A list of references and resources for LW

Updated: 2011-05-24

• F = Free
• E = Easy (adequate for a low educational background)
• M = Memetic Hazard (controversial ideas or works of fiction)

Summary

Do not flinch, most of LessWrong can be read and understood by people with a previous level of education less than secondary school. (And Khan Academy followed by BetterExplained plus the help of Google and Wikipedia ought to be enough to let anyone read anything directed at the scientifically literate.) Most of these references aren't prerequisite, and only a small fraction are pertinent to any particular post on LessWrong. Do not be intimidated, just go ahead and start reading the Sequences if all this sounds too long. It's much easier to understand than this list makes it look like.

Nevertheless, as it says in the Twelve Virtues of Rationality, scholarship is a virtue, and in particular:

It is especially important to eat math and science which impinges upon rationality: Evolutionary psychology, heuristics and biases, social psychology, probability theory, decision theory.

Contents

LessWrong.com Overview Why read Less Wrong? Artificial Intelligence General Friendly AI Machine Learning The Technological Singularity Heuristics and Biases Mathematics Learning Mathematics Basics General Probability Logic Foundations Miscellaneous Decision theory Game Theory Programming Python Haskell General Computer science (Algorithmic) Information Theory Physics General General relativity Quantum physics Foundations Evolution Philosophy General The Mind Epistemology Linguistics Neuroscience General Education Miscellaneous Concepts Websites Fun & Fiction Fiction Fun Go

 

LessWrong.com

This list is hosted on LessWrong.com, a community blog devoted to refining the art of human rationality - the art of thinking. If you follow the links below you'll learn more about this community. It is one of the most important resources you'll ever come across if your aim is to get what you want, if you want to win. It shows you that there is more to most things than meets the eye, but more often than not much less than you think. It shows you that even smart people can be completely wrong but that most people are not even wrong. It teaches you to be careful in what you emit and to be skeptical of what you receive. It doesn't tell you what is right, it teaches you how to think and to become less wrong. And to do so is in your own self interest because it helps you to attain your goals, it helps you to achieve what you want.

Overview

• About Less Wrong FE
• FAQ FE
• Less Wrong wiki (The wiki about rationality.) F
• Less Wrong discussion area F
• The Sequences (The most systematic way to approach the Less Wrong archives.) FE
• Sequences in Alternative Formats (HTML, Markdown, PDF, and ePub versions.) FE
• List of all articles from Less Wrong (In chronological order.) F
• Graphical Visualization of Major Dependencies (Dependencies between Eliezer Yudkowsky posts.) FE
• Eliezer's Posts Index (Autogenerated index of all Yudkowsky posts in chronological order.) FE
• Eliezer Yudkowsky's Homepage (Founder of LW and top contributor.) FE
• Less Wrong Q&A with Eliezer Yudkowsky: Video Answers FE
• An interview with Eliezer Yudkowsky (Parts 1, 2 and 3) FE
• Eliezer Yudkowsky on Bloggingheads.tv FE
• Best of Rationality Quotes 2009/2010 FE
• Less Wrong Rationality Quotes (Sorted by points. Created by DanielVarga.) FE
• Comment formatting FE

Why read Less Wrong?

A few articles exemplifying in detail what you can expect from reading Less Wrong, why it is important, what you can learn and how it does help you.

• Yes, a blog. FE
• What I've learned from Less Wrong FE
• Goals for which Less Wrong does (and doesn't) help FE
• Rationality: Common Interest of Many Causes FE
• How to Save the World FE
• Reflections on rationality a year out FE

Artificial Intelligence

Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultra-intelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an "intelligence explosion," and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. — I. J. Good, "Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine"

General

• AI Foom Debate F
• Intelligence explosion FE
• Why an Intelligence Explosion is Probable F
• The Nature of Self-Improving Artificial Intelligence (Audio) F
• SIAI Reading List: Artificial Intelligence and Technology Acceleration Skeptics
• SIAI Reading List: Artificial General Intelligence and the Singularity
• So You Want To Be A Seed AI Programmer F
• Levels of Organization in General Intelligence F
• Artificial Intelligence: A History of Ideas and Achievements F
• Publications | Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence F
• Some Singularity, Superintelligence, and Friendly AI-Related Links F
• Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (index) FE

