LessWrong

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LessWrong
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LessWrong (also written Less Wrong) is a community blog and forum focused on discussion of cognitive biases, philosophy, psychology, economics, rationality, and artificial intelligence, among other topics.[1][2]

Purpose

LessWrong promotes lifestyle changes believed by its community to lead to increased rationality and self-improvement. Posts often focus on avoiding biases related to decision-making and the evaluation of evidence. One suggestion is the use of Bayes' theorem as a decision-making tool.[2] There is also a focus on psychological barriers that prevent good decision-making, including fear conditioning and cognitive biases that have been studied by the psychologist Daniel Kahneman.[3]

LessWrong is also concerned with

existential threats and the singularity. The New York Observer noted that "Despite describing itself as a forum on 'the art of human rationality,' the New York Less Wrong group ... is fixated on a branch of futurism that would seem more at home in a 3D multiplex than a graduate seminar: the dire existential threat—or, with any luck, utopian promise—known as the technological Singularity ... Branding themselves as 'rationalists,' as the Less Wrong crew has done, makes it a lot harder to dismiss them as a 'doomsday cult'."[4]

History

Eliezer Yudkowsky at Stanford University in 2006

LessWrong developed from Overcoming Bias, an earlier group blog focused on human rationality, which began in November 2006, with artificial intelligence researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky and economist Robin Hanson as the principal contributors. In February 2009, Yudkowsky's posts were used as the seed material to create the community blog LessWrong, and Overcoming Bias became Hanson's personal blog.[5] In 2013, a significant portion of the rationalist community shifted focus to Scott Alexander's Slate Star Codex.[6]

LessWrong and its surrounding movement are the subjects of the 2019 book The AI Does Not Hate You, written by former BuzzFeed science correspondent Tom Chivers.[7][8][9]

Roko's basilisk

In July 2010, LessWrong contributor Roko posted a

nervous breakdowns.[10][11][4] The ban was lifted in October 2015.[12]

David Auerbach wrote in Slate "the combination of messianic ambitions, being convinced of your own infallibility, and a lot of cash never works out well, regardless of ideology, and I don't expect Yudkowsky and his cohorts to be an exception. I worry less about Roko's Basilisk than about people who believe themselves to have transcended conventional morality."[11]

Roko's basilisk was referenced in Canadian musician

Grimes's music video for her 2015 song "Flesh Without Blood" through a character named "Rococo Basilisk" who was described by Grimes as "doomed to be eternally tortured by an artificial intelligence, but she's also kind of like Marie Antoinette". After thinking of this pun and finding that Grimes had already made it, Elon Musk contacted Grimes, which led to them dating.[13][14] The concept was also referenced in an episode of Silicon Valley titled "Facial Recognition".[15]

The Basilisk has been compared to Pascal's wager.[16]

Neoreaction

The neoreactionary movement first grew on LessWrong,[17] attracted by discussions on the site of eugenics and evolutionary psychology.[18] Yudkowsky has strongly rejected neoreaction.[17][19][20] In a survey among LessWrong users in 2016, 28 out of 3060 respondents, or 0.92%, identified as "neoreactionary".[21]

Effective altruism

LessWrong played a significant role in the development of the

existential risk reduction.[23]

References

  1. ^ "Less Wrong FAQ". LessWrong. Archived from the original on 30 April 2019. Retrieved 25 March 2014.
  2. ^ a b Miller, James (28 July 2011). "You Can Learn How To Become More Rational". Business Insider. Archived from the original on 10 August 2018. Retrieved 25 March 2014.
  3. ^ Burkeman, Oliver (9 March 2012). "This column will change your life: asked a tricky question? Answer an easier one". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 26 March 2014. Retrieved 25 March 2014.
  4. ^ a b Tiku, Nitasha (25 July 2012). "Faith, Hope, and Singularity: Entering the Matrix with New York's Futurist Set". Observer. Archived from the original on 12 April 2019. Retrieved 12 April 2019.
  5. ^ "Where did Less Wrong come from? (LessWrong FAQ)". Archived from the original on 30 April 2019. Retrieved 25 March 2014.
  6. ^ Lewis-Kraus, Gideon (9 July 2020). "Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley's War Against the Media". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 10 July 2020. Retrieved 4 August 2020.
  7. ^ Cowdrey, Katherine (21 September 2017). "W&N wins Buzzfeed science reporter's debut after auction". The Bookseller. Archived from the original on 27 November 2018. Retrieved 21 September 2017.
  8. .
  9. from the original on 23 April 2020. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  10. ^ Love, Dylan (6 August 2014). "WARNING: Just Reading About This Thought Experiment Could Ruin Your Life". Business Insider. Archived from the original on 18 November 2018. Retrieved 6 December 2014.
  11. ^ a b Auerbach, David (17 July 2014). "The Most Terrifying Thought Experiment of All Time". Slate. Archived from the original on 25 October 2018. Retrieved 18 July 2014.
  12. ^ RobbBB (5 October 2015). "A few misconceptions surrounding Roko's basilisk". LessWrong. Archived from the original on 15 March 2018. Retrieved 10 April 2016. The Roko's basilisk ban isn't in effect anymore
  13. ^ Paez, Danny (5 August 2018). "Elon Musk and Grimes: "Rococo Basilisk" Links the Two on Twitter". Inverse. Archived from the original on 24 July 2020. Retrieved 24 July 2020.
  14. ^ Oberhaus, Daniel (8 May 2018). "Explaining Roko's Basilisk, the Thought Experiment That Brought Elon Musk and Grimes Together". Vice. Archived from the original on 25 July 2020. Retrieved 24 July 2020.
  15. ^ Burch, Sean (23 April 2018). "'Silicon Valley' Fact Check: That Thought Experiment Is Real and Horrifying". TheWrap. Archived from the original on 12 November 2020. Retrieved 12 November 2020.
  16. ^ Paul-Choudhury, Sumit (2 August 2019). "Tomorrow's Gods: What is the future of religion?". BBC. Archived from the original on 1 September 2020. Retrieved 28 August 2020.
  17. ^ from the original on 13 June 2022. Retrieved 23 March 2019.
  18. ^ Keep, Elmo (22 June 2016). "The Strange and Conflicting World Views of Silicon Valley Billionaire Peter Thiel". Fusion. Archived from the original on 13 February 2017. Retrieved 5 October 2016. Thanks to LessWrong's discussions of eugenics and evolutionary psychology, it has attracted some readers and commenters affiliated with the alt-right and neoreaction, that broad cohort of neofascist, white nationalist and misogynist trolls.
  19. from the original on 5 October 2016. Retrieved 5 October 2016. Land and Yarvin are openly allies with the new reactionary movement, while Yudkowsky counts many reactionaries among his fanbase despite finding their racist politics disgusting.
  20. ^ Eliezer Yudkowsky (8 April 2016). "Untitled". Optimize Literally Everything (blog). Archived from the original on 26 May 2019. Retrieved 7 October 2016.
  21. from the original on 13 June 2022. Retrieved 2 October 2020.
  22. ISBN 9780198728795.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link
    )
  23. ^ .
  24. ^ Moss, David (20 May 2021). "EA Survey 2020: How People Get Involved in EA". Effective Altruism Forum. Archived from the original on 28 July 2021. Retrieved 28 July 2021.

External links