We are excited to announce that Robin Hanson will be giving a talk on “elites” for Chicago Rationality. To get a sense of his thoughts on the topic, and to come prepared with your thoughts and questions, see some of his writing on the subject: https://www.overcomingbias.com/?s=elite Thank you to those who had
This month we’re going to try something a little different and make concrete predictions about the future (e.g. the probability that certain things will happen by a given year). We’ll be doing it live, rather than arriving with our predictions for a pre-assigned list, so feel free to bring ideas
Description: Is there a rational argument for including “political” topics in conversations at work? Or will individuals and/or companies be more productive if they exclude such topics, to the degree that is possible? What role does an individual’s background play in this, since what is considered political versus just your life may not
The votes were close, but the topic for June meet-up (6/5 @ 2 PM) will be luck egalitarianism, or more broadly the degree to which justice requires compensating people for, or neutralizing the effects of, luck. Is it important to distinguish between inequalities resulting from unchosen circumstances or “brute luck”
This month our very own Chris Weaver will present on “Use of Bayesian statistics in Science: Advantages and Pitfalls” (see below for more detail), and then we’ll have a discussion. Here’s a little bit more on what he’ll be covering: Bayesian techniques are popular in the rationality community, and also in science.
We’ll be talking about city planning, including what makes for a good city and how much planning should there actually be (versus organic growth). Here are two readings to facilitate discussion (not required, as usual): Jane Jacobs on cities http://www.zompist.com/jacobs.html A Scalable Urban Design and the Single Building City https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fnzZCq4XCeoWGPEp8/a-scalable-urban-design-and-the-single-building-city
This month’s topic is about technocracy, which economist E. Glen Weyl (in the reading) defines as “the view that most of governance and policy should be left to some type of ‘experts’, distinguished by meritocratically-evaluated training in formal methods used to ‘optimize’ social outcomes.” I think this is interesting because,
This month’s topic will be looking at technological progress from various perspectives. I thought it would be useful to layout a few key questions that might be of interest, and then we can see what people want to focus on at the beginning of the meeting. Overarching topic: Technological progress,
And here’s the suggested reading (reading any one of these should be sufficient): “The Network Structure of Exploration and Exploitation”from David Lazer and Allan Friedmanhttps://ndg.asc.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Lazer-Friedman-2007-ASQ.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2zzOtVAsm_yzRCF77wvy3JAcmrWsF-t3cq_MrXpk44wmLpDriTfCmSc78 “Modular structure within groups causes information loss but can improve decision accuracy”from Albert Kaohttps://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2018.0378 Press release: https://www.santafe.edu/news-center/news/group-decisions-when-more-information-isnt-necessarily-better?fbclid=IwAR0hVWRvd4NRuBbGQJrbF8rHnHxpGirXaN9fX7atF6AV7afrpwHF6t8K5wg Two podcasts from SFI discussing these topics: Nicole Creanza
The topic: Is any knowledge inherently harmful, on either an individual or a societal level? The readings:• from Scott Alexander: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/06/asymmetric-weapons-gone-bad/• from Nick Bostrom: https://nickbostrom.com/papers/vulnerable.pdf• from Wired, concerning Bostrom: https://www.wired.com/story/technology-could-end-humanity-how-stop-it/ The readings are not limiting factors — participants are encouraged to think Outside the Box™ to come up with possible examples of inherently
