Yvain’s most important articles
Important
Meditations on Moloch: An explanation of co-ordination problems within our society
Weak Men are Superweapons (supplement—feminists will like this one less)
The Virtue of Silence—silence is a hard virtue
You Kant Dismiss Universalizability—Kant is about not proposing rules that would be self-defeating
The Spirit of the First Amendment
Red Plenty—Why communism failed
All in all, another brick in the motte—Motte-and-bailey doctrine
Intellectual Hipsters and Meta-Contrarianism
Burdens—society owes people an existence
Reactionary Philosophy in an Enormous, Planet-sized Nutshell
Archipelago and Atomic Communitarianism—different countries based on different principles
Parable of the talents—nature vs. nurture
Nobody is perfect, Everything is Commensurable
The categories were made for man, not man for the categories—hairdryer incident
Toxoplasma of rage—why the most divisive issues will always spread
Towards a theory of drama, Further towards a theory of drama
All debates are bravery debates
I can tolerate anything except the outgroup—what tolerance really mean
Who by very slow decay—Euthanasia
Efficient Charity: Do Unto Others
Eight Short Studies on Excuses
Book review: Chronicles of wasted time
The biodeterminists guide to parenting
Social Justice General
Offense versus harm minimisation
Fearful Symmetry—Politicization, Micro-aggressions, Hyperviligance
In favor of niceness, community and civilisation—Importance of the social contract
Radicalizing the romanceless—Complaints about “Nice Guys”
Living by the sword—whales and cancer
Social justice for the highly-demanding of rigour
Meditations on Privilege 1 - India (Meditation 2 - follow up)
Meditation 3 - Creepiness
Meditation 5 - True love and creepiness
Meditation 8 on Superweapons and Bingo
I believe the correct term is “straw individual”
Five case studies on politicization
Social Justice Careful
Why I defend scoundrels part 2
Untitled—Arguments against nerds being privileged. How feminism makes some men afraid to talk to women.
Social Justice and Words, Words, Words—What privilege means vs. what feminists say it means
A Response to Apophemi on Triggers—Should the rationality community be a safe space?
Fetal Attraction: Abortion and the Principle of Charity
Arguments about Male Violence Prove too Much
I do not understand rape culture
Useful concepts
Introduction to Game Theory—main ones:
Prisoner’s dilemma includes discussion of limited crimes
Unspoken ground assumptions of discussion
Should you reverse any advice you hear?
Hope! Change! - how much change can we expect from our politicians
What universal human experiences are you missing without realizing it?
A Thrive-survive Theory of the Political Spectrum—included primarily for the section on how to get into a Republican mindset
Read History of Philosophy Backwards
Searching for One-Sided Tradeoffs
Schelling fences on slippery slopes
Purchase fuzzies and utilitons separately
Beware isolated demands for rigour
Diseased thinking: dissolving questions about disease
Confidence levels inside and outside an argument
Least convenient possible world
Giving and accepting apologies
Epistemic learned helplessness
Approving reinforces low-effort behaviors—wanting/liking/approving
A signaling theory of class x politics interaction
A parable on obsolete ideologies
The Courtier’s Reply and the Myers Shuffle
Talking snakes: A cautionary tale
My id on defensiveness—Projective identification
Interesting
Bogus Pipeline, Bona Fide Piepline
The Zombie Preacher Of SomerSet
Apologia Pro Vita Sua—“drugs mysteriously find their own non-fungible money”
Money, money, everywhere, but not a cent to spend—that $5000 can be a crippling debt for some people
Social Psychology is a Flamethrower
An Iron Curtain has descended upon Psychopharmacology—Russian medicines being ignored
The Control Group is out of Control—parapsychology
Schitzophrenia and geomagnetic storms
And I show you how deep the Rabbit Hole Goes—story, purely for entertainment value
Five years and one week of less wrong—interesting for readers of Less Wrong only
Highlights from my notes from another psychiatry conference—Schitzophrenia
The apologist and the revolutionary—Anosognosia and neuro-science
I thought the biodeterminists guide was one of the most useful things I’ve ever read. I’d love it if Yvain would write the same for longevity, general fitness, IQ, etc.
I’d love there to be more work done on longevity, general fitness, and other practical applied rationality topics as well. The opportunity cost of having so many well written articles on social justice and the social sciences floating around is that LW users may spend more time thinking about those topics, to the partial exclusion of spending time thinking about applied rationality.
On longevity: see here.
Romeo Stevens has a guide on general fitness here called “optimal exercise” I believe.
That article is here
I asked for a good general guide to IQ (and in particular its objectivity and importance) on the LW FB group a while back. I got a bunch of answers, including these standouts:
http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/1198gottfred.html
http://www.newscientist.com/data/doc/article/dn19554/instant_expert_13_-_intelligence.pdf
But there’s still plenty of room for improvement on those so I’d be curious to hear others’ suggestions.
