rationalnewsletter

Issue #75

Reanalysis of Milgram’s Obedience Experiments: In 18 of 23 variations of the experiment, the mean levels of shock for those who fully believed that they were inflicting pain were lower than for subjects who did not fully believe they were inflicting pain. // drive.google.com

# Instrumental

Dual Wielding // Zvi, 2 min Favorite

How to Make Billions of Dollars Reducing Loneliness // John_Maxwell, 8 min

How do you learn foreign language vocabulary, beyond Anki? // Elizabeth, 1 min

# Epistemic

How Can People Evaluate Complex Questions Consistently? // Elizabeth, 1 min

The Missing Math of Map-Making // johnswentworth, 2 min

Don't Pull a Broken Chain // johnswentworth, 5 min

This sometimes helps to expose assumptions // MoritzG, 1 min

# Ai

Six AI Risk/Strategy Ideas // Wei_Dai, 4 min

2-D Robustness // vlad_m, 2 min

AI Alignment Writing Day Roundup #1 // Benito, 1 min

Embedded Agency via Abstraction // johnswentworth, 13 min

AI Forecasting Resolution Council (Forecasting infrastructure, part 2) // jacobjacob, 3 min

# Anthropic

Why Not Hi-Tech Forms? // Robin Hanson, 2 min

# Decision theory

Look at the Shape of Your Utility Distribution // zulupineapple, 3 min

Gratification: a useful concept, maybe new // Stuart_Armstrong, 4 min

Is there a type of utilitarianism that combines the sum and median utility? // Bob Jacobs, 1 min

Predictable Identities: 16 – Newcomblike, Part II // Jacob Falkovich, 1 min

# Math and cs

Schelling Categories, and Simple Membership Tests // Zack_M_Davis, 9 min

Logical Counterfactuals and Proposition graphs, Part 2 // Donald Hobson, 4 min

# Books

Book Review: Reframing Superintelligence // Scott Alexander, 9 min Favorite

# Ea

Why are the people who should be doing safety research, but aren’t, doing something else? // Adam Scholl, 1 min

# Community

September Bragging Thread // Raemon, 1 min

A new rationality YouTube channel emerges // Dominik Tujmer, 1 min

Cambridge LW/SSC Meetup // AspiringRationalist, 1 min

Am I going for a job interview with a woo pusher? // CronoDAS, 1 min

Meetups Everywhere 2019 // Scott Alexander, 3 min

# Culture war

A Game of Giants [Wait But Why] // kilotaras, 1 min Favorite

# Misc

A Personal Rationality Wishlist // DanielFilan, 4 min

Does anyone know of a good overview of what humans know about depression? // elityre, 1 min

What's the optimal procedure for picking macrostates? // Adam Scholl, 1 min

Performance IQ and higher mathematics // c5pi, 1 min

# Podcasts

Peter Thiel/Eric Weinstein Transcript on Growth, Violence, and Stories // Benito, 18 min Favorite

92 – Replacing Guilt // The Bayesian Conspiracy, 114 min

#167 — A Few Thoughts on White Supremacy // Waking up with Sam Harris, 41 min

# Videos of the week

Finally, AI-Based Painting is Here! // Two Minute Papers, 4 min