Less Wrong/2011 Articles

The following is a list of all articles from Less Wrong from 2011, in chronological order. One-paragraph summaries of each post are at Less_Wrong/2011_Articles/Summaries.

The main purpose of this list is to keep track of which concepts introduced in these articles still need pages created for them on this wiki. Also, to keep track of which wiki pages should have these articles listed in their References section.

This list is still in progress. Please feel free to continue filling in this list, or fixing problems with the parts that are already filled in.

Less Wrong Articles

Title	Concepts Introduced/Discussed	Author
Optimizing Fuzzies And Utilons: The Altruism Chip Jar		orthonormal
Choose To Be Happy		DanArmak
Working hurts less than procrastinating, we fear the twinge of starting		Eliezer_Yudkowsky
New Year's Predictions Thread (2011)		Kevin
Rationality Quotes: January 2011		wedrifid
Applied Optimal Philanthropy: How to Donate $100 to SIAI for Free		Louie
Techniques for probability estimates		Yvain
The Neglected Virtue of Scholarship		lukeprog
In the Pareto-optimised crowd, be sure to know your place		Stuart_Armstrong
Rationalist Clue		Mass_Driver
I		PhilGoetz
A LessWrong "rationality workbook" idea		jwhendy
Spaced Repetition Database for A Human's Guide to Words		divia
Back to the Basics of Rationality		lukeprog
Branches of rationality		AnnaSalamon
Anki deck for biases and fallacies		phob
Simpson's Paradox		bentarm
Rational Repentance		Mass_Driver
The Best Textbooks on Every Subject		lukeprog
Eliezer to speak in Oxford, 8pm Jan 25th		alexflint
Statistical Prediction Rules Out-Perform Expert Human Judgments		lukeprog
Theists are wrong; is theism?		Will_Newsome
Scientific Self-Help: The State of Our Knowledge		lukeprog
The Illusion of Sameness		Elizabeth
David Chalmers' "The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis"		lukeprog
Optimal Employment		Louie
Counterfactual Calculation and Observational Knowledge		Vladimir_Nesov
The Urgent Meta-Ethics of Friendly Artificial Intelligence		lukeprog
Rationality Quotes: February 2011		gwern
On Charities and Linear Utility		Anatoly_Vorobey
Fast Minds and Slow Computers		jacob_cannell
How to Beat Procrastination		lukeprog
You're in Newcomb's Box		HonoreDB
Value Stability and Aggregation		jimrandomh
Reaching the general public		RichardKennaway
Procedural Knowledge Gaps		Alicorn
How to make your intuitions cost-sensitive		apophenia
Subjective Relativity, Time Dilation and Divergence		jacob_cannell
Make your training useful		AnnaSalamon
Secure Your Beliefs		lukeprog
Science: Do It Yourself		tommccabe
Algorithms as Case Studies in Rationality		abramdemski
Some Heuristics for Evaluating the Soundness of the Academic Mainstream in Unfamiliar Fields		Vladimir_M
Revisiting the Anthropic Trilemma II: axioms and assumptions		Stuart_Armstrong
Write It Like A Poem		Strange7
Scholarship and DIY Science		SarahC
Dead men tell tales: falling out of love with SIA		Stuart_Armstrong
Ability to react		Swimmer963
Fun and Games with Cognitive Biases		Cosmos
Updateless anthropics		Stuart_Armstrong
Research methods		Swimmer963
Use curiosity		AnnaSalamon
Vassar talk in New Haven, Sunday 2/27		tommccabe
Singularity Institute now accepts donations via Bitcoin		Kevin
Eliezer Yudkowsky and Michael Vassar at NYU, Thursday March 3rd		Cosmos
Rationality Quotes: March 2011		Alexandros
Go Try Things		atucker
A Transhumanist Poem		Swimmer963
Positive Thinking		Swimmer963
Less Wrong at Burning Man 2011		Kevin
The Limits of Curiosity		Elizabeth
Plant Seeds of Rationality		lukeprog
Making Reasoning Obviously Locally Correct		JGWeissman
How I Lost 100 Pounds Using TDT		Zvi
Being a teacher		Swimmer963
Enjoying food more: a case study in third options		MBlume
How to Be Happy		lukeprog
Rationality Outreach: A Parable		SarahC
Less Wrong NYC: Case Study of a Successful Rationalist Chapter		Cosmos
Towards a Bay Area Less Wrong Community		LucasSloan
Effective Rationality Outreach		paulfchristiano
Less Wrong Rationality and Mainstream Philosophy		lukeprog
Costs and Benefits of Scholarship		lukeprog
Rationality Boot Camp		Jasen
The trouble with teamwork		Swimmer963
Crime and punishment		PhilGoetz
Verifying Rationality via RationalPoker.com		Louie
