June 2020
Personal
Completed a React Native course on Udemy.
Built the MVP for Anyo, a mobile video messaging app using React Native and Firebase.
Links
Picoeconomics
Schelling Fences on Slippery Slopes
Schelling fences, arbitrary lines in the sand that guide behavior, are very effective
Applied Picoeconomics
Thoughts on how to apply picoeconomics to improve yourself
Precis of Breakdown of Will
Comprehensive overview of picoeconomics; explains what hyperbolic discounting is
Game Theory
Bargaining and Auctions
The game theory of bargaining, auctions, and negotiations
What Is Signaling, Really?
Signaling can waste resources, but sometimes is the only way to believably communicate
Interlude for Behavioral Economics
Data on how people act in prisoner dilemmas, ultimatum games, and dictator games
Real World Solutions to Prisoners’ Dilemmas
Trust and anger are evolution’s solutions to prisoner dilemmas and ultimatum games
Backward Reasoning Over Decision Trees
Reasoning backwards over decision trees is useful for sequential games
Winning is for Losers
You should fail fast to find people who cooperate to play long term games with
Player of Games
If enough people are playing a game, somebody will be playing a different game
Information Theory
Visual Information Theory
Visual introduction of concepts in information theory like entropy, and mutual information
Information Theory for Intelligent People
An introduction to information theory, focusing on entropy and KL divergence
Inferential Distance
Illusion of Transparency
People underestimate differences in background knowledge, aka “inferential distance”
Expecting Short Inferential Distances
There used to be few inferential steps when sharing most info, now there’s often many
The Sad Truth of Inferential Distance
When someone won’t listen to reason, it’s probably because of inferential distance
Rationality
Decision Theory FAQ
Introduction to decision theory, the study of making rational choices
The cognitive decoupling elite
Cognitive decoupling is the ability to block out context and past experience
A Deep Dive into the Harris-Klein Controversy
When people argue with different levels of cognitive decoupling, misunderstanding occurs
One Man’s Modus Ponens
Don’t be overconfident when you extrapolate from premises and conclusions that you hold true
The Jordan Peterson Mask
Jordan Peterson shares useful fake frameworks that gives motivation and meaning
Social Status / Signaling
The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millennial
Unskilled people signal fictional financial security and meaning for parents and employers
Statistics
Tails of Great Soccer Players
For the tails of normal distributions, the average has more of an effect than the total population
Pokemonumber On It
Using simulations to estimate how long it takes to catch ’em all in Pokemon Go
Artificial Intelligence
May 2020 news
Links from around the web, and Gwern’s thoughts on GPT-3
Technology
CLI: Improved
Alternatives to standard CLI tools
Rolling Shutter
CMOS image sensors capture video by scanning vertically, which causes distortion
The Visual Microphone
Small vibrations of objects can be used to recover the sound in that room
Computer Science / Software Development
An Intro to Compilers
An introduction to what the frontend, optimizer, and backend do in a compiler
Really fast Markov chains in ~20 lines of awk
Using command line tools to create language generating Markov chains
Misc
The Skewed and the Screwed
The minority sex will get to dictate their preferences more in relationships
Do The Real Thing
Doing fake work requires effort, but in a way that feels doable and safe. Do real work
Who By Very Slow Decay
Life in the medical system as a terminal patient is terrible
Eight Short Studies on Excuses
Accepting sincere excuses can lead to a lack of schelling fences on a slippery slope
Democracy and Futarchy
Prediction markets are good at finding truth, and futarchy is a compelling way to pick policy
A Big Little Idea Called Legibility
Making a complex system simple is a common failure pattern for individuals and societies
Books
Industrial Society and Its Future
The Unabomber’s manifesto on why industrialization and technology are bad for society, and why leftism is prevalent. Most of his thoughts on this are that modern life is too easy, which removes most opportunities to undergo the “power process”, which is where people get to accomplish difficult but necessary tasks in their lives.