Harley-ml/lesswrong huggingface dataset:
# non-judgemental awareness

Alice and Bob are playing each other in tennis.  
However their internal experience is quite different. 

Alice: "I’ve got to keep my elbow straight, knees firm, don’t tense". Her experience is  mentally effortful, there are lots of words in her internal monologue. She spends many mental cycles on success or failure. It takes much willpower. Her attention is very focused on individual parts. She’s micromanaging. Alice is not paying attention to what is going on right now. She’s living in the world of what should be as opposed to what is. 

Bob: He is curious about where the ball is, he’s conscious of his body in space, the many things he’s feeling. He intends to absorb the whole motion, his thoughts are mostly non-verbal. conscious experience is much more static. 


What's going on here?
When practicing to improve in a skill you want to get as much good quality information as possible (eg: Bob). This is your raw data. Nuances you are not aware of don’t exist. They’re invisible to you. The more you’re curious and aware of your body, it’s fluctuations, the surrounds the more you experience. You actually look at reality as opposed to hallucinate it. 

You get much closer to the raw sense data. Think about how your butt feels on the chair you’re currently sitting on. You probably expect it to feel like a pressure shaped like an oval. That’s how you expect a somewhat rigid solid (human muscles) to conform to the flat surface of the chair. But if you pay attention to the sensations it doesn’t really feel like that. There's more of a bundle of sensations. If you stub your toe or experience some kind of pain, asking questions like where exactly is the pain, what kind of pain, what shape can sometimes make the pain lessen or change. Sensations are neutral, your brain places this “BAD” label on particular sensations. Which are then felt as unpleasant. [1]


For an exercise, Try:  
Throw a nearby object at a somewhat difficult target. [2]  
First → Really focus, think about the steps, effortful, repeat to yourself what you’re going to do. Try to explain how you are going to throw it.   
Second → Visualise throwing the ball a few times, perhaps mime the motion, see what the ball feels like in your hand, imagine the trajectory the ball might take, now let the ball slip out from your fingertips, were you correct about the shape of the ball's flight? 

$~$
***
$~$

[1] Much of this is taken from Jonathan Blow's [Introspective techniques](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7kh8pNRWOo)

[2] This exercise is taken from *The Inner Game of Tennis* by Timothy Gallwey



Tags: Psychological, mostly preconceptions, tennis, seeing with fresh eyes, experience ball toss
# Less to Greater, Bookmarklet Edition

[Lesser2Greater](https://github.com/quanticle/lesser2greater) is a Chrome extension that redirects from lesswrong.com to greaterwrong.com. I’d like to use it, but I’m not a Chrome user.  I do, however, use [bookmarklets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookmarklet), so I made one to replicate Lesser2Greater’s functionality.
# Bay Area: vibes

Paul Graham [says](http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html) that cities send subtle messages about what your ambitions should be—different ones tell you to be richer, or be smarter, or to live better. I have lately been feeling like the same is true of people, and groups of people, and TV shows, and songs, and workplaces, and Twitter, and places you sit down to get a quick drink.  

Obviously people (and all these other things) explicitly tell you to do different things sometimes. But I think there are subtler suggestions, both about what is valuable, and about what the world is like.

Some examples, mostly from people I know, anonymized:

*   Alice says to be more careful with your minutes. Also maybe your seconds
*   Bob says to find things to laugh about
*   Celia says to find flaws to smirk about
*   Doris says to have more novel insights
*   Erica says to feel more, and better
*   Francis tells you that just your being there is amazing, but that doing something would also be a fittingly wonderful manifestation of that
*   Gerald says to be more reasonable
*   Harriet says that everything is fundamentally ok
*   Ira says to know more stories
*   Jared says to know more facts

I had thought in the abstract that people around influence a person, but lately I more viscerally anticipate it, and shy away from some of the influences.

It’s dinner time, so I won’t elaborate further. Does this fit your experience?
# Logical Counterfactuals are low-res

Cross-posted from my blog. Related to my several previous posts.

