These are a few of my favorite links
Things that shaped my worldview, good advice, and fun stuff.
These are pieces I consider more timeless or delightful than the things I cover in my regular link posts.
SSC
Scott Alexander is my favorite writer. He has the ability to write engagingly about technical topics and think clearly about emotional ones. He currently writes ACX which appears in my regular linkposts. I want to highlight some my favorites from his previous blog SSC (Slate Star Codex Abridged also offers a good introduction to his previous writing):
I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup
Nobody Is Perfect, Everything Is Commensurable
Archipelago and Atomic Communitarianism
In Favor of Niceness, Community, and Civilization
1960: The Year The Singularity Was Cancelled
A Something Sort Of Like Left-Libertarianism-ist Manifesto
Book Review: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
ACX
Unpredictable Reward, Predictable Happiness
Scott Aaronson
Who Can Name the Bigger Number? A delightful piece. Makes complexity theory interesting and accessible.
In the same vein, see The Fable of the Chessmaster
Eigenmorality is a fascinating post discussing reputation systems.
Common Knowledge and Aumann’s Agreement Theorem
How to upper-bound the probability of something bad
Gwern
My Ordinary Life: Improvements Since the 1990s
Laws of Tech: Commoditize Your Complement
Evolution as Backstop for Reinforcement Learning
Andrew Kortina
Kinky Labor Supply and the Attention Tax
Speech is Free, Distribution is Not
Principles for Radical Tax Reform and a Universal Dividend
Roots of Progress
Instant stone (just add water!)
Vitalik Buterin
Putanumonit
Julia Galef’s Unpopular Ideas collections
Unpopular ideas about social norms
Unpopular ideas about politics and economics
Unpopular ideas about children
Unpopular ideas about crime and punishment
Reflective Disequilibrium
I enjoy virtually everything on Reflective Disequilibrium, a sample:
Flow-through effects of saving a life through the ages on life-years lived
Rawls’ original position, potential people, and Pascal’s Mugging
Population ethics and inaccessible populations
Flow-through effects of innovation through the ages
Breeding happier animals: no futuristic tech required
I also found many of the posts on labor mobility and animals interesting
Papers
The ergodicity solution of the cooperation puzzle
Statistically Controlling for Confounding Constructs Is Harder than You Think
One parameter is always enough
Mad-Dog Everettianism: Quantum Mechanics at Its Most Minimal
The Theory of Interstellar Trade
Geometric reasons for normalising variance to aggregate preferences
Formalizing preference utilitarianism in physical world models
The End of Economic Growth? Unintended Consequences of a Declining Population
Developing ecospheres on transiently habitable planets: the genesis project
Bentham or Bergson? Finite Sensibility, Utility Functions and Social Welfare Functions
Quasi-Pareto Social Improvements
Towards Welfare Biology: Evolutionary Economics of Animal Consciousness and Suffering
The private provision of public goods via dominant assurance
contracts
Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective
Cardinal Welfare, Individualistic Ethics, and Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility
I’ve highlighted Robin Hanson’s blog before, but here are some important papers:
Warning Labels as Cheap-Talk: Why Regulators Ban Drugs
The Promise of Prediction Markets
For reference
Kurzgesagt
I enjoy the YouTube channel Kurzgesagt, they have well made animations on topics that readers of this blog would enjoy. A sample of their videos:
Who Is Responsible For Climate Change?
A Selfish Argument for Making the World a Better Place
The Black Hole Bomb and Black Hole Civilizations
Overpopulation – The Human Explosion Explained
Online science fiction
Short stories
The Last Question by Issac Asimov
The Goddess of Everything Else by Scott Alexander
The Egg by Andy Weir, animated by Kurzgesagt
Chaser 6 by Alicorn
The House Beyond Your Sky by Benjamin Rosenbaum
On relationships
Intentionally Making Close Friends
A Common Habit That Costs Us Friends
How to Pick Your Life Partner – Part 1
the friendship theory of everything
Health
Ticker: Don’t Die of Heart Disease. Best compilation of advice about avoiding heart disease, the leading cause of death in developed countries.
Lifespan extension: separating fact from fiction (EDIT: though because of Bryan Johnson’s data, I no longer think that rapamycin is a good idea for most people.)
