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The Fabric Book
FABRIC (fabric dot camp) is a nonprofit best known for running summer camps for young people, for instance ESPR (the European Summer Programme on Rationality) and PAIR (the Programme on AI and Rationality). We teach original classes on epistemics, mathematics, introspection, and cognitive science. Intellectual autonomy is key; so one-third of the entire schedule is student-run.
Hardcover available on Lulu, see this link: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
One frame for what we do: imagine you could communicate with a younger version of yourself. What would you try to convey? This book collects some attempted answers:
1. "Limits to Legibility" by Jan Kulveit
2. "escaping flatland" by Euan Ong
3. "The human project" by Logan Graves
4. "Introducing Deadweight Loss as a Service" by L Zahir
5. "Reasoning when you've other things to do" by Julian D'Costa
6. "On Slack - having room to be excited" by Neel Nanda
7. "You're not too irrational to know your preferences" by Daystar Eld
8. "Different types of evidence" by Lukas Finnveden
9. "Cracking cultures" by Gavin Leech
10. "Explaining the free energy principle to my past self" by Ariel Cheng
11. "7 ways to become unstoppably agentic ..." by Claire Fraser
12. "...'Agency' needs nuance" by Claire Fraser
13. "Deontology and virtue ethics as effective theories" by Jan Kulveit
14. "Crossing the ocean of my ignorance" by Gavin Leech
15. "Memo on the grain of truth problem" by Nuño Sempere
16. "Species as Canonical Referents of Superorganisms" by Yudhister Kumar
17. "Your Standards are Too High" by Neel Nanda
18. "The World is Full of Wasted Motion" by Neel Nanda
19. "What I would build if there were no planning permission laws" by Raymond Douglas
20. "Nonmonetary reasons to start a company" by Gavin Leech
21. "On Stating The Obvious" by Raymond Douglas
22. "Philosophy of Exercise" by Andrew Wu
23. "The Rationality Community Sucks" by Ulisse Mini
24. "Why I am not a philosopher" by Gavin Leech
25. "i can do more more more" by Claire Wang
26. "Expertise makes people weirder, not more alike" by Gytis Daujotas
27. "Ways To Get More Brainspace" by Raymond Douglas
28. "Taking past selves into account" by Jacob G-W
29. "The Shiny" by Mihály Bárász
Hardcover available on Lulu, see this link: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
One frame for what we do: imagine you could communicate with a younger version of yourself. What would you try to convey? This book collects some attempted answers:
1. "Limits to Legibility" by Jan Kulveit
2. "escaping flatland" by Euan Ong
3. "The human project" by Logan Graves
4. "Introducing Deadweight Loss as a Service" by L Zahir
5. "Reasoning when you've other things to do" by Julian D'Costa
6. "On Slack - having room to be excited" by Neel Nanda
7. "You're not too irrational to know your preferences" by Daystar Eld
8. "Different types of evidence" by Lukas Finnveden
9. "Cracking cultures" by Gavin Leech
10. "Explaining the free energy principle to my past self" by Ariel Cheng
11. "7 ways to become unstoppably agentic ..." by Claire Fraser
12. "...'Agency' needs nuance" by Claire Fraser
13. "Deontology and virtue ethics as effective theories" by Jan Kulveit
14. "Crossing the ocean of my ignorance" by Gavin Leech
15. "Memo on the grain of truth problem" by Nuño Sempere
16. "Species as Canonical Referents of Superorganisms" by Yudhister Kumar
17. "Your Standards are Too High" by Neel Nanda
18. "The World is Full of Wasted Motion" by Neel Nanda
19. "What I would build if there were no planning permission laws" by Raymond Douglas
20. "Nonmonetary reasons to start a company" by Gavin Leech
21. "On Stating The Obvious" by Raymond Douglas
22. "Philosophy of Exercise" by Andrew Wu
23. "The Rationality Community Sucks" by Ulisse Mini
24. "Why I am not a philosopher" by Gavin Leech
25. "i can do more more more" by Claire Wang
26. "Expertise makes people weirder, not more alike" by Gytis Daujotas
27. "Ways To Get More Brainspace" by Raymond Douglas
28. "Taking past selves into account" by Jacob G-W
29. "The Shiny" by Mihály Bárász
336 pages, Hardcover
Published June 16, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
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October 2, 2025I put together my favourite essays by my favourite group of people.
Among other things it's an attempt to show what it actually takes to be rational, which is not firstly to do with becoming smarter or more mathy or more cynical or whatnot.
You can get the hardcover here or just download it.
Among other things it's an attempt to show what it actually takes to be rational, which is not firstly to do with becoming smarter or more mathy or more cynical or whatnot.
You can get the hardcover here or just download it.
November 7, 2025
this book is wonderful! reading this as someone older than the intended audience (16-20 vs 21) it felt still relevant and made me feel hope/ambition without getting sucked up in wow everything is futile should have done these x months ago.
November 24, 2025
Reminded me of my time at PAIR, which is to say I loved every minute of it.
A huge thank you to Gavin for donating a copy to me (:
A huge thank you to Gavin for donating a copy to me (:
October 17, 2025
A more palatable and succinct intro to rationalism than the sequences.
Notes on a couple of the essays
Limits to legible reasoning
Legibility (Human Interpretability) is hard, and forcing it might worsen reasoning.
Also: illegibility might explain how rational agents can disagree (eg they can’t agree on the best black box). This does not seem to excuse beliefs from admitting predictions, just definitive cruxes
On slack
Probably a good heuristic, but disagree in the margins: Everything is a trade-off, but the currency is not slack. Parkinson’s Law seems like a good intuition pump for this. The rather odd counter-example seems to be messianic entrepreneurs (Jobs’ reality distortion field and Musk’s unreasonable timelines). They do not seem to trade bottlenecks for slack.
Deontology and Virtue Ethics as effective theories
Argument tailored to consequentialist. Arguably short of an argument about how virtue ethics tackles game theory easily compared to (typical) consequentialist calculations. The latter is at a risk of being self-defeating. The relentless pragmatism is beautiful (also the physics analogy)
“Why I am not a philosopher“ is really good. Would undoubtedly have lead to my younger self’s intellectual capture.
Species as canonical referents of super-organisms is weirdly underread when cross-referencing with LW. Not sure what to make of possible implications
Notes on a couple of the essays
Limits to legible reasoning
Legibility (Human Interpretability) is hard, and forcing it might worsen reasoning.
Also: illegibility might explain how rational agents can disagree (eg they can’t agree on the best black box). This does not seem to excuse beliefs from admitting predictions, just definitive cruxes
On slack
Probably a good heuristic, but disagree in the margins: Everything is a trade-off, but the currency is not slack. Parkinson’s Law seems like a good intuition pump for this. The rather odd counter-example seems to be messianic entrepreneurs (Jobs’ reality distortion field and Musk’s unreasonable timelines). They do not seem to trade bottlenecks for slack.
Deontology and Virtue Ethics as effective theories
Argument tailored to consequentialist. Arguably short of an argument about how virtue ethics tackles game theory easily compared to (typical) consequentialist calculations. The latter is at a risk of being self-defeating. The relentless pragmatism is beautiful (also the physics analogy)
“Why I am not a philosopher“ is really good. Would undoubtedly have lead to my younger self’s intellectual capture.
Species as canonical referents of super-organisms is weirdly underread when cross-referencing with LW. Not sure what to make of possible implications
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews