Timeline of the rationality community

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This is a timeline of the rationality community (sometimes also called the "rationalist community").

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Full timeline

Year Month and date Event type Details
1996 November 18 Eliezer Yudkowsky writes the first version of "Staring into the Singularity".[1]
1998 January 15 Wei Dai announces the creation of the "everything" mailing list, a mailing list for the discussion of modal realism.[2][3]
2000 February 6 The first email is sent on SL4 ("Shock Level Four"), a mailing list about transhumanism, superintelligent AI, existential risks, and so on.[4][5]
2000 July Machine Intelligence Research Institute is founded as the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence.[6]:3
2006 November Robin Hanson starts Overcoming Bias.[7] The first post on the blog seems to be from November 20.[8] On one of the earliest snapshots of the blog, the listed contributors are: Nick Bostrom, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Robin Hanson, Eric Schliesser, Hal Finney, Nicholas Shackel, Mike Huemer, Guy Kahane, Rebecca Roache, Eric Zitzewitz, Peter McCluskey, Justin Wolfers, Erik Angner, David Pennock, Paul Gowder, Chris Hibbert, David Balan, Patri Friedman, Lee Corbin, Anders Sandberg, and Carl Shulman.[9]
2007 March 28 A blog post from this day is probably the first time Bryan Caplan quotes Eliezer Yudkowsky.[10]
2008 November–December The AI-Foom debate between Robin Hanson and Eliezer Yudkowsky takes place. The blog posts from the debate would later be turned into an ebook by MIRI.[11][12]
2008 November 17 http://web.archive.org/web/20090123165853/http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/11/whither-ob.html https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=367406
2008 December 10 The lesswrong.com domain name is registered.[13]
2009 January 27 https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/oD9fmceuJ4AFdSQ9q/ob-status-update http://web.archive.org/web/20090131150554/http://robinhanson.typepad.com/overcomingbias/2009/01/ob-status-update.html
2009 February 23 https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/2om7AHEHtbogJmT5s/about-less-wrong
2009 February 26 "(A beta version of Less Wrong is now live, no old posts imported as yet. Some of the plans for what to do with Less Wrong relative to OB have been revised by further discussion among Robin, Nick, and myself, but for now we're just seeing what happens once LW is up - whether it's stable, what happens to the tone of comments once threading and voting is enabled, etcetera." "Posting by non-admins is disabled for now - today we're just testing out registration, commenting, threading, etcetera.)"[1]
2009 February Eliezer Yudkowsky starts LessWrong using as seed material his posts on Overcoming Bias.[14]
2009 March 5 https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/sr7n7WpiisSJ8oJk2/posting-now-enabled https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/LD5kLJEwzaPrc9cik/posting-now-enabled-on-less-wrong
2009 March 12 The LessWrong Wiki is created.[15]
2009 April 16 The LessWrong IRC channel exists as early as this date.[16]
2010 February 28 Publication The first chapter of Eliezer Yudkowsky's fan fiction Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is published. The book would be published as a serial concluding on March 14, 2015.[17][18] The fan fiction would become the initial contact with MIRI of several larger donors to MIRI.[19]
2010 May 4 The RationalWiki page on LessWrong is created.[20]
2010 July 23 The LessWrong user Roko publishes "Solutions to the Altruist's burden: the Quantum Billionaire Trick". The ideas in this post came to be known as "Roko's basilisk".[21][22]
