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Wikipedia article on LessWrong, the community blog founded by Eliezer Yudkowsky that became a foundational hub for AI safety, rationalism, and effective altruism discourse, hosting key early discussions on AI alignment and existential risk.

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Importance: 62/100wiki pagereference

Summary

LessWrong is a community blog and forum founded in 2009 by Eliezer Yudkowsky, focused on rationality, cognitive biases, and AI safety. It served as an early incubator for AI alignment thinking and the effective altruism movement. It is notable for 'The Sequences' essays and discussions including Roko's basilisk thought experiment.

Key Points

  • •Founded in 2009 by Eliezer Yudkowsky, growing from the Overcoming Bias blog; became a central hub for rationalist and AI safety communities.
  • •Hosts 'The Sequences', influential essays on improving human reasoning, decision-making, and evaluating evidence using Bayesian methods.
  • •Played a significant role in developing the effective altruism movement; 31% of early EA adopters first heard of EA through LessWrong.
  • •Covers AI alignment, AI safety, existential risk, transhumanism, and the technological singularity.
  • •Subject of the 2019 book 'The AI Does Not Hate You' by Tom Chivers, reflecting its cultural significance in AI safety discourse.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 
 
 
 
 
 
 Rationality-focused community blog 
 For the concept of choosing the least undesirable of available options, see lesser evil . 
 

 LessWrong Type of site Internet forum , blog Available in English Created by Eliezer Yudkowsky URL LessWrong.com Registration Optional, but is required for contributing content Launched February 1, 2009 &#59; 17 years ago  ( 2009-02-01 ) Current status Active Written in JavaScript , CSS (powered by React and GraphQL ) 
 LessWrong (also written Less Wrong ) is a community blog and forum focused on discussion of cognitive biases , philosophy , psychology , economics , rationality , and artificial intelligence , among other topics. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] It is associated with the rationalist community .

 
 Purpose

 [ edit ] 
 LessWrong describes itself as an online forum and community aimed at improving human reasoning, rationality, and decision-making, with the goal of helping its users hold more accurate beliefs and achieve their personal objectives. [ 3 ] The best known posts of LessWrong are "The Sequences", a series of essays which aim to describe how to avoid the typical failure modes of human reasoning with the goal of improving decision-making and the evaluation of evidence. [ 4 ] [ 5 ] One suggestion is the use of Bayes' theorem as a decision-making tool. [ 2 ] There is also a focus on psychological barriers that prevent good decision-making, including fear conditioning and cognitive biases , that have been studied by the psychologist Daniel Kahneman . [ 6 ] LessWrong is also concerned with artificial intelligence, transhumanism , existential threats , and the singularity . [ 7 ] 

 History

 [ edit ] 
 Eliezer Yudkowsky at Stanford University in 2006 
 LessWrong developed from Overcoming Bias, an earlier group blog focused on human rationality, which began in November 2006, with artificial intelligence researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky and economist Robin Hanson as the principal contributors. In February 2009, Yudkowsky's posts were used as the seed material to create the community blog LessWrong, and Overcoming Bias became Hanson's personal blog. [ 8 ] In 2013, a significant portion of the rationalist community shifted focus to Scott Alexander's Slate Star Codex . [ 4 ] 

 Artificial intelligence

 [ edit ] 
 Discussions of AI within LessWrong include AI alignment , AI safety , [ 9 ] and machine consciousness . [ citation needed ] Articles posted on LessWrong about AI have been cited in the news media. [ 9 ] [ 10 ] LessWrong, and its surrounding movement work on AI are the subjects of the 2019 book The AI Does Not Hate You , written by former BuzzFeed science correspondent Tom Chivers. [ 11 ] [ 12 ] [ 13 ] 

 Effective altruism

 [ edit ] 
 LessWrong played a significant role in the development of the effec

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