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LessWrong

TagLast edit: Jul 20, 2022, 6:48 PM by Leo

LessWrong (sometimes spelled Less Wrong) is a community blog and forum dedicated to improving epistemic and instrumental rationality.

History

In November 2006, the group blog Overcoming Bias was launched, with Robin Hanson and Eliezer Yudkowsky as its primary authors.[1] In early March 2009, Yudkowsky founded LessWrong, repurposing his contributions to Overcoming Bias as the seed content for this “community blog devoted to refining the art of human rationality.”[2][3] This material was organized as a number of “sequences”, or thematic collections of posts to be read in a specific order, later published in book form.[4] Shortly thereafter, Scott Alexander joined as a regular contributor.

Around 2013, Yudkowsky switched his primary focus to writing fan fiction, and Alexander launched his own blog, Slate Star Codex, to which most of his contributions were posted. As a consequence of this and other developments, posting quality and frequency on LessWrong began to decline.[5] By 2015, activity on the site was a fraction of what it had been in its heyday.[6]

LessWrong was relaunched as LessWrong 2.0 in late 2017 on a new codebase and a full-time, dedicated team.[7][8] The launch coincided with the release of Yudkowsky’s book Inadequate Equilibria, posted as a series of chapters and also released as a book.[9] Since the relaunch, activity has recovered and has remained at steady levels.[6][10]

In 2021, the LessWrong team became Lightcone Infrastructure, broadening its scope to encompass other projects related to the rationality community and the future of humanity.[11]

Funding

As of July 2022, LessWrong and Lightcone Infrastructure have received over $2.3 million in funding from the Survival and Flourishing Fund,[12][13][14] $2 million from the Future Fund,[15] and $760,000 from Open Philanthropy.[16]

Further reading

Monteiro, Chris et al. (2017) History of Less Wrong, LessWrong Wiki, October 20.

External links

LessWrong. Official website.

Donate to LessWrong.

Related entries

AI Alignment Forum | Effective Altruism Forum | Lightcone Infrastructure | rationality community

  1. ^

    Hanson, Robin (2009) About, Overcoming Bias.

  2. ^

    Alexander, Scott (2014) Five years and one week of Less Wrong, Slate Star Codex, March 13.

  3. ^

    Bloom, Ruben (2019) A brief history of LessWrong, LessWrong, May 31.

  4. ^

    Yudkowsky, Eliezer (2015) Rationality: From AI to Zombies, Berkeley: Machine Intelligence Research Institute.

  5. ^

    Alexander, Scott (2017) Comment on ‘A history of the rationality community?’, Reddit, August 15.

  6. ^
  7. ^

    Vaniver (2017) LW 2.0 open beta live, LessWrong, September 20.

  8. ^

    Bloom, Ruben et al. (2019) Welcome to LessWrong!, LessWrong, June 14.

  9. ^

    Yudkowsky, Eliezer (2017) Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck, Berkeley: Machine Intelligence Research Institute.

  10. ^

    “the conclusion that the LW community recovered from its previous decline holds” (Sempere, Nuño (2021) Shallow evaluations of longtermist organizations, Effective Altruism Forum, June 24)

  11. ^

    Habryka, Oliver (2021) The LessWrong Team is now Lightcone Infrastructure, come work with us!, LessWrong, September 30.

  12. ^

    Survival and Flourishing Fund (2019) SFF-2020-H1 S-process recommendations announcement, Survival and Flourishing Fund.

  13. ^

    Survival and Flourishing Fund (2020) SFF-2021-H1 S-process recommendations announcement, Survival and Flourishing Fund.

  14. ^

    Survival and Flourishing Fund (2020) SFF-2021-H2 S-process recommendations announcement, Survival and Flourishing Fund.

  15. ^

    Future Fund (2022) Our grants and investments: LessWrong, Future Fund.

  16. ^

    Open Philanthropy (2022) Grants database: LessWrong, Open Philanthropy.

The LessWrong Team is now Light­cone In­fras­truc­ture, come work with us!

HabrykaOct 1, 2021, 4:36 AM
65 points
2 comments1 min readEA link
(www.lesswrong.com)

Shal­low eval­u­a­tions of longter­mist organizations

NunoSempereJun 24, 2021, 3:31 PM
192 points
34 comments34 min readEA link

[Linkpost] LessOn­line (May 31—June 2, Berkeley, CA)

Saul MunnMar 28, 2024, 11:37 PM
26 points
0 comments1 min readEA link
(Less.Online)

Pod­cast with Oli Habryka on LessWrong /​ Light­cone Infrastructure

DanielFilanFeb 6, 2023, 4:42 PM
85 points
14 comments1 min readEA link

“Two-fac­tor” vot­ing (“two di­men­sional”: karma, agree­ment) for EA fo­rum?

david_reinsteinJun 25, 2022, 11:10 AM
81 points
18 comments1 min readEA link
(www.lesswrong.com)

[Question] I have thou­sands of copies of HPMOR in Rus­sian. How to use them with the most im­pact?

