The Bayesian Conspiracy

We kick off a couple things: The Sequences Reading/Discussion , and What Lies Dreaming The OG Sequences in chronological order we read:  The Martial Art of Rationality  ; Why Truth? And…  ;  …What’s a Bias Again? For next time:  The Proper Use of Humility ;  The Modesty Argument Collated & edited in: Rationality: AI to Zombies also as a podcast , and a podcast The Elephant in the Brain  (and o...

An awesome anonymous listener made this and sent it in after the episode aired! Thanks, awesome mystery person! Alas, we had some technical difficulties in this episode too and we lost some small chunks of audio. I cropped it as best I could, but there’s some little bits where you can tell the audio skips a bit. Today’s main topic/recommended reading:  Memetic Tribes and War Culture Pe...

Matt Freeman may be distant in body, but he is present in spirit Moridinamael’s  A Dialogue on Rationalist Activism KatjaGrace’s Are ethical asymmetries from property rights? Yudkowsky’s  Transhumanism as Simplified Humanism Very Bad Wizards ep 148 Am I Wrong? Moridinamael’s  Spamming Micro-Intentions to Generate Willpower Crystal Society podcast The Society of Mind by Marv...

This episode has some audio quirks. We ended up having our recording software crash (but saved most of our audio) after about an hour and 15 minutes, so we have a tone shift at that point since we took a 20 minute break while we got our stuff back up and running. A Dialogue on Rationalist Activism – A dialogue-form essay Matt wrote the day after we recorded this episode We’ve Got Ward Doof M...

A confluence of time-expensive events prevented us from recording an episode this week. However, since Shut Up And Do The Impossible: The Rational Fiction Online Anthology was just released, we’re podcasting a story from that anthology instead. This audio was first released at The Methods of Rationality podcast . Sword of Good original text Shut Up And Do The Impossible: The Rational Fiction...

We finally get to some older listener feedback, then discuss productivity tools & systems. Also, Eneasz unveiled Shut Up And Do The Impossible: The Rational Fiction Online Anthology. Lizard hatching ; Lizard chased by snakes Malcom Gladwell on the (non-)value of getting into Harvard Bayesians vs Barbarians Universal Paperclips – the paperclip maximizer game, plus Wired’s article ab...

Eneasz is still allergic to mysticism, but he really likes thinking of society as a super-being that guides humans and cares about their actions. Does this foresay doom for our host? A correction: Eneasz made a joke about Calvanists being Catholics, which is the opposite of the truth, they’re a sect of Protestantism. Oops! Outside the Laboratory Newcomblike Problems Are the Norm The Intellig...

It’s only  almost  as crazy as it sounds. A bunch of links to help you get started on Magick! UltraCulture’s guide: The Complete Psychonaut Field Manual: A Cartoon Guide to Chaos Magick RUNE SOUP links: All things Sigils Sigils Reboot: How to Get Big Magic From Little Squiggles Very Bad Company – Occultism and Power Even a Really Big Map Is Not the Territory Why Belief is the Wro...

Alexander Wales and DayStar Eld join us to discuss Rational Fiction Their Podcast – Rationally Writing Alexander Wales’s page DayStar Eld’s page Eneasz’s Fiction The Progenitor – Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality /r/rational on Reddit The Idiot Ball Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Abridged Guide to Intelligent Characters Worm Unsong The /r/ration definition of Rat...

This episode is a bit unusual in that our pre-recording mic check conversation sort of kept going into a conversation we felt was worth sharing. We redacted some of the personal identifiable info and names of actual people, so if the conversation earlier on sounds sort of disjointed, that’s because it is. Steven also didn’t start moderating his freakishly fast speaking speed until a wh...

We speak with Serge Faguet about biohacking. The lowest hanging fruit is, of course, sleep and exercise. Going beyond that, Serge mentioned: 23 And Me for DNA sequencing Promethease for further DNA analysis Life Extension Foundation for supplements Oura Ring for sleep analysis Three deep-dive articles by him: I’m 32 and spent $200k on biohacking . How to biohack your intelligence | How I set and e...

We speak with Anthony Aguirre of Metaculus. Try out Metaculus , it’s neat and helps one train their calibration. Future of Life Institute Rat Chat: Maps vs Buttons; Nerds vs Normies Big thanks to David for our intro music! I’ll add a link here for his stuff when I track it down. We’d like to thank creators of our new outro music from the Sumerki Project! Check out their stuff her...