Faith and theory		PhilGoetz
Rational Reading: Thoughts On Prioritizing Books		patrissimo
The Neuroscience of Pleasure		lukeprog
Philosophy: A Diseased Discipline		lukeprog
London Hackday, this Friday, April 1st (No, this is not a joke)		Alexandros
Mental Metadata		Alicorn
Guilt: Another Gift Nobody Wants		Yvain
Reflections on rationality a year out		SarahC
Singularity Institute featured on Philanthroper		Louie
The Good News of Situationist Psychology		lukeprog
The peril of ignoring emotions		Swimmer963
Manufacturing prejudice		PhilGoetz
Don't Fear Failure		atucker
Just Try It: Quantity Trumps Quality		atucker
Rationality Quotes: April 2011		benelliott
Details of Taskforces; or, Cooperate Now		paulfchristiano
Spaniard Lesswrongers, Unite!		Raw_Power
Failure Modes sometimes correspond to Game Mechanics		Johnicholas
Human errors, human values		PhilGoetz
The Neuroscience of Desire		lukeprog
Separate morality from free will		PhilGoetz
The Absolute Self-Selection Assumption		paulfchristiano
Anthropics makes sense with shorter people		KatjaGrace
We are not living in a simulation		dfranke
Best videos inspiring first interest in rationality or the singularity		Academian
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality Podcast		Eneasz
How not to be a Naïve Computationalist		diegocaleiro
Levels of Action		tommccabe
Three consistent positions for computationalists		dfranke
The Bias You Didn't Expect		Psychohistorian
Say More, Justify Less		paulfchristiano
How You Make Judgments: The Elephant and its Rider		lukeprog
Offense versus harm minimization		Yvain
Build Small Skills in the Right Order		lukeprog
Learned Blankness		AnnaSalamon
Vanilla and chocolate and preference judgements		Swimmer963
No, Seriously. Just Try It.		lukeprog
Official Less Wrong Redesign: Call for Suggestions		Louie
Epistle to the New York Less Wrongians		Eliezer_Yudkowsky
The benefits of madness: A positive account of arationality		Skatche
Is Kiryas Joel an Unhappy Place?		gwern
Heading Toward: No-Nonsense Metaethics		lukeprog
Mini-camp on Rationality, Awesomeness, and Existential Risk (May 28 through June 4, 2011)		AnnaSalamon
Being Wrong about Your Own Subjective Experience		lukeprog
Convincing Arguments Aren’t Necessarily Correct – They’re Merely Convincing		lionhearted
What is Metaethics?		lukeprog
What data generated that thought?		Kaj_Sotala
Mapping our maps: types of knowledge		Swimmer963
So You've Changed Your Mind		Spurlock
Meditation, insight, and rationality. (Part 1 of 3)		DavidM
Cryonics Promotional Video Contest -- 10 BTC Prize		lsparrish
On Being Okay with the Truth		lukeprog
SIAI - An Examination		BrandonReinhart
The Cognitive Costs to Doing Things		lionhearted
Meditation, insight, and rationality. (Part 2 of 3)		DavidM
Your Evolved Intuitions		lukeprog
Leadership and Self Deception, Anatomy of Peace		TimFreeman
Experiment Idea Thread - Spring 2011		Psychohistorian
Intuition and Unconscious Learning		lukeprog
The Power of Agency		lukeprog
The 5-Second Level		Eliezer_Yudkowsky
Shifting Load to Explicit Reasoning		Vladimir_Nesov
Building rationalist communities: lessons from the Latter-day Saints		calcsam
Building rationalist communities: a series overview		calcsam
Chemicals and Electricity		lionhearted
When Intuitions Are Useful		lukeprog
Scholarship: How to Do It Efficiently		lukeprog
Holy Books (Or Rationalist Sequences) Don’t Implement Themselves		calcsam
Designing Rationalist Projects		calcsam
Conceptual Analysis and Moral Theory		lukeprog
Colonization models: a programming tutorial (Part 1/2)		snarles
Colonization models: a tutorial on computational Bayesian inference (part 2/2)		snarles
Values vs. parameters		PhilGoetz
How and Why to Granularize		lukeprog
Suffering as attention-allocational conflict		Kaj_Sotala
The Aliens have Landed!		TimFreeman
On the Anthropic Trilemma		KatjaGrace
Metacontrarian Metaethics		Will_Newsome
Rationalist horoscopes: A low-hanging utility generator.		AdeleneDawner
A summary of Savage's foundations for probability and utility.		Sniffnoy
Ace Attorney: pioneer Rationalism-didactic game?		Raw_Power
Inferring Our Desires		lukeprog
Self-programming through spaced repetition		Luke_Grecki
LW Biology 101 Introduction: Constraining Anticipation		virtualAdept