2011 (summer) A rationality minicamp takes place.[23]
2011 July 18–26 Paperwork to establish the Center for Applied Rationality as a nonprofit is filed.[24][25]
2011 September 24 As early as this day there is a company called Personalized Medicine LLC co-founded by Michael Vassar and offering personalized medical help.[26][27][28][29]
2012 May 8 MIRI's April 2012 progress report is published, in which CFAR's name is announced. Until this point, CFAR was known as the "Rationality Group" or "Rationality Org".[30]
2013 February 13 Scott Alexander publishes the first post on his new blog, Slate Star Codex.[31]
2013 February 27 MetaMed, a personalized medical research company founded by Michael Vassar and other rationalist-adjacent people, officially launches.[32] A few days later Eliezer Yudkowsky would advertise the company on LessWrong.[33]
2013 December 31 Jonah Sinick announces Cognito Mentoring on LessWrong.[34]
2014 February 26 The Slate Star Codex subreddit, r/slatestarcodex, is created.[35]
2014 June 6 On LessWrong, discussion of mass-downvoting harassment begins to take place.[36]
2014 July 3 Eugine_Nier is banned from LessWrong for mass-downvoting harassment of certain users.[37]
2014 December 7 Eugine_Nier apparently returns under a different account (Azathoth123).[38]
2015 March 14 The serial publishing of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality concludes.
2015 August 28 The subreddit r/SneerClub is created as a place to "sneer" at the rationality community. (Connection to RationalWiki?)[39]
2015 September 4 The LessWrong Slack channel is announced.[40]
2015 December 23 On LessWrong, the user VoiceOfRa is banned for retributive downvoting.[41]
2016 Vaniver, Anna Salamon, et al. begin the "LessWrong revival"
2016 February 26 The Tumblr personality su3su2u1, who has been known for criticizing the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and Yudkowsky's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, admits to using various other pseudonyms and lying about personal details under those names.[42][43] Shortly later su3su2u1 would delete their account.[44][45][46]
2016 April 12 The 8chan board /ratanon/ is created around this time. The board hosts memes about rationalists as well as gossip of the rationality community, among other discussion.[47][48][49][50]
2016 May The Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant of $304,000 over two years to CFAR's Summer Program on Applied Rationality and Cognition (SPARC).[51]
2016 July The Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant of $1,035,000 over two years to CFAR.[52]
2016 August The Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant worth $500,000 to Machine Intelligence Research Institute. The grant writeup notes, "Despite our strong reservations about the technical research we reviewed, we felt that awarding $500,000 was appropriate for multiple reasons".[53]
2016 December 1 Downvoting on LessWrong is temporarily disabled.[54]
2017 May 30 The lesserwrong.com domain name is registered.[55]
2017 June 3 The RationalWiki page on MetaMed is created.[56]
2017 June 18 The "Welcome to Lesswrong 2.0" post is made on the lesserwrong.com domain.[57]
2017 February 22 During an "ask me anything" (AMA) on Reddit, the philosopher David Chalmers responds to a question about LessWrong, stating that he has "seen a lot of interesting ideas come from the 'rationalist' community".[58]
2017 September 20 Open beta of LessWrong 2.0 begins.[59][60]
2017 October 28 On LessWrong 2.0, Eliezer Yudkowsky publishes the first post in a new sequence/book called Inadequate Equilibria.[61] The post is cross-posted to the Effective Altruism Forum.[62]