Friendly AI

The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else. — Eliezer Yudkowsky, Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk

• Recommended Reading for Friendly AI Research F
• A review of proposals toward safe AI F
  
• Friendly AI: a bibliography F
  
• Creating Friendly AI 1.0 (The Analysis and Design of Benevolent Goal Architectures) F
• What is Friendly AI? FE
• Knowability Of FAI F
• Bostrom & Yudkowsky, "The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence" (2011) F
• Paperclip maximizer FE
• From mostly harmless to civilization-threatening: pathways to dangerous artificial general intelligences FE
• A compact list of Eliezer Yudkowsky's positions (Reasons to take friendly AI serious.) FE
• The Basic AI Drives F
• Catastrophic risks from artificial intelligence F
• Super-intelligence does not imply benevolence (Videos) F
• Coherent Extrapolated Volition (CEV) FM
• Shaping the Intelligence Explosion (Anna Salamon at Singularity Summit 2009) FE
• Machine Ethics is the Future F
• Who’s Who in Machine Ethics F
• Mitigating the Risks of Artificial Superintelligence F
  

Machine Learning

Not essential but an valuable addition for anyone who's more than superficially interested in AI and machine learning.

• A Gentle Introduction to the Universal Algorithmic Agent AIXI F
• School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI) F
• Good Freely Available Textbooks on Machine Learning F
• Learning About Statistical Learning
• Learning about Machine Learning, 2nd Ed.
• Bayesian Reasoning and Machine Learning F

The Technological Singularity

The term “Singularity” had a much narrower meaning back when the Singularity Institute was founded. Since then the term has acquired all sorts of unsavory connotations. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

• Three Major Singularity Schools, Eliezer Yudkowsky FE
• The Singularity FAQ FE
• Brief History of Intellectual Discussion of Accelerating Change FE
• The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis FE
• Special Report: The Singularity (IEEE Spectrum) FEM
• The Coming Technological Singularity (The original essay by Vernor Vinge.) FEM
• Technological singularity FEM
• The Singularity Is Near, Ray Kurzweil EM
• Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind E
• Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence E
• There’s More to Singularity Studies Than Kurzweil FE
• Tech Luminaries Address Singularity (IEEE Spectrum. (2008, June).) FEM
• Economics Of The Singularity (Hanson, R. (2008).) FE
• What did you learn about the singularity today? F
• The Singularity Hypothesis: A Scientific and Philosophical Assessment (Bibliography) FE
• Yes, The Singularity is the Biggest Threat to Humanity FE
• What should a reasonable person believe about the Singularity? FE
• An overview of models of technological singularity F
• Hard Takeoff Sources F
  

Heuristics and Biases

One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision. — Bertrand Russell

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. — Charles Darwin

The heuristics and biases program in cognitive psychology tries to work backward from biases (experimentally reproducible human errors) to heuristics (the underlying mechanisms at work in the brain).

• Cognitive biases, common misconceptions, and fallacies. FE
• Cognitive Biases Potentially Affecting Judgment of Global Risks F
• Ugh fields (The Ugh Field forms a self-shadowing blind spot) FE
• The Apologist and the Revolutionary (Not being aware of your own disabilities.) FE
• Generalizing From One Example FE
• Self-fulfilling correlations F
• The scourge of perverse-mindedness FE
• Dunning–Kruger effect FE
• Procrastination FE

Mathematics

Learning Mathematics

Here's a phenomenon I was surprised to find: you'll go to talks, and hear various words, whose definitions you're not so sure about. At some point you'll be able to make a sentence using those words; you won't know what the words mean, but you'll know the sentence is correct. You'll also be able to ask a question using those words. You still won't know what the words mean, but you'll know the question is interesting, and you'll want to know the answer. Then later on, you'll learn what the words mean more precisely, and your sense of how they fit together will make that learning much easier. The reason for this phenomenon is that mathematics is so rich and infinite that it is impossible to learn it systematically, and if you wait to master one topic before moving on to the next, you'll never get anywhere. Instead, you'll have tendrils of knowledge extending far from your comfort zone. Then you can later backfill from these tendrils, and extend your comfort zone; this is much easier to do than learning "forwards". (Caution: this backfilling is necessary. There can be a temptation to learn lots of fancy words and to use them in fancy sentences without being able to say precisely what you mean. You should feel free to do that, but you should always feel a pang of guilt when you do.) — Ravi Vakil