On IQ, I strongly recommend Ian Deary’s Intelligence: A Short Introduction (link to shared file in my Google Drive).
And a friend requests an article comparing IQ and conscientiousness as a predictor for different things.
Added. That article is pretty comprehensive so deserves a place in the list.
This got linked to on facebook, and Rob Bensinger made the following comment:
Stingray suggested that a condensed list would be useful, and judging by the 6 upvotes several other people agree. In order to do this, I’ve taken the intersection of the two lists (by removing the items that didn’t make Rob Bensinger’s list from the OP list). I’d expect what’s left to be higher value pieces. (although a few removed items definitely sound interesting.)
Important
Meditations on Moloch: An explanation of co-ordination problems within our society
Weak Men are Superweapons (supplement—feminists will like this one less)
You Kant Dismiss Universalizability—Kant is about not proposing rules that would be self-defeating
The Spirit of the First Amendment
Red Plenty—Why communism failed
All in all, another brick in the motte—Motte-and-bailey doctrine
Intellectual Hipsters and Meta-Contrarianism
Reactionary Philosophy in an Enormous, Planet-sized Nutshell
Anti-reactionary FAQ
Right is the new Left
Archipelago and Atomic Communitarianism—different countries based on different principles
Parable of the talents—nature vs. nurture
Why I defend scoundrels
Non-conformism
Towards a theory of drama, Further towards a theory of drama
All debates are bravery debates
I can tolerate anything except the outgroup—what tolerance really mean
Who by very slow decay—Euthanasia
Non-libertarian FAQ
Consequentialism FAQ
Efficient Charity: Do Unto Others
Eight Short Studies on Excuses
Generalising from one example
Game theory as a dark art
What is signaling really?
Social Justice General
Offense versus harm minimisation
Fearful Symmetry—Politicization, Micro-aggressions, Hyperviligance
In favor of niceness, community and civilisation—Importance of the social contract
Social justice for the highly-demanding of rigour
Meditation 5 - True love and creepiness
Meditation 8 on Superweapons and Bingo
Triggers
I believe the correct term is “straw individual”
Five case studies on politicization
Social Justice Careful
Why I defend scoundrels part 2
A Response to Apophemi on Triggers—Should the rationality community be a safe space?
Meditation on Applause Lights
Arguments about Male Violence Prove too Much
Mitt Romney
Useful concepts
Introduction to Game Theory—main ones:
Nash Equilibria and Schelling Points
Bargaining and auctions
Prisoner’s dilemma includes discussion of limited crimes
Revenge as a charitable act
Hope! Change! - how much change can we expect from our politicians
A Thrive-survive Theory of the Political Spectrum
Read History of Philosophy Backwards
Against bravery debates
Searching for One-Sided Tradeoffs
Proving too much
Non-central fallacy
Schelling fences on slippery slopes
Purchase fuzzies and utilitons separately
Diseased thinking: dissolving questions about disease
Confidence levels inside and outside an argument
Least convenient possible world
Epistemic learned helplessness
Approving reinforces low-effort behaviors—wanting/liking/approving
What’s in a name
How not to lose an argument
Beware trivial inconveniences
When truth isn’t enough
Why support the underdog?
Applied picoeconomics
A signaling theory of class x politics interaction
That other kind of status
A parable on obsolete ideologies
Talking snakes: A cautionary tale
Beware the man of one study
Interesting
Bogus Pipeline, Bona Fide Piepline
“I appreciate the situation”
A Babylon 5 Story
Social Psychology is a Flamethrower
The Control Group is out of Control—parapsychology
The apologist and the revolutionary—Anosognosia and neuro-science
One thing that I’d like to know before considering Rob Bensinger’s suggestions is how strongly feminist he is (this doesn’t count as an ad hominem, as that only applies when someone has given reasons and you ignore them in favour of who they are, not when they’ve stated an opinion with no reasons). Because a lot of those articles are rather highly critical of feminism and it wouldn’t make much sense, for example, to ask a Christian whether you should read certain articles about atheism.
That said, maybe he just feels that these articles would turn people off—in which case—I probably should have done a better job of labelling than with my current system.
(For reasons of disclosure, my views on feminism are pretty close to Scott. I can appreciate that feminism has done lots of good in the past and that they make some good points, but I also don’t like what the movement has become).
I’m much more interested in the articles that he would have included, then the ones that he excluded because I’m taking a completionist approach—the idea is that if you read through the list, you shouldn’t miss anything important.
