“The Credibility Paradox: Violence as a Double-Edged Sword in International Politics”, Abrahms 2013 (excerpts; Why does terrorism so rarely succeed in policy goals compared to guerrilla warfare, and trigger backfire effects? Because use of terrorist tactics triggers the horns effect; given the same hypothetical, they are perceived as fundamentally hateful, unable to keep negotiated commitments, & intrinsically preferring violence.)
Everything is heritable:
“Are Political Orientations Genetically Transmitted?”, Alford et al 2005 (excerpts)
“Paternal Antisocial Behavior and Sons’ Cognitive Ability: A Population-Based Quasiexperimental Study”, Latvala et al 2014 (excerpts)
“Rabbit genome analysis reveals a polygenic basis for phenotypic change during domestication”, Carneiro et al 2014 (the power of selection—complex behaviors influenced by many small changes; excerpts)
Politics/religion:
“Reactionary Philosophy In An Enormous, Planet-Sized Nutshell”
“The Credibility Paradox: Violence as a Double-Edged Sword in International Politics”, Abrahms 2013 (excerpts; Why does terrorism so rarely succeed in policy goals compared to guerrilla warfare, and trigger backfire effects? Because use of terrorist tactics triggers the horns effect; given the same hypothetical, they are perceived as fundamentally hateful, unable to keep negotiated commitments, & intrinsically preferring violence.)
“Blonde cargoes: Finnish children in the slave markets of medieval Crimea”
“New poll finds majority of Americans believe torture justified after 9/11 attacks”
“Jihadi Radicalization of Muslim Clerics”, Nielsen 2012 (excerpts)
Statistics/AI/meta-science:
“Framing For Light Instead Of Heat” (What do we mean by ‘controlling’ in statistics and is it what we think it means?)
“Site Selection Bias in Program Evaluation”, Allcott 2014 (on one reason programs ‘fade out’; of particular concern in effective altruism; excerpts)
“Probable Points and Credible Intervals, Part 2: Decision Theory”
“Bayes’ rule in Haskell, or why drug tests don’t work”
“Kalkalash! Pinpointing the Moments The Simpsons became less Cromulent”
Psychology/biology:
“Artificial Selection on Relative Brain Size in the Guppy Reveals Costs and Benefits of Evolving a Larger Brain”, Kotrschal et al 2013 (excerpts; fascinating little experiment—it’s odd the males showed no intelligence gain, and selecting on volume isn’t exactly what you want to select on, but I’d love to see what a larger experiment ran for more generations showed.)
“Clinical outcome of preimplantation genetic diagnosis and screening using next generation sequencing”, Tan et al 2014 (excerpts)
Alexander Shulgin obituary
“Wireheading: Towards a Consumer Market?” (excerpts)
“Secrets of the Magus: Ricky Jay does closeup magic that flouts reality”
Technology:
“Bitcoin and Me”, Hal Finney
“Programming Sucks”
“The explosion of No. 5 Blast Furnace, Corus UK Ltd, Port Talbot”, 2001 (excerpts)
“The Darkhotel APT: A Story of Unusual Hospitality” (cyberwarfare)
“Statistical Basis for Predicting Technological Progress”, Nagy et al 2013
“Found on the Web, With DNA: a Boy’s Father”
“Tokyo Polytechnic University Publishes Results of VOCALOID Study”
A Linux audio tweak to compensate for hearing loss
Economics:
“A colourful history of progress” (the Industrial Revolution, synthetic dyes, and the environment)
“Forget It!”, Isaac Asimov (on the benefits of standardization, illustrated by an old practical mathematics textbook.)
“Study of Men’s Falling Income Cites Single Parents” (2013)o
“Redistributing from Capitalists to Workers: The Chamley-Judd Impossibility Theorem”
“Net benefits: How to quantify the gains that the internet has brought to consumers”
“Beware of the survivorship bias: Investors may have developed too rosy a view of equity returns”
Philosophy:
“A Philosopher Walks Into A Coffee Shop” (humor)