• Habits of Mathematical Minds FE
• How to Develop a Mindset for Math FE
• How to learn math? FE
• How Do You Go About Learning Mathematics? (Here another version.) FE
• How to Read Mathematics F
• A Learning Roadmap: From high-school to mid-undergraduate studies F

Basics

• The Khan Academy (World-class education for free (1800+ videos).) FE
• Just Math Tutotrials (FREE math videos for the world!) F
• BetterExplained (There’s always a better way to explain a topic.) FE
• Steven Strogatz on the Elements of Math (A very basic introduction to mathematics.) FE
• Mathematics Illuminated F

General

• The Princeton Companion to Mathematics (Reference for anyone with a serious interest in mathematics.)
• Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science (A solid and relevant base of mathematical skills.)
• The Art and Craft of Problem Solving
• Mathematical Logic F
• Free Mathematics eBooks F
• Free Online Mathematics Textbooks F
  
• Interactive Mathematics Miscellany and Puzzles F
• math.stackexchange.com (Q&A for people studying math at any level.) F
• MathOverflow F
  
• wolframalpha.com (Check your math!) F

Probability

Probabilities express uncertainty, and it is only agents who can be uncertain. A blank map does not correspond to a blank territory. Ignorance is in the mind. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

Math is fundamental, not just for LessWrong. But especially Bayes’ Theorem is essential to understand the reasoning underlying most of the writings on LW.

• Probability is in the Mind FE
• My Bayesian Enlightenment FE
• What is Bayesianism FE
• Bayes' Theorem Illustrated (My Way) FE
• An Intuitive (and Short) Explanation of Bayes’ Theorem FE
• An Intuitive Explanation of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Intuitive Explanation of Bayes’ Theorem FE
• An Intuitive Explanation of Bayes' Theorem FE
• A Technical Explanation of Technical Explanation (More Bayes. Many writings rely on this page.) F
• Bayes' theorem FE
• You, A Bayesian FE
• Visualizing Bayes’ theorem FE
• The Nature of Probability (Video talk between Eliezer Yudkowsky and the statistician Andrew Gelman.) FE
• Probability Theory: The Logic of Science , E. T. Jaynes (Free draft available.)
• Probability Theory With Applications in Science and Engineering, E. T. Jaynes F
• Bayesian Probability Theory (Bayesian approach) vs. Frequentist Probability Theory (Frequentist approach) F
• Probability Theory As Extended Logic F
• Introduction to Bayesian Statistics, William M. Bolstad
• Bayesian statistics (Scholarpedia) F
• Bayesian probability (Wikipedia) F
• Bayes’ Theorem (A whole crowd on the blogs that seems to see more in Bayes’s theorem.) F
• Bayesian Epistemology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) F
• Monty Hall problemformally proven using Bayes' theorem F
• Monty Hall, Monty Fall, Monty Crawl F
• The Bayesian revolution of the sciences F
• Bayesian data analysis F
  
• What to believe: Bayesian methods for data analysis F
  
• Probability Booklist
• An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications
• Aumann's agreement theorem (Agreeing to Disagree) F

Logic

• Mr. Spock is Not Logical FE
• Logic FE
• Mathematical logic FE
• Introduction to Boolean algebra F
• Boolean algebra F
• Boolean logic F
• First-order logic F
• First-Order Logic, Raymond M. Smullyan
• Propositional calculus F
• Introduction to Mathematical Logic F
• Introduction to Logic, Alfred Tarski
• Introduction to Mathematical Logic, Alonzo Church
• Possible Worlds: An Introduction to Logic and Its Philosophy F
• Gödel Without Tears F
• Second-order logic F
• An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic
• Logical Labyrinths
• Stephen Cook's lecture notes in computability and logic F
• How to Prove It: A Structured Approach
• Proofs are Programs: 19th Century Logic and 21st Century Computing F
• Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning: Induction and analogy in mathematics
• The Cartoon Guide to Löb's Theorem F
• Symbolic Logic: An Accessible Introduction to Serious Mathematical Logic F