(_Epistemic status: I have no idea why such an obvious observation is never even mentioned by the decision theorists. Or maybe it is, I have not seen it._)

A logical counterfactual, as described by Nate Soares:

> _In a setting with deterministic algorithmic agents, how (in general) should we evaluate the expected value of the hypothetical possible worlds in which the agent’s decision algorithm takes on different outputs, given that all but one of those worlds is logically impossible?_

So we know that something happened in the past, but want to consider something else having happened instead under the same circumstances. Like a ubiquitous and familiar to everyone lament of a decision made: “I knew better than doing X and should have done Y instead”. It feels like there was a choice, and one could have made a different choice even while being the same person under the same circumstances.

Of course, a “deterministic algorithmic agent” would make the same decisions in the same circumstances, so what one really asks is “what kind of a \[small\] difference in the agent’s algorithm, and/or what kind of \[minimally\] different inputs into the algorithm’s decision-making process would result in a different output?” When phrased in this way, we are describing different “hypothetical possible worlds”. Some of these worlds correspond to different algorithms, and some to different inputs to the same algorithm, and in this way they are just as “logically possible” as the world where the agent we observed took an action we observed.

Why does it feel like there was both a logical possibility and impossibility, “the agent’s decision algorithm takes on different outputs”? Because the world we see is in low resolution! Like when you see a road from high up, it looks like a single lane:

![](https://donerkebabphilosophy.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/b21b024b4bd85b7a994f31b251265dc1.png?w=1100)

But when you zoom in, you see something looking like this, with a maze of lanes, ramps and overpasses:

![](https://donerkebabphilosophy.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/39ffd9f7644ed20d6e840e37d6bf8bfb.png?w=1100)

So how does one answer Nate’s question? ([Which was not really a question,](https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2016/09/logical_uncertainty_and_logica.html#c051499) but maybe should have been) Zoom In! See what the agent’s algorithm is like, what hardware it runs on, what unseen-from-high-up inputs can cause it to switch lanes and take a different turn. So that the worlds which look counterfactual from high up (e.g. a car could have turned left, even though it has turned right) becomes physically unlikely when zoomed in (e.g. the car was in the right lane with no other way to go but right, short of jumping a divider). Treating the apparent logical counterfactuals as any other physical uncertainty seems like a more promising approach than inventing some special treatment for what appears an impossible possible world.
# case study: iterative drawing

This exercise brings together a few principles from my previous posts. If you're in the mood to to a little drawing (15mins).

>experiment: 
>pick an object (eg a cup) to draw. Divide your page into 20 rectangles. Do a brief sketch in one of the rectangles. For a few moments, thoughtfully and non-judgmentally reflect on it. What interests you, what kind of shapes are there? Draw another cup variant, noticing as you go. 

This exercise is taken from the youtube video: [*Iterative Drawing, the fastest way to improve*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0ufz75UvHs). 40min video. The tl;dr is the exercise above. You do a tiny drawing experiment, and non-judgementally pay attention to what happened. 

Iterative drawing is an example in fast feedback loops. You try out lots of different hypothesis and explore the space of all possible cups much faster. Of all possible marks on paper you will find the once you like if you explore more. If you're to spend 15 minutes drawing cups, I think I'd rather be the person who has drawn twenty over the person who has drawn one. [1]

You are generating a lot of interesting data. And you’ve paying attention to it. Quality and quantity. Anything you notice can then feedback into the generation process. The changes are cumulative. The results of each experiment inform the next batch of theories. Maybe the handles too large, perhaps a different angle. You’re also focusing on the fundamentals, shape and proportion. Not focusing on the details. 

A few doodles & interesting things I discovered:
![](https://res.cloudinary.com/dr9bato9u/image/upload/v1539749791/DSC_0195.jpg)

$~$
$~$  
$~$
  
**Notes**

[1] I'm reminded of that anecdote about grading pottery students by quantity. You will be marked by sheer number of pots produced. This strange metric let to much better pottery. story and discussion [here](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hY86FhYysQ7dBg3d8/just-try-it-quantity-trumps-quality). 