Meta information on the timeline

How the timeline was built

The initial version of the timeline was written by Issa Rice.

Funding information for this timeline is available.

What the timeline is still missing

Timeline update strategy

See also

External links

References

  1. ↑ "Yudkowsky - Staring into the Singularity 1.2.5". Retrieved June 1, 2017. 
  2. ↑ "Wei_Dai comments on Shock Level 5: Big Worlds and Modal Realism - Less Wrong". LessWrong. Retrieved September 16, 2017. 
  3. ↑ Wei Dai. "Theory of Everything Mailing List". Retrieved September 16, 2017. 
  4. ↑ "SL4: By Date". Retrieved June 1, 2017. 
  5. ↑ Eliezer S. Yudkowsky. "SL4 Mailing List". Retrieved June 1, 2017. 
  6. ↑ "Form 990-EZ 2000" (PDF). Retrieved June 1, 2017. Organization was incorporated in July 2000 and does not have a financial history for years 1996-1999. 
  7. ↑ "Overcoming Bias : Bio". Retrieved June 1, 2017. 
  8. ↑ "Overcoming Bias: How To Join". Retrieved September 26, 2017. 
  9. ↑ "Overcoming Bias". Retrieved September 26, 2017. 
  10. ↑ Bryan Caplan (March 28, 2007). "Here is Wisdom". EconLog. Retrieved September 27, 2017. 
  11. ↑ "The Hanson-Yudkowsky AI-Foom Debate". Lesswrongwiki. LessWrong. Retrieved July 1, 2017. 
  12. ↑ "Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Thoughts on the Singularity Institute (SI) - Less Wrong". LessWrong. Retrieved July 15, 2017. Nonetheless, it already has a warm place in my heart next to the debate with Robin Hanson as the second attempt to mount informed criticism of SIAI. 
  13. ↑ "Showing results for: lesswrong.com". ICANN WHOIS. Retrieved September 27, 2017. Creation Date: 2008-12-10T23:29:03Z 
  14. ↑ "FAQ - Lesswrongwiki". LessWrong. Retrieved June 1, 2017. 
  15. ↑ "Revision history of "LessWrong Wiki" - Lesswrongwiki". LessWrong. Retrieved September 25, 2017. 
  16. ↑ "Revision history of "Less Wrong IRC Chatroom" - Lesswrongwiki". LessWrong. Retrieved September 25, 2017. 
  17. ↑ "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality Chapter 1: A Day of Very Low Probability, a harry potter fanfic". FanFiction. Retrieved July 1, 2017. Updated: 3/14/2015 - Published: 2/28/2010 
  18. ↑ David Whelan (March 2, 2015). "The Harry Potter Fan Fiction Author Who Wants to Make Everyone a Little More Rational". Vice. Retrieved July 1, 2017. 
  19. ↑ "2013 in Review: Fundraising - Machine Intelligence Research Institute". Machine Intelligence Research Institute. August 13, 2014. Retrieved July 1, 2017. Recently, we asked (nearly) every donor who gave more than $3,000 in 2013 about the source of their initial contact with MIRI, their reasons for donating in 2013, and their preferred methods for staying in contact with MIRI. […] Four came into contact with MIRI via HPMoR. 
  20. ↑ "Revision history of "LessWrong" - RationalWiki". Retrieved September 25, 2017. 
  21. ↑ "Roko's basilisk/Original post". RationalWiki. Retrieved February 26, 2017. 
  22. ↑ "Roko's basilisk - Lesswrongwiki". LessWrong. Retrieved February 26, 2017. 
  23. ↑ Anna Salamon (March 29, 2012). "Minicamps on Rationality and Awesomeness: May 11-13, June 22-24, and July 21-28". LessWrong. Retrieved July 11, 2017. 
  24. ↑ "Center for Applied Rationality Nonprofit IRS Approval" (PDF). Retrieved July 8, 2017. 
  25. ↑ Louie Helm (May 8, 2012). "Machine Intelligence Research Institute Progress Report, April 2012". Machine Intelligence Research Institute. Retrieved June 30, 2017. 
  26. ↑ "Our Staff - medicineispersonal2". Retrieved September 27, 2017. 
  27. ↑ "Our Company - medicineispersonal2". Retrieved September 27, 2017. 
  28. ↑ "Wayback Machine". Retrieved September 27, 2017. 
  29. ↑ Louie Helm (February 5, 2012). "Machine Intelligence Research Institute Progress Report, January 2012". Machine Intelligence Research Institute. Retrieved September 27, 2017. Michael Vassar officially left his role as President to work for his new company, Personalized Medicine. 
