The LessWrong Diaspora is a set of loosely affiliated, often independent blogs and social networks which sprung up from the ruins of the community blog LessWrong. Diaspora ranges from the rigorously serious venues focused on existential risk or philosophy, to what are essentially cyber orgies of particularly high Openness people who have shared culture.
| | Author | Purpose/Focus | Example Post |
| Untitled | John David Pressman | Politics Effective Action Computer History Tutorials | The Favored Mindset |
| Otium | Sarah Constantin | Medicine Skepticism Philosophy | Sepsis Cure Needs An RCT |
| Cold Takes | Holden Karnofsky | AI Philosophy Human Values Futurology | The Most Important Century (in a nutshell) |
| Minding Our Way | Nate Soares | Effective Action Psychology Reducing Malignant Inhibitions | Confidence all the way up |
| Thing of Things | Ozy Frantz | Sexuality Gender Culture Wars Psychology | Cis By Default |
| Slate Star Codex | Scott Alexander | Psychology Medicine Philosophy History Sociology Culture Wars Problems In Society Politics Whale Puns | Book Review: House of God |
| Overcoming Bias | Robin Hanson | Psychology History Futurology Contrarianism Evolutionary Psychology Epistemics | School Isn’t For Learning |
| Agenty Duck | Brienne Yudkowsky | Psychology Esoteric Secrets Effective Action Introspection Values | When Your Left Arm Becomes A Chicken |
| KnowingLess | Aella | Sexuality Porn Drugs Psychology Surveys Culture Wars | How Taboo Are These Sexual Fetishes? |
| Clear Language, Clear Mind | Emil O. W. Kirkegaard | Psychology 'Rationality' Science of Intelligence Eugenics Genetics | Against CFAR |
| Cognitive Pie | Said Achmiz | History Soviet History Human Computer Interaction Software Design Gaming | Soviet kids’ atlas |
| Melting Asphalt | Kevin Simler | Sociology Philosophy Empiricism 'Rationality' | Personhood: A Game for Two or More Players |
| MIRI Blog | Machine Intelligence Research Institute | AI Philosophy Human Values | September 2017 Newsletter |
| Gwern.net | Gwern Branwen | Sociology Drugs Cryptocurrencies Darknet Statistics Genetics Philosophy Politics | The Melancholy of Subculture Society |
| Don't Worry About The Vase | TheZvi | 'Rationalist' Community 'Rationality' Perverse Incentives Lifestyle Philosophy | Best of Don’t Worry About the Vase |
| Compass Rose | Benjamin Hoffman | 'Rationality' Philosophy | The order of the soul |
| Entirely Useless | Anonymous | Catholicism History Mathematics Politics Theology | Zombies and Ignorance of the Formal Cause |
| Minds Aren't Magic | Paul Crowley | Global Poverty 'Rationality' Mathematics | The long scale of utility |
| Chris Stucchio | Chris Stucchio | Mathematics Statistics Computing Economics | A High Frequency Trader's Apology, Pt 1 |
| Permit Doubting Values | PDV | Lifestyle Productivity Free Speech Culture Wars | How I Use Beeminder |
| DSPEYER | Daniel Speyer | Philosophy Statistics Science Politics | Recently reread Scott's review of Seeing Like A State and … |
| Everything Studies | John Nerst | Philosophy Psychology Culture | Science, the Constructionists, and Reality |
| Untitled | Grognor | Personal 'Rationality' | Detachment Examined |
| Particular Virtue | Evictorial | Psychology Software Engineering Sociology | Save Your Work |
| Seattle RRG Reading Notes | Seattle Rationality Reading Group | LessWrong LessWrong Diaspora and related subjects | October 02 2017 RRG Notes |
| Eukaryote Writes Blog | Georgia | Effective Altruism Existential Risk | Biotic replacement and evolutionary innovation as a global catastrophic risk |
| Put A Number On It! | Jacob Falkovich | 'Rationality' Mathematics | Shopping for Happiness |
| Bayesian Investor Blog | Peter McCluskey | 'Rationality' Markets Investing | Financial Procrastination |
| Solar Panel | Proof Of Logic | 'Rationality' Psychology Introspection | Judgement as Fake Explanation |
| BearLamp | Elo | Psychology Problem Solving | List of common human goals |
| SquirrelInHell | SquirrelInHell | 'Rationality' AI Philosophy Psychology | The AI Alignment Problem Has Already Been Solved(?) Once |
| drossbucket | drossbucket | Mathematics 'Rationality' | Metarationality: a messy introduction |
| Malcolm Ocean | Malcolm | Mental models Productivity | Honing mode vs Jamming mode (in conversation) |
| An Algorithmic Lucidity | Zack M. Davis | Philosophy Programming | Counterfactual Social Thought |
| Hivewired | Fiona Nightingale | Science 'Rationality' Politics Transhumanism | An Introduction to Origin |
| BriefLiteraryAbandon | DisplayName | Books Law | In which I borrow Popehat.com’s sock puppet, and attempt to explain 12(b)6 motions and crappy journalism. |
| YHWH Memorial School for Error Correction in Signal Processing | Moshe | Bible studies | Flood-resistant lineages: Genesis 6-9 |
| Stories by Freddie deBoer on Medium | Fredrik deBoer | Politics | the three hot trends in Silicon Valley horseshit |
| Fredrik deBoer's Blog | Fredrik deBoer | Education Politics | Lesson Plan: Teaching Prose Style to Freshmen |
| Sailor Vulcan's Starship | Sailor Vulcan | 'Rationality' Philosophy Literature | A Definitive Rebuttal Against Solipsism and Ontological Nihilism, and a Potential Solution to the Paradox of the First Cause |
| Nintil | Artir | Politics Insight Porn Philosophy Economics | Indian feminism and the role of the environment: Why the Google memo is still right |
| Name and Nature | Paul Wright | Religion Philosophy Science | Q: When is a person like a rock? A: When there’s no God |
| Anonymous Mugwump | Anonymous Mugwump | Media Geopolitics | Mein weltanschauung |
| nothing is mere | Rob Bensinger | 'Rationality' Philosophy Science | Ditch the word “hypocrite” |
| Qualia Computing | Algekalipso | AI Consciousness Ethics | The Most Important Philosophical Question |
| The Open Philanthropy Blog | David Roodman | Philanthropy Criminology | Maybe the Murder Rate Levelled Off This Year? |
| ribbonfarm | Multiple Authors | Insight Porn | The World As If |
| Andrew Critch | Andrew Critch | AI Effective Altruism 'Rationality' | Deserving Trust / Grokking Newcomb’s Problem |
| Wait But Why | Tim Urban | Insight Porn Technology | The Elon Musk Post Series |
| Ferocious Truth | J Thomas Moros | Philosophy Mathematics AI 'Rationality' | Ferocious Truth |
| Map and Territory | G Gordon Worley III | Ethics Psychology | Nothing is Forbidden, but Some Things are Good |
| Giving Gladly | Julia Wise | Lifestyle Effective Altruism | Practical steps for self-care |
| pseudoerasmus | pseudoerasmus | History Economics | McCloskey: Cotton wasn’t crucial to the Industrial Revolution |
| Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science | Andrew Gelman | Statistics Science | Should we worry about rigged priors? A long discussion. |
| GiveDirectly Blog | Multiple Authors | Effective Altruism | Long term impacts of cash transfers here at home |
| The Rationalist Conspiracy | Alyssa Vance | Science Politics Philosophy Personal | Four Layers of Intellectual Conversation |
| Small Truths | Daniel Klein | Insight Porn Politics | Don't be a Reactionary |
| Aceso Under Glass | Anonymous | Science Effective Altruism Gaming | Seeing Like A State, Flashlights, and Giving This Year |
| Venam's Blog | Patrick Louis | Technology Insight Porn | Parts Of Life That Shouldn't Be Brought Back |
| Brute Reason | Miri | Philosophy Community 'Rationality' | Emotional Labor: What It Is and How To Do It |
| The Giving What We Can Blog | Multiple Authors | Effective Altruism | The Economic Benefits of Malaria Eradication |
| Kaj Sotala | Kaj Sotala | Personal Insight Porn 'Rationality' | How I found & fixed the root problem behind my depression and anxiety after 20+ years |
| The sideways view | Paul Christiano | AI Effective Altruism 'Rationality' | If we can’t lie to others, we will lie to ourselves |
| @meditationstuff | meditationstuff | Meditation Personal Health 'Rationality' | TL;DR Nutrition Recommendations v1.0 (Nutrition for people who don’t want to think about it AT ALL.) |
| AI Alignment | Paul Christiano | AI | Security and AI alignment |
| The GiveWell Blog | Multiple Authors | Effective Altruism | Why we’re allocating discretionary funds to the Deworm the World Initiative |
| Unenumerated | Nick Szabo | Politics Economics Anthopology | Conflict and collectibles among the Yurok |
| Luke Muehlhauser | Luke Muehlhauser | AI Effective Altruism Personal Science | Three wild speculations from amateur quantitative macrohistory |
| sam[ ]zdat | Lou Keep | Personal Insight Porn 'Rationality' | Selection Bias in the Quarry |
