The Bayesian Conspiracy

** Fixed the audio. Please re-download for the correct episode. ** Drugs that boost mental performance for dummies. Did caffiene help kickstart the Enlightenment era? FOR SCIENCE! /r/nootropics  for your nootropic discussion needs Other places to discuss include Nootropics Depot and Longecity Gwern’s posts on nootropics in general , and in-depth on Modafinil in particular The Flynn Effect Th...

Slate Star Codex article – You Kant Dismiss Universalizability Wikipedia page on the Revelation Principle Eliezer’s post on LessWrong –  Ends Don’t Justify Means (Among Humans) Another LessWrong post – Protected From Myself Louis CK bit on Lying (1:46 seconds long) Short book by Sam Harris on Lying ( six minute preview of audiobook) Scott Alexander post on LessWrong &...

We talk with Tsvi from MIRI Game-playing algorithm that pauses Tetris “ On The Origin of Circuits “, discussing a chip hardware evolution experiment MIRI’s technical research agenda overview Alignment for advanced machine learning systems paper from MIRI Musk’s OpenAI Paul Christiano’s about page , which links to his paper Tsvi mentioned Logical induction paper from MIRI Reason a...

The Logical Fallacy of  Generalizing from fictional evidence Genie Button  Though Experiment Wait but Why on AI Part 1 and Part 2 The Downfall meme we mentioned. This is Steven’s favorite version. Yudkowsky vs Hanson – Great AI FOOM debate  and the Video Sam Harris AI TED talk Albion’s Seed – SSC Redditor provides an incredible explanation of how being poor can make you bad with money

Who can access the external part of your brain that you carry around in your pocket? What rights do you have to it? With Chase. Police demand audio records from the Echo of a murder victim, Amazon displeased ( more details ) EFF defends podcasting (as a whole) from a patent troll Speaking of which – The EFF is  the best . Seriously . The pacemaker that thwarted a fire insurance fraud The pac...

We discuss a famously controversial post, despite our better judgement. With Sean and Matt. The Post: Torture Vs Dust Specks Rationality: From AI to Zombies – The Podcast Shut Up And Multiply is actually taken from two posts:  Circular Altruism and  The “Intuitions” Behind “Utilitarianism” Three Worlds Collide (also in audio ) The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (pdf)...

Crystal Society (or  read it for free ) (or listen to most of it as audio ) Crystal Mentality Quick Links: Aubrey de Grey’s TED talk on extreme longevity Ending Aging  – Aubrey de Grey’s book “The Sequences” – Compiled in book form . Max Harms on Cryonics (Video)  Micromort  – The unit used to measure a one in a million chance of dying Rationalist blogs: h...

Forgive the pun. I couldn’t help myself. (Steven) In this bonus episode, Eneasz and Steven respond to some of the feedback to the Nazi Punching episode. Thank you to everyone who provided thoughtful comments. Be assured we read everything, but we only have so much time to respond on the air. The Innocence Project is the group we mentioned that investigates the cases of people on death row. T...

Being effective vs. feeling good. EA is a big topic, this is really just an intro for the uninitiated. The Life You Can Save , by Peter Singer (and the inspired-by website ) Money: The Unit of Caring , by Eliezer Yudkowsky Nobody is Perfect, Everything is Commensurate , by Scott Alexander What Is The Greatest Good?  – an EA profile in The Atlantic, wherein they refer to EA as “generosi...

When is it OK to punch Nazis? With Sean. Original  Richard Spencer being punched video Follow-up video of the guy who punched him being briefly confronted Eneasz’s two posts on the topic Ken White of Popehat On Punching Nazis (he’s against it, for good legal reasons) A pro-punching piece a friend sent to Eneasz The Alternative Right piece discussing black genocid e that is quoted Who i...

Eliezer Yudkowsky’s original post on Neural Categories and hanging nodes . Scott Alexander on Diseased Thinking and a longer essay Concept Networks . The very worthwhile analysis on holiday gift giving reddit comment. Google’s deep learning utilizes these sorts of networks. “ The Great AI Awakening ” discusses this at some length, and is Eneasz’s source for visual rec...

The Conspirators meander through various topics, using a Tinder encounter as a framing story:     Steven’s OKCupid stats come from Rationally Speaking episode 89 Katrina’s OKCupid stats (and pic) come from Big Lies People Tell The Toxoplasma of Rage Dan Dennett’s talk Haidt on The Moral Roots of Conservatives and Liberals Philosophers and their beards Our brand new  Pat...

