New from LessWrong: Flinching away from truth is often about protecting epistemology. The key insight here is that treating independent variables as necessarily dependent is dangerous. If you think good thing X can only be true if Y is also true, then you're going to be motivated to find evidence for Y's veracity. Anna Salamon explains this better than me, but it's a clever technique to add to your rationality toolkit.
On slightly more practical grounds, Put A Number On It explains how to get rich slowly and avoid the financial hedonic treadmill. There's also a follow-up post about lending to friends and family. One wonders what Jacob is planning to get out of telling us this, but the answer is actually quite mundane: referral bonuses to the investment services he finds most profitable.
The National Weather Service reports that Chicago is going to have its first year on record without snow in January or February.
Scott Alexander has three particularly good posts this month: Considerations on Cost Disease, notes from an AI safety conference, and a repost of his Non-Libertarian FAQ. Also something that looks like fiction which I haven't found time to read yet.
On the pro-libertarian side of things, here's how the GOP tried to prevent another Ron Paul and ended up with Trump instead.
SpaceX announces plans to send tourists around the Moon as early as next year. I've seen some negative reactions to this news, but insufficient context to figure out why they're annoyed. If I had to guess, this could be seen as Elon Musk one-upping NASA's announcement that Exploration Mission 1 may be crewed, but personally I think that's a terrible idea. Flying astronauts on untested rockets is...questionable, and Dragon 2 will be tested unmanned and LEO before sending tourists.
