Link Sharing Thread - April '11

Scientists settle centuries-old debate on perception (physorg.com)

Edit: apparently people here can't detect sarcasm, so I'm changing the header.

So, I took this thread as an excuse for going thought my lists of interesting websites accumulated over the years, and make a selection of things I think will specifically interest LWers. There are still a lot of links, because I sift through large swats of information. This is a valuable recourse, don't dismiss it just because it's badly organized.

I've also tried adding some descriptions because people were complaining about that.

I recommend checking out every one of these, and spreading it out over a few weeks.

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/breathmed.html (meditation is a useful habit, this is a very concrete tutorial on how to do it.)

http://www.epicsplosion.com/epicsploitation/38 (A silly thing, please contribute to make it better!)

http://www.mspaintadventures.com/ (one of the most epic stories of our time, with great characters and concepts. It's long and starts slow, so just be patient.)

http://www.ted.com/ (ideas worth spreading)

http://dresdencodak.com/ (Awesome art, and deals more directly with the singularity than any other webcomic i know of)

http://vihart.com/ (distilled nerdyness)

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality (Eliezers masterful rationalist fanfiction)

http://utilitarian-essays.com/ (some LW like articles)

http://thejuicemedia.com/ (Warning! Mindkiller!)(Although the political alignment probably is similar to much of LW, that's not the reason to watch these. That reason is it being a fantastic example of how art and humour can communicate serous things better than solemnity can.)

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/ (random funny blog)

http://extvia.deviantart.com/gallery/ (Awesome arts that I for some reason have a strong intuition most LWers will love)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U (funny rant relevant to Joy in the merely real)

http://people.mokk.bme.hu/~daniel/rationality_quotes/rq.html (like the rationaltiy quote threads here on LW? This is a compilation of the best ones.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeJ6-gN0eB4 (If you ae rational enoguht to overcome your prejudices to wathing this, you will discover it's amazingly good art and even has antidepresant properties.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEUxlwb2uFI (WTF?!)

http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbulb.html (pretty pictures!)

http://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oa-story&story=dr_yes_jolonah (scary story, gives you an healthy appreciation for what might happen if you fail to win.)

http://www.kuro5hin.org/prime-intellect/mopiidx.html (good free scifi)

http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1857290 (good free scifi)

http://www.raikoth.net/Stuff/story1.html (good free scifi)

http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/under.htm (good free scifi)

http://www.pixelscapes.com/sailornothing/ (fiction)

http://www.xeper.org/maquino/nm/Morlindale.pdf (LotR fanfiction)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxucpPq6Lc&feature=player_embedded (good animation about copies, reminds me about Eliezers "the simple truth")

http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.0646 (Tegmarks original Mathematical Universe paper)

http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html (Classic parable about death)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfRVCaA5o18&feature=player_embedded (interesting facts that are very telling about how the brain works)

http://gwynethllewelyn.net/2006/07/09/what-is-real-anyway-an-essay-by-extropia-dasilva/

http://hanson.gmu.edu/mangledworlds.html (What an explanation to the born probabilities might look like.)

http://www.000webhost.com/ (great free webhost, donate the money you'd have paid for hosting to the SIAI instead)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGFqfTCL2fs (everyone who regularly dives a car must see this)

http://www.symphonyofscience.com/videos.html (Awesome music to help you take joy in the real)

http://www.erfworld.com/book-1-archive/ (webcomic)

http://www.webcomicsnation.com/shaenongarrity/narbonic/series.php?view=archive&chapter=9802 (webcomic)

http://unicornjelly.com/uni001.html (webcomic)

http://www.project-apollo.net/mos/index.html (webcomic)

http://www.rhjunior.com/totq/00001.html (webcomic)

Judges' parole decisions are heavily influenced by how recently they ate

More than two years ago, Vladimir Nesov linked to Tim Minchin's beat poem Storm. More recently, it's been animated -- very nicely, I think.

Summary: a rationalist goes to a London dinner party and meets an astrology-spouting, truth-is-just-opinion opining girl and goes off, much to the annoyance of everyone else in the room.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6f5bcn_z0Qg

3 minute animated video with enough going on to make at least 10 movies. Maybe 100.

Khan Academy and the Effectiveness of Science Videos

If Modern Humans Are So Smart, Why Are Our Brains Shrinking?

