The Bayesian Conspiracy

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) Ashton Kutcher’s Thorn program “…And I Show You How Deep The Rabbit Hole Goes” – short story by Scott Alexander featuring pills of many colors SMBC Comics is the best! Superman and the Clan of the Fiery Cross radio shows Reasons and Persons, by Derek Parfit A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles, by Thomas Sowell

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: https://slatestarcodex.com/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss http://www.overcomingbias.com/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss http://lesswrong.com/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss https://srconstantin.wordpress.com/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss http://www.deathisbadblog.com/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss http://agentyduck.blogspot.com/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss Less Wrong Slack Rationalist subreddits: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss Less Wrong Study Hall Crystal Mentality: Amazon – http://amzn.to/2lUTCuF?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss Gumroad – https://gumroad.com/l/CrystalMentality?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss Other Rational Fics: Animorphs: The Reckoning – Animorphs are actually trying to win! Harry Potter and the Natural 20 – Hogwarts isn’t ready for a DnD Hero!  Worm – The superhero fiction where the super humans are actually creative!  MIRI’s rational fiction prize  Also of note – Rationally Writing podcast (and at iTunes)

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. This is the article on the FBI investigation into white supremacist infiltration into law enforcement, provided by Matt, that we discussed in the episode. Sam Harris & Glenn C. Loury – Racism and Violence in America Article on Outrage Marketing – I Helped Create the Milo Trolling Playbook. You Should Stop Playing Right Into It A Brief History of Redlining Hailing Trump with a drink….

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 “generosity for nerds” (Which is one of the ways you can tell it’s better than pleb generosity. – Eneasz) GiveWell.org, probably the best-known site for evaluating charity effectiveness. They are the source of the oft-cited ~$3000 = one life saved statistic (based on the effectiveness of their top-rated charity, the Against Malaria Foundation) Giving What We Can – where you can make the 10% pledge, in addition to getting more info 80,000 Hours – making a difference via your career by putting your comparative advantage to the best use. 2017 AI Risk Literature Review and Charity Comparison – We briefly discussed the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and it’s possible relationship to Effective Altruism. This article is an in-depth analysis of some aspects of that topic. Center For Effective Altruism Effective Altruism.org Animal Charity Evaluators The Salvation Army – :/ at best

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 genocide that is quoted Who is this “Black Bloc?” The shooting of a (not really) Nazi at University of Washington Derek Black, the white supremacist who was invited to dinner by Jewish classmates and decided he wouldn’t be a supremacist anymore. Superman vs The KKK, on This American Life, where Eneasz first heard of it, although it looks to have first appeared in Freakonomics and so has probably shown up all over the place. Non-Violent options for change at Indivisible Guide Change My View at reddit  

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 recognition software finding cats in youtube videos and The Hidden Watchers. This Alien Shore is what inspired Eneasz’s face-tattoos, it contains a society where every morning people apply very elaborate face make-up to signal their interests, social status, careers, education, etc. Those who are very confident they won’t have personality shifts over time get them tattooed on. TED talk by David Epstein regarding extreme body-types of the most elite athletes. Link starts at 6:00, but the first six minutes of the talk is about how new technology has led to record-breaking improvements in performance, which is also very interesting.

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 Patreon page!         Fun on Tinder! Ho hum, I’ll just flip through this person’s images…                                                                         Photoshop Magic!                                                           I didn’t get the sad Kermit memo

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 classes at Stanford. *You usually need a degree for a job in academia The Logic of Stupid Poor People Alternative perspective: poor person with designer purse Brian Caplan on illegal IQ tests Venomous. We mean that the snakes are venomous, not poisonous. Batesian mimicry is parasitic in that one species (the most edible one) benefits to the detriment of the model species. It can only be maintained if the harm caused to the predator by eating the model outweighs the benefit of eating the mimic. –Sterns & Hoekstra. Evolution: An Introduction (5th ed.). p. 464. Katrina: To clarify, it’s hard for me to tell where the truth lies on the cost/benefit analysis of making a child. It isn’t hard to predict a child’s impact on carbon emissions. That’s clearly a cost.

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 is not certain. Kant bites the bullet on not lying to murderers in his typically named essay “On A Supposed Right To Lie From Altruistic Motives“. SSC somewhat in favor of Deontology – You Kant Dismiss Universalizability Common Rationalist saying: Consequentialism is Ideal, But Deontology is Safe for Humans Philosophy gets a lot of side-eye from Rationalists, in large part because of things Like This. But see also LukeProg’s Take YouTube video where Katrina is arguing with a video gamer about the goodness of the protagonist of The Last Of Us. Video of a bloody penguin fight over a female. Planet Money episode on economic policies all economists are fully behind, but which will never be implemented. Our Voting episode (with Tim!)