Very good! Hoping to see - weakly intending to commit - a post list of his latest boom (fertility decline, which lead him to culture). I attended one of Robin's Zoom meetings on culture, and I'm confident it is on par with his other great fixations thus far (prediction markets, signaling, ems and aliens) if not even bigger. Robin seems absolutely possessed by the phenomenon.
For those who do not follow him: Robin has begun seeing culture as broken/maladaptive, and he seems to think this is perhaps the key issue of our time, on par or bigger than climate change and AI. He thinks that cultural change is driven into directions which will eventually lead to population decline and nasty places, even though he remains optimistic on our species' future in the long run.
Could you clarify a bit here. Is Hanson talking about specific cultures or all of the instances of culture?
Hanson seems to treat the global civilization as a cultural melting pot, but he does distinguish insular subcultures from that. I intuit he sees contemporary cultures on a gradient relative to global, hegemonic trends (which correlate with technological progress, increasing wealth and education) and thereby drifting pressures.
This is not novel to Hanson, it's been a staple of (neo)reactionary /conservative thought for millenia.
I wouldn't equate Robin's perspectives on culture with reactionary movements or conservatism. If anything, he seems quite open to radical transformations of society (e.g. futarchy to replace parlamentarism, bounty systems and vouching to replace policing, private insurance policies to replace welfare policies etc.).
Whereas (neo-)reactionary / conservative thought simply often intends to return some previous status quo, Robin does not confess to representing such views and has not proposed such solutions. In fact, as far as I'm aware he hasn't proposed any solutions at all as of yet.
I have converted the anthology into an audio format using the default (and terrible) AWS AI voice (mostly for my own consumption): https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fabien368/episodes/Overcoming-bias-anthology---our-thinking-e2q61mg
Yeah it's for the bounty. Hanson suggested that a list of links might be preferred to a printed book, at least for now, since he might want to edit the posts.
I notice that there's just shy of 128 here and they're mostly pretty short, so you can start the day by flipping a coin 7 times to decide which one to read. Not a bisection search, just convert the seven flips to binary and pick the corresponding number. At first, you only have to start over and do another 7 flips if you land on 1111110 (126), 1111111 (127), or 0000000 (128).
If you drink coffee in the morning, this is a way better way to start the day than social media, as the early phase of the stimulant effect reinforces behavior in most people. Hanson's approach to various topics is a good mentality to try boosting this way.
How difficult would it be to turn this into an epub or pdf? Is there word of that coming soon? (or integrating into LW like the Codex?)
Part 1: Our Thinking
Near and Far
1 Abstract/Distant Future Bias
2 Abstractly Ideal, Concretely Selfish
3 We Add Near, Average Far
4 Why We Don't Know What We Want
5 We See the Sacred from Afar, to See It Together
6 The Future Seems Shiny
7 Doubting My Far Mind
Disagreement
8 Beware the Inside View
9 Are Meta Views Outside Views?
10 Disagreement Is Near-Far Bias
11 Others' Views Are Detail
12 Why Be Contrarian?
13 On Disagreement, Again
14 Rationality Requires Common Priors
15 Might Disagreement Fade Like Violence?
Biases
16 Reject Random Beliefs
17 Chase Your Reading
18 Against Free Thinkers
19 Eventual Futures
20 Seen vs. Unseen Biases
21 Law as No-Bias Theatre
22 Benefit of Doubt = Bias
Part 2: Our Motives
Signaling
23 Decision Theory Remains Neglected
24 What Function Music?
25 Politics isn't about Policy
26 Views Aren't About Sights
27 Why Do Bets Look Bad?
28 Homo Hypocritus
29 Resolving Your Hypocrisy
30 Errors, Lies, and Self-Deception
Norms
31 Enforce Common Norms On Elites
32 Identity Norms
33 Exclusion As A Substitute For Norms, Law, & Governance
34 How Idealists Aid Cheaters
35 Beware Mob War Strategy
36 Automatic Norms
37 10 Implications of Automatic Norms
38 Automatic Norm Lessons
39 Automatic Norms in Academia
Fiction
40 Plot Holes & Blame Holes
41 Fairy Tales Were Cynical
42 Why Fiction Lies
43 Biases Of Fiction
44 Why We Fight Over Fiction
45 Stories Are Like Religion
46 More Stories As Religion
The Dreamtime
47 This is the Dream Time
48 DreamTime
49 Dreamtime Social Games
50 We Moderns Are Status-Drunk
51 Earth: A Status Report
52 On Teen Angst
Part 3: Our Institutions
Prediction Markets
53 Prediction Markets "Fail" To Mooch
54 Seeking Robust Credible Expertise Buyers
55 Prediction Markets Need Trial and Error
56 New-Hire Prediction Markets
57 Shoulda-Listened Futures
58 Brand Truth Narrowly
Academia
59 Fixing Academia Via Prediction Markets
60 Intellectual Prestige Futures
61 Academic Stats Prediction Markets
62 How To Fund Prestige Science
Medicine
63 Medical Doubts OpEd
64 Medical Market Failures
Paternalism
65 Paternalism Is About Status
66 Rulesy Folks Push Paternalism
67 Universal Basic Dorms
Law
68 Elites Must Rule
69 Status App Concept
70 Our Prestige Obsession
71 Yay Stability Rents
72 Conditional Harberger Tax Games
73 Reliable Private-Enough Physical Identity
74 Freedom Isn't Free
75 Quality Regs Say 'High Is Good'
76 Socialism: A Gift You'd Exchange?
77 Vouch For Pandemic Passports
78 Can We Tame Political Minds?
79 Consider Reparations
80 Regulating Infinity
81 Privately Enforced & Punished Crime
82 Fine Grain Futarchy Zoning Via Harberger Taxes
Part 4: Our Past
Farmers and Foragers
83 Fear Made Farmers
84 Forage vs Farm Future
85 Two Types of People
86 Forager v Farmer, Elaborated
87 Rome As Semi-Foragers
88 Self-Control Is Slavery
89 School Is To Submit
90 Why Grievances Grow
91 The World Forager Elite
History as Exponential Modes
92 The Great Cycle Rule
93 The Labor-From-Factories Explosion
94 Lost Advanced Civilizations
The Great Filter
95 Try-Try or Try-Once Great Filter?
96 Great Filter with Set-Backs, Dead-Ends
97 Seeing ANYTHING Other Than Huge-Civ Is Bad News
98 Our Level in the Great Filter
99 At Least Two Filters
100 Fertility: The Big Problem
Part 5: Our Future
Aliens
101 Humans Are Early
102 An Alien War Nightmare
103 Non-Grabby Legacies
104 Why We Can't See Grabby Aliens
105 Beware General Visible Near Prey
106 If The Future Is Big
UFOs
107 UFOs – What The Hell?
108 On UFOs-As-Aliens Priors
109 My Awkward Inference
110 UFO Stylized Social Facts
111 Explaining Stylized UFO Facts
The Age of Em
112 Why Age of Em Will Happen
113 How To Not Die (Soon)
114 How Does Brain Code Differ?
115 Progeny Probabilities: Souls, Ems, Quantum
116 Em Redistribution
Artificial Intelligence
117 A.I. Old-Timers
118 How Lumpy AI Services?
119 A History Of Foom
120 I Still Don't Get Foom
121 Foom Justifies AI Risk Efforts Now
122 Is The City-ularity Near?
123 The Betterness Explosion
124 An Outside View of AI Control
125 AI Risk, Again