Collected writing

Essays and letters by Alyssa, gathered from scattered gists into one place. 145 pieces, 2008–2021.

2008

Singularity objections: Friendliness and feasibility2008-01-29 · ~1,000 words
Friendliness and self-modification2008-01-29 · ~700 words
Singularity objections: Singularity and intelligence2008-01-29 · ~1,500 words
Graphs don’t prove the Singularity2008-01-29 · ~450 words
Questions that influence AGI-risk probabilities2008-06-27 · ~660 words

2009

On revolts, the middle class, and the inherited furniture of belief2009-05-05 · ~12,000 words
Notes on an Epic Night redesign2009-08-14 · to Richard Przekop and Graham Beatty
What drives specialization — and why complaining about it doesn’t help2009-09-02 · to Michael Vassar, Carl Shulman, Owain Evans
The top 5 technology panics of 20092009-09-05 · ~1,150 words
How far can AI jump?2009-10-17 · ~750 words

2010

Business and human capital2010-01-26 · ~770 words
IMO scores as a high-ceiling test of intellectual ability2010-04-18 · ~1,400 words
Fact-checking Ray Kurzweil’s 1999 predictions: second set2010-05-02 · to Amara D. Angelica
Comments on Kurzweil’s prediction graphs2010-05-16 · ~1,000 words
Innovative future-forecasting project goes open-source2010-07-12 · ~750 words
Eliezer Yudkowsky on rationality, Fun Theory, and the Singularity2010-07-19 · ~1,700 words
Series on Instrumental Rationality2010-07-22 · ~11,000 words
Candidate statement for the Humanity+ Board2010-08-04 · ~640 words
Comments on a KurzweilAI politics & society piece2010-08-05 · to amara@kurzweilai.net
Edits on a Kurzweil prediction about European entrepreneurship2010-12-12 · ~900 words
Thiel Fellowship application essays2010-12-28 · ~2,600 words
How viral marketing works2010-12-30 · ~600 words

2011

The Uncertain Future, open-sourced2011-01-27 · ~750 words
What 3D printers will actually be used for, in the short term2011-02-14 · ~600 words
A draft proposal for Executive Director of Humanity+2011-02-16 · to humanityplusboard@yahoogroups.com
TED Fellowship application essays2011-03-01 · ~1,650 words
Risk, success, and failure2011-04-19 · ~1,950 words
A plan for real college reform2011-04-25 · ~600 words
Spin in subtext: a worked example2011-09-04 · ~1,100 words
Pricing schemes for the Variance market2011-10-03 · ~700 words
On anonymity online2011-10-12 · ~1,500 words
HealthMap: a one-stop shop for health online2011-12-30 · to MetaMed management

2012

Raising the powerless2012-01-13 · ~700 words
Quantifying medical research in QALYs2012-03-18 · ~700 words
The Basic Rationality Concept Inventory2012-03-19 · ~900 words
Programming jobs: a sanity check2012-04-29 · ~770 words
On investing in life extension2012-05-20 · ~600 words
Why academic papers are a terrible discussion forum2012-06-19 · ~1,700 words
The fallacious argument from poverty2012-06-25 · ~670 words
Why I dislike Berkeley2012-08-09 · ~770 words
On psychology and Newtonian mechanics2012-12-19 · ~720 words

2013

About MetaMed2013-01-09 · ~1,170 words
Ambien vs. Xyrem for primary insomnia2013-06-17 · ~1,350 words
Against infinite meta2013-06-17 · ~2,225 words
MetaMed researcher policy2013-06-17 · ~3,950 words
Connection Theory FAQ2013-06-17 · ~2,250 words
Why hobbyist quadcopters won’t fight malaria2013-07-12 · ~655 words · email to the Overcoming Bias NYC list
Hyperloop Is Not Open Source2013-08-16 · ~1,440 words
School as Research2013-09-08 · ~740 words
Three Points on Wealth, Burning Man, and the Bay Area2013-09-19 · ~600 words
The Coca-Cola Fallacy2013-10-04 · ~640 words

2014

Mad At NSA? How to Fight Back, For Real2014-01-08 · ~1,420 words
On the Interestingness of Text2014-03-16 · ~840 words
Why Join Google2014-04-19 · ~810 words
On the Will of God2014-09-01 · ~770 words
Large-Scale Decision Making2014-10-17 · ~750 words
Thoughts on the AI Impacts Site2014-10-26 · ~890 words
Money in US politics: a $250 prize2014-11-20 · ~770 words
Arguments for and against, takeoff speeds, and discontinuous progress2014-11-29 · ~1,420 words
How US college admissions actually works2014-12-21 · ~770 words

2015

Bay Area LessWrong meetup survey: results2015-01-10 · ~960 words
The meta problem and the object-level problem2015-06-15 · ~830 words
Why budgeting in order to donate is penny-wise and pound-foolish2015-07-28 · ~610 words
The world as a collection of machines2015-08-04 · ~2,050 words
Everything you know about federal sentencing is a lie2015-09-19 · ~700 words
Why I want to start a machine learning company2015-09-21 · ~1,800 words
A back-of-the-envelope model of artificial group selection2015-10-06 · ~990 words
Artificial group selection: replies and a way around the problem2015-10-07 · ~860 words
How long it took the microprocessor to actually become a business2015-10-16 · ~670 words
Thoughts on General Biotics2015-10-25 · ~1,200 words
The game theory of superintelligence2015-12-11 · ~1,000 words
On CFAR’s longitudinal study2015-12-12 · ~800 words
On community achievements2015-12-14 · ~700 words
On Kegan’s developmental stages2015-12-16 · ~1,600 words
Thoughts on AI timeline surveys2015-12-17 · ~850 words
On economics2015-12-18 · ~600 words
On Taleb, and what counts as a scientific theory2015-12-20 · ~900 words
On the Reducetarian Foundation, and what really pollutes2015-12-23 · ~1,200 words
How to organize tasks for a small team2015-12-28 · ~700 words
On vegan activism2015-12-30 · ~10,100 words · first draft

