rationalnewsletter

Issue #238

When you cancel school (snow days, COVID, summer, holidays), kids stop committing so much suicide // twitter.com

# Instrumental

How to Make Easy Decisions // lynettebye, 2 min

# Epistemic

Word-Distance vs Idea-Distance: The Case for Lanoitaring // Sable, 9 min

Distillation Experiment: Chunk-Knitting // AllAmericanBreakfast, 7 min

Can People Be Honestly Wrong About Their Own Experiences? // Scott Alexander, 6 min

# Ai

Mysteries of mode collapse due to RLHF // janus, 14 min

How could we know that an AGI system will have good consequences? // So8res, 6 min

Applying superintelligence without collusion // Eric Drexler, 7 min

Trying to Make a Treacherous Mesa-Optimizer // MadHatter, 4 min

A philosopher's critique of RLHF // ThomasWoodside, 2 min

# Decision theory

Rudeness, a useful coordination mechanic // Raemon, 3 min

The biological function of love for non-kin is to gain the trust of people we cannot deceive // chaosmage, 9 min

Internalizing the damage of bad-acting partners creates incentives for due diligence // tailcalled, 1 min

Adversarial Priors: Not Paying People to Lie to You // eva_, 3 min

Is there any discussion on avoiding being Dutch-booked or otherwise taken advantage of one's bounded rationality by refusing to engage? // shminux, 1 min

# Books

[Book Review] "Station Eleven" by Emily St. John Mandel // lsusr, 1 min

Highlights From The Comments On Brain Waves // Scott Alexander, 14 min

# Ea

We must be very clear: fraud in the service of effective altruism is unacceptable // evhub

Speculation on Current Opportunities for Unusually High Impact in Global Health // johnswentworth, 4 min

Opportunities that surprised us during our Clearer Thinking Regrants program // spencerg

# Community

I Converted Book I of The Sequences Into A Zoomer-Readable Format // dkirmani, 2 min

Women and Effective Altruism // p-g-keerthana-gopalakrishnan, 3 min

Thinking About Mastodon // jkaufman, 1 min

Charging for the Dharma // jchan, 5 min

EA (& AI Safety) has overestimated its projected funding — which decisions must be revised? // strawberry calm, 1 min

# Culture war

What’s the Deal with Elon Musk and Twitter? // Zvi, 37 min

FTX will probably be sold at a steep discount. What we know and some forecasts on what will happen next // Nathan Young

Democracy Is in Danger, but Not for the Reasons You Think // ExCeph, 14 min

# Misc

What it's like to dissect a cadaver // OldManNick, 5 min Favorite

Exams-Only Universities // MathieuRoy, 2 min

What is epigenetics? // Metacelsus, 7 min

The optimal angle for a solar boiler is different than for a solar panel // yair-halberstadt, 2 min

Google Search as a Washed Up Service Dog: "I HALP!" // shminux, 1 min

# Podcasts

#140 – Bear Braumoeller on the case that war isn't in decline // , 167 min

# Rational fiction

[simulation] 4chan user claiming to be the attorney hired by Google's sentient chatbot LaMDA shares wild details of encounter // janus, 17 min