rationalnewsletter

Issue #41

Birds have a forebrain organization with no cortex, but their cognitive skills are on par with primates. A specific cortical architecture cannot be a requirement for advanced cognitive skills. // drive.google.com

# Instrumental

Strategy is the Deconfusion of Action // ryan_b, 7 min

Learning-Intentions vs Doing-Intentions // Ruby, 4 min

What makes people intellectually active? // abramdemski, 1 min

How can I most effectively improve my writing abilities? // ChristianKl, 1 min

What's the best way for me to improve my English pronounciation? // ChristianKl, 1 min

# Epistemic

Toward An Honest Consensus // Robin Hanson, 2 min Favorite

How did academia ensure papers were correct in the early 20th Century? // Ben Pace, 2 min

Why do Contemplative Practitioners Make so Many Metaphysical Claims? // romeostevensit, 7 min

What do you do when you find out you have inconsistent probabilities? // Radamantis, 1 min

Revealed preferences aren't just exposed lies // jml, 1 min

# Ai

Will humans build goal-directed agents? // rohinmshah, 7 min

What are good ML/AI related prediction / calibration questions for 2019? // james_t, 2 min

Conceptual Analysis for AI Alignment // capybaralet, 2 min

Generalising CNNs // James Crook, 5 min

Optimization Regularization through Time Penalty // Linda Linsefors, 4 min

# Anthropic

What Happened To 90s Environmentalism? // Scott Alexander, 25 min Favorite

Perpetual Motion Via Negative Matter? // Robin Hanson, 5 min

# Decision theory

Two More Decision Theory Problems for Humans // Wei_Dai, 2 min

# Math and cs

Logical inductors in multistable situations. // Donald Hobson, 1 min

# Books

Tales of the Turing Church // Robin Hanson, 7 min

# Ea

Does anti-malaria charity destroy the local anti-malaria industry? // Viliam, 1 min Favorite

# Community

Applied Rationality Workshop Cologne, Germany // mschons, 2 min

Announcement: A talk about structured concurrency at FOSDEM // Martin Sustrik, 1 min

Preregistration Of Investigations For The 2019 SSC Survey // Scott Alexander, 3 min

# Fun

Card Rebalancing and Economic Considerations in Digital Card Games // Zvi, 6 min

Advantages of Card Rebalancing // Zvi, 12 min

# Misc

What exercises go best with 3 blue 1 brown's Linear Algebra videos? // Raemon, 1 min

How do we identify bottlenecks to scientific and technological progress? // An1lam, 1 min

I want it my way! // nickhayes, 10 min

What is a reasonable outside view for the fate of social movements? // jacobjacob, 1 min

Towards no-math, graphical instructions for prediction markets // ryan_b, 2 min

# Podcasts

#145 — The Information War // Waking up with Sam Harris, 80 min

75 – Culture Roots of America // The Bayesian Conspiracy, 102 min

# Videos of the week

3 kinds of bias that shape your worldview | J. Marshall Shepherd // TED, 12 min