Foundations

All the limitative theorems of metamathematics and the theory of computation suggest that once the ability to represent your own structure has reached a certain critical point, that is the kiss of death: it guarantees that you can never represent yourself totally. Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, Church’s Undecidability Theorem, Turing’s Halting Theorem, Tarski’s Truth Theorem — all have the flavour of some ancient fairy tale which warns you that “To seek self-knowledge is to embark on a journey which … will always be incomplete, cannot be charted on any map, will never halt, cannot be described.” — Douglas Hofstadter 1979

• Foundations of mathematics FE
• Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction E
• What Is Mathematics? An Elementary Approach to Ideas and Methods F
• The Mathematical Experience
• What is Mathematics: Gödel's Theorem and Around F
• Metamath (Constructs mathematics from scratch, starting from ZFC set theory axioms) F
• The Mathematical Atlas (Clickable Map of Mathematics) F

Miscellaneous

• Introductory Mathematics: Algebra and Analysis (Bridges the gap between school & university work.)
• Naive Set Theory
  
• Proofs from THE BOOK, Martin Aigner
• Principles of Mathematical Analysis, Walter Rudin
• A Classical Introduction to Modern Number Theory
• Reading List: Graph Isomorphism
• A Measure Theory Tutorial (Measure Theory for Dummies) F
• Topology Without Tears F
• Category Theory for Beginners F
• Category Theory for the Mathematically Impaired (A Short Reading List) F
• TheCatsters' Category Theory Videos F
• Foundations of Algebraic Geometry F
• Elements of Information Theory
• The “no self-defeating object” argument, and the vagueness paradox F
  
• Vanity and Ambition in Mathematics (A few posts by multifoliaterose.) F

Decision theory

It is precisely the notion that Nature does not care about our algorithm, which frees us up to pursue the winning Way - without attachment to any particular ritual of cognition, apart from our belief that it wins. Every rule is up for grabs, except the rule of winning. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

Remember that any heuristic is bound to certain circumstances. If you want X from agent Y and the rule is that Y only gives you X if you are a devoted irrationalist then ¬irrational. Under certain circumstances what is irrational may be rational and what is rational may be irrational. Paul K. Feyerabend said: "All methodologies have their limitations and the only ‘rule’ that survives is ‘anything goes’."

• Decision theory F
• Decision Theory (LW Wiki) F
• Timeless Decision Theory, by Eliezer Yudkowsky F
• What is Wei Dai's Updateless Decision Theory? F
  
• Good and Real (Rationality & Decision Theory)
• Newcomb's paradox F
• Newcomb's Problem and Regret of Rationality F
• The Meta-Newcomb Problem (A self-undermining variant.) F
• Pascal's Mugging (Finite version of Pascal's Wager.) F

Game Theory

Game theory is the study of the ways in which strategic interactions among economic agents produce outcomes with respect to the preferences (or utilities) of those agents, where the outcomes in question might have been intended by none of the agents. — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

• Game theory (Wikipedia) F
• Game Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) F
• Strategy F
• Mixed strategy Nash equilibrium FE
• Nash equilibrium F
• Prisoner's dilemma F
• Gambit: Software Tools for Game Theory F
• Game Theory with Ben Polak F
• Game Theory — Open Yale Courses F
• Game Theory 101 F
• Von Neumann, Morgenstern, and the Creation of Game Theory: From Chess to Social Science F
• Game theory: mathematics as metaphor F
• The History of Combinatorial Game Theory F

Programming

With Release 33-9117, the SEC is considering substitution of Python or another programming language for legal English as a basis for some of its regulations. — Will Wall Street require Python?

Programming knowledge is not mandatory for LessWrong but you should however be able to interpret the most basic pseudo code as you will come across various snippets of code in discussions and top-level posts outside of the main sequences.

Python

Python is a general-purpose high-level dynamic programming language.

• python.org F
• Dive Into Python (Python from novice to pro) F
• learnpythonthehardway.org F
• A Byte of Python F
• Python in a Nutshell, Second Edition
• Python for Software Design
• Python Cookbook
• Learning Python, 3rd Edition
• Free eBook Programming Tutorial
  for Python Games! F
• Probability and Statistics for Python programmers F

Haskell

Haskell is a standardized, general-purpose purely functional programming language, with non-strict semantics and strong static typing.