| Foundational Research Institute | Multiple Authors | AI X-Risk Ethics | Training neural networks to detect suffering |
| 80,000 Hours | Multiple Authors | Effective Altruism Careers Technology | 5 reasons not to go into education |
| Rationally Speaking | Julia Galef | 'Rationality' Science Psychology | RS 190 - Amanda Askell on "Pascal's Wager and other low risks with high stakes" |
| Lettuce be Cereal | Joāo Eira | 'Rationality' | (Ir)rationality is in the Eye of the Beholder |
| Noahpinion | Noah Smith | Economics Finance Politics | The margin of stupid |
| EconTalk | Multiple Authors | Economics Politics | Doug Lemov on Teaching |
| greyenlightenment.com | Multiple Authors | Politics Insight Porn Current Affairs | The wall: it ain’t happening |
| Jeff Kaufman's Writing | Jeff Kaufman | Technology Current Affairs AI Economics Effective Altruism | Scientific Charity Movement |
| protokol2020 | protokol2020 | Mathematics Philosophy | Sleeping Beauty Problem Variant |
| Julia Galef | Julia Galef | 'Rationality' Current Affairs | Can we intentionally improve the world? Planners vs. Hayekians |
| Rationality through Board games | Anonymous | Games 'Rationality' | Dealing with secret information |
| benkuhn.net | Ben Kuhn | Mathematics Technology 'Rationality' | The St. Petersburg “paradox” |
| Eli Bendersky's website | Eli Bendersky | Technology | How to JIT - an introduction |
| The Merely Real | Chana Messinger | 'Rationality' Effective Altruism Education | Of Foxes, Hedgehogs, and Radicals |
| Meteuphoric | Katja Grace | 'Rationality' | Perfect principles are for bargaining |
| mindlevelup | Owen Shen | 'Rationality' Motivation Self-Help | The Best Self-Help Should Be Self-Defeating |
| Bartleby’s Backpack | Tom Bartleby | Philosophy 'Rationality' | Contra Yudkowsky on Quidditch—and a meta point |
| Ben Models the World | Benjamin Hoffman | AI 'Rationality' | Make more disjunctions explicit |
| The Bayesian Conspiracy | Multiple Authors | 'Rationality' | 34 – Lies, All Lies! |
| Status 451 | Multiple Authors | Free Speech 'Rationality' Politics | Judging things by their side effects |
| Random Critical Analysis | RCAFDM | Statistics Economics | US life expectancy is below naive expectations mostly because it economically outperforms |
| Intelligent Agent Foundations Forum | Multiple Authors | AI Decision Theory | Delegative Inverse Reinforcement Learning |
| Alere Sonore | Accalia | Psychology Effective Altruism Philosophy Personal | Your Field Is Not The Best Field, And My Field Is Pretty Cool |
| pirate.london | Chris Monteiro | Transhumanism Cybercrime | Transhumanist talks in the last 6 months |
| H+Pedia | Chris Monteiro, David Wood, others | Transhumanism | Comparison of futurist related ideas and positions |
| Blog Name | Author | Purpose/Focus | Example Post |
|---|
| Slate Star Scratchpad | Scott Alexander | Psychology Medicine Philosophy History Sociology Culture Wars Problems In Society Politics Whale Puns | “Today at the child hospital, I asked a kid if he knew what his diagnosis was...” |
| Ragged Jack Scarlet | Anonymous | Sociology Insight Porn Memes Psychology Culture Wars | Mythic Values/Folk Values |
| Academician Zex | Anonymous | Alcoholism Homosexuality Sexuality Memes Cute Animals Culture Wars Cartoons Video Games | The 80/20 rule and the addiction lobby |
| Wirehead Wannabe | Anonymous | Depression Suicide Youth Rights Politics Culture Wars | “I gotta admit...” |
| Forum Name | Forum Type | Topic Focus | Administrator(s) | Moderation Type | Updated |
| Name of the forum. eg. LessWrong | What ”kind” of forum it is. For example LessWrong might be described as “community blog”, Reddit as “link aggregator”. | What the forum is about. For example LessWrong might be described as “Attempts to explore ‘the art of human rationality’.” | Who is the head moderator or maintainer of the forum. For example LessWrong when it was founded would have been Eliezer Yudkowsky. | Loose, Medium, or Strict. Loose being none to very little, Strict being “goofing off gets you banned in 15 minutes”, and Medium being somewhere in between. | The date that the entry was last touched in YYYY-MM-DD format. eg. 2017-10-06. |
| LessWrong 2.0 | Community Blog | Attempting the creation of a 'rationality canon'. | Vaniver, Oliver Habryka | Medium | 2019-01-06 |