2016

On futurism as a community practice2016-01-01 · ~650 words
On telling Andrea Rossi from Eric Drexler2016-01-11 · ~1,650 words
On checks from the Fed2016-02-11 · ~715 words
Biases in person-assessment2016-02-18 · ~1,350 words
A fifteen-point scale for organizational efficacy2016-02-19 · ~750 words
Well-run organizations2016-02-19 · ~1,440 words
Why San Francisco housing data lies2016-02-20 · ~915 words
Thoughts on community flow-through effects2016-02-24 · ~2,270 words
How strongly does the CFAR-sphere claim its techniques work?2016-02-24 · ~840 words
On finding a deep, narrow problem your software actually solves2016-03-10 · ~1,180 words
The British and slavery2016-05-02 · ~2,380 words
Urban planning: a response to dath ilan2016-05-03 · ~5,710 words
Notes on writing about AI risk2016-05-25 · ~1,470 words
The week of the misplaced parenthesis2016-06-06 · ~810 words
What an EA leaders’ forum should actually decide2016-06-09 · ~1,720 words
On defining the EA brand2016-06-09 · ~1,650 words
Two business principles2016-07-24 · 643 words
On building a peer-rated credit system2016-07-26 · 748 words
Conservation of weirdness, and other principles for movement-building2016-08-08 · 1,487 words
Weekly project update: date parsing, candidate generation, and a string-sort bug2016-08-22 · 862 words
The South Sea Bubble, and a survey of the EA Facebook group2016-08-22 · 1,240 words
On donation timelines, and why 2050 will be harder than 20162016-08-26 · 812 words
On FLI’s Trillion-Dollar Nuke App2016-10-07 · 605 words

2017

Against “Moral Communism”2017-01-13 · 871 words
Long-Term World Improvement2017-04-08 · 1,332 words
The downsides of moving to the Bay Area2017-04-14 · 1,042 words
The pool is pre-selected: on Leverage and trusted-advisor evidence2017-04-17 · ~600 words
Griggs v. Duke Power: the IQ-tests-are-illegal myth2017-04-28 · ~660 words
Replies to Julia Wise on CEA, GiveWell, and Open Phil2017-05-01 · ~1,300 words
“Try it and see” is not enough evidence in psychology2017-05-07 · ~840 words
Leverage Research and the disease of secrecy2017-05-07 · ~750 words
Burying the lede: Facebook comments on GiveWell’s writeup2017-05-07 · ~1,800 words
CEA, EA Funds, and the missing US politics option2017-05-17 · ~720 words
A Monte Carlo futurism site2017-06-04 · ~1,670 words
A first-stab model of conference value2017-06-05 · ~590 words
Notes from EA Global Boston 20172017-06-06 · ~740 words
AI results on toy problems2017-06-10 · ~700 words
2017 links: rescued from the Facebook black hole2017-08-26 · ~1,870 words
Why cryptocurrency won’t replace mortgage banking2017-09-04 · ~600 words
My plan to steal Wikipedia2017-09-17 · ~1,150 words
Has EA started its decline?2017-09-23 · ~1,300 words
Chains of community2017-09-23 · ~640 words
What happened to the Extropians2017-09-23 · ~650 words
Should autonomous weapons be banned?2017-09-30 · ~710 words
Street crime in District 62017-10-01 · ~960 words
Encrypted applications as a leverage point2017-12-07 · ~710 words
NYT cites Alon Levy on subway construction costs2017-12-29 · ~650 words

2018

In defense of the US government2018-01-25 · ~1,270 words
Rules for large players2018-02-12 · ~1,740 words
Are all categories fuzzy?2018-02-18 · ~625 words
Why deep RL doesn’t scale to the real world2018-02-19 · ~750 words
Five claims about AI futurism2018-03-01 · ~930 words
Civil procedure reform2018-03-19 · ~1,040 words
Self-driving car safety2018-03-25 · ~610 words
Silicon Valley is anti-capitalist2018-04-10 · ~800 words
The omitted false negatives in the trans-youth debate2018-11-25 · ~670 words

2019

Israel as a case study in starting a country2019-09-15 · ~970 words
On sociology2019-09-16 · ~830 words
OpenAI’s GPT-2 disclosure as inverted responsible-disclosure2019-09-18 · ~650 words
Getting a “lead” in AI research2019-12-05 · ~750 words

2020

Thoughts on standardized testing2020-07-24 · ~1,650 words

2021

On the Schmidt–Matheny report on US strategy toward China2021-01-28 · ~1,500 words
Third wave of autocratization2021-02-15 · ~830 words
Industrial Capabilities Report to Congress2021-02-22 · ~1,290 words
Wealth as a source of technological stagnation?2021-07-22 · ~770 words