Optimal Exercise and How To Train Like A Minimalist
Feedback loops for exercise (VO2Max)
Censorship, propaganda, and information ecology
Tools for Thinking About Censorship
The True Purpose of Propaganda
Propaganda (Almost) Never Works
The Demand for Political Misinformation is a Bigger Problem than the Supply
Everything else
Inventing on Principle by Bret Victor. One of the best presentations I have ever seen.
Dr. Kathryn Paige Harden talk on genetics and education. Excellent scientific communication on a difficult topic.
Twitter thread on times when a rule was implemented and backfired.
Sequencing is the new microscope
Japan’s Hometown Tax. A simple way to give citizens control over how their taxes are spent and preserve cultural value.
Finding Sean Mendez. Hilarious and logical, the best combination.
Beyond the mean, median, and mode. The math of different measures of central tendency.
Competitive Ethics. Which system of ethics would “win” if they all competed?
Complete Class: Consequentialist Foundations
Distilling Singular Learning Theory
Against neutrality about creating happy lives
Actually possible: thoughts on Utopia
Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued
The Privilege of Earning To Give
Rawls’ original position, potential people, and Pascal’s Mugging. Sidestepping the Repugnant Conclusion by also weighing the values of the unborn.
Mark Rober built an obstacle course for squirrels in his backyard. Surprising and fun. I have a much greater appreciation for them now.
The amazing intelligence of crows
I find the Liter of Light project inspiring. A simple, creative solution to a problem in developing countries.
Economist Steven Landsburg on Population Growth
The Greatest Story Ever Told: The Amazing Story of Economic Growth
Hans Rosling: Global population growth, box by box
The Least You Can Do for Global Poverty Is Better than the Best You Can Do
There is only one poverty strategy: (broad based) growth
Extreme poverty: how far have we come, how far do we still have to go?
80K hours on Research questions that could have a big social impact, organised by discipline
How I Became the Honest Broker. A good persona to strive for.
36 questions that lead to love by Arthur Aron. Not really about “love” per se but good questions to ask anyone you want to know better.
Contrafreeloading. Most animals prefer to do some intellectual and physical work to earn their reward (except cats). I think people are the same.
The Extreme Engineering of ASML’s EUV Light Source. An incredible amount of work went in to the chip on your computer and phone. This is true for every manmade object. As Gordon Brander says, “Everything around me was someone's lifework.”
Reading the news is the new smoking. Try out an information diet, avoiding most news and discussion of current events will free up your time and make you happier.
Dyson's eternal intelligence. Cosmology sets the ultimate limits on the things our society can do.
Sciama’s argument on life in a random universe and distinguishing apples from oranges. Good intuitions for high dimensional spaces.
Nandgame. Learn how computers work from transistors up to programming languages.
Nigeria’s Chaotic Rise as the Tech Heart of Africa. I’m excited about the opportunity for poor countries to rapidly develop advanced technologies. See here for more.
Data Science at the Singularity. Read carefully, this is a blueprint for a new way to do science. Work hard to build an good benchmark and reward anyone publishes their method in an open and reproducible way. Refining benchmarks to align them with real-world utility and making it easier to build on others work accelerates the process.
After 34 Years, Someone Finally Beat Tetris. Communities of practice are powerful things. A group with a shared interest in an old game have learned to play at a level previously thought impossible. Top players can routinely “beat tetris”. This hasn’t lead to a dead end in play, but rather a fluorishing of different ways to top the leaderboard (fastest to a game crash, most points to a game crash, dodging game crashes, etc.). All of science could be like this. All of play could be like this.
Ideological Abuse, Busyness, and the Importance of Rest. Give yourself a break. Sustainable participation in your job, social movements, and relationships is your best bet.
How to like everything more. You can learn to like things more and find appreciation for just about everything and everyone. Simply learning more about something often makes it more endearing.
What Goes Without Saying. I was nodding along to all of this. Some people don’t share these intuitions and while I wish them well, but I don’t want to work with them.
A Swift Introduction to Geometric Algebra. This odd subset of math seems capable of generalizing linear algebra and simplifying how we teach physics. Perhaps students of the future will jump directly from arithmetic to geometric algebra and from there learn all of physics through this lens.
Your Book Review: Progress And Poverty. This review made me “see the cat”.
We’re going to need a lot of solar panels
I found Sapolsky’s first lecture in this Introduction to Human Behavioral Biology captivating.
How I’ve run major projects by Ben Kuhn.
Sam- my favorite insight here is “speech is free, distribution is not.” Very true.
awesome list, refound many of my favs after a long time! Thank you for sharing. Keep this updated.