Progress Report, Jan 2014

Currently 3,341 words into Ch. 102.  I don’t know if I’ll post this chapter immediately upon its completion; after that starts the Final Arc which may take a while to write, so I may save 102 as a brief interlude during that long drought.  (Ch. 102 is shaping up to be short.  But not boring, rest assured.)

Among the guilty pleasures of my recent reading is MLP Loops (an endless series of one-shot stories about increasing numbers of Equestrians in a Groundhog Day Loop; this idea really should not have worked for 445,000 words, but I’m still reading).  If you don’t know the series, don’t try to start with this story.  I’ve also been working my way through City of Angles (non-fanfic, original world).

The Center for Applied Rationality is now at $47,840 out of $150,000 in its matching fundraiser, and your donations will be greatly appreciated.  Please read this post (which went up a few days ago) for a more detailed account of what CFAR did in 2013, and what it hopes to do in 2014.  In particular they hope to focus more on epistemic rationality training (better modeling the world); and more formal experimentation, including some potential academic collaborations, to verify what works.  (Also good news for scaling up: yesterday the Wall Street Journal published a positive article on CFAR.)  CFAR’s workshops are net-cash-positive and subsidize CFAR’s ongoing research and non-revenue endeavors, but not completely; CFAR still needs your donations to keep going.  We can live in a saner tomorrow – if we all pitch in.

The next Progress Report will be on Feb 1st, 2014 at 5pm Pacific Time.  (Sorry for forgetting to mention that previously!)