rationalnewsletter

Issue #84

Happy people had widespread neurological activity, and the regions involved were generally relevant to the behavioral activities being performed: happiness should be taken within the context of events and behaviors. // link.springer.com

# Instrumental

How to Improve Your Sleep // lynettebye, 21 min Favorite

When do you start looking for a Boston apartment? // jkaufman, 1 min

# Epistemic

The Curse Of The Counterfactual // pjeby, 22 min

How do you assess the quality / reliability of a scientific study? // elityre, 1 min

Prospecting for Conceptual Holes // lsusr, 2 min

Is requires ought // jessicata, 8 min

Learning from other people's experiences/mistakes // alkay, 1 min

# Ai

Chris Olah’s views on AGI safety // evhub, 14 min

AlphaStar: Impressive for RL progress, not for AGI progress // orthonormal, 2 min

Is it harder to become a MIRI mathematician in 2019 compared to in 2013? // riceissa, 4 min

Rohin Shah on reasons for AI optimism // abergal, 1 min

The Simulation Epiphany Problem // Koen.Holtman, 4 min

# Decision theory

Financial Incentives Are Weaker Than Social Incentives But Very Important Anyway // Scott Alexander, 6 min Favorite

Why are people so bad at dating? // Xodarap, 3 min

Theater Tickets, Sleeping Pills, and the Idiosyncrasies of Delegated Risk Management // Davidmanheim, 3 min

Doing things in a populated world // KatjaGrace, 1 min

Is there a definitive intro to punishing non-punishers? // pjeby, 1 min

# Math and cs

Shared Cache is Going Away // jkaufman, 1 min

The Missing Piece // Martin Sustrik, 3 min

Rugby & Regression Towards the Mean // Bucky, 4 min

What is the connection between these two definitions of ascription universality? // Liam Donovan, 1 min

A new kind of Hermeneutics // yamar69, 7 min

# Books

Tables of Presence, Nearby Absence, & Degrees of Intensity (Novum Organum Book 2: 10-) // Francis Bacon, 30 min

# Community

Aella on Rationality and the Void // Jacobian, 18 min

# Culture war

New Atheism: The Godlessness That Failed // Scott Alexander, 22 min

# Misc

Prediction markets for internet points? // paulfchristiano, 5 min

The Technique Taboo // lsusr, 1 min

On Internal Family Systems and multi-agent minds: a reply to PJ Eby // Kaj_Sotala, 30 min

Halloween // KatjaGrace, 1 min

What are human values? - Thoughts and challenges // Chris_Leong, 2 min

# Podcasts

#173 — Anti-Semitism and Its Discontents // Waking up with Sam Harris, 74 min

Rationally Speaking #242 - Keith Frankish on "Why consciousness is an illusion" // NYC Skeptics, 43 min

# Videos of the week

There is No Algorithm for Truth - with Tom Scott // The Royal Institution, 59 min