Pancritical Rationalism Can Apply to Preferences and Behavior		TimFreeman
Dominus' Razor		badger
The cost of universal cryonics		handoflixue
Seeing Red: Dissolving Mary's Room and Qualia		orthonormal
Bias in capital project decision making		jsalvatier
Measuring aversion and habit strength		Academian
A Study of Scarlet: The Conscious Mental Graph		orthonormal
Teachable Rationality Skills		Eliezer_Yudkowsky
Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment		badger
Overcoming suffering: Emotional acceptance		Kaj_Sotala
Nature: Red, in Truth and Qualia		orthonormal
Pluralistic Moral Reductionism		lukeprog
Heuristics for Deciding What to Work On		John_Maxwell_IV
Rationality Quotes: June 2011		Oscar_Cunningham
The Landmark Forum — a rationalist's first impression		Nisan
Action and habit		Swimmer963
St. Petersburg Mugging Implies You Have Bounded Utility		TimFreeman
Safety Culture and the Marginal Effect of a Dollar		jimrandomh
Memory, Spaced Repetition and Life		Duke
Not for the Sake of Pleasure Alone		lukeprog
How not to move the goalposts		HopeFox
Malice, Stupidity, or Egalité Irréfléchie?		lionhearted
Model Uncertainty, Pascalian Reasoning and Utilitarianism		multifoliaterose
Efficient philanthropy: local vs. global approaches		multifoliaterose
When is further research needed?		RichardKennaway
Foma: Beliefs that Cause Themselves to be True		atucker
Community roles: teachers and auxiliaries		calcsam
Community roles: committees and leadership		calcsam
Entangled with Reality: The Shoelace Example		lukeprog
The True Rejection Challenge		Alicorn
Reasons for being rational		Swimmer963
Not for the Sake of Selfishness Alone		lukeprog
Rationality Quotes July 2011		Normal_Anomaly
Behaviorism: Beware Anthropomorphizing Humans		Yvain
The Blue-Minimizing Robot		Yvain
'Is' and 'Ought' and Rationality		BobTheBob
Dark Arts: Schopenhauer wrote The Book on How To Troll		Raw_Power
Basics of Animal Reinforcement		Yvain
Find yourself a Worthy Opponent: a Chavruta		Raw_Power
Basics of Human Reinforcement		Yvain
How to annoy misanthropes and bleeding-hearts		PhilGoetz
An Outside View on Less Wrong's Advice		Mass_Driver
Time and Effort Discounting		Yvain
Wanting vs. Liking Revisited		Yvain
Prospect Theory: A Framework for Understanding Cognitive Biases		Yvain
Physical and Mental Behavior		Yvain
Community norm question: brief text ad signatures		Kaj_Sotala
Voluntary Behavior, Conscious Thoughts		Yvain
Follow-up on ESP study: "We don't publish replications"		CarlShulman
Trivers on Self-Deception		Yvain
Knowing what you want is a prerequisite to getting what you want		nwthomas
Rationality Market Research		Raemon
Rationalist Judo, or Using the Availability Heuristic to Win		jschulter
To what degree do we have goals?		Yvain
Preference For (Many) Future Worlds		wedrifid
The limits of introspection		Yvain
Ego syntonic thoughts and values		Yvain
Approving reinforces low-effort behaviors		Yvain
Illustrator needed: Intuitive Bayes 2.0		Eliezer_Yudkowsky
Connectionism: Modeling the mind with neural networks		Yvain
Secrets of the eliminati		Yvain
Tendencies in reflective equilibrium		Yvain
Bayesian Conspiracy @ Burning Man 2011		Kevin
Optimal Philanthropy for Human Beings		lukeprog
How to enjoy being wrong		lincolnquirk
The $125,000 Summer Singularity Challenge		Kaj_Sotala
On the unpopularity of cryonics: life sucks, but at least then you die		gwern
MSF Theory: Another Explanation of Subjectively Objective Probability		potato
Teaching Introspection		Swimmer963
Rationality Quotes August 2011		dvasya
Do Humans Want Things?		lukeprog
Modularity and Buzzy		Kaj_Sotala
Consistently Inconsistent		Kaj_Sotala
Raise the Age Demographic		calcsam
Selecting optimal group projects and roles		calcsam
Towards a New Decision Theory for Parallel Agents		potato
Theory of Knowledge (rationality outreach)		KPier
Strategic ignorance and plausible deniability		Kaj_Sotala
Judgment Under Uncertainty summaries, Part 1: Representativeness		Tesseract
Remind Physicalists They're Physicalists		lukeprog
Are Deontological Moral Judgments Rationalizations?		lukeprog
Why We Can't Take Expected Value Estimates Literally (Even When They're Unbiased)		HoldenKarnofsky
