Thanks Noah for suggesting the following readings & podcast! 1. https://www.princeton.edu/~cuff/voting/theory.html 2. https://www.electionscience.org/commentary-analysis/voting-theory-podcast-2012-10-06-interview-with-nobel-laureate-dr-kenneth-arrow/ 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbard%E2%80%93Satterthwaite_theorem

1. On critical thresholds and cultural/scientific diffusion: https://www.meltingasphalt.com/interactive/going-critical/ 2. A second reference on critical thresholds (sorry for the self-reference but I’m rushing): https://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6393/1116 3. Look up the definition of “phase transition” [possible cool topic for future meeting—things that hover near criticality..]

Hey all—by some kind of emergent process, we have self-organized a topic for next meetup: Free Will. This is a VAST topic with a ton of writings. Any recommendations? Here are a few possibilities, H/T Shane with an addition by myself: a) Rationalist: Yukdowski (I’d grab the last few posts):

1. A Human’s Guide to Words: What are words, how are they useful, how can they be wrong, how can we avoid being wrong? Drawn from this sequence: https://www.lesswrong.com/s/SGB7Y5WERh4skwtnb 2. Inside/outside views : People are oftentimes bad at estimation. This can oftentimes be improved by reference class forecasting (“Outside view”).

1) What is an optimal course of action when you encounter a situation in which you have a good amount of epistemic uncertainty? We exist and act in the world, so we have to do something before we have all the information, right?  No Half-Speed https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FMkQtPvzsriQAow5q/the-correct-response-to-uncertainty-is-not-half-speed In this reading, how

1. Pragmatism versus principles (i.e. prioritizing the practical effects of choices/policies versus prioritizing fundamental principles, for example because of the negative long-term effects at the individual or societal level of violating said principles) 2. Mono-causal versus poly-causal accounts of a given phenomena: The Omnigenic Model As Metaphor For Life (https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/09/13/the-omnigenic-model-as-metaphor-for-life/)

When is it worth sacrificing “traditional” ways of doing things in the name of modernity, progress, clarity or efficiency? Possible readings — SSC’s review of Seeing Like A State discussing (often argued to be failed) modernist attempts at improving “legibility” by scrapping traditional ways of life. Chesterton’s Fence principle https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Chesterton%27s_Fence

Here are the two papers I mentioned yesterday. One describes the “Bayesian Truth Serum” (for subjective data) and one describes the “Surprisingly Popular Answer” solution to the wisdom of crowds problem. http://tiny.cc/surprisingly-popular http://tiny.cc/bayesian-truth-serum

Are fallacies entirely bad or can the be understood as weak evidence: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YgNLfytckSyKTnDXN/fallacies-as-weak-bayesian-evidence We’ll be running through this list, or a similar one: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy

Political polarization! With a very specific question for us to answer, that seems to come up frequently: is it OK to punch a Nazi? But more pragmatically: what are the effects of punching a Nazi? This question is a stand-in for a more serious question about communication. Some people think