See also: Scott Young's [Portrait Challenge](https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/myprojects/portrait-challenge/)

[Nonjudgementally](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MCzM9TA6YrHzXCoS7/non-judgemental-awareness) looking at the world, then making an attempt to draw what's there, then observing the results is also in part inspired from *Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain* by Betty Edwards

More [Brienne](http://agentyduck.blogspot.com/2018/08/photo-studies.html): an "original seeing"-esq post.
# Facebook, The Rodents, and The Common Knowledge Machine

  

"The rationalist communities use of Facebook is an inadequate scenario. A group of people put real money into making a simple tool that could enable transitions from inadequate equilibria to better, 'adequate' ones. This tool was made in the basic sense, but had none of the necessary polishing or marketing work done because the money only stipulated raw tool creation. Better planning and project management could have avoided this outcome. The fact that this outcome was collectively allowed to stand implies serious issues with the foundational makeup of the people within the rationalist community."
# New GreaterWrong feature: anti-kibitzer (hides post/comment author names and karma values)

[GreaterWrong](https://www.greaterwrong.com) now has a new feature (which [was once available for the original Less Wrong](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XbfdLQrAWTRfpggRM/lesswrong-anti-kibitzer-hides-comment-authors-and-vote)):

*Anti-kibitzer mode*, which **hides the names and karma values of posts and comments**.

On [GreaterWrong](https://www.greaterwrong.com), take a look to the right side of the page, and you’ll see this icon:

![Anti-kibitzer mode toggle icon](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/xyychcwezhi61ou/Screenshot%202018-10-19%2016.58.03.png?dl=0)

Click it, and it’ll change to this:

![Anti-kibitzer mode toggle icon, enabled state](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/zqe00tbp0mj52i6/Screenshot%202018-10-19%2016.59.21.png?dl=0)

Now the authors of posts and comments, and all karma values, are hidden:

![Comment, with anti-kibitzer mode enabled](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/bq8q820ucwscx47/Screenshot%202018-10-20%2009.54.44.png?dl=0)

Click the icon again to disable. (You’ll be asked if you’re sure you want to disable anti-kibitzer mode. *NOTE:* You can *skip the confirmation prompt* by *holding the Shift key* while clicking to disable.)

**Having the anti-kibitzer turned on doesn’t interfere with any other functionality.** You can still post, comment, reply, vote, click on users’ names to go to their user page (where their name will be obfuscated), etc. You can turn it on or off at any time.

Your own name, and your own karma values, are *not* hidden.

See the [original Less Wrong post about this feature](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XbfdLQrAWTRfpggRM/lesswrong-anti-kibitzer-hides-comment-authors-and-vote) for more discussion.
# Berkeley: being other people

Sometimes I enjoy understanding better what it is like to be other people. You can do this somewhat subtly by talking to people for ages about other topics, and making inferences. Lately I’ve been asking more directly, something like, ‘what about your experience do you think other people would be surprised by?’  But that’s hard to answer, because one doesn’t necessarily have things cached in that way, and many of one’s own idiosyncrasies are probably like water to a fish, and it involves imagining other people imagining you.

Another way to learn about such things is to ask a bunch of people about the details of a common experience. For instance, I have enjoyed:

Going to evensong in Oxford with a bunch of people from the office, then later discussing what we thought about when we got bored: 

*   The very old but humorously hateful notes in the song book
*   The possible friction between the church’s commitment to the poor and their lavish church decor
*   The fact that each of the people in the choir is conscious right now and looking back at us, and later will go and collect their children from school and make dinner in their kitchen and go on living their lives forever  
    
*   The skull decorations  
    

Learning about the YouTube genres that different people are into: 

*   How things work, e.g. how cherry plantations are dried
*   People accidentally dying in extreme sports  
    
*   Marriage proposals
*   Movie trailers
*   Giant pimples being popped  
    
*   Video game reviews
*   Planes crashing
*   Obscure dances

Hearing different people’s views of the monkey waiter sculpture in my house’s foyer 

*   Somehow problematic
*   Creepy in a fun way
*   Never noticed it, but it has a nice face
*   Is a novelty object and therefore disturbs the neutrality of the foyer

One thing I take away from this kind of thing is that different people are paying attention to different things about their environment, and thinking about it in different terms, and getting different kicks out of it.