Source: Wired Magazine   Robin Hanson’s “ What is Signaling ?” Scott Alexander’s definition of signaling: a method of conveying information among not-necessarily-trustworthy parties by performing an action which is more likely or less costly if the information is true than if it is not true. A list of some blog posts about signaling courtesy of Less Wrong. Hanson on sitting in on...

Alonzo blogs at The Atheist Ethicist Common Sense Atheism’s ULTIMATE Desirism FAQ Link to The Atheist Ethicist’s overview of Desirism Wikia page on Desirism    

Doing the Right Thing Wikipedia on: Consequentialism Ethical Egoism Deontology Divine Command Theory Moral Relativism Virtue Ethics Care Ethics Euthyphro’s Dilemma Objectivism Katrina mentioned that she’d read that the impact of child rape is less severe on cultures where this practice is typical. It turns out is was a comment on this LessWrong post and the validity of this statement i...

The conspirators discuss a minor setback. The Safety Pin movement Scott Alexander on your model of the electorate A slightly-more-articulate version of Eneasz’s  decision to change the deep past now Eliezer Yudkowsky on the optimism of Trump voters  

Considerations on Procreation Not having kids – is it like drinking unicorn blood, in that you’ll lead a cursed life, a half-life ? How The Woman Got Her Period (“The endometrium seals off our main blood supply from the newly implanted embryo. The growing placenta literally burrows through this layer, rips into arterial walls and re-wires them to channel blood straight to the hun...

Subjects the politicians aren’t talking about, that they really should be talking about. Links! UN resolution on antibiotics US banning of antibiotics in soap Guy with potentially antibiotic resistant tuberculosis (that ended up not so dangerous) sued CDC . More drug resistant tuberculosis! I nternet access in prison is pretty limited . :/ Mortality rate for people infected with ebola . Up t...

Note: Oops! We accidentally used a crummy laptop microphone. Audio is lower quality for this episode.  Links: Politics is the Mind Killer  on Less Wrong “ Chimpanzee Politics “: A book about two chimpanzees competing to run the “club of chimpanzees” featured on HPMoR Predictive power of party politics: one position can predict 85% of other, unrelated positions. Elizabeth Edwards , a Ne...

We speak with GMU economist Robin Hanson. (note that the audio improves significantly when we switch mics at ~20min) Robin blogs at Overcoming Bias We discuss his recent book,  The Age of Em Robin Hanson discusses prediction markets in greater length at Sintetia Nate Silver & co. predict elections (among other things) at FiveThirtyEight Wikipedia’s summary of The Malthusian Trap Scott Al...

Feelings – should we have them? The Conspiracy decides! This American Life episode about Testosterone Julia Galef’s presentation on The Straw Vulcan . Also – a text summary of same Less Wrong article: “ Feeling Rational ” Steven Universe is  The Best! Sam Harris speaks with Paul Bloom against empathy Less Wrong article: “ Scope Insensitivity ” “One death is a Tr...

We addressed a couple things that we missed last time, and got carried away. Katrina referenced the book “ Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? ” Chimps have amazing flash-memory AIs can  fly our fighter jets better than we can A partial list of animals by neuron-count . OpenWorm – Building the First Digital Lifeform The Valley of Bad Rationality Ozy re: Rationalist...

Katrina referenced the book “ Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? ” Wiki page about the author . See also, wikipedia on animal cognition . About the crow facial recognition and warning study . Prairie dog language study . The thought experiment of Torture vs Dust Specks . The Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis . Also, like most good things, discussed in Harry Potter a...

Steve ( @youngidealist on twitter) talks to us about Street Epistemology The Street Epistemology website , which has been significantly updated and expanded since we recorded this episode. Looking nice! The Street Epistemology book – A Manual For Creating Atheists Short text interview  with Peter Boghossian by Sam Harris Practice and/or learn at blab.im  (none of the Conspirators have used t...

It’s about modeling agents making decisions, not game design. – EB …but you can also apply game theory to game design. – KS Yvain’s sequence of posts introducing Game Theory Defecting is MADE OF FIRE Wikipedia on Dr. Axelrod’s Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma tournament Over the years the Less Wrong community has run a few PD tournaments of their own, with some...