I want to read good blog posts, but I don't have enough time to exhaustively read all the blogs I like.
And I'm sure there are good bloggers who I've never heard of.
At the end of February, I will read (at least) the top 5 blog posts in this market.
I'll resolve the market to the one I think is best, where "best" means something like "Is this the kind of blog post that I'll look back on in a year and think 'Yeah, I'm glad I spent the time to read that post'?" So I will be mildly inclined against posts about current news, since I don't think I'll care much about them in a year. (But posts about current events can still win, e.g. a post that convinces me that nuclear war is imminent and I should move to the countryside. So news articles are not excluded.).
And I'll be inclined against choosing posts I've already read. I haven't done much reading in 2023, so anything published this year is probably something I haven't read.
I like the following blogs:
- https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/
- https://marginalrevolution.com/
- https://www.overcomingbias.com
- https://betonit.substack.com/
- https://www.econlib.org/author/ssumner/
- https://www.themoneyillusion.com/
- https://applieddivinitystudies.com/
- https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com
- http://paulgraham.com/articles.html
- https://fantasticanachronism.com/
- https://news.manifold.markets/
- https://thezvi.wordpress.com
- https://radimentary.wordpress.com
- https://xenaproject.wordpress.com
- Eliezer Yudkowsky's Sequences
I will not look at those blogs in February, so they're a good source of unread posts that I'll probably like.
If you read one of these blogs, your taste is probably similar to mine, so go with the posts you like most.
I will not choose anything published by Astral Codex Ten, since I'll read all the ACX posts anyway, and ACX would likely win the competition if I put it on here.
Please do not recommend books. If you want to recommend a long sequence of posts, pick one of them.
If your response is "I can't figure out what posts you'll like because I don't know how you think/what you find funny", I suggest taking a look at https://lettertok.substack.com/p/resolving-januarys-manifold-market, which I wrote about resolving the previous version of this market.
🏅 Top traders
| # | Name | Total profit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ṁ1,117 |
Whoops, I've procrastinated on resolving this. Sorry to all the bettors
My takeaways (not guaranteed to be full summaries):
- https://trevorklee.substack.com/p/why-im-now-making-drugs-for-cats
- Cool idea---if getting a drug approved is too hard in humans, try doing it in cats
- This article led me to https://trevorklee.substack.com/p/how-to-win-an-election-in-10-easy
- Which summarizes Dominic Cummings's blogs on how he campaigned for Brexit
- I think this article will stick with me the most (even though it wasn't the one linked)
- https://www.residentcontrarian.com/p/another-semi-insider-article-about
- My main takeaway: A writer's output is limited by (1) how fast they can find good ideas and (2) how fast they can turn good ideas into good words
- Cracked was able to outsource (1), increasing the articles/hour of their writing staff
- https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/08/16/voting3.html
- The challenges of making a cryptocurrency governance system that can't be taken over by bribery
- If I understood it right
- I've previously read https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/26/snarks.html, which was fascinating
- https://mindingourway.com/steering-towards-forbidden-conversations/
- I came across this post in 2021
- An important idea (don't avoid the conversations that feel awkward) that I haven't followed as much as I should
- https://meltingasphalt.com/social-status-down-the-rabbit-hole/
- People do prestigious/prosocial things because it makes the rest of their group more likely to treat them well
- Reminds me of Geoffrey Miller's The Mating Mind, which I liked (although I'm never quite sure how much of evolutionary psychology is true)
- Wow, office disagreements gone really wrong
I forgot to mention that I also like https://dynomight.net/. But I've already read "Winner take all science" and "buy more copies", so I won't choose those posts. I'll avoid looking at Dynomight for the rest of the month, so if they publish a great new post and you bet on it, I might very well choose it