Many of my friends say they think they are pretty legible, so there would not be much surprising to others about their internal life. My guess is that they are thinking their experience is mostly a sort of standard one, with this window of visual experience, and some accurately represented sounds, and some reasonable thoughts about the things going on in their lives, and so on. But I guess that actually the same visual scene looks in some sense very different to different people, because of things like where their attention goes, what abstractions they use to think about it, and what associations and emotional flavor things have for them.

If you want to play this game with me, what do you think about when you are waiting in the grocery line? What YouTube genres do you come back to? What about your experience do you think other people wouldn’t guess?
# List of previous prediction market projects

[Here](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XB1GHfizNtVYTOAD_uOyBLEyl_EV7hVtDYDXLQwgT7k/edit?usp=sharing) I try to curate what is, to my knowledge, the most extensive list of previous prediction market projects.

This is useful because it provides a reference class to answer the question: “Why is our society inadequate at building functional futures markets for basically anything beyond equities, currencies and commodities, despite the massive benefits this would bring (see e.g. [Arrow et al., 2008](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/320/5878/877))?”

In this vein, I aim to primarily focus on real-money projects that might have scaled to something like an institutionalised exchange (and thus focus less on play-money projects, consulting companies offering a more nebolous “collective intelligence”, or forecasting platforms which are not actually _markets_).

I post this spreadsheet publicly despite its incompleteness, as doing so is likely the best way to complete it.

**Feedback is very welcome.**

If you -- yes you! -- are keen to help, the single most useful 15-30 min task would be to further research a cell in the column “Shut-down date and reason”, and comment with links/findings.
# One Doubt About Timeless Decision Theories

[Timeless Decisions Theories](https://intelligence.org/files/TDT.pdf) (including variants like FDT, UDT, ADT, ect.) provide a rather elegant method of solving a broader class of problems than CDT. While CDT requires the outcomes of decisions to be independent of the individual making the decision (in such a way that causal surgery on a single node is valid), timeless decisions theories can handle any problem where the outcome is a function of the choice selected (even if this occurs indirectly as a result of a prediction).

(Epistemic Status: Thoughts for further investigation)

This is an excellent reason to investigate these decision theories, yet we need to make sure that we don't get [blinded by insight](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/it2WqSkyit36bvdRL/blinded-by-insight). Before we immediately jump to conclusions by taking this improvement, it is worthwhile considering what we give up. Perhaps there are other classes that we might which to optimise over which we can no longer optimise over once we have included this whole class?

After all, there is a sense in which there is no free lunch. As discussed in the TDT paper, for any algorithm, we could create a situation where there is an agent that specifically punished that algorithm. The usual response is that these situations are unfair, but a) the universe is often unfair b) there are plausible situations where the algorithm chosen influences the outcome is slightly less unfair ways.

Expanding on b), there are times when you want to be [predictable](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/q9DbfYfFzkotno9hG/example-decision-theory-problem-agent-simulates-predictor) to simulators. Indeed, I can even imagine agents that wish to eliminate agents that they can't predict. Further, rather than facing a perfect predictor, it seems like it'll be at least a few orders of magnitude more likely that you'll face an imperfect predictor. Modelling these as X% perfect predictor, 100-X% random predictor will usually be implausible as predictors won't have a uniform success rate over all algorithms. These situations are slightly more plausible for scenarios involving AI, but even if you perfectly know an agent's source code, you are unlikely to know its exact observational state due to random noise.

It therefore seems that the "best" decision theory algorithm might be dominated by factors other than optimal performance on the narrow class of problems TDT operates on. It may very well be the case that TDT is ultimately taking the right approach, but even if this is the case, I thought it was worthwhile sketching out these concerns so that they can be addressed.
# look at the water

Occasionally I’ve noticed I’m handicapping myself. I don’t let knowledge I know from different contexts seep in. I’ve got to solve the assignment problem the “proper way”. 