The other thing I did when compiling this list, which I wish I hadn’t, was to include articles for a single strong section, without actually noting that this was the case. In particular, the useful concepts section contains many articles where I only want you to get a single concept out of the article. If someone already knows the concept, I guess you could skip them.
Actually, I definitely want to produce a revised version of the list that does a better job of breaking into sections based on why the articles were included so that people can decide for themselves which articles they want to read or not. It’ll probably take me several months to get round to it, but I think that it could be valuable.
My list has a lot of added posts; I’ll try to get a draft to link to in the next few weeks. I’d say there are different sets of introductory articles I’d recommend to people who I know to be feminists and people who I know to be anti-feminists, and the list I’m currently working on is one I’d feel comfortable giving to either group.
That means posts that take for granted at the outset that the reader thinks feminism is obviously terrible (e.g., Radicalizing the Romanceless, which quips that people who talk about Nice Guys are “blurring the already rather thin line between ‘feminism’ and ‘literally Voldemort’”) are less-likely-than-baseline to make my list, whereas ones that make a persuasive and sympathetic case against common ideas in feminism (e.g., Weak Men Are Superweapons) are more-likely-than-baseline to make my list.
Looking forward to seeing the list when it is done.
And here’s my list!
I’ll let you know! I’ll also want feedback on what you and others think I should add/remove, since I don’t expect the list to be perfect even at achieving my own Scott-promoting goals.
Off topic, but… since you are allegedly a strong feminist, maybe you can recommend specific feminist writing that you think is good reading as a counterpoint to SSC’s stuff? I’ve read a fair amount of feminist writing but I haven’t managed to find much that is as well-argued/thoughtful/reasonable as the SSC stuff. Ideally it would be feminist writing that attempts to respond to SSC directly.
“As well-argued/thoughtful/reasonable as the SSC stuff” is a pretty hard target to hit on most topics. Could you be more specific than “feminist writing”, e.g., talk about a certain claim SSC makes that you’d like to see assessed by others?
Popehat’s Shirts and Shirtiness strikes me as an especially high-quality post that’s SSC-ish while coming out in favor of some ideas you see in feminism. Agenty Duck’s Hasty Genderalizations gives a broader argument for worrying about gender bias. Ben Kuhn’s On Inclusivity in Less Wrong is an example of a good feminism-relevant response to a specific SSC argument (though I don’t necessarily agree 100% with Ben’s arguments, and some of them may be dated at this point).
I’m not sure which of these is closest to what you’re looking for. I find blogs like Thing of Things, Gruntled and Hinged, and The Unit of Caring useful both for clearly articulating ideas in the feminist memespace and for providing independent confirmation for some SSC views.
What criteria have you used to decide which posts are the most important?
Well, it’s very subjective. I tried to optimise heavily for originality, ideas that I’ve seen on Slatestarcodex, but haven’t seen anywhere else. On the other hand, I’ve also included comprehensive rebuttals like Why I hate your freedom, Consequentialism FAQ and Who by very slow decay. Here it isn’t so much the ideas that are unique, but how comprehensively he tackles these issues and with how much charity.
The reason why the list is so long is that I’ve tried to be inclusive. My aim is to try ensure that it includes all the “must read” articles, even if this results in the list being very long.
I think that if someone who is completely unfamiliar with Yvain’s writings saw your post, she/he would likely be scared of a wall of links. If you want your list to be useful, you should provide a recommended reading order for new readers. I’ve upvoted you, but at the moment the list is ordered randomly.
That’s an interesting idea. However, the most likely outcome is that I’ll be distracted by other projects and never get round to this. Compiling that list already took way too much of my time.
I’m only one data point, but I am fairly similar to the hypothetical “someone” that Stingray described, and I do intend to actually read most of these. This should slightly shift your estimate toward fewer people being scared off by the wall of links.
On the other hand, if you went through and bolded the important articles, I’d probably read just them. So, I’d still be getting a little value out of your prioritization work, but much less value than any hypothetical people scared off by the wall of links.
EDIT: Rob Bensinger made a useful comment on the LW facebook page about what he’d take off and add to this list. I’ve taken the intersection of the two to make a more selective list of what you both recommend. I’ll probably just read through those, with the exception of a few interesting-sounding items.
“Virtue of Silence” link is wrong.
That’s the point! /s
Thanks. Fixed
Hey, the Purchase Fuzzies and Utilons Separately post seems to actually be written by Yudkowski. Is it possible that you meant to link to the related Doing your good deed for the day?
Thanks for the list, though. As a new reader it’s been interesting going through these posts.
I’ve been looking for this all my life without even knowing it. (Well, at least for half a year.)
“Eight Short Studies on Excuses” link is wrong.
Fixed
I really liked the consequentialist FAQ!
“Right is the new Left” link is wrong.