16. Meditations on Moloch

Read the original essay here. Do note that I read an older version. The author made many changes since its publication that I consider dishonest and cowardly. To read along with my narration, go here.

Download the mp3 here.

If you liked the piece, you might find yourself thinking about it in the shower for a long time as it gradually rends your soul to little swarming pieces. To help you process it, here are some followup essays:

• On Gnon by Nick Land
• Misperceptions on Moloch, by the same author, explaining some misunderstandings of the original essay that people mostly made out of some ideological motivation
• SSC Book Review: Red Plenty, again by the same author
• The Ancient God Who Rules High School
• In Soviet Union, Optimization Problem Solves You
• Minimum Viable Superorganism by Kevin Simler
• Inequalities by Sarah Perry
• Malthusianisms
• The Importance of Goodhart's Law
• Self-fulfilling Correlations
• Lost Purposes
• Siren worlds and the perils of over-optimized search
• The Optimizer's Curse and How to Beat It or Disappointment at Black Belt Bayesian.
• Why the Tails Come Apart

15. Biases against Overcoming Bias

Read the original essay here.

Download the mp3 here.

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Episode 14: What You Can't Say

Read the original essay here.

Download the mp3 here.

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Episode 13: The Nothingness of Personality

Read the original essay here.

Download the mp3 here.

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For more Borges audio, try his lectures. These are in his own voice, and some are even in English!

Episode 12: Why Speculate?

Read the original essay here (PDF) or here.

Download the mp3 here.

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If you want to use the clip of my reading of the now-famous Murray Gell-Mann amnesia effect for your own podcast or whatever, you can download it here.

Further reading: Generalized Mount Stupid

Episode 11: Cargo Cult Science

Read the original talk here.

Download the mp3 here.

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Episode 10: Crony Beliefs

Read the original essay here.

Download the mp3 here.

Episode 9: A Positive Account of Property Rights

Read the original essay here.

Download the mp3 here.

Episode 8: The Will to Believe

Read the original essay here.

Download the mp3 here.

Part of this lecture serves as a partial response to The Ethics of Belief, the reading-fodder for the previous episode. James identifies some important psychological realities and subtle distinctions that Clifford glosses over. If you ask me to pit them against one another, then I'm with Clifford. I don't think James was quite fair. He totally ignored Clifford's Bastatian, proto-Hayekian point about the macroeffects, the subtle and distributed effects, the side effects, the unnoticed negative externalities, of promoting less than maximally true beliefs.

However. This essay's logic is, so far as I can tell, insecapable. I'm astonished that no one has ever adopted this essay's theses as a foundational epistemological principle, that I've never seen debates one way or the other on the matter. Having read the essay several times in the course of producing this episode, I must say that I agree with it.

Episode 7: The Ethics of Belief

Read the original essay here.

Download the mp3 here.

I reckon William Kingdon Clifford would have been a much more eminent philosopher had he not died at 33.

Episode 6: The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses

It is expensive to keep track of multiple partially overlapping partially contradictory models. You must do it anyway.

— Will Newsome (@willnewsome) August 5, 2012

Hypotheses shouldn't be pet causes.

— Will Newsome (@willnewsome) January 12, 2013

yeah, the rationalist community was way better back in '97 http://t.co/Vwcst34dIx

— kenzo (@aprayerofquiet) April 13, 2015

Read the original essay here (PDF warning) or here.

Download the mp3 here.

Bonus Episode: You're Probably Wondering Why I Called You Here Today

Read the original essay here.

Download the mp3 here.

Since most of you are from Slate Star Codex now, I thought I'd release something I made a long time ago. I had the idea to turn SSC into a podcast, but in making the attempt, realize that was far, far too daunting an undertaking. Thus this bonus episode is a reading of the first SSC article, with the same microphone I used for Keep Your Identity Small.

Episode 5: The Reversal Test: Eliminating Status Quo Bias in Applied Ethics

Read the original essay here (PDF warning).

Download the mp3 here.

Not the best choice of essays to read, owing to the abominably boring, repetitive, academic (but I repeat myself) writing style. Still a useful thing to have in your cognitive arsenal, a fairly powerful debiasing technique as well as an argument for one of my pet causes.

Episode 4: In Praise of Passivity

Download the mp3 here.

Read the original essay here (PDF warning) or here.

This essay is incredibly important. If I could suggest one short thing for everyone in the world to read, it might be this. I'm not proud of the job I did reading it. Boring and listless and full of minor mistakes. Nevertheless I do hope you listen. Once again I must entreat that reading along while listening may prove helpful.

Not Episode 3: Scott and Scurvy

Unfortunately, even though I did in fact record a reading of this essay, the author warned that you must ask permission before reposting his articles. So I asked permission, and he didn't grant it! So I can't release it! It can't be helped.

I recommend the essay anyway. Read it here. I think there are important lessons in it about the fragility of scientific knowledge and the mechanisms by which it might be lost.

Episode 2: The Use of Knowledge In Society

Read the original essay here.

Download the mp3 here.

If, like me, you found the essay incomprehensible during your first few attempts at it, here are some other essays which may shed some light:

• I, Pencil
• In Soviet Union, Optimization Problem Solves You

Episode 1: Keep Your Identity Small

Read the original essay here.

Download the mp3 here.