• haskell.org F
• hackage.haskell.org/platform/ (All you need to get up and running.) F
• Learn Haskell in 10 minutes F
• Learn You a Haskell for Great Good! F
• Programming in Haskell
• Real World Haskell F
• The Haskell Road to Logic, Maths and Programming
• Pearls of Functional Algorithm Design (Techniques of reasoning about programs in an equational style.)
• Write Yourself a Scheme in 48 Hours F
• Haskell tutorial by Conrad Barski F

General

• Programming Language Pragmatics, Michael L. Scott
• Practical Foundations for Programming Languages F
• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs F
• How to Design Programs (An Introduction to Computing and Programming) F
• projecteuler.net (Learn programming and math by solving problems) F
• GitHub (Social Coding) F
• The FTP Site (Functional Programming) F
• Syntax and Semantics of Programming Languages
• Bootstrapping (compilers) F
• Low-level programming language F
• Assembly language F
• Quine (computing) (Self-producing program) F
• Probabilistic Programming FE
• A Field Guide to Genetic Programming F

Computer science

The introduction of suitable abstractions is our only mental aid to organize and master complexity. — Edsger W. Dijkstra

One of the fundamental premises on LessWrong is that a universal computing device can simulate every physical process and that we therefore should be able to reverse engineer the human brain as it is fundamentally computable. That is, intelligence and consciousness are substrate-neutral.

• Computer science FE
• Introduction to Computer Science & Programming: Free Courses FE
• Exploring Computational Thinking FE
• What is computation? FE
• Complexity Explained: The Complete Series F
• Computation Finite and Infinite Machines, Marvin Minsky
• Introduction to the Theory of Computation, Michael Sipser
• The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, Charles Petzold E
• Programming Language Pragmatics, Michael L. Scott
• Introduction to Algorithms, Thomas H. Cormen
• Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science (Mathematics that support advanced computer programming and the analysis of algorithms.)
• Computability, Complexity, and Languages: Fundamentals of Theoretical Computer Science
• An Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and Its Applications
• Theoretical Computer Science (Q&A site for theoretical computer scientists and researchers in related fields.) F
• The Original 'Lambda Papers' F
• The Design of Approximation Algorithms F

(Algorithmic) Information Theory

• An Introduction to Information Theory FE
• Information vs. Meaning FE
• Omega and why maths has no TOEs FE
• What is Solomonoff Induction? FE
• Occam's Razor F
• Decoherence is Simple F
  
• Kolmogorov complexity F
• An Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and Its Applications
• Solomonoff Induction (An introduction to Solomonoff's approach to inductive inference.) F
• Algorithmic information theory F
• Algorithmic probability F
• Solomonoff Induction (SIAI Blog) F
• Information theory F
• Entropy in thermodynamics and information theory F
• The Unknowable (Free book by Gregory Chaitin) F

Physics

A poet once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. — Richard Feynman

General

• The Road to Reality
• The Feynman Lectures on Physics
• Usenet Physics FAQ F
• So You'd Like to Learn Some Physics... F
• 100 Videos for Teaching and Studying Physics F
• From Eternity to Here (The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time)
• Carl Sagan's Apple Pie FE

General relativity

You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother. ~ Albert Einstein

• Introduction to Differential Geometry and General Relativity F
• Lecture Notes on General Relativity F
• The General Relativity Tutorial F
• Modern Physics: General Relativity F

Quantum physics

An electron is not a billiard ball, and it’s not a crest and trough moving through a pool of water. An electron is a mathematically different sort of entity, all the time and under all circumstances, and it has to be accepted on its own terms. The universe is not wavering between using particles and waves, unable to make up its mind. It’s only human intuitions about QM that swap back and forth. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

I am not going to tell you that quantum mechanics is weird, bizarre, confusing, or alien. QM is counterintuitive, but that is a problem with your intuitions, not a problem with quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics has been around for billions of years before the Sun coalesced from interstellar hydrogen. Quantum mechanics was here before you were, and if you have a problem with that, you are the one who needs to change. QM sure won’t. There are no surprising facts, only models that are surprised by facts; and if a model is surprised by the facts, it is no credit to that model. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

