Thoughts and links, 1-2/2017

Posted: 2017-03-05 , Modified: 2017-03-05

See all the links for January and February. (See April’s post for an explanation of the organization.) Here are some highlights.

Podcast picks

Imaginary worlds
- 28 days of black cosplay
- Growing up Avatar-American: Why is Avatar so popular among Asian-Americans?
On being
- Alain de Botton - The true hard work of love and relationships (notes)
- Maria Popova - Cartographer of meaning in a digital age (notes)
Radiolab
- Stranger in paradise Raccoons as an endangered species, or not?
- On the media: busted, America’s poverty myths.¹ See also Freakonomics: Is the American Dream really dead?
Rationally speaking
- 176 - Against Democracy What if democracy is not the best system of government?
- 178 - Tim Urban on “Trying to live well, as semi-rational animals”
Reply All
- 86 Man of the people A mindblowing story about how far a scammer got by harnessing the power of a new technology - the radio.
- 87 Storming the castle Prank calls as an art form, by Longmont potion castle
Reveal (investigative reporting)
- The year in Reveal, including an interview with white nationalist Richard Spencer
- The man inside: four months as a prison guard: inside private prisons
The Truth: The dark end of the mall A post-apocalytic story
This American Life
- 607 Didn’t we solve this one? Iraqis risk their lives by helping American forces, but get rejected from immigration.
- 610 Grand gestures
99 percent invisible
- 244 The revolutionary post - history of the postal service
- On Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture: 246 Usonia 1 and 247 Usonia the beautiful
- 248 Atom in the garden of Eden - the dream of the nuclear age, manifested in “gamma gardens”
青春愛消遣
- 56 愛上德國男: A story about love and limerence.

Articles and websites

Zenpencils: inspirational cartoon quotes
Rationality
- Otium
  - Ra h: A very good articulation of the corrupting force of generic superlativity. Related to Moloch, etc.
  - There is no secret notebook h
- Satvik Beri
  - Increasing output: Advice both for personal productivity and management.
  - Efficiency vs. disproportionate results h: Two modes for solving problems that are too often disjoint.
“Surprisingly popular” answer can trump ignorance of the masses
Airtable: Useful spreadsheet program which can save multiple sort/filter views
AI safety resources:
- Human-compatible AI bibliography
- Agent foundations (the “forum digest” posts are very helpful)
- Concrete problems in AI safety
- Alignment in machine learning

Books

One flew over the cuckoo’s nest - Set in a psychiatric hospital, but manages to a hopeful and humorous (and sad) story.
The dragon and the stars - collection of Chinese-themed sci-fi/fantasy short stories
Farseer trilogy, Robin Hobb - follows the life of an assassin, with all its moral dilemmas. I liked the treatment of magic (the Skill - telepathic ability to talk with or influence other people - and the Wit - a communing with animals).
- Assassin’s Apprentice, Robin Hobb
- Royal Assassin, Robin Hobb
In the beginning was the command line, Neal Stephenson - I wished I’d read this a long time ago; it illuminated some basic knowledge about computers which I lacked. A command line tutorial.
The invisible heart: An economic romance, Russell Roberts - A conversation about economics delightfully embedded in a love story. Made some good arguments for deregulation.
Diaspora, Greg Egan - Greg Egan goes very far in imagining the evolution of minds in cyberspace. Some interesting metaphors for mathematics. Different ways of embedding life/computation in the universe. A journey through multiple universes in search for…?
Comics!
- Descender 1 After a mysterious AI wreaks destruction, robots are outlawed. Follows the story of an android who wakes up in this world.
- Saga 1 A couple from opposite sides of a galactic war tries to escape being hunted on all sides. Writing and art is fantastic. Also, +1 for Esperanto.
So you’ve been publicly shamed, Jon Ronson. Starting with several stories of Twitter shaming gone out of control, investigates how public shaming has transformed in recent years, the morality and role of public shaming, how to mitigate it, etc.

A quote: when we feel gratitude we’re more generous to strangers, when we’re more aware of luck’s importance, we’re more likely to plow our own fortune back into the common good. But we underplay luck because we can recall our own struggles far better than the fateful but fuzzy role of chance and because the very idea corrodes our faith in free will, but mostly because like Benny Franklin, we’re deeply invested in our own autobiographies.↩