If this was a problem I’d stumbled upon in the wild I would throw any tool I had at it. I’m not trying to solve this math question instead I’m performing a social ritual. I need to discharge obligation so I can say “I’ve tried” which then lets me read some fiction guilt free. 

To compartmentalise is to keep different bits of knowledge from influencing each other. 

$~$

Common sense contains a lot of knowledge. Couple that with some rough guesses and a bit of reasoning can get you really far. [1] Enrico Fermi was jokingly considered a magician because of the kinds of inferences he could make.

Experiment:
>A back of the envelope calculation or fermi-question is great for cutting through some of these types of errors. What is the mass of the moon? [2] 

$~$

I've also noticed this pattern when I'm talking about the results of a recent study. 

Me: "a study showed facebook causes low mood".   
friend: "how did they get that".  
me: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.   
friend: "well if I was trying to show this, I'd try and find people who don't use facebook and give them happiness quizzes, maybe that's hard because most people use facebook. Hmm, maybe I'd get 1000 people and get half of them to stop using facebook for a month."  
me: "... how did you do that?"  

There's a little learned helplessness on my part here. It's as if "the conclusions" have been given to me by the authority that is scientists. eg: Turns out *Science* says facebook is bad. 

It was nice for me to realise that studies are essays written by people who looked at some phenomena for a while. The smarter the person and the longer they looked the better, but people nonetheless. 


$~$  
$~$ 
$~$  
  
**Notes**

[1] Carl Schulman has complained that people do not do enough fermi's coupled with wiki-look ups and googling. Research advice [here](https://mosstuff.quora.com/Generalist-research-advice-by-Carl-Shulman). 

[2]  The mass of the moon is 7 x 10^22 kg. how'd you do it? can you get it from a different angle?

Street fighting mathematics is a wonderful course about generalised-fermi's.
It has a beautifully silly introductory [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u23ZUSu7-HY). A promo reads: "No epsilons or deltas are harmed by taking this course"

The title is taken from a Feynman anecdote about Brazilian students guessing the [teachers passwords](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NMoLJuDJEms7Ku9XS/guessing-the-teacher-s-password#a9qtYws9AGR6mADuk)
# play and spinning plates

There are four levels of ignorance [1]:
* Known Knowns - Knowledge - Things you know and you know you know them. 
* Known Unknowns - Lack of Knowledge - Things you know you don’t know.  - I don’t know how to juggle, piffle is probably a word, That feeling that there’s something you’ve forgotten. 
* Unknown Knowns - Lack of Awareness - Things you don’t know you know.  Unconscious social knowledge, Things you assume everyone knows how to do, math intuitions.
* Unknown Unknowns - Things you don’t know you don’t know.  A fundamentally different way of experiencing reality, is cryptography important to economics. is having kids transformative. The edge of the map. Ontological updates.

It’s very important to have ways of bumping into Unknown Unknowns. A friend tells you about X. A chance meeting. You read a strange book. You notice you’ve been failing and don’t know why. Going for a walk. [Attending University](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jxvT3bAfekBPApb5q/look-at-the-water#uwWQG4ipose9h7p5x). New experiences. 

Once strategy is serious play. Messing around with something seemingly unrelated. Following your interest and sense of fun where it leads even if it’s silly. Don’t let your societal schooling interfere with your weirdness education. 

Play lets you explore your boundaries, you’re more comfortable failing so your reach extends. When you're in this mind-frame you notice the wobble of spinning plates in the cafeteria or leave photographic plates near your radium samples or think it strange that mold grew on your infected samples. 

Reality is far stranger that it appears. You’re probably wrong about something and there are might crucial considerations that you’re woefully neglecting. But you can’t know which until after the fact. There’s always more to learn, go bump into the world. 

Great experiments can be accidents, play will make you accident prone. Play is a biased random walk. 