• The Quantum Physics Sequence F
• And the Winner is... Many-Worlds! (MWI) F
• The Everett Interpretation F
• "Quantum Computing since Democritus" course notes F
• Consistent Quantum Theory F
• Lecture series on quantum mechanics from Oxford's undergraduate course. F
• Learning Material on Quantum Computing F

Foundations

• Foundations of Physics (Journal Devoted to the Conceptual Bases and Fundamental Theories of Modern Physics) FEM
• FQXi (Foundational Questions Institute) FEM
• Theory of everything (TOE) FEM
• Theories of Everything and Godel's theorem FM
• List of unsolved problems in physics F
• The Born Probabilities FM
• Scott Aaronson on Born Probabilities FE
• Eliezer Yudkowsky and Scott Aaronson on Born Probabilities (Video talk.) FE
• Born rule (One of the key principles of quantum mechanics.) F
• Spin-statistics theorem F
• Why we need the spin-statistics theorem FE
• Entropy F
• Entropy (arrow of time) F
• Beyond the Reach of God FE
• Information and the Nature of Reality: From Physics to Metaphysics
  
• The Universes of Max Tegmark FEM
• The mathematical universe (Level IV Multiverse/Ultimate Ensemble/Mathematical Universe Hypothesis) FEM

Evolution

(Evolution) is a general postulate to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must henceforward bow and which they must satisfy in order to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines of thought must follow — this is what evolution is. — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

• Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Daniel Dennett
• The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, Richard Dawkins E
• 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution FE
• Evolution: 24 myths and misconceptions FE
• Micro- and macroevolution (Image) FE
• Evolutionary Theory: Mathematical and Conceptual Foundations
  
• Talk.origins (Discussion and debate of biological and physical origins.) FE
• Human Evolution Education Resources F
• Genetic Algorithms and Evolutionary Computation F
• Evolution of Adaptive Behaviour in Robots by Means of Darwinian Selection
• Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
• The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution
• Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters
• Why Evolution Is True
• Universal Darwinism F
• Bayesian Methods and Universal Darwinism F
• Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer FE

Philosophy

There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination. — Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, 1995.

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. — Wittgenstein

General

• Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
• Good and Real (Demystifying Paradoxes from Physics to Ethics)
• nickbostrom.com F
• Quantum Mechanics and Philosophy: An Introduction F
• Metaphilosophical Mysteries FE

The Mind

Everything of beauty in the world has its ultimate origins in the human mind. Even a rainbow isn't beautiful in and of itself. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

• The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self & Soul
• Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness
• The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self
• Consciousness (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) F
• 7681 free papers on consciousness in philosophy and in science. F
• Neuroscience of Ethics
• Intelligence (Definitions) FE

Epistemology

Levels of epistemic accuracy.

• The Simple Truth (This essay is meant to restore a naive view of truth.) FE
• Probability is in the Mind (Probabilities express ignorance, states of partial information.) F
• Not technically a lie FE
• Falsehood FE
• Bullshit (Not even wrong) FE
• Evidence (What is Evidence?) F
• Formal Epistemology F
• In Defense of Objective Bayesianism
• Bayesian Epistemology
• The “no self-defeating object” argument, and the vagueness paradox F
• Knowledge and Its Limits, Timothy Williamson M
• Being an Absolute Skeptic FE
• Ned Hall and L.A. Paul (On what contemporary philosophy thinks about causality.) F

Linguistics

• Language: the Basics, R. L. Trask E
• The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker E
• A Brief History of Grammar F
• babelsdawn.com (A blog about the origins of speech.) F
• Language Log (A collaborative languageblog) F
  

Neuroscience

• Neuroscience for Kids (For students and teachers who would like to learn about the nervous system.) FE
• Principles of Neural Science (All the details of how the neuron and brain work.)
• Essentials of Neural Science and Behavior (The fundamentals of biology in mental processes.)
• Reverse Engineering the Brain (Ideas regarding the sufficient “hardware” and information processing capabilities to build a human equivalent computational substrate.) F
• Bayesian brain F
• The Bayesian brain: the role of uncertainty in neural coding and computation F

