rationalnewsletter

Issue #52

Political knowledge tends to increase the effects of identity as more knowledgeable people have more informational ammunition to counter argue any stories they don’t like. // www.nytimes.com

# Instrumental

Rest Days vs Recovery Days // Unreal, 6 min Favorite

Retrospective on a quantitative productivity logging attempt // femtogrammar, 3 min

Criticism catalyzes analytical thinking in groups // rayraegah, 1 min

# Epistemic

800 scientist call out against statistical significance // Yoav Ravid, 1 min

[Question] Tracking accuracy of personal forecasts // CheerfulWarrior, 1 min

# Ai

More realistic tales of doom // paulfchristiano, 10 min Favorite

The Main Sources of AI Risk? // Wei_Dai, 2 min

Some thoughts after reading Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach // swift_spiral, 2 min

What's wrong with these analogies for understanding Informed Oversight and IDA? // Wei_Dai, 1 min

Is there a difference between uncertainty over your utility function and uncertainty over outcomes? // Chris_Leong, 1 min

# Meta-ethics

Intuitions on Negative Utilitarianism // Isnasene, 39 min

# Decision theory

Comparison of decision theories (with a focus on logical-counterfactual decision theories) // riceissa, 13 min Favorite

# Math and cs

Declarative Mathematics // johnswentworth, 3 min

Insights from Munkres' Topology // sil ver, 17 min

Can a Bayesian agent be infinitely confused? // Yoav Ravid, 1 min

# Books

Book Review: Inventing The Future // Scott Alexander, 29 min

# Community

Willing to share some words that changed your beliefs/behavior? // Duncan_Sabien, 1 min

Ideas for a fact checking widget // Yoav Ravid, 1 min

Ask LW: Have you read Yudkowsky's AI to Zombie book? // CaiwitzAzaria, 1 min

Motivational Meeting Place // Vincent B, 4 min

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

# Culture war

What societies have ever had legal or accepted blackmail? // clone of saturn, 1 min

Has "politics is the mind-killer" been a mind-killer? // SonnieBailey, 4 min

The Game Theory of Blackmail // Linda Linsefors, 4 min

Predictable Identities: 5 // Jacob Falkovich, 1 min

Can We Trust Deliberation Priests? // Robin Hanson, 2 min

# Misc

Cryopreservation of Valia Zeldin // avturchin, 1 min

How large is the fallout area of the biggest cobalt bomb we can build? // habryka, 1 min

Translating Predictive Coding Into Perceptual Control // Scott Alexander, 5 min

# Podcasts

#54 - OpenAI on publication norms, malicious uses of AI, and general-purpose learning algorithms // The 80000 Hours team, 173 min

#151 — Will We Destroy the Future? // Waking up with Sam Harris, 102 min

Rationally Speaking #229 - John Nerst on "Erisology, the study of disagreement" // NYC Skeptics, 64 min

# Videos of the week

How a new species of ancestors is changing our theory of human evolution | Juliet Brophy // TED, 11 min