rationalnewsletter

Issue #98

Although people admit that individuals and society as a whole are also responsible for climate change, they prefer to adopt personal actions that require no significant reductions in their energy and resource use as long as others have not started. // www.mdpi.com

# Instrumental

Some quick notes on hand hygiene // willbradshaw, 3 min

# Epistemic

A point of clarification on infohazard terminology // eukaryote, 2 min

[Link] Beyond the hill: thoughts on ontologies for thinking, essay-completeness and forecasting // jacobjacob, 1 min

# Ai

Writeup: Progress on AI Safety via Debate // Beth Barnes, paulfchristiano, 39 min

Plausibly, almost every powerful algorithm would be manipulative // Stuart_Armstrong, 3 min

On the falsifiability of hypercomputation // jessicata, 5 min

Synthesizing amplification and debate // evhub, 4 min

Twenty-three AI alignment research project definitions // rmoehn, 5 min

# Anthropic

Long Now, and Culture vs Artifacts // Raemon, 7 min

Absent coordination, future technology will cause human extinction // landfish, 6 min

Suicide Hotspots Of The World // Scott Alexander, 11 min

# Decision theory

"But that's your job": why organisations can work // Stuart_Armstrong, 4 min Favorite

Mazes Sequence Roundup: Final Thoughts and Paths Forward // Zvi, 17 min

Protecting Large Projects Against Mazedom // Zvi, 4 min

Philosophical self-ratification // jessicata, 6 min

Decision Theory Remains Neglected // Robin Hanson, 10 min

# Math and cs

Category Theory Without The Baggage // johnswentworth, 15 min Favorite

UML IX: Kernels and Boosting // sil ver, 13 min

# Ea

Map Of Effective Altruism // Scott Alexander, 1 min

# Community

A Cautionary Note on Unlocking the Emotional Brain // Evan Huus, 1 min

Bayes-Up: An App for Sharing Bayesian-MCQ // Louis Faucon, 1 min

More writeups! // jkaufman, 1 min

# Culture war

Predictable Identities 25: External Control // Jacob Falkovich, 1 min

# Misc

"Memento Mori", Said The Confessor // namespace, 1 min Favorite

Money isn't real. When you donate money to a charity, how does it actually help? // Dagon, 1 min

The BODY alignment game. Take a break, have a quick play. // leggi, 1 min

# Podcasts

#69 - Jeff Ding on China, its AI dream, and what we get wrong about both // The 80000 Hours team, 97 min

#185 — February 7, 2020 // Waking up with Sam Harris, 30 min

#184 — The Conversational Nature of Reality // Waking up with Sam Harris, 29 min

Rob & Howie on what we do and don't know about 2019-nCoV // The 80000 Hours team, 79 min

# Rational fiction

The Adventure: a new Utopia story // Stuart_Armstrong, 63 min

# Videos of the week

Are indoor vertical farms the future of agriculture? | Stuart Oda // TED, 9 min