Support Slate Star Codex on Patreon. I have a day job and SSC gets free hosting, so don't feel pressured to contribute. But extra cash helps pay for contest prizes, meetup expenses, and me spending extra time blogging instead of working.
The COVID-19 Forecasting Project at the University of Oxford is making advanced pandemic simulations of 150+ countries available to the public, and also offer pro-bono forecasting services to decision-makers.
Giving What We Can is a charitable movement promoting giving some of your money to the developing world or other worthy causes. If you're interested in this, consider taking their Pledge as a formal and public declaration of intent.
Metaculus is a platform for generating crowd-sourced predictions about the future, especially science and technology. If you're interested in testing yourself and contributing to their project, check out their questions page
Seattle Anxiety Specialists are a therapy practice helping people overcome anxiety and related mental health issues (eg GAD, OCD, PTSD) through evidence based interventions and self-exploration. Check out their free anti-anxiety guide here
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80,000 Hours researches different problems and professions to help you figure out how to do as much good as possible. Their free career guide show you how to choose a career that's fulfilling and maximises your contribution to solving the world's most pressing problems.
Substack is a blogging site that helps writers earn money and readers discover articles they'll like.
Dr. Laura Baur is a psychiatrist with interests in literature review, reproductive psychiatry, and relational psychotherapy; see her website for more. Note that due to conflict of interest she doesn't treat people in the NYC rationalist social scene.
Beeminder's an evidence-based willpower augmention tool that collects quantifiable data about your life, then helps you organize it into commitment mechanisms so you can keep resolutions. They've also got a blog about what they're doing here
AISafety.com hosts a Skype reading group Wednesdays at 19:45 UTC, reading new and old articles on different aspects of AI Safety. We start with a presentation of a summary of the article, and then discuss in a friendly atmosphere.
Jane Street is a quantitative trading firm with a focus on technology and collaborative problem solving. We're always hiring talented programmers, traders, and researchers and have internships and fulltime positions in New York, London, and Hong Kong. No background in finance required.
Altruisto is a browser extension so that when you shop online, a portion of the money you pay goes to effective charities (no extra cost to you). Just install an extension and when you buy something, people in poverty will get medicines, bed nets, or financial aid.
Norwegian founders with an international team on a mission to offer the equivalent of a Norwegian social safety net globally available as a membership. Currently offering travel medical insurance for nomads, and global health insurance for remote teams.
The Effective Altruism newsletter provides monthly updates on the highest-impact ways to do good and help others.
B4X is a free and open source developer tool that allows users to write apps for Android, iOS, and more.
MealSquares is a "nutritionally complete" food that contains a balanced diet worth of nutrients in a few tasty easily measurable units. Think Soylent, except zero preparation, made with natural ingredients, and looks/tastes a lot like an ordinary scone.
Tag Archives: science
More Intuition-Building On Non-Empirical Science: Three Stories
[Followup to: Building Intuitions On Non-Empirical Arguments In Science] I. In your travels, you arrive at a distant land. The chemists there believe that when you mix an acid and a base, you get salt and water, and a star … Continue reading
Building Intuitions On Non-Empirical Arguments In Science
I. Aeon: Post-Empirical Science Is An Oxymoron And It is Dangerous: There is no agreed criterion to distinguish science from pseudoscience, or just plain ordinary bullshit, opening the door to all manner of metaphysics masquerading as science. This is ‘post-empirical’ … Continue reading
More Confounders
[Epistemic status: Somewhat confident in the medical analysis, a little out of my depth discussing the statistics] For years, we’ve been warning patients that their sleeping pills could kill them. How? In every way possible. People taking sleeping pills not … Continue reading
5-HTTLPR: A Pointed Review
In 1996, some researchers discovered that depressed people often had an unusual version of the serotonin transporter gene 5-HTTLPR. The study became a psychiatric sensation, getting thousands of citations and sparking dozens of replication attempts (page 3 here lists 46). … Continue reading
[PARTIALLY RETRACTED] Cortical Neuron Number Matches Intuitive Perceptions Of Moral Value Across Animals
[EDIT: No longer confident in this post, see here.] Yesterday’s post reviewed research showing that animals’ intelligence seemed correlated with their number of cortical neurons. If this is true, we could use it to create an absolute scale that puts … Continue reading
Neurons And Intelligence: A Birdbrained Perspective
Elephants have bigger brains than humans, so why aren’t they smarter than we are? The classic answer has been to play down absolute brain size in favor of brain size relative to body. Sometimes people justify this as “it takes … Continue reading
Book Review: The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions
When I hear scientists talk about Thomas Kuhn, he sounds very reasonable. Scientists have theories that guide their work. Sometimes they run into things their theories can’t explain. Then some genius develops a new theory, and scientists are guided by … Continue reading
Is Science Slowing Down?
[This post was up a few weeks ago before getting taken down for complicated reasons. They have been sorted out and I’m trying again.] Is scientific progress slowing down? I recently got a chance to attend a conference on this … Continue reading
Is Science Slowing Down?
[I wrote this after attending a conference six months ago. At the time I was confused about whether and when I was allowed to publish it. I am still confused, but less optimistic about that confusion getting resolved, so I … Continue reading
Highlights From The Comments On Kuhn
Thanks to everyone who commented on the review of The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions. From David Chapman: It’s important to remember that Kuhn wrote this seven decades ago. It was one of the most influential books of pop philosophy in … Continue reading →