Phonetic Clues Hint Language Is Africa-Born

The detection of such an ancient signal in language is surprising. Because words change so rapidly, many linguists think that languages cannot be traced very far back in time. The oldest language tree so far reconstructed, that of the Indo-European family, which includes English, goes back 9,000 years at most.

Quentin D. Atkinson, a biologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, has shattered this time barrier, if his claim is correct, by looking not at words but at phonemes — the consonants, vowels and tones that are the simplest elements of language. Dr. Atkinson, an expert at applying mathematical methods to linguistics, has found a simple but striking pattern in some 500 languages spoken throughout the world: A language area uses fewer phonemes the farther that early humans had to travel from Africa to reach it.

The Science Of Why We Don't Believe Science - details the cognitive biases involved in the way humans deal with information. None of this will be a surprise to LW readers, but still a nice article to spread.

People over 40 are happier, better at judging situations, and a few other things relative to young'uns

Too Damned Quiet?, arXiv.org - Submitted on 4 Apr 2011

It is often suggested that extraterrestial life sufficiently advanced to be capable of interstellar travel or communication must be rare, since otherwise we would have seen evidence of it by now. This in turn is sometimes taken as indirect evidence for the improbability of life evolving at all in our universe. A couple of other possibilities seem worth considering. One is that life capable of evidencing itself on interstellar scales has evolved in many places but that evolutionary selection, acting on a cosmic scale, tends to extinguish species which conspicuously advertise themselves and their habitats. The other is that -- whatever the true situation -- intelligent species might reasonably worry about the possible dangers of self-advertisement and hence incline towards discretion. These possibilities are discussed here, and some counter-arguments and complicating factors are also considered.

Today's xkcd: A timeline of major events in the next century, generated by Googling things like "in " and "will * by the year ".

(I like juxtapositions like "robots granted same rights as humans" followed shortly by "humans have domesticated robots" ... "Lord Jesus rules Earth from throne in Jerusalem" + "entire world population gay due to chemicals in the water" + "public masturbation legalized" ... "Singularity occurs" + "fishing industry collapses". (I bet...))

This adorable comic seems like some sort of transhumanist metaphor at the end but damned if I can explain how.

Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice?

Some bitcoin links:

• Bitcoin -- the main bitcoin site
• We Use Coins -- a basic introduction
• MyBitCoin -- an e-wallet service
• CoinPal -- a place to buy bitcoins using paypal

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/03/30/how-to-get-tenure-at-a-major-research-university/

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/03/31/how-to-get-tenure-at-almost-every-other-research-university/

Pretty interesting discussion of how the criteria for tenure at top universities differ from those at others, especially since the ultra-focus top universities demand actually could be counter-thetical to scientific creativity, as shown in Simonton's "Psychology of Science" books.

The Seven Most Discussed Scientific Biases

Hey! Just found a link that reminded me of LW!

http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html

I just stumbled upon it and am a bit sceptical as to it's accuracy, but it's interesting and relevant enough to link I think.

The always readable Rebecca Solnit has an article in the march issue of LMD that's relevant to Less Wrong's interests, the stuff on mental disaster kits is a nice idea, the anti-nuclear stuff is instructive in it's dishonesty: ArticleHere

This Collection of articles on medical reforms is specific to Britain, but the statistics abuse documented is common the world over, I particularly recommend the article on cancer stats.

I never really understood the fuss over cooking for engineers, but this vaguely similar idea is wonderful.

Also: Webcomics! Comics on the internet. Who doesn't enjoy Webcomics? Only the craziest of individuals that's for sure! Webcomics!

Here are some fanc pictures which don't involve webcomics

Also, I'll take this down if it doesn't work for non-members, but this forum thread is the closest thing to one of those "well we should have a bunch of crappy smug fwd:fwd:fwd:fwd jokes but for atheists instead of christians" that's actually made me laugh (by the same people who brought you this I gather). Since I've seen this sort of internet infidels stuff brought up a few times I thought people here might get a kick out of it!

Is Sugar Toxic? - NYTimes.com

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This Year, Transhumanism Will Stop Sounding Crazy

An interesting project, if it gets off the ground.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/benway/arc-island-a-brave-new-civilization