deluks917

Rationalist:

We Are The Athenians Not The Spartans by wubbles (lesswrong) – “Our values should be Athenian: individualistic, open, trusting, enamored of beauty. When we build social technology, it should not aim to cultivate values that stand against these. High trust, open, societies are the societies where human lives are most improved.”

The Precept Of Universalism by H i v e w i r e d – “Universality, the idea that all humans experience life in roughly the same way. Do not put things or ideas above people. Honor and protect all peoples.” Eight points expanding on how to put people first and honor everyone.

Where Do Hypotheses Come From by c0rw1n (lesswrong) – Link to a 25 page article. “Why are human inferences sometimes remarkably close to the Bayesian ideal and other times systematically biased? In particular, why do humans make near-rational inferences in some natural domains where the candidate hypotheses are explicitly available, whereas tasks in similar domains requiring the self-generation of hypotheses produce systematic deviations from rational inference. We propose that these deviations arise from algorithmic processes approximating Bayes’ rule.”

Rationalist:

Bayes: A Kinda Sorta Masterpost by Nostalgebraist – A long and very well thought-out criticism of Bayesianism. Explanation of Bayesian methodology. Comparison with classical statistics. Arguments for Bayes. The problem of ignored hypotheses with known relations. The problem of new ideas. Where do priors come from? Regularization and insights from machine learning.

Tasting Godhood by Agenty Duck – Poetic and personal. Wine tasting. Empathizing with other people. Seeing others as whole people. How to dream about other people. Sci-fi futures. Tasting godhood is the same as tasting other people. Looking for your own godhood.

Epistemology Vs Critical Thinking by Onemorenickname (lesswrong) – Epistemies work. General approaches don’t work. Scientific approaches work. Epistemic effort vs Epistemic status. Criticisms of lesswrong Bayesianism.

The Precept Of Niceness by H i v e w i r e d – Prisoner’s Dilemma’s. Even against a truly alien opponent you should still cooperate as long as possible on the iterated prisoner’s dilemma, even with fixed round lengths, play tit-for-tat. Niceness is the best strategy.

Politics and Economics:

Summing Up My Thoughts On Macroeconomics by Noah Smith – Slides from Noah’s talk at the Norwegian Finance Ministry. Comparison of Industry, Central Bank and Academic Macroeconomics. Overview of important critiques of academic macro. The DGSE standard mode and ways to improve it. What makes a good Macro theory. Go back to the microfoundations.

Podcast:

81 Leaving Islam by Waking Up with Sam Harris – “Sarah Haider. Her organization Ex-Muslims of North America, how the political Left is confused about Islam, “rape culture” under Islam, honesty without bigotry, stealth theocracy, immigration, the prospects of reforming Islam”

Scott:

SSC Journal Club Ai Timelines by Scott Alexander – A new paper surveying what Ai experts think about Ai progress. Contradictory results about when Ai will surpass humans at all tasks. Opinions on Ai risk, experts are taking the arguments seriously.

Rationalist:

Summer Programming by Jacob Falkovich (Put A Number On It!) – Jacob’s Summer writing plan. Re-writing part of the lesswrong sequences. Ribbonfarm’s longform blogging course on refactored perception.

How Men And Women Perceive Relationships Differently by AellaGirl – Survey Results about Relationship quality over time. Lots of graphs and a link to the raw data. “In summary, time is not kind. Relationships show an almost universal decrease in everything good the longer they go on. Poly is hard, and you have to go all the way to make it work – especially for men. Religion is also great, if you’re a man. Women get more excited and insecure, men feel undesirable.”

Dichotomies by mindlevelup – 6 short essays about dichotomies and whats useful about noticing them. Fast vs Slow thinking. Focused vs Diffuse Mode. Clean vs Dirty Thinking. Inside vs Outside View. Object vs Meta level. Generative vs Iterative Mode. Some conclusions about the method.

EA:

Announcing Effective Altruism Grants by Maxdalton (EA forum) – CEA is goving out £100,000 grants for personal projects. “We believe that providing those people with the resources that they need to realize their potential could be a highly effective use of resources.” A list of what projects could get funded, the list is very broad. Evaluation criteria.

Review Of Ea New Zealands Doing Good Better Book by cafelow (EA forum) – New Zealand EAs gave out 250 copies of “Doing Good Better”. 80 of the recipients responded to a follow up survey. The results were extremely encouraging. Survey details and discussion. Possible flaws with the giveaway and survey.

Rationalist:

Bring Up Genius by Viliam (lesswrong) – An “80/20” translation. Positive motivation. Extreme resistence from the Hungarian government and press. Polgar’s five principles. Biting criticism of the school system. Learning in early childhood. Is Genius a gift or curse? Celebrity. Detailed plan for daily instruction. Importance of diversity. Why chess? Teach the chess with love, playfully. Emancipation of women. Polgar’s happy family.

Kindness Against The Grain by Sarah Constantin (Otium) – Sympathy and forgiveness evolved to follow local incentive gradients. Some details on we sympathize with and who we don’t. The difference between a good deal and a sympathetic deal. Smooth emotional gradients and understanding what other people want. Forgiveness as not following the local gradient and why this can be useful.

Bet Or Update Fixing The Will to Wager Assumption by cousin_it (lesswrong) – Betting with better informed agents is irrational. Bayesian agents should however update their prior or agree to bet. Good discussion in comments.

EA:

A Powerful Weapon in the Arsenal (Links Post) by GiveDirectly – 8 Links on Basic Income, Effective Altruism, Cash Transfers and Donor Advised Funds

Misc:

Fuckers Vs Raisers by AellaGirl – Evolutionary psychology. The qualities that are attractive in a guy who sleeps around are also attractive in a guy who wants to settle down.

