| Book |
Part |
Chapter |
| Rationality: From AI to Zombies -- Preface |
Book One:
Map and Territory |
Biases: An Introduction
By Rob Bensinger |
Part A:
Predictably Wrong |
001: What Do I Mean By "Rationality"?
002: Feeling Rational
003: Why Truth? And...
004: ... What's a Bias, Again?
005: Availability
006: Burdensome Details
007: Planning Fallacy
008: Illusion of Transparency
009: Expecting Short Inferential Distances
010: The Lens That Sees Its Own Flaws
|
Part B:
Fake Beliefs |
011: Making Beliefs Pay Rent
012: A Fable of Science and Politics
013: Belief in Belief
014: Bayesian Judo
015: Pretending to be Wise
016: Religion's Claim to be Non-Disprovable
017: Professing and Cheering
018: Belief as Attire
019: Applause Lights
|
Part C:
Noticing Confusion |
020: Focus Your Uncertainty
021: What Is Evidence?
022: Scientific Evidence, Legal Evidence, Rational Evidence
023: How Much Evidence Does It Take?
024: Einstein’s Arrogance
025: Occam’s Razor
026: Your Strength as a Rationalist
027: Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of Absence
028: Conservation of Expected Evidence
029: Hindsight Devalues Science
|
Part D:
Mysterious Answers |
030: Fake Explanations
031: Guessing the Teacher’s Password
032: Science as Attire
033: Fake Causality
034: Semantic Stopsigns
035: Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions
036: The Futility of Emergence
037: Say Not "Complexity"
038: Positive Bias: Look into the Dark
039: Lawful Uncertainty
040: My Wild and Reckless Youth
041: Failing to Learn from History
042: Making History Available
043: Explain/Worship/Ignore?
044: "Science" as Curiosity-Stopper
045: Truly Part of You
|
| Interlude: The Simple Truth |
Book Two:
How to Actually
Change Your Mind |
Rationality: An Introduction
By Rob Bensinger |
Part E:
Overly Convenient Excuses |
046: The Proper Use of Humility
047: The Third Alternative
048: Lotteries: A Waste of Hope
049: New Improved Lottery
050: But There’s Still a Chance, Right?
051: The Fallacy of Gray
052: Absolute Authority
053: How to Convince Me That 2 + 2 = 3
054: Infinite Certainty
(+ Bonus Minisode)
055: 0 And 1 Are Not Probabilities
056: Your Rationality Is My Business
|
Part F:
Politics and Rationality |
057: Politics is the Mind-Killer
058: Policy Debates Should Not Appear One-Sided
059: The Scales of Justice, the Notebook of Rationality
060: Correspondence Bias
061: Are Your Enemies Innately Evil?
062: Reversed Stupidity Is Not Intelligence
063: Argument Screens Off Authority
064: Hug the Query
065: Rationality and the English Language
066: Human Evil and Muddled Thinking
|
Part G:
Against Rationalization |
067: Knowing About Biases Can Hurt People
068: Update Yourself Incrementally
069: One Argument Against An Army
070: The Bottom Line
071: What Evidence Filtered Evidence?
072: Rationalization
073: A Rational Argument
074: Avoiding Your Belief’s Real Weak Points
075: Motivated Stopping and Motivated Continuation
076: Fake Justification
077: Is That Your True Rejection?
078: Entangled Truths, Contagious Lies
079: Of Lies and Black Swan Blowups
080: Dark Side Epistemology
|
Part H:
Against Doublethink |
081: Singlethink
082: Doublethink (Choosing to be Biased)
083: No, Really, I've Deceived Myself
084: Belief in Self-Deception
085: Moore’s Paradox
086: Don’ Believe You’ll Self-Deceive
|
Part I:
Seeing with Fresh Eyes |
087: Anchoring and Adjustment
088: Priming and Contamination
089: Do We Believe Everything We’re Told?
090: Cached Thoughts
091: The "Outside the Box" Box
092: Original Seeing
093: Stranger than History
094: The Logical Fallacy of Generalization from Fictional Evidence
095: The Virtue of Narrowness
096: How to Seem (and Be) Deep
097: We Change Our Minds Less Often Than We Think
098: Hold Off On Proposing Solutions
099: The Genetic Fallacy
|
Part J:
Death Spirals |
100: The Affect Heuristic
101: Evaluability (and Cheap Holiday Shopping)
102: Unbounded Scales, Huge Jury Awards, and Futurism
103: The Halo Effect
104: Superhero Bias
105: Mere Messiahs
106: Affective Death Spirals
107: Resist the Happy Death Spiral
108: Uncritical Supercriticality
109: Evaporative Cooling of Group Beliefs
110: When None Dare Urge Restraint
111: The Robbers Cave Experiment
112: Every Cause Wants to Be a Cult
113: Guardians of the Truth
114: Guardians of the Gene Pool
115: Guardians of Ayn Rand
116: Two Cult Koans
117: Asch's Conformity Experiment
118: On Expressing Your Concerns
119: Lonely Dissent
120: Cultish Countercultishness
|
Part K:
Letting Go |
121: The Importance of Saying "Oops"
122: The Crackpot Offer
123: Just Lose Hope Already
124: The Proper Use of Doubt
125: You Can Face Reality
126: The Meditation on Curiosity
127: No One Can Exempt You From Rationality’s Laws
128: Leave a Line of Retreat
129: Crisis of Faith
130: The Ritual
|
| Interlude: The Power of Intelligence |
Book Three:
The Machine in the Ghost |
Minds: An Introduction
By Rob Bensinger |
Part L:
The Simple Math of Evolution |
131: An Alien God
