rationalnewsletter

Issue #44

Sex differences in relative academic strengths and pursuit of STEM degrees rise with increases in gender equality. // www.theatlantic.com

# Instrumental

Life can be better than you think // Natália Mendonça, 9 min Favorite

Too Smart for My Own Good // isovector, 3 min

Building up to an Internal Family Systems model // Kaj_Sotala, 34 min

Stale air / high CO2 may decrease your cognitive function // Yoav Ravid, 1 min

# Epistemic

The Relationship Between Hierarchy and Wealth // sarahconstantin, 15 min Favorite

From Personal to Prison Gangs: Enforcing Prosocial Behavior // johnswentworth, 6 min

S-Curves for Trend Forecasting // mr-hire, 4 min

Do the best ideas float to the top? // Quinn, 7 min

# Ai

Disentangling arguments for the importance of AI safety // ricraz, 9 min

"AlphaStar: Mastering the Real-Time Strategy Game StarCraft II", DeepMind [won 10 of 11 games against human pros] // gwern, 1 min

Thoughts on reward engineering // paulfchristiano, 13 min

Capability amplification // paulfchristiano, 15 min

Following human norms // rohinmshah, 5 min

# Anthropic

How Does Brain Code Differ? // Robin Hanson, 11 min Favorite

Link: That Time a Guy Tried to Build a Utopia for Mice and it all Went to Hell // Alexei, 1 min

Distant Future Tradeoffs // Robin Hanson, 1 min

# Decision theory

Less Competition, More Meritocracy? // Zvi, 24 min Favorite

Is Agent Simulates Predictor a "fair" problem? // Chris_Leong, 1 min

Clarifying Logical Counterfactuals // Chris_Leong, 8 min

# Math and cs

Allowing a formal proof system to self improve while avoiding Lobian obstacles. // Donald Hobson, 2 min

# Community

Starting to see 2 months later // Pausecafe, 2 min

Shanghai LessWrong Meetup // Mindey, 1 min

January 2019 Nashville SSC Meetup // Dude McDude, 1 min

Predictions For 2019 // Scott Alexander, 4 min

2018 Predictions: Calibration Results // Scott Alexander, 6 min

# Fun

Game Analysis Index // Zvi, 1 min

Games in Kocherga club: Fallacymania, Tower of Chaos, Scientific Discovery // Alexander230, 1 min

# Misc

Should questions be called "questions" or "confusions" (or "other")? // Raemon, 1 min

Is intellectual work better construed as exploration or performance? // ioannes_shade, 1 min

In what way has the generation after us "gone too far"? // Elo, 1 min

Could declining interest to the Doomsday Argument explain the Doomsday Argument? // avturchin, 3 min

Fine Grain Futarchy Zoning Via Harberger Taxes // Robin Hanson, 6 min

# Podcasts

Rationally Speaking #225 - Neerav Kingsland on "The case for charter schools" // NYC Skeptics, 47 min

# Videos of the week

The secrets of learning a new language | Lýdia Machová // TED, 10 min