas-larsen, 6 min

Optimization power as divergence from default trajectories // joshua-clymer, 6 min

Why the Kaldor-Hicks criterion can be non-transitive // Rupert, 1 min

# Books

Forecasting Fusion Power // daniel-kokotajlo, 1 min

Your Book Review: The Future Of Fusion Energy // Scott Alexander, 22 min

# Community

I applied for a MIRI job in 2020. Here's what happened next. // ViktoriaMalyasova, 9 min

Announcing the Clearer Thinking Regrants program // spencerg, 1 min

BBC Future covers progress studies // jasoncrawford, 3 min

# Culture war

Against Active Shooter Drills // Zvi, 8 min

What's the information value of government hearings? // Kenny, 2 min

Why did Russia invade Ukraine? // Bohaska

# Misc

In defense of flailing, with foreword by Bill Burr // lc, 4 min

Infohazards and inferential distances // acylhalide, 6 min

Security analysis of 'cloud chemistry labs'? // Kenny, 1 min

Peer Review: Nightmares // Scott Alexander, 8 min

Why Be Romantic // Robin Hanson, 3 min

# Podcasts

Who Are You EP 01: Seth Jordan on Social Threefolding // The Jim Rutt Show, 79 min

#132 - Nova DasSarma on why information security may be critical to the safe development of AI systems // , 162 min

164 – Pregnancy is Body Horror // The Bayesian Conspiracy, 112 min

Currents 064: Michael Garfield and J.F. Martel on Art x AI // The Jim Rutt Show, 61 min

YANSS 235 – How Terry Crews confronted his insecurities, updated his limiting beliefs, and changed his concept of masculinity (and himself) //

# Videos of the week

Large Language Models as a Cultural Technology // Simons Institute, 15 min