132: The Wonder of Evolution
133: Evolutions Are Stupid (But Work Anyway)
134: No Evolutions for Corporations or Nanodevices
135: Evolving to Extinction
136: The Tragedy of Group Selectionism
137: Fake Optimization Criteria
138: Adaptation-Executers, Not Fitness-Maximizers
139: Evolutionary Psychology
140: An Especially Elegant Evolutionary Psychology Experiment
141: Superstimuli and the Collapse of Western Civilization
142: Thou Art Godshatter
|
Part M:
Fragile Purposes |
143: Belief in Intelligence
144: Humans in Funny Suits
145: Optimization and the Intelligence Explosion
146: Ghosts in the Machine
147: Artificial Addition
148: Terminal Values and Instrumental Values
149: Leaky Generalizations
150: The Hidden Complexity of Wishes
151: Anthropomorphic Optimism
152: Lost Purposes
|
Part N:
A Human’s Guide to Words |
153: The Parable of the Dagger
154: The Parable of Hemlock
155: Words as Hidden Inferences
156: Extensions and Intensions
157: Similarity Clusters
158: Typicality and Asymmetrical Similarity
159: The Cluster Structure of Thingspace
160: Disguised Queries
161: Neural Categories
162: How An Algorithm Feels From Inside
163: Disputing Definitions
164: Feel the Meaning
165: The Argument from Common Usage
166: Empty Labels
167: Taboo Your Words
168: Replace the Symbol with the Substance
169: Fallacies of Compression
170: Categorizing Has Consequences
171: Sneaking in Connotations
172: Arguing "By Definition"
173: Where to Draw the Boundary?
174: Entropy, and Short Codes
175: Mutual Information, and Density in Thingspace
176: Superexponential Conceptspace, and Simple Words
177: Conditional Independence, and Naive Bayes
178: Words as Mental Paintbrush Handle
179: Variable Question Fallacies
180: 37 Ways That Words Can Be Wrong
|
| Interlude: An Intuitive Explanation of Bayes's Theorem |
Book Four:
Mere Reality |
The World: An Introduction
By Rob Bensinger |
Part O:
Lawful Truth |
181: Universal Fire
182: Universal Law
183: Is Reality Ugly?
184: Beautiful Probability
185: Outside the Laboratory
186: The Second Law of Thermodynamics, and Engines of Cognition
187: Perpetual Motion Beliefs
188: Searching for Bayes-Structure
|
Part P:
Reductionism 101 |
189: Dissolving the Question
190: Wrong Questions
191: Righting a Wrong Question
192: Mind Projection Fallacy
193: Probability is in the Mind
194: The Quotation is Not the Referent
195: Qualitatively Confused
196: Think Like Reality
197: Chaotic Inversion
198: Reductionism
199: Explaining vs. Explaining Away
200: Fake Reductionism
201: Savannah Poets
|
Part Q:
Joy in the Merely Real |
202: Joy in the Merely Real
203: Joy in Discovery
204: Bind Yourself to Reality
205: If You Demand Magic, Magic Won't Help
206: Mundane Magic
207: The Beauty of Settled Science
208: Amazing Breakthrough Day: April 1st
209: Is Humanism a Religion Substitute?
210: Scarcity
211: The Sacred Mundane
212: To Spread Science, Keep It Secret
213: Initiation Ceremony
|
Part R:
Physicalism 201 |
214: Hand vs. Fingers
215: Angry Atoms
216: Heat vs. Motion
217: Brain Breakthrough! It's Made of Neurons!
218: When Anthropomorphism Became Stupid
219: A Priori
220: Reductive Reference
221: Zombies! Zombies?
222: Zombie Responses
223: The Generalized Anti-Zombie Principle
224: GAZP vs. GLUT
225: Belief in the Implied Invisible
226: Zombies: The Movie
227: Excluding the Supernatural
228: Psychic Powers
|
Part S:
Quantum Physics and Many Worlds |
229: Quantum Explanations
230: Configurations and Amplitude
231: Joint Configurations
232: Distinct Configurations
233: Collapse Postulates
234: Decoherence is Simple
235: Decoherence is Falsifiable and Testable
236: Privileging the Hypothesis
237: Living in Many Worlds
238: Quantum Non-Realism
239: If Many-Worlds Had Come First
240: Where Philosophy Meets Science
241: Thou Art Physics
242: Many Worlds, One Best Guess
|
Part T:
Science and Rationality |
243: The Failures of Eld Science
244: The Dilemma: Science or Bayes?
245: Science Doesn't Trust Your Rationality
246: When Science Can't Help
247: Science Isn't Strict Enough
248: Do Scientists Already Know This Stuff?
249: No Safe Defense, Not Even Science
250: Changing the Definition of Science
251: Faster Than Science
252: Einstein's Speed
253: That Alien Message
254: My Childhood Role Model
255: Einstein's Superpowers
256: Class Project
|
| Interlude: A Technical Explanation of Technical Explanation |
Book Five:
Mere Goodness |
Ends: An Introduction
By Rob Bensinger |
Part U:
Fake Preferences |
257: Not for the Sake of Happiness (Alone)
258: Fake Selfishness
259: Fake Morality
260: Fake Utility Functions
261: Detached Lever Fallacy
262: Dreams of AI Design
263: The Design Space of Minds-in-General
|
Part V:
Value Theory |
264: Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom
265: My Kind of Reflection
266: No Universally Compelling Arguments
267: Created Already in Motion
268: Sorting Pebbles into Correct Heaps
More coming soon...
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