Spaced Repetition literature review prize: And the winner is...		jsalvatier
A Crash Course in the Neuroscience of Human Motivation		lukeprog
A Sketch of an Anti-Realist Metaethics		Jack
Help Fund Lukeprog at SIAI		Eliezer_Yudkowsky
Rational Home Buying		Yvain
Decision Theory Paradox: PD with Three Implies Chaos?		orthonormal
Polyhacking		Alicorn
A History of Bayes' Theorem		lukeprog
Is Rationality Teachable?		lukeprog
Consequentialism Need Not Be Nearsighted		orthonormal
Rationality Quotes September 2011		dvasya
Open Thread: September 2011		Pavitra
Hacking on LessWrong Just Got Easier		atucker
Prisoner's Dilemma Tournament Results		prase
Tool ideology		PhilGoetz
Rational Communication		Swimmer963
Rationalist sites worth archiving?		gwern
My Greatest Achievement		Swimmer963
The Cognitive Science of Rationality		lukeprog
Complexity: inherent, created, and hidden		Swimmer963
The Optimizer's Curse and How to Beat It		lukeprog
Your inner Google		PhilGoetz
Knowledge is Worth Paying For		lukeprog
Blindsight and Consciousness		atucker
Living bias, not thinking bias		crazy88
Stanislav Petrov Day		gwern
A Rationalist's Tale		lukeprog
$100 off for Less Wrong: Singularity Summit 2011 on Oct 15 - 16 in New York		Louie
Philosophy by Humans, 1: Concepts Don't Work That Way		lukeprog
Rationality Drugs		lukeprog
Open thread, October 2011		MarkusRamikin
Rationality Quotes October 2011		MinibearRex
Rationality Lessons Learned from Irrational Adventures in Romance		lukeprog
Prize for the best introduction to the LessWrong source ($250)		jsalvatier
Not By Empathy Alone		gwern
Neural Correlates of Conscious Access		atucker
Morality is not about willpower		PhilGoetz
1001 PredictionBook Nights		gwern
The Outside View Of Human Complexity		Andy_McKenzie
A few analogies to illustrate key rationality points		kilobug
Calibrate your self-assessments		Yvain
Anti-akrasia tool: like stickK.com for data nerds		dreeves
A Rational Approach to Fashion		lionhearted
On the Openness personality trait & 'rationality'		gwern
How to understand people better		pwno
Amanda Knox: post mortem		gwern
Things you are supposed to like		PhilGoetz
The Protagonist Problem		atucker
Let Your Workers Gather Food		D_Malik
Better Disagreement		lukeprog
Rhetoric for the Good		lukeprog
Great Explanations		lukeprog
2011 Less Wrong Census / Survey		Yvain
Rationality Quotes November 2011		Jayson_Virissimo
Rational Romantic Relationships, Part 1: Relationship Styles and Attraction Basics		lukeprog
Maximizing Cost-effectiveness via Critical Inquiry		HoldenKarnofsky
Modularity, signaling, and belief in belief		Kaj_Sotala
Drawing Less Wrong: An Introduction		Raemon
Drawing Less Wrong: Should You Learn to Draw?		Raemon
Existential Risk		lukeprog
Poker with Lennier		HonoreDB
Poll results: LW probably doesn't cause akrasia		AnnaSalamon
The curse of identity		Kaj_Sotala
Drawing Less Wrong: Overview of Skills, and Relevance to Rationality		Raemon
Don’t Apply the Principle of Charity to Yourself		UnclGhost
Practical debiasing		crazy88
Drawing Less Wrong: Observing Reality		Raemon
Objections to Coherent Extrapolated Volition		XiXiDu
5-second level case study: Value of information		Kaj_Sotala
Value of Information: Four Examples		Vaniver
(Subjective Bayesianism vs. Frequentism) VS. Formalism		potato
Philosophy by Humans, 2: Living Metaphorically		lukeprog
Uncertainty		Vaniver
Hack Away at the Edges		lukeprog
5 Axioms of Decision Making		Vaniver
Announcing the Quantified Health Prize		Zvi
Rationality Quotes December 2011		Jayson_Virissimo
Funnel plots: the study that didn't bark, or, visualizing regression to the null		gwern
Drawing Less Wrong: Technical Skill		Raemon
2011 Survey Results		Yvain
An akrasia case study		nyan_sandwich
Compressing Reality to Math		Vaniver
How to label thoughts nonverbally		eugman
Ritual Report: NYC Less Wrong Solstice Celebration		Raemon
Measures, Risk, Death, and War		Vaniver
Decision Analysis Sequence		Vaniver
Spend Money on Ergonomics		Kevin
Prediction is hard, especially of medicine		gwern
Just another day in utopia		Stuart_Armstrong
Welcome to Less Wrong! (2012)		orthonormal
Best of Rationality Quotes, 2011 Edition		DanielVarga
For-Profit Rationality Training		ksvanhorn
The Value (and Danger) of Ritual		Raemon
The bias shield		PhilGoetz