Bi-Weekly Rational Feed

===Highly Recommended Articles:

Bring Up Genius by Viliam (lesswrong) - An “80/20” translation. Positive motivation. Extreme resistance 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.

The Shouting Class by Noah Smith—The majority of comments come from a tiny minority of commentators. Social media is giving a bullhorn to the people who constantly complain. Negativity is contagious. The level of discord in society is getting genuinely dangerous. The French Revolution. The author criticizes shouters on the Left and Right.

How Givewell Uses Cost Effectiveness Analyses by The GiveWell Blog—GiveWell doesn’t take its estimates literally, unless one charity is measured as 2-3x as cost-effective GiveWell is unsure if a difference exists. Cost-effective is however the most important factor in GiveWell’s recommendations. GiveWell goes into detail about how it deals with great uncertainty and suboptimal data.

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.”

The Face Of The Ice by Sarah Constantin (Otium) - Mountaineering. Survival Mindset vs Sexual-Selection Mindset. War and the Wilderness. Technical Skill.

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.

===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.

Terrorism and Involuntary Commitment 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.

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.

Open Thread 77- Opium Thread by Scott Alexander—Bi-weekly open thread. Includes some comments of the week and an update on translating “Bringing Up Genius”.

Third and Fourth Thoughts on Dragon Army by SlateStarScratchpad. - Scott goes from Anti-Anti-Dragon-Army to Anti-Dragon-Army. He then gets an email from Duncan and updates in favor of the position that Duncan thought things out well.

Hungarian Education III Mastering The Core Teachings Of The Budapestians by Scott Alexander—Lazlo Polgar wanted to prove he could intentionally raise chess geniuses. He raised the number 1,2 and 6 female chess players in the world?

Four Nobel Truths by Scott Alexander—Four Graphs describing facts about Israeli/Askenazi Nobel Prizes.

===Rationalist:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

Script for the rationalist seder is linked by Raemon (lesswrong) - An explanation of Rationalist Seder, a remix of the Passover Seder refocused on liberation in general. A story of two tribes and the power of stories. The full Haggadah/script for the rationalist Seder is linked.

The Personal Growth Cycle by G Gordon Worley (Map and Territory) - Stages of Development. “Development starts from a place of integration, followed by disintegration into confusion, which through active efforts at reintegration in a safe space results in development. If a safe space for reintegration is not available, development may not proceed.”

Until We Build Dath Ilan by H i v e w i r e d—Eliezer’s Sci-fi utopia Dath Ilan. The nature of the rationalist community. A purpose for the rationality community. Lots of imagery and allusions. A singer is someone who tries to do good.

Do Ai Experts Exist by Bayesian Investor—Some of the numbers from ” When Will AI Exceed Human Performance? Evidence from AI Experts” don’t make sense.

Relinquishment Cultivation by Agenty Duck—Agenty Duck designs meditation to cultivate the attitude of “If X is true I wish to believe X, if X is not true I wish to believe not X”. The technique is inspired by ‘loving-kindness’ meditation.

10 Incredible Weaknesses Of The Mental Health by arunbharatula (lesswrong) - Ten arguments that undermine the credibility of the mental health workforce. Some of the arguments are sourced and argued significantly more thoroughly than other.

Philosophical Parenthood by SquirrelInHell—Updateless Decision theory. Ashkenazi intelligence. “In this post, I will lay out a strong philosophical argument for rational and intelligent people to have children. It’s important and not obvious, so listen well.”

On Connections Between Brains And Computers by Small Truths—A condensation of Tim Ubran’s 36K word article about Neuralink. The astounding benefits of having even a SIRI level Ai responding directly to your thoughts. The existential threat of Ai means that mind-computer links are worth the risks.

Thoughts Concerning Homeschooling by Ozy (Thing of Things) - Evidence that many public school practices are counter-productive. Stats on the academic performance of home-schoolers. Educating ‘weird awkward nerds’.