We discuss schooling and education with Audrey. Robin Hanson argues that schooling is to domesticate humans . The Zvi is much more emotionally compelling in his Case Against Education and it’s follow-up (with more coming) Scott Alexander examines why DC’s graduation rates are projected to plummet Richard Feynman’s anecdote about students who knew all the details of light polarizi...

This one got off to an odd start since we were on a time crunch and Joshua as delayed in arriving. As a result, this one is way more disorganized than usual. We hope it’s fun nonetheless. Big thanks to David for our intro music! I’ll add a link here for his stuff when I track it down. We’d like to thank creators of our new outro music from the Sumerki Project! Check out their stu...

Join Steven and David Youssef as they talk about the rationality community, how to win, and explore some possible reasons that Rationalists aren’t all total rock stars! Links: Tim Ferris’s The Four Hour Work Week The works of Naseem Taleb, and specifically Anti-Fragile  

This episode got off to an interesting start. We usually test the mics with small talk and whatnot, but wound up just getting into interesting things and never quite got around to breaking to do an intro. I guess today we talk about culture war stuff. cw: cw We mentioned Scott Alexander and his views on feminism and social justice . Those links are just some of his views. If you’ve ever read...

In this episode, we discuss 3 or 4 popular things currently (or recently) circulating Rationalist circles online. Yudkowsky on no fire alarms for AI. Zvi on the concept of Slack. Ben Hoffman “ Sabbath Hard and Go Home “.  A Lesswrong Crypto Autopsy on Lesserwrong by Scott Alexander: Gwern discussing bitcoin on Lesswrong back in the day.  A commenter on the subreddit posted this on this...

Robin Hanson returns to talk about his new book: The Elephant In The Brain Robin’s classic “X is not about Y” post . 2008! Man, time flies. Eneasz mentioned The North Pond Hermit . Relevant quote: “Solitude did increase my perception. But here’s the tricky thing—when I applied my increased perception to myself, I lost my identity. With no audience, no one to perform for, I...

Brian Dunning of the Skeptoid podcast and Skeptoid Media Inc. returns to talk with us about his newest documentary, The Principles of Curiosity! ( Website Link , Video Link ) It presents a general introduction to the foundations of scientific skepticism and critical thinking, focusing on a simple process they call the three Cs: Challenge, Consider, and Conclude. It’s the spiritual successor...

A discussions as to whether marriage is outdated and net-harmful. In large part based on Eneasz’s blog post . Naveen recommends this discussion between 3Blue1Brown and Ben Eater on Net Neutrality See also Naveen’s current project – Standard Meta Next episode:  The Principles of Curiosity

Robert McIntyre talks about the future of aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation I’m sure you’re all stoked about the sound on this one. All we can say is that we took steps to correct it (like we all recorded our audio independently, including having Robert send his own recording to us) and somehow the heavens conspired to make this sound harsher than the first. Sorry for the ear damage...

Happy Holidays! Nothing this new this week, but here’s some Star Wars The Methods of Rationality main page

In this episode we have our sound engineer Kyle Moore on the show. I thought it would be fun to talk with someone who sort of has to listen to the show and get their take on it. The conversation was, in my opinion, very fun and engaging. I also edited this episode since Kyle has been busy with his day job. – Steven Discussed in this episode: Straw Man vs Steel Man arguments Eneasz’s pa...

Make me one with everything. We went a little off-format for this one. Peter Singer – All Animals Are Equal (pdf) Scott Alexander tries to do a study , but it’s unethical… Eliezer Yudkowsky on Joy In The Merely Real Richard Dawkins – The Greatest Show on Earth William The Conqueror (Sexyback parody) Rick Strassman – DMT: The Spirit Molecule

We speak with Robert McIntyre, winner of the Small Animal Brain Preservation Prize , about recent advances in brain preservation. A pretty good introduction to  connectomics  is this TED Talk by Sebastian Seung Robert recommends some papers on recent advances in scanning and simulation of brain tissue — 1 , 2 , 3 , 4  — and also the  Whole Brain Emulation Roadmap Robert’s paper o...