Timeline of the rationality community

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

Big picture

Full timeline

Year Month and date Event type Details
1998 January 15 Wei Dai announces the creation of the "everything" mailing list, a mailing list for the discussion of modal realism.[1][2]
1996 November 18 Eliezer Yudkowsky writes the first version of "Staring into the Singularity".[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]
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.[8][9]
2009 February Eliezer Yudkowsky starts LessWrong using as seed material his posts on Overcoming Bias.[10]
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".[11][12]
2012 The Center for Applied Rationality is founded.
2013 February 13 Scott Alexander publishes the first post on his new blog, Slate Star Codex.[13]
2013 December 31 Jonah Sinick announces Cognito Mentoring on LessWrong.[14]
2014 February 26 The Slate Star Codex subreddit, r/slatestarcodex, is created.[15]
2014 June 6 On LessWrong, discussion of mass-downvoting harassment begins to take place.[16]
2014 July 3 Eugine_Nier is banned from LessWrong for mass-downvoting harassment of certain users.[17]
2014 December 7 Eugine_Nier apparently returns under a different account (Azathoth123).[18]
2015 August 28 The subreddit r/SneerClub is created as a place to "sneer" at the rationality community. (Connection to RationalWiki?)[19]
2015 December 23 On LessWrong, the user VoiceOfRa is banned for retributive downvoting.[20]
2016 Vaniver, Anna Salamon, et al. begin the "LessWrong revival"
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.[21][22][23][24]
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).[25]
2016 July The Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant of $1,035,000 over two years to CFAR.[26]
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".[27]
2016 December 1 Downvoting on LessWrong is temporarily disabled.[28]
2017 June 18 The "Welcome to Lesswrong 2.0" post is made on the lesserwrong.com domain.[29]
2017 September 20 Open beta of LessWrong 2.0 begins.[30][31]

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. "Wei_Dai comments on Shock Level 5: Big Worlds and Modal Realism - Less Wrong". LessWrong. Retrieved September 16, 2017. 
  2. Wei Dai. "Theory of Everything Mailing List". Retrieved September 16, 2017. 
  3. "Yudkowsky - Staring into the Singularity 1.2.5". Retrieved June 1, 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. "The Hanson-Yudkowsky AI-Foom Debate". Lesswrongwiki. LessWrong. Retrieved July 1, 2017. 
  9. "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. 
  10. "FAQ - Lesswrongwiki". LessWrong. Retrieved June 1, 2017. 
  11. "Roko's basilisk/Original post". RationalWiki. Retrieved February 26, 2017. 
  12. "Roko's basilisk - Lesswrongwiki". LessWrong. Retrieved February 26, 2017. 
  13. "You're probably wondering why I've called you here today". Slate Star Codex. September 29, 2014. Retrieved February 26, 2017. 
  14. Jonah Sinick. "Cognito Mentoring: An advising service for intellectually curious students - Less Wrong". LessWrong. Retrieved September 24, 2017. 
  15. "moderators - r/slatestarcodex". Retrieved September 24, 2017. a community for 3 years [Wed Feb 26 05:15:26 2014 UTC] 
  16. Kaj Sotala. "[meta] Policy for dealing with users suspected/guilty of mass-downvote harassment? - Less Wrong Discussion". LessWrong. Retrieved September 24, 2017. 
  17. Kaj Sotala. "[moderator action] Eugine_Nier is now banned for mass downvote harassment - Less Wrong". LessWrong. Retrieved September 24, 2017. 
  18. Dahlen. "PSA: Eugine_Nier evading ban? - Less Wrong". LessWrong. Retrieved September 25, 2017. 
  19. "moderators - r/SneerClub". Retrieved June 1, 2017. 
  20. NancyLebovitz. "Voiceofra is banned - Less Wrong". LessWrong. Retrieved September 25, 2017. 
  21. "ratanon - Catalog". Retrieved September 24, 2017.  First post here is from April 12.
  22. "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.
  23. 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.
  24. offwo200 (August 12, 2016). "/ratanon/ - Rationalists Anonymous • r/slatestarcodex". reddit. Retrieved September 24, 2017.  Another discovery post from August 2016.
  25. "Center for Applied Rationality — SPARC". Open Philanthropy Project. Retrieved July 11, 2017. 
  26. "Center for Applied Rationality — General Support". Open Philanthropy Project. Retrieved July 11, 2017. 
  27. "Machine Intelligence Research Institute — General Support". Open Philanthropy Project. Retrieved June 30, 2017. 
  28. Vaniver. "Downvotes temporarily disabled - Less Wrong". LessWrong. Retrieved September 24, 2017. 
  29. Oliver Habryka. "Welcome to Lesswrong 2.0". Retrieved July 6, 2017. 
  30. Vaniver. "LW 2.0 Open Beta starts 9/20 - Less Wrong Discussion". LessWrong. Retrieved September 24, 2017. 
  31. Habryka. "LW 2.0 Strategic Overview - Less Wrong Discussion". LessWrong. Retrieved September 24, 2017.