  30. ↑ Louie Helm (May 8, 2012). "Machine Intelligence Research Institute Progress Report, April 2012". Machine Intelligence Research Institute. Retrieved June 30, 2017. 
  31. ↑ "You're probably wondering why I've called you here today". Slate Star Codex. September 29, 2014. Retrieved February 26, 2017. 
  32. ↑ Scott Alexander (February 27, 2013). "MetaMed launch day". Slate Star Codex. Retrieved September 27, 2017. 
  33. ↑ "MetaMed: Evidence-Based Healthcare - Less Wrong". LessWrong. Retrieved September 27, 2017. 
  34. ↑ Jonah Sinick. "Cognito Mentoring: An advising service for intellectually curious students - Less Wrong". LessWrong. Retrieved September 24, 2017. 
  35. ↑ "moderators - r/slatestarcodex". Retrieved September 24, 2017. a community for 3 years [Wed Feb 26 05:15:26 2014 UTC] 
  36. ↑ Kaj Sotala. "[meta] Policy for dealing with users suspected/guilty of mass-downvote harassment? - Less Wrong Discussion". LessWrong. Retrieved September 24, 2017. 
  37. ↑ Kaj Sotala. "[moderator action] Eugine_Nier is now banned for mass downvote harassment - Less Wrong". LessWrong. Retrieved September 24, 2017. 
  38. ↑ Dahlen. "PSA: Eugine_Nier evading ban? - Less Wrong". LessWrong. Retrieved September 25, 2017. 
  39. ↑ "moderators - r/SneerClub". Retrieved June 1, 2017. 
  40. ↑ Elo. "Lesswrong real time chat - Less Wrong Discussion". LessWrong. Retrieved September 25, 2017. 
  41. ↑ NancyLebovitz. "Voiceofra is banned - Less Wrong". LessWrong. Retrieved September 25, 2017. 
  42. ↑ "Wading In — Clarification: I have, in the past, commented...". archive.is. February 27, 2016. Retrieved September 27, 2017. 
  43. ↑ "I'm the reason su3su2u1 just made this post". Slate Star Scratchpad. Retrieved September 27, 2017. 
  44. ↑ "Against Interminable Arguments". Slate Star Codex. March 7, 2016. Retrieved September 27, 2017. 
  45. ↑ "Open Thread 49.5". Slate Star Codex. May 18, 2016. Retrieved September 27, 2017. 
  46. ↑ "A Minion achieves Self Awareness. • r/SneerClub". reddit. Retrieved September 27, 2017. 
  47. ↑ "ratanon - Catalog". Retrieved September 24, 2017.  First post here is from April 12.
  48. ↑ "8ch.net/ratanon/*: /ratanon/ - Rationalists Anonymous". Retrieved September 24, 2017.  The first snapshot on archive.is is from April 18, 2016, a post from April 14.
  49. ↑ MonkeyTigerCommander (May 5, 2016). "Hate Reddit (but still inexplicably on Reddit, apparently)? Maybe /ratanon/ is the place for you. • r/slatestarcodex". reddit. Retrieved September 24, 2017.  r/slatestarcodex seems to discover it on May 5, 2016.
  50. ↑ offwo200 (August 12, 2016). "/ratanon/ - Rationalists Anonymous • r/slatestarcodex". reddit. Retrieved September 24, 2017.  Another discovery post from August 2016.
  51. ↑ "Center for Applied Rationality — SPARC". Open Philanthropy Project. Retrieved July 11, 2017. 
  52. ↑ "Center for Applied Rationality — General Support". Open Philanthropy Project. Retrieved July 11, 2017. 
  53. ↑ "Machine Intelligence Research Institute — General Support". Open Philanthropy Project. Retrieved June 30, 2017. 
  54. ↑ Vaniver. "Downvotes temporarily disabled - Less Wrong". LessWrong. Retrieved September 24, 2017. 
  55. ↑ "Showing results for: lesserwrong.com". ICANN WHOIS. Retrieved September 27, 2017. Creation Date: 2017-05-30T00:32:43Z 
  56. ↑ "Revision history of "MetaMed" - RationalWiki". Retrieved September 25, 2017. 
  57. ↑ Oliver Habryka. "Welcome to Lesswrong 2.0". Retrieved July 6, 2017. 
  58. ↑ "I'm David Chalmers, philosopher interested in consciousness, technology, and many other things. AMA. • r/philosophy". reddit. Retrieved September 27, 2017. 
  59. ↑ Vaniver. "LW 2.0 Open Beta starts 9/20 - Less Wrong Discussion". LessWrong. Retrieved September 24, 2017. 
  60. ↑ Habryka. "LW 2.0 Strategic Overview - Less Wrong Discussion". LessWrong. Retrieved September 24, 2017. 
  61. ↑ "Inadequacy and Modesty". Retrieved October 29, 2017. 
  62. ↑ "Inadequacy and Modesty". Effective Altruism Forum. Retrieved October 29, 2017. 
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