The Face Of The Ice by Sarah Constantin (Otium) - Mountaineering. Survival Mindset vs Sexual-Selection Mindset. War and the Wilderness. Technical Skill.

===EA:

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.

Announcing Effective Altruism Grants by Maxdalton (EA forum) - CEA is giving 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.

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

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$)?”

New Report Consciousness And Moral Patienthood by 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.”

Adding New Funds To Ea Funds by the Center for Effective Altruism (EA forum) - The Center for Effective Altruism wants feedback on whether it should add more EA funds. Each question is followed by a detailed list of critical considerations.

The Time Has come to Find Out [Links] by GiveDirectly − 8 media links related to Cash Transfers, Give Directly and Effective Altruism.

Considering Considerateness: Why Communities Of Do Gooders Should Be by The Center for Effective Altruism—Consequentialist reasons to be considerate and trustworthy. Detailed and contains several graphs. Include practical discussions of when not to be considerate and how to handle unreasonable preferences. The conclusion discusses how considerate EAs should be. The bibliography contains many very high quality articles written by the community.

===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.

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.

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.

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.”

Book Review Weapons Of Math Destruction by Zvi Moshowitz—Extremely long. “What the book is actually mostly about on its surface, alas, is how bad and unfair it is to be a Bayesian. There are two reasons, in her mind, why using algorithms to be a Bayesian is just awful.”

A Brief Argument With Apparently Informed Global Warming Denialists by Artir (Nintil) - Details of the back and forth argument. So commentary on practical rationality and speculation about how the skeptic might have felt.

Population By Country And Region 10K BCE to 2016 CE by Luke Muehlhauser − 204 countries, 27 region. Links to the database used and a forthcoming explanatory paper. From 10K BCE to 0 CE gaps are 1000 years. From 0 CE to 1700 CE gaps are 100 years. After that they are 10 years long.

Regulatory Lags For New Technology 2013 Notes by gwern (lesswrong) - Gwern looks at the history of regulation for high frequency trading, self driving cars and hacking. The post is mostly comprised of long quotes from articles linked by gwern.

Two Economists Ask Teachers To Behave As Irrational Actors by Freddie deBoer—A response to Cowen’s interview of Raj Chetty. Standard Education reform rhetoric implies that hundreds of thousands of teachers need to be fired. However teachers don’t control most of the important inputs to student performance. You won’t get more talented teachers unless you increase compensation.

Company Revenue Per Employee by Tyler Cowen—The energy sector has high revenue per employee. The highest score was attained by a pharmaceutical distributor. Hotels, restaurants and consumer discretionaries do the worst on this metric. Tech has a middling performance.

===Misc:

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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

Text To Speech Speed by Jeff Kaufman—Text to speech has become a very efficient way to interact with computers. Questions about settings. Very short.

Hello World! Stan, Pymc3 and Edward by Bob Carpenter (Gelman’s Blog) - Comparison of the three frameworks. Test case of Bayesian linear regression. Extendability and efficiency of the frameworks is discussed.

Computer Science Majors by Tyler Cowen—Tyler links to an article by Dan wang. The author gives 11 reasons why CS majors are rare, none of which he finds convincing. Eventually the author seems to conclude that the 2001 bubble, changing nature of the CS field, power law distribution in developer productivity and lack of job security are important causes.

Beespotting On I-5 by Eukaryote—Drive from San Fran to Seattle. The vast agricultural importance of Bees. Improving Bee quality of life.

===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”

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.

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

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.”

Nick Szabo by Tim Ferriss—“Computer scientist, legal scholar, and cryptographer best known for his pioneering research in digital contracts and cryptocurrency.”

The Road To Tyranny by Waking Up with Sam Harris—Timothy Snyder. His book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.

Hans Noel On The Role Of Ideology In Politics by Rational Speaking—“Why the Democrats became the party of liberalism and the Republicans the party of conservatism, whether voters are hypocrites in the way they apply their ostensible ideology, and whether politicians are motivated by ideals or just self-interest.”