General Education

• The Best Textbooks on Every Subject F
• 250 Free Online Courses from Top Universities F
• VideoLectures - exchange ideas & share knowledge F
  
• Online degrees and video courses from leading universities. F
• Khan Academy FE
• YouTube – EDU F
• iTunes U F
• The Harvard Extension School’s Open Learning Initiative F
• Free Electric Circuits Textbooks F
• Podcasts from the University of Oxford F
• Ask a Mathematician / Ask a Physicist F
  

Miscellaneous

Not essential but a good preliminary to reading LessWrong and in some cases helpful to be able to make valuable contributions in the comments. Many of the concepts in the following works are often mentioned on LessWrong or the subject of frequent discussions.

• Good and Real (Rationality & Decision Theory)
• Reasons and Persons (Ethics, rationality and personal identity.)
• Predictably Irrational E
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
• The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark E
• A New Kind of Science FM
• Conway's Game of Life F
• Anthropic principles agree on bigger future filters FM
• Cognitive Science in One Lesson FE

Concepts

Elaboration of miscellaneous terms, concepts and fields of knowledge you might come across in some of the subsequent and more technical advanced posts and comments on LessWrong. The following concepts are frequently discussed but not necessarily supported by the LessWrong community. Those concepts that are controversial are labeled M.

• Rationality FE
• The map is not the territory FE
• Utility theory F
• Utilitarianism FM
• Antiprediction F
  
• Cellular automaton F
• Paradise-engineering FEM
• Simulation Argument FM
• Anthropic Principle FM
• Boltzmann brain FEM
• Self-Indication Assumption FM
• Many-worlds interpretation (MWI) F
• Quantum suicide and immortality FEM
• Cryonics (We Agree: Get Froze) FE
• Prediction market FE
• Bootstrapping (compilers) F
• Pascal's mugging F

Websites

Relevant websites. News and otherwise. F

• yudkowsky.net (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky)
  
• theuncertainfuture.com (Visualizing "The Future According to You")
• overcomingbias.com
• singinst.org (The SIAI, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence)
• acceleratingfuture.com
• nickbostrom.com
• Meteuphoric
• wrongbot.com
• Transhumanist Resources
• BLTC Research (Global technology project to abolish the biological substrates of suffering.) M

Fun & Fiction

The following are relevant works of fiction or playful treatments of fringe concepts. That means, do not take these works at face value.

Accompanying text: The Logical Fallacy of Generalization from Fictional Evidence

Fiction

• Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (A LessWrong Community Project) FE
• Luminosity (A Twilight Fanfiction Story by Alicorn) FE
• Three Worlds Collide (A story to illustrate some points on naturalistic metaethics and diverse other issues of rational conduct) FE
• The Finale of the Ultimate Meta Mega Crossover (Vernor Vinge x Greg Egan crackfic) FM
• Permutation City (Accompanying text) (The famous science fiction novel by Greg Egan.) M
• Diaspora (Accompanying text) (Another influential hard science fiction novel by Greg Egan.) M
• A Fire Upon the Deep (This novel by Vernor Vinge has set the stage for a new generation of SF.) M
• Neverness, David Zindell M
• Free Hard SF Novels & Short Stories FEM
• orionsarm.com (Hard science fiction collective worldbuilding project.) FEM

Fun

• The Strangest Thing An AI Could Tell You FEM
• The AI in a box boxes you FEM
• How Many LHC Failures Is Too Many? FEM
• Hamster in Tutu Shuts Down Large Hadron Collider FEM
• Eliezer Yudkowsky Facts FEM
• A Much Better Life? FEM

Go

A popular board game played and analysed by many people in the LessWrong and general AI crowd.

• What Is the Game of Go? FE
• The Interactive Way To Go FE
• Rationality Lessons in the Game of Go F
• An overview of online go servers F
• AITopics Go (If you want to understand intelligence, the game of Go is much more demanding.) F
• Computer Go F
• Go software (Extensive list of Go software) F
• Go Software (A commercial Go-playing program for PC, iPhone, iPad.)

---

Note:

This list is a work in progress. I will try to constantly update and refine it.

If you've anything to add or correct (e.g. a broken link), please comment below and I'll update the list accordingly.