Longform read Q4 2015
In addition to the books I read last quarter, I also read a lot of longform. Here's a selection of pieces I enjoyed:
- Everything You Think You Know About the Collapse of the Soviet Union is Wrong (a) by Leon Aron
Almost all contemporaneous experts failed to predict the (non-violent, morally principled) collapse of the USSR. The collapse should really be more surprising, but because it happened we're inclined to treat it as quite ordinary. - Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department (a) by Alexander Coward
Beloved mathematics adjunct at UC Berkeley is penalized for being an excellent teacher (admittedly a one-sided account). - How to Lose Weight in Four Easy Steps (a) by Aaron Bleyaert
Good advice. - The Strange Case of Anna Stubblefield (a) by Daniel Engber
- A History of Transhumanist Thought (a) by Nick Bostrom
Quick history of the modern transhumanist movement written by one of its founders. - What Developmental Milestones Are You Missing? (a)
by Scott Alexander - The Doomsday Invention (a) by Raffi Khatchadourian
New Yorker profile on Bostrom. - The Value of a Life (a) by Buck Shlegeris
Attempt to figure out the "buyer's price" of human life. I found the derivation section opaque, a sign that I haven't absorbed the approach fully (and am thus unable to assess its validity), but I appreciated the attempt. - Who By Very Slow Decay (a) by Scott Alexander
Fairly horrifying perspective on dying in the US health system. - I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup (a) by Scott Alexander
- Before the Startup (a) by Paul Graham
Some advice on the "do I want to start a startup?" question that reduced my angst: consider all the things you can do before a startup that are more difficult after starting one. - Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity (a) by Marc Andreessen
- Anthropic Shadow by Cirkovic, Sandberg, and Bostrom
Discussion of anthropic bias. My (admittedly lacking) summary: the fact that we are here observing bears on our probability estimates of existential risks. Some of the evidence we see is biased towards lower extinction probabilities, because if an extinction event of sufficient magnitude (e.g. earth-splitting magnitude) had occurred, there wouldn't be any observers left to take note of it. - An unreasonably large number of New Yorker think pieces on Trump
- Frank Sinatra Has a Cold (a) by Gay Talese
Fun profile of Sinatra, whom I knew very little about going in. - Sharpening the Fermi Paradox by Armstrong and Sandberg
Cashing out the feasibility of intergalactic colonization, then noticing that if intergalactic travel is as feasible as it appears, then the Fermi paradox becomes more problematic. - Prediction Markets (a) by gwern
I've been getting more into prediction-making lately (reading Superforecasting, setting up a PredictionBook account, making predictions of which contenders will become GiveWell top charities). - Year's End (a) by Jhumpa Lahiri
Short story about a father, son, and the father's new wife and daughters who just migrated from India. - What Money Can Buy (a) by Larissa Macfarquhar
Macfarquhar profile on Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation. Opens with a very beautiful, very Macfarquharian intro paragraph.
(a) = archived version of the page, hosted by the Internet Archive. A new thing I'm trying with an eye towards building Long Content (a).
[rereads: 1, edits: typo fixes, added the endnote about archived content]