In that spirit, experiments: 
>say "rhubarb" over and over again untill it sounds like weird noises, look at the world upside down, open a “forbidden” door, write as many questions as you can about one particular tree. 

$~$ 

$~$   

$~$ 

**Notes**

[1] These are four levels that I know of. Might be more. who knows.   
Armour, P. (2000). The five orders of ignorance. Communications of the ACM, 43(10), pp.17-20.


Title is inspired by more Feynman, [spinning plates & serious play](https://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~kilcup/262/feynman.html)
# [Beta] Post-Read-Status on Lessestwrong

Over on Lessestwrong.com (our sometimes-staging-site), we're trying out an update to how post items display on the frontpage. Posts that you've read now appear slightly grey. The goal is to make it so you can tell when you've read a post at a glance, without making it feel like unread posts are shouting at you to read them or feel like an obligation.

You can log in on lessestwrong using your usual login, and see how it feels.
# Schools Proliferating Without Practicioners

Very interesting post from "The Last Rationalist" discussing how the rationalist community seems to have been slow to update on comparative impracticality of formal Bayes and on the replication crisis in psychology.

I don't fully agree with this post - for instance, my impression is that there is in fact a [replication crisis in medicine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#In_medicine), which the author seems unaware of or understates - but I think the key points provide useful food for thought.

(Note: this is my opinion as a private individual, not an official opinion as a CFAR instructor or as a member of any other organization.)
# East Coast Rationalist Megameetup 2018

**NYC Secular Solstice this year will be on December 15. That weekend, from December 14 to 17, we'll be hosting a rationalist community gathering with accommodations for out-of-towners in the NYC area. If you'd like to join us, please register at [rationalistmegameetup.com](https://rationalistmegameetup.com/)!**

The stars are aligning for the solstice season to be soon upon us! The eighth annual Secular Solstice in NYC will be held on December 15. Every year, rationalist sojourners travel to New York to gather together and experience the darkest time of the year in the light of our community. Last year, [Taymon](https://www.lesswrong.com/users/taymon-beal) organized the first East Coast Rationalist Megameetup here in NYC, and it was a great success. This year we are again organizing a gathering place that weekend for solstice sojourners and New Yorkers alike, to solidify that tradition into our second annual East Coast Rationalist Megameetup.

For those traveling from out of town, we're renting a big house together! Like last year, we're pricing the sleeping arrangements at $100 per person, and the other costs (for the activities listed below) at $25 per person, for a total cost of $125.

For New Yorkers or those who already have accommodations, who would like to join in the events and festivities but not sleep over, please register as well! Again, the megameetup-only cost is $25 per person.

The exact schedule for the weekend is up in the air, but we're planning on hosting:

*   three meals: Saturday lunch, Saturday dinner, and Sunday breakfast
*   Secular Solstice afterparty on Saturday night
*   an unconference on Sunday

Depending on the attendees and interest, we're hoping to also plan some other activities to further the megameetup tradition.

If you'd like to attend, please register as soon as possible so we can get an accurate headcount and book an ideal space for the event. For reference, last year we rented a 9 bedroom house which we stretched (with air mattresses and creativity) to sleep around 36 at peak occupancy (Saturday night). This year we're shooting for two to a bed and one per air mattress at peak occupancy -- non-peak occupancy is expected to be significantly less crowded. Solstice tickets are not included in either of these registrations, so please make sure to register for Solstice separately.

_Anyone who would like to attend but cannot afford $125 should contact me directly for arrangements._
# On Doing the Improbable

(Cross-posted from Facebook.)

* * *

I've noticed that, by my standards and on an Eliezeromorphic metric, most people seem to require catastrophically high levels of faith in what they're doing in order to stick to it. By this I mean that they would not have stuck to writing the Sequences or HPMOR or working on AGI alignment past the first few months of real [difficulty](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dhj9dhiwhq3DX6W8z/hero-licensing), without assigning odds in the vicinity of 10x what I started out assigning that the project would work. And this is not a kind of estimate you can get via good epistemology.

