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.
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.
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
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.
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
.
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.
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
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.
Substack is a blogging site that helps writers earn money and readers discover articles they'll like.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tag Archives: psychology
Going Loopy
[content warning: mild ideohazards about rumination that might make people who have anxiety disorders have anxiety disorders more effectively, in the bad sense of “effectively”] [epistemic status: more crackpottish than usual for this blog. Wild speculation.] I. If the brain … Continue reading
What Universal Human Experiences Are You Missing Without Realizing It?
Remember Galton’s experiments on visual imagination? Some people just don’t have it. And they never figured it out. They assumed no one had it, and when people talked about being able to picture objects in their minds, they were speaking … Continue reading
Fix Science In Half An Hour
You’ve probably heard about the crisis of replication in psychology. The problem is that replication is an unglamorous business; researchers would much rather do the sexier work of pushing forward knowledge with new results. So we need to make replications … Continue reading
Proposed Biological Explanations For Historical Trends In Crime
My debate on crime rates with Michael Anissimov has been long and meandering, but I think we’re starting to come to something of a consensus. I think (I don’t know if Michael agrees) that the evidence showing long-term decline in … Continue reading
Genetic Testing and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
Lineweaver et al tested 144 elderly adults for the ApoE4 gene, which is known to be a major risk factor for Alzheimers. They told half of them their test results, kept it secret from the other half, then waited. Eight … Continue reading
Public Awareness Campaigns
A little while back I discussed how, contrary to the conventional wisdom that they’ve been “proven to work”, anti-rape campaigns aimed at men have zero evidence of effectiveness. I added that this was no surprise, since similar public awareness campaigns … Continue reading
Social Psychology Is A Flamethrower
Mark Twain: There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. If this is true of all science, it is doubly true of social psychology. At its best, … Continue reading
Wisdom of the Ancients, Redux
The authors of the paper on Victorian intelligence have seen my critique and kindly replied. HBD Chick has already addressed their response from pretty much the same perspective I will, but just to make it official… I originally complained that … Continue reading
The Wisdom of the Ancients
Were The Victorians Cleverer Than Us?, asks a new study by Woodley et al that has gotten name-dropped in places like The Daily Mail and The Huffington Post. Meanwhile, Betteridge’s Law of Headlines continues to warn us that “Any headline … Continue reading
Can You Condition Yourself?
A friend recently told me about a self-help tactic that has become popular in the circles I move in: the idea of applying behaviorism to yourself (sometimes called “training your inner pigeon”). The idea is you give yourself rewards when … Continue reading