“TCP ex Machina: Computer-Generated Congestion Control” (“Although the RemyCCs appear to work well on networks whose parameters fall within or near the limits of what they were prepared for—even beating in-network schemes at their own game and even when the design range spans an order of magnitude variation in network parameters—we do not yet understand clearly why they work, other than the observation that they seem to optimize their intended objective well. We have attempted to make algorithms ourselves that surpass the generated RemyCCs, without success.”)
“Sequence Thinking vs. Cluster Thinking” (False dichotomy—“cluster thinking” is simply “sequence thinking” sans arbitrary restrictions of hypotheses/models, like a cryonics analysis which only uses conjunctions and never disjunctions, so it’s unsurprising that sequence thinking is faster & easier but generally less accurate than cluster thinking; but still interesting.)
He has in mind Yudkowsky’s favourite far future argument, so your statement appers wrong, and thus needlessly dismissive, which I think is why you have been downvoted.
Technology:
“In the Beginning was the Command Line”, Neal Stephenson
Data Compression Explained, Matt Mahoney
“A Pedagogy of Diminishing Returns: Scientific Involution across Three Generations of Nuclear Weapons Science”, Gusterson 2005
“Responses to Catastrophic AGI Risk: A Survey”, Sotala & Yampolskiy 2013
“It’s All About The Benjamins: An empirical study on incentivizing users to ignore security advice”, Christin et al (excerpts)
“Visualizing Algorithms” (sorting, maze-drawing)
“how I created 8088 Domination, which is a program that displays fairly decent full-motion video on a 1981 IBM PC”
“Fixing Unix/Linux/POSIX Filenames: Control Characters (such as Newline), Leading Dashes, and Other Problems” (on the nigh-insuperable difficulties of correct filename handling)
“TCP ex Machina: Computer-Generated Congestion Control” (“Although the RemyCCs appear to work well on networks whose parameters fall within or near the limits of what they were prepared for—even beating in-network schemes at their own game and even when the design range spans an order of magnitude variation in network parameters—we do not yet understand clearly why they work, other than the observation that they seem to optimize their intended objective well. We have attempted to make algorithms ourselves that surpass the generated RemyCCs, without success.”)
Ultra-long-term civilizations: planets warmed by neutrinos
Statistics:
“Knowing When to Stop: How to gamble if you must-the mathematics of optimal stopping”
“Model Combination and Adjustment”
“Big Data: New Tricks for Econometrics”, Varian 2014 (Readable overview of some machine learning techniques for economics.)
“If correlation doesn’t imply causation, then what does?”, Nielsen
“Sequence Thinking vs. Cluster Thinking” (False dichotomy—“cluster thinking” is simply “sequence thinking” sans arbitrary restrictions of hypotheses/models, like a cryonics analysis which only uses conjunctions and never disjunctions, so it’s unsurprising that sequence thinking is faster & easier but generally less accurate than cluster thinking; but still interesting.)
Using Repeated Measures & LOESS smoothing to Remove Artifacts from Longitudinal Data (The idea of measures which systematically vary over time terrifies me, but that’s a neat approach: occasionally take calibration samples and fit a curve to control for the bias.)
“The Neutral Model of Inquiry (or, What Is the Scientific Literature, Chopped Liver?)”
Gustav III of Sweden’s coffee experiment
Medicine:
“Who By Very Slow Decay”: end-of-life medical care
Economics:
“How Copyright Keeps Works Disappeared”, Heald 2013
“How bad were the Navigation Acts really?”
“Results of the German and American submarine campaigns of WWII”
The price of the Cold War: ~$12,000 billion?
The price of Apollo: ~$170 billion.
The price of the Manhattan Project: ~$30 billion.
“Should Oregon fund college through equity?”
“Sequence Thinking vs. Cluster Thinking” is pretty obviously Holden expressing annoyance at the lower decile of LessWrong.
He has in mind Yudkowsky’s favourite far future argument, so your statement appers wrong, and thus needlessly dismissive, which I think is why you have been downvoted.