I mean, you can legit estimate 100x higher odds of success than the [Modest](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/oLGCcbnvabyibnG9d) and the Outside Viewers think you can possibly assign to "writing the most popular HP fanfiction on the planet out of a million contenders on your first try at published long-form fiction or Harry Potter, using a theme of Harry being a rationalist despite there being no evidence of demand for this" blah blah et Modest cetera. Because in fact Modesty flat-out doesn't work as metacognition. You might as well be reading sheep entrails in whatever way supports your sense of social licensing to accomplish things.

But you can't get numbers in the range of what I estimate to be something like 70% as the required threshold before people will carry on through bad times. "It might not work" is enough to force them to make a great effort to continue past that 30% failure probability. It's not good decision theory but it seems to be how people actually work on group projects where they are not personally madly driven to accomplish the thing.

I don't want to have to artificially cheerlead people every time I want to cooperate in a serious, real, extended shot at accomplishing something. Has anyone ever solved this organizational problem by other means than (a) bad epistemology (b) amazing primate charisma?

* * *

EDIT: Guy Srinivasan reminds us that paying people a lot of money to work on an interesting problem is also standardly known to help in producing real perseverance.
# Boston Solstice 2018

Six years ago Julia and I took the bus down to NYC with a group from the Boston LessWrong meetup. We were headed to a Solstice celebration and megameetup [Ray](https://www.lesswrong.com/users/raemon) was organizing. It was a good weekend: lots of talking to people I'd only met online, various proto-EA conversations, friendly and relaxed atmosphere. The Solstice itself was in a crowded living room, and I remember playing guitar for [Uplift](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB3uTV5Pyz0), [Thanksgiving Eve](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dADZFqO62A), and [God Wrote the Sky](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtJPuu5TE3E). This was the second NYC Solstice, the first one being [in 2011](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jES7mcPvKpfmzMTgC/ritual-report-nyc-less-wrong-solstice-celebration), and it was still a cosy event.

![](https://www.jefftk.com/solstice-2012-big.jpg)

_NYC Solstice 2012; I'm in the middle_

We went again the next year, for the first big Solstice. There was a [Kickstarter](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/244974495/brighter-than-today-a-secular-solstice), it was a beautiful hall, full band of professional musicians. Good in a different way, still a really nice time to see friends and get together.

A week later we held the first Boston Solstice, in a friend's house, with basically no rehearsal. It was fun and silly, and I really liked it.

Boston also moved on to a larger event, in the MIT Chapel, for the following years, and while I enjoyed helping out with the music I missed the feeling of a smaller event.

As the long-term drift to the Bay has continued, it's time for Boston to go back to having a smaller, more casual, more communal Solstice. This year I'm planning to host one at our house, centered mostly around group singing, with a few readings. Ray's original vision had a large emotional arc, from happy and silly, to serious and solemn, to joyful and triumphant, anchored by a dark and meaningful speech, but the theatric intensity necessary for this isn't the sort of thing I'm up for. The idea is we'll still have a general arc to the evening, with some central darkness bookended by lighter pieces, but it won't be as quasi-spiritual/deep as people might be used to from other events.

So: if this sounds like something you would enjoy, save the date: Friday December 21st.

(Reading [past Solstice](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RLE4kZiYw8LtwPXLy/bay-solstice-2017-thoughts) [discussion](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HWMoS3sBc2LKyRtZ3/a-quick-note-on-weirdness-points-and-solstices-and-also) the differing expectations around kids are tricky. If you want something to be a community event, since kids and parents are part of the community you need to figure out how that's going to work. My current plan is for the kids to be around for the initial joyful section, which is the part they're likely to be most interested in, and then do rotating volunteer childcare upstairs for when kids stop being interested in the singing. If you're thinking of coming and bringing kids, let me know so we can coordinate!)