| Whistling Lobsters | Link Aggregator | "Whistling Lobsters aims to stand at the intersection of interesting, useful, and excellent." | Obormot | Strict | 2017-10-06 |
| /r/slatestarcodex | Subreddit | Slate Star Codex community and related topics | Bakkot, _Vulture_, coderman9, PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN, ScottAlexander, tailcalled, werttrew, utilsucks, cjet79 | Medium | 2017-10-07 |
| /r/rational | Subreddit | Rational and rationalist fiction | ParidexisErrant, alexanderwales, eaturbrainz | Loose | 2017-10-09 |
| /r/HPMOR | Subreddit | Analysis of "Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality" | jaiwithani, V2Blast, EliezerYudkowsky, bbrazil, noking, alexanderwales | Loose | 2017-10-09 |
| Effective Altruism Forum | Community Blog | This forum brings together people who want to change the world, to make plans and share announcements. | Larissa Hesketh-Rowe, Julia Wise | Medium | 2017-10-09 |
| Omnilibrium | Debate Forum | Rational Discussion of Controversial Topics | Unknown | Medium | 2017-10-09 |
| Cafe Chesscourt | BBS | A forum for the rationalist community | theojones | Medium | 2017-10-15 |
| | Topic Focus | Size | Administrator | Moderation Type | Updated |
| What the chatroom is named. eg. #lesswrong would be… #lesswrong. | What topics the chatroom typically focuses on. eg. #lesswrong might be: Gwern Branwen, Cryptocurrency, Information Technology, AI, 'Rationalist' Community, Insight Porn | How many users (including lurkers) does the channel have? This is usually listed somewhere in the interface. | Who controls the chatroom? eg. #lesswrong might be: Gwern Branwen, or namespace depending on your political opinions. | Loose, Medium, or Strict. Loose being none to very little, Strict being “goofing off gets you banned in 15 minutes”, and Medium being somewhere in between. | The date that the entry was last touched in YYYY-MM-DD format. eg. 2017-10-06. |
| #lesswrong (Freenode) | Gwern Branwen, Cryptocurrency, Information Technology, AI, 'Rationalist' Community, Insight Porn | 277 | Gwern Branwen | Strict | 2017-10-06 |
| ##hplusroadmap (Freenode) | Cryptocurrency, Hardware, Biohacking, Transhumanism | 86 | kanzure | Strict | 2017-10-09 |
| #slatestarcodex (Freenode) | Scott Alexander, Culture Wars, Lifestyle | 83 | Drethelin | Strict | 2017-10-09 |
| #chapelperilous (Freenode) | Postrationality, Religion, Culture Wars, Neoreaction | 23 | lucidian | Loose | 2017-10-09 |
| lesswrongers slack | full scope, solving problems. | 500 registered, 40 active weekly | Elo | walled garden, low moderation needed. | 2017-10-07 |
| SSC Discord | Psychology, Scott Alexander, Sexuality, Culture Wars | ~300 | deluks917 | Strict | 2017-10-06 |
| LessWrong Discord | rationality, irrationality, shitposting, Less Wrong 2.0 support/development (not actively monitored by the LW 2.0 team) | 440 (low activity) | ex cinera | firm but gentle | 2017-10-19 |
| Russian LessWrong Slack | Futurism, Coworking, Russia, Don't Be Shy Most People Speak English! | 2000+ registered, ~150 WAU (~50 are posting), and ~80 DAU (~25 are posting) | berekuk | reign of terror | 2019-03-31 |
| Doissetep | Chatroom aggregator, participants own and moderate 'shards' with different norms. Topics span everything from X-Risk to cuddling. | ~300 | Admin: Gray; Moderators: amanda, Lilly, nightpool | Varies between rooms, Medium from server moderators | 2019-10-28 |
| exegesis | brain hacking, personal advice, mathematics, autistic special interests, community, sexuality | ~350 (almost inactive though) | celestia | loose unfortunately | 2019-06-03 |
| a compelling narrative | Above all, ACN is the the cool place to hang out. You can find most of the cool people here. In ACN, you can just chill and do whatever and totally relax. "Take it easy" is the ACN motto, for example, that's how laid back it is here. Show up if you want to have a good time. | 349 | ex cinera | Medium in most channel, loose in #hell | 2019-03-31 |
| Biggest Spotlight discord (Contact Hivewired#6054 on discord) | Splinter of Exegesis, full scope, mental health, non-binary genders | ~100 (inactive) | Hive | community | 2017-10-07 |
| EA Corner | Effective Altruism | 360 | apprenticebard, lintamande, Pedro, Taymon, Throne3d | Medium | 2019-04-02 |