Bike To Work Houston by Mr. Money Mustache – How a lawyer bikes to work in Houston. Bikes are surprisingly fast relative to cars in cities. Houston is massive.

A Remark On Usury by Entirely Useless – “To take usury for money lent is unjust in itself, because this is to sell what does not exist, and this evidently leads to inequality which is contrary to justice.” Thomas Aquinas is quoted at length explaining the preceding statement. EntirelyUseless argues that Aquinas mixes up the buyer and the seller.

Politics and Economics:

Why Universities Cant Be The Primary Site Of Political Organizing by Freddie deBoer – Few people on campus. Campus activism is seasonal. Students are an itinerant population. Town and gown conflicts. Students are too busy. First priority is employment. Is activism a place for student growth?. Labor principles.

Misc:

Thingness And Thereness by Venkatesh Rao (ribbonfarm) – The relation between politics, home and frontier. Big Data, deep learning and the blockchain. Liminal spaces and conditions.

Reducers Transducers And Coreasync In Clojure by Eli Bendersky – “I find it fascinating how one good idea (reducers) morphed into another (transducers), and ended up mating with yet another, apparently unrelated concept (concurrent pipelines) to produce some really powerful coding abstractions.”

Podcast:

Newcomers by Venam – A transcript of a discussion about advice for new Unix users. Purpose. Communities. Learning by Yourself. Technical Tips. Venam linked tons of podcast transcripts today. Check them out.

Scott:

Is Pharma Research Worse Than Chance by Scott Alexander – The most promising drugs of the 21st century are MDMA and ketamine (third is psilocybin). These drugs were all found by the drug community. Maybe pharma should look for compounds with large effect sizes instead of searching for drugs with no side-effects.

Tumblr Post by Scott Alexander (Scratchpad) – The leader of the terrorist attack in London was in a documentary about jihadists living in Britain. “Being the sort of person who seems likely to commit a crime isn’t illegal.” Involuntary commitment.

Rationalist:

Becoming A Better Community by Sable (lesswrong) – Lesswrong holds its memebers to a high standard. Intimacy requires unguarded spontaneous interactions. Concrete ideas to add more fun and friendship to lesswrong.

Conformity Excuses by Robin Hanson – Human behavior is often explained by pressure to conform. However we consciously experience much less pressure. Robin discusses a list of ways to rationalize conforming.

Deorbiting A Metaphor by H i v e w i r e d – Another post in the origin sequence. Rationalist Myth-making. (note: I am unlikely to keep linking all of these. Follow hivewired’s blog)

EA:

New Report Consciousness And Moral Patienthood by Luke Muehlhauser (Open Philosophy) – “In short, my tentative conclusions are that I think mammals, birds, and fishes are more likely than not to be conscious, while (e.g.) insects are unlikely to be conscious. However, my probabilities are very “made-up” and difficult to justify, and it’s not clear to us what actions should be taken on the basis of such made-up probabilities.”

A Paradox in the Measurement of the Value of Life by klloyd (EA Forum) – Eight Thousand words on: “A Health Economics Puzzle: Why are there apparent inconsistencies in the monetary valuation of a statistical life (VSL) and a quality-adjusted life year (QALY$)?”

Podcast:

Masha Gessen: Russian-American journalist by The Ezra Klein Show – Trump and Russia, plausible and sinister explanation. Ways Trump is and isn’t like Putin, studying autocracies, the psychology of Jared Kushner

Rationalist:

Finite And Infinite by Sarah Constantin (Otium) – “James Carse, in Finite and Infinite Games, sets up a completely different polarity, between infinite game-playing (which is open-ended, playful, and non-competitive) vs. finite game-playing (which is definite, serious, and competitive).” Playfulness, property, and cooperating with people who seriously weird you out.

Mode Collapse And The Norm One Principle by tristanm (lesswrong) – Generative Adversarial Networks. Applying the lessons of Machine Learning to discourse. How to make progress when the critical side of discourse is very powerful. “My claim is that any contribution to a discussion should satisfy the “Norm One Principle.” In other words, it should have a well-defined direction, and the quantity of change should be feasible to implement.”

Cognitive Sciencepsychology As A Neglected by Kaj Sotala (EA forum) – Ways psychology could benefit AI safety: “The psychology of developing an AI safety culture, Developing better analyses of ‘AI takeoff’ scenarios, Defining just what it is that human values are, Better understanding multi-level world-models.” Lots of interesting links.

On Resignation by Small Truths – Artificial intelligence. “It’s an embarrassing lapse, but I did not think much about how the very people who already know all the stuff I’m learning would behave. I wasn’t thinking enough steps ahead. Seen in this context, Neuralink isn’t an exciting new tech venture so much as a desperate hope to mitigate an unavoidable disaster.”

Optimizing For Meta Optimization by H i v e w i r e d – A very long list of human cultural universals and comments on which ones to encourage/discourage: Myths, Language, Cognition, Society. Afterwards some detailed bullet points about an optimal dath ilanian culture.

Culture War:

One Day We Will Make Offensive Jokes by AellaGirl – “This is why I feel suspicious of some groups that strongly oppose offensive jokes – they have the suspicion that every person is like my parents – that every human “actually wants” all the terrible things to happen.”

Some Observations On Cis By Default Identification by Ozy (Thing of Things) – Many ‘cis-by-default’ people are repressing or not noticing their gender feelings. This effect strongly depends on a person’s community.

Amusement:

Create 2314 by protokol2020 – Find the shortest algorithm to create the number 2314 using a prescribed set of operations.

Podcast:

Christy Ford by EconTalk – “A history of how America’s health care system came to be dominated by insurance companies or government agencies paying doctors per procedure.”