rationalnewsletter

Issue #6: Full List

Average walking speed increases predictably as city size increases, roughly as N^{0.1}, where N is city population. // www.pnas.org

# Instrumental

Everything I ever needed to know, I learned from World of Warcraft: Goodhart’s law // Said Achmiz, 7 min Favorite

Internalizing Internal Double Crux // TurnTrout, 4 min

A Few Tips on How to Generally Feel Better (and Avoid Headaches) // moridinamael, 5 min

Ikaxas' Hammertime Final Exam // Ikaxas, 1 min

5-minute timer tool // Gust, 1 min

Shaping Agents // Dominik Tujmer, 3 min

Finding a Girlfriend with Reinforcement Learning // Michaël Trazzi, 6 min

# Epistemic

Duncan Sabien: "In Defense of Punch Bug" // Davis_Kingsley, 1 min Favorite

Words, Locally Defined // abramdemski, 3 min

# Ai

AI Safety via Debate // ESRogs, 1 min Favorite

Soon: a weekly AI Safety prerequisites module on LessWrong // toonalfrink, 1 min

Program Search and Incomplete Understanding // Diffractor, 5 min

Beginning Machine Learning // crybx, 8 min

AGI Safety Literature Review (Everitt, Lea & Hutter 2018) // Kaj_Sotala, 1 min

Rigging is a form of wireheading // Stuart_Armstrong, 1 min

Levels of AI Self-Improvement // avturchin, 48 min

Fundamentals of Formalisation level 1: Basic Logic // toonalfrink, 1 min

Should an AGI build a telescope to spot intergalactic Segways? // Michaël Trazzi, 2 min

A Logician, an Entrepreneur, and a Hacker, discussing Intelligence // Michaël Trazzi, 2 min

Assembling Any Lego or NYT Best Seller? // Michaël Trazzi, 2 min

Decoding, Not Encoding // Michaël Trazzi, 2 min

# Books

Book Review: History Of The Fabian Society // Scott Alexander, 27 min Favorite

Inefficient Doesn’t Mean Indifferent // Zvi, 4 min

The Sheepskin Effect // Zvi, 6 min

The Case Against Education: Splitting the Education Premium Pie and Considering IQ // Zvi, 11 min

# Ea

Thoughts on the REACH Patreon // Raemon, 25 min

Please Take the 2018 Effective Altruism Survey! // peter_hurford, 1 min

Are long-term investments a good way to help the future? // Dacyn, 3 min

Effective Egoism, or My Life in a Video Game // Michaël Trazzi, 1 min

# Culture war

Why Economics Is, And Should Be, Creepy // Robin Hanson, 9 min

A Pullable Thread of the Social Fabric // Robin Hanson, 3 min

# Misc

Give praise // toonalfrink, 1 min Favorite

Bayes' Law is About Multiple Hypothesis Testing // abramdemski, 6 min

Confounded No Longer: Insights from 'All of Statistics' // TurnTrout, 12 min

Research: Rescuers during the Holocaust // Martin Sustrik, 11 min

Does Thinking Hard Hurt Your Brain? // Raemon, 1 min

Meditations on the Medium // lifelonglearner, 10 min

Prediction Contest 2018 // jbeshir, 3 min

Moral frameworks and the Harris/Klein debate // lincolnquirk, 1 min

Warrior rationalists // Dominik Tujmer, 2 min

A possible solution to the Fermi Paradox // sil ver, 3 min

Are you Living in a Me-Simulation? // Michaël Trazzi, 8 min

Eight political demands that I hope we can agree on // ChristianKl, 1 min

Adversarial Collaboration Contest: Loose Ends And Registration // Scott Alexander, 1 min

# Podcasts

#125 — What Is Christianity? // Waking up with Sam Harris, 111 min

Rationally Speaking #207 - Alison Gopnik on "The wrong way to think about parenting, plus the downsides of modernity" // NYC Skeptics, 63 min

# Videos of the week

Why you think you're right -- even if you're wrong | Julia Galef // TED, 11 min