rationalnewsletter

Issue #94

Sleeping fewer hours than experts recommend had no negative effects on brain and cognition in large scale long term study. This results could challenge the suitability of current sleep guidelines on cognitive outcomes. // academic.oup.com

# Instrumental

On Being Robust // TurnTrout, 2 min

# Epistemic

What we Know vs. How we Know it? // Elizabeth, 2 min Favorite

The Universe Doesn't Have to Play Nice // Chris_Leong, 2 min

What Intellectual Progress Did I Make In The 2010s? // Scott Alexander, 16 min

# Ai

Outer alignment and imitative amplification // evhub, 11 min

(Double-)Inverse Embedded Agency Problem // shminux, 2 min

Exploring safe exploration // evhub, 4 min

What were the biggest discoveries / innovations in AI and ML? // elityre, 1 min

A Very Unlikely Chess Game // Scott Alexander, 4 min

# Meta-ethics

Morality vs related concepts // MichaelA, 10 min

Moral uncertainty vs related concepts // MichaelA, 19 min

Is there a moral obligation to respect disagreed analysis? // km42, 1 min

# Anthropic

Homeostasis and “Root Causes” in Aging // johnswentworth, 3 min

# Decision theory

What is Life in an Immoral Maze? // Zvi, 5 min Favorite

Stripping Away the Protections // Zvi, 11 min

What is Success in an Immoral Maze? // Zvi, 2 min

Dissolving Confusion around Functional Decision Theory // scasper, 11 min

Rah Chain of Command // Robin Hanson, 2 min

# Math and cs

Definitions of Causal Abstraction: Reviewing Beckers & Halpern // johnswentworth, 5 min

How to Throw Away Information in Causal DAGs // johnswentworth, 3 min

UML V: Convex Learning Problems // sil ver, 14 min

Example: Markov Chain // johnswentworth, 5 min

# Books

Book review: Rethinking Consciousness // steve2152, 8 min

[Book Review] The Trouble with Physics // lsusr, 2 min

How Bees Argue // Robin Hanson, 3 min

# Community

AIRCS Workshop: How I failed to be recruited at MIRI. // ArthurRainbow, 28 min

Clumping Solstice Singalongs in Groups of 2-4 // Raemon, 4 min

Halifax SSC Meetup -- Saturday 11/1/20 // interstice, 1 min

South Bay Meetup, Saturday 1/25 // DavidFriedman, 1 min

# Culture war

Criticism as Entertainment // Elizabeth, 3 min Favorite

Hardball Questions For The Next Debate (2020) // Scott Alexander, 3 min

# Misc

Of arguments and wagers // paulfchristiano, 7 min

Subscripting Typographic Convention For Citations/Dates/Sources/Evidentials: A Proposal // gwern, 5 min

Are "superforecasters" a real phenomenon? // reallyeli, 1 min

Preference synthesis illustrated: Star Wars // Stuart_Armstrong, 4 min

[Personal Experiment] Training YouTube's Algorithm // lsusr, 3 min

# Podcasts

#33 Classic episode - Anders Sandberg on cryonics, solar flares, and the annual odds of nuclear war // The 80000 Hours team, 85 min

# Videos of the week

The paradox of efficiency | Edward Tenner // TED, 13 min