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.
B4X is a free and open source developer tool that allows users to write apps for Android, iOS, and more.
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.
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.
Substack is a blogging site that helps writers earn money and readers discover articles they'll like.
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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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.
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.
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 Effective Altruism newsletter provides monthly updates on the highest-impact ways to do good and help others.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Tag Archives: rationality
Guided By The Beauty Of Our Weapons
[Content note: kind of talking around Trump supporters and similar groups as if they’re not there.] I. Tim Harford writes The Problem With Facts, which uses Brexit and Trump as jumping-off points to argue that people are mostly impervious to … Continue reading
SSC Journal Club: Analytical Thinking Style And Religion
[Content warning: religious people might feel kind of like this objectifies them and treats them as weird phenomena to be explained away.] A major theme of this blog is: why do people disagree so intractably? And what can we do … Continue reading
Another Followup To “Economists On Education”
Last month I argued that a news article misrepresented the feelings of economists on school vouchers. I got a bit of pushback from people who thought I had just misread it, and that it wasn’t deceptive at all (1, 2, … Continue reading
Heuristics Work Until They Don’t
I. I got to talk to some AI researchers last week, and they emphasized how surprised everyone had been by recent progress in the field. They all agreed on why they were surprised: the “AI winters”, two (or so) past … Continue reading
2016 Predictions: Calibration Results
At the beginning of every year, I make predictions. At the end of every year, I score them. Here are 2014 and 2015. And here are the predictions I made for 2016. Strikethrough’d are false. Intact are true. Italicized are … Continue reading
Might People On The Internet Sometimes Lie?
From Reddit: Parents Of Children Who Claim To Have Had Past Lives, What Did They Tell You?. Some sample comments: When he was 6 years old my son described in great detail my grandmother’s house he never been to. This … Continue reading
SSC Journal Club: Expert Prediction Of Experiments
I. It’s been a good month for fretting over failures of expert opinion, so let’s look at DellaVigna & Pope, Predicting Experimental Results: Who Knows What? The authors ran a pretty standard behavioral economics experiment where they asked people on … Continue reading
Tuesday Shouldn’t Change The Narrative
538 predicts Hillary has a 65% chance of winning the election to Trump’s 35%. New York Times says it’s more like 84% Hillary and 16% Trump. Both sites agree both candidates will get somewhere between 40% and 50% of the … Continue reading
It’s Bayes All The Way Up
[Epistemic status: Very speculative. I am not a neuroscientist and apologize for any misinterpretation of the papers involved. Thanks to the people who posted these papers in r/slatestarcodex. See also Mysticism and Pattern-Matching and Bayes For Schizophrenics] Bayes’ Theorem is … Continue reading
Book Review: Superforecasting
Philip Tetlock, author of Superforecasting, got famous by studying prediction. His first major experiment, the Expert Political Judgment experiment, is frequently cited as saying that top pundits’ predictions are no more accurate than a chimp throwing darts at a list … Continue reading