MikhailSaminDec 27, 2022, 11:07 AM
39 points
10 comments1 min readEA link

Less­wrong Di­as­pora survey

eloApr 3, 2016, 11:25 AM
5 points
5 comments1 min readEA link

In­creased Availa­bil­ity and Willing­ness for De­ploy­ment of Re­sources for Effec­tive Altru­ism and Long-Termism

Evan_GaensbauerDec 29, 2021, 8:20 PM
46 points
1 comment2 min readEA link

Read­ing the ethi­cists 2: Hunt­ing for AI al­ign­ment papers

Charlie SteinerJun 6, 2022, 3:53 PM
9 points
0 comments1 min readEA link
(www.lesswrong.com)

some thoughts on lessOn­line (note: early prices end Mon­day)

RaemonMay 10, 2024, 11:21 PM
11 points
0 comments5 min readEA link

Low-Com­mit­ment Less Wrong Book (EG Ar­ti­cle) Club

JeremyFeb 10, 2022, 3:25 PM
39 points
25 comments1 min readEA link

Listen to more EA con­tent with The Non­lin­ear Library

Kat WoodsOct 19, 2021, 12:24 PM
187 points
94 comments8 min readEA link

[Question] What (stan­dalone) LessWrong posts would you recom­mend to most EA com­mu­nity mem­bers?

Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸Feb 9, 2022, 12:31 AM
67 points
20 comments1 min readEA link

In­ter­ven­tion op­tions for im­prov­ing the EA-al­igned re­search pipeline

MichaelA🔸May 28, 2021, 2:26 PM
49 points
27 comments12 min readEA link

A sum­mary of ev­ery “High­lights from the Se­quences” post

AkashJul 15, 2022, 11:05 PM
47 points
3 comments17 min readEA link

LessWrong is now a book, available for pre-or­der!

terraformDec 4, 2020, 8:42 PM
48 points
1 comment10 min readEA link

LessWrong/​EA New Year’s Ul­tra Party

Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸Dec 18, 2020, 5:15 AM
74 points
10 comments1 min readEA link

Rea­sons for and against post­ing on the EA Forum

MichaelA🔸May 23, 2021, 11:29 AM
32 points
10 comments14 min readEA link

[Question] Fo­rum + LW re­la­tion­ship: What is the effect?

RockwellJan 23, 2023, 9:35 PM
56 points
26 comments1 min readEA link

What cog­ni­tive bi­ases feel like from the inside

EA HandbookJul 27, 2022, 11:13 PM
34 points
6 comments5 min readEA link
(www.lesswrong.com)

Light­cone In­fras­truc­ture/​LessWrong is look­ing for funding

HabrykaJun 14, 2023, 4:45 AM
65 points
10 comments1 min readEA link

Learn­ing From Less Wrong: Spe­cial Threads, and Mak­ing This Fo­rum More Useful

Evan_GaensbauerSep 24, 2014, 10:59 AM
6 points
21 comments3 min readEA link

LW4EA: Elas­tic Pro­duc­tivity Tools

JeremyJan 3, 2023, 3:18 AM
−1 points
5 comments1 min readEA link
(www.lesswrong.com)

New tool for ex­plor­ing EA Fo­rum and LessWrong—Tree of Tags

Filip SondejOct 27, 2022, 5:43 PM
43 points
8 comments1 min readEA link

How To Ac­tu­ally Succeed

Jordan ArelSep 12, 2022, 10:33 PM
11 points
0 comments5 min readEA link

[Question] How do Ra­tion­al­ists’ and EAs’ be­liefs differ?

aprilsunAug 11, 2023, 9:04 PM
13 points
9 comments1 min readEA link

Looping

Jarred FilmerOct 5, 2022, 1:47 AM
19 points
4 comments1 min readEA link

Is­sue with AI al­ign­ment—di­ver­sity of opinions as com­pete­tive ad­van­tage? (as op­posed to echo cham­bers)

Mars RobertsonAug 30, 2023, 9:44 AM
1 point
5 comments2 min readEA link

Como são vie­ses cog­ni­tivos vis­tos por den­tro?

AE Brasil / EA BrazilJul 20, 2023, 6:48 PM
4 points
0 comments4 min readEA link

I Con­verted Book I of The Se­quences Into A Zoomer-Read­able Format

Daniel KirmaniNov 10, 2022, 2:59 AM
33 points
5 comments1 min readEA link

LW4EA: Six eco­nomics mis­con­cep­tions of mine which I’ve re­solved over the last few years

JeremyAug 30, 2022, 3:20 PM
8 points
0 comments1 min readEA link
(www.lesswrong.com)

Es­ti­mat­ing EA Growth Rates (MCF memo)

Angelina LiOct 25, 2023, 8:48 AM
133 points
18 comments30 min readEA link

A tool for search­ing ra­tio­nal­ist & EA webs

Daniel_FriedrichSep 29, 2023, 3:20 PM
11 points
8 comments1 min readEA link
(ratsearch.blogspot.com)
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