_crossposted from [jefftk.com](https://www.jefftk.com/p/boston-solstice-2018)_
# East Coast Rationalist Megameetup 2018

**NYC Secular Solstice this year will be on December 15. That weekend, from December 14 to 17, we'll be hosting a rationalist community gathering with accommodations for out-of-towners in the NYC area. If you'd like to join us, please register at [rationalistmegameetup.com](https://rationalistmegameetup.com/)!**

The stars are aligning for the solstice season to be soon upon us! The eighth annual Secular Solstice in NYC will be held on December 15. Every year, rationalist sojourners travel to New York to gather together and experience the darkest time of the year in the light of our community. Last year, [Taymon](https://www.lesswrong.com/users/taymon-beal) organized the first East Coast Rationalist Megameetup here in NYC, and it was a great success. This year we are again organizing a gathering place that weekend for solstice sojourners and New Yorkers alike, to solidify that tradition into our second annual East Coast Rationalist Megameetup.

For those traveling from out of town, we're renting a big house together! Like last year, we're pricing the sleeping arrangements at $100 per person, and the other costs (for the activities listed below) at $25 per person, for a total cost of $125.

For New Yorkers or those who already have accommodations, who would like to join in the events and festivities but not sleep over, please register as well! Again, the megameetup-only cost is $25 per person.

The exact schedule for the weekend is up in the air, but we're planning on hosting:

*   three meals: Saturday lunch, Saturday dinner, and Sunday breakfast
*   Secular Solstice afterparty on Saturday night
*   an unconference on Sunday

Depending on the attendees and interest, we're hoping to also plan some other activities to further the megameetup tradition.

If you'd like to attend, please register as soon as possible so we can get an accurate headcount and book an ideal space for the event. For reference, last year we rented a 9 bedroom house which we stretched (with air mattresses and creativity) to sleep around 36 at peak occupancy (Saturday night). This year we're shooting for two to a bed and one per air mattress at peak occupancy -- non-peak occupancy is expected to be significantly less crowded. Solstice tickets are not included in either of these registrations, so please make sure to register for Solstice separately.

_Anyone who would like to attend but cannot afford $125 should contact me directly for arrangements._

_Original [event post](https://www.lesswrong.com/events/rYBaS8PHEbmoomwAS/east-coast-rationalist-megameetup-2018) here, publishing as a plain post as a suggestion from habryka, apologies for any double-posting annoyances._
# Debate Rules In Benjamin Franklin's Junto

*(Note: The Junto was a secret society formed by Benjamin Franklin for the purpose of intellectual discourse and business networking. The following is the debate rules they used to maintain an atmosphere of reason.)*
1. Our debates were to be under the direction of a president, and to be  conducted in the sincere spirit of inquiry after truth, without fondness for dispute, or desire of victory.
2. To prevent warmth, all expressions of positiveness in opinions, or direct contradiction, were after some time made contraband, and prohibited under small pecuniary penalties.
3. I even forbid myself, agreeably to the old laws of our Junto, the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fix&#x27;d opinion, such as certainly, undoubtedly, etc., and I adopted, instead of  them, I conceive, I apprehend, or I imagine a thing to be so or so; or  it so appears to me at present. 
4. When another asserted something that I  thought an error, I deny&#x27;d myself the pleasure of contradicting him  abruptly, and of showing immediately some absurdity in his proposition;  and in answering I began by observing that in certain cases or  circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appear&#x27;d or seem&#x27;d to me some difference, etc. 
I soon found the  advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engag&#x27;d in  went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I propos&#x27;d my opinions  procur&#x27;d them a readier reception and less contradiction; I had less  mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily  prevail&#x27;d with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I  happened to be in the right. 

Source: [Excerpts from the Autobiography Of Benjamin Franklin ](https://crypt.obormot.net/AutobiographyOfBenjaminFranklin/Junto)
# Linkpost: Arena’s New Opening Hand Rule Has Huge Implications For How We Play the Game

This is a link-post for my latest Magic article, posted on Channel-Fireball: [Arena’s New Opening Hand Rule Has Huge Implications For How We Play the Game.](https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/arenas-new-opening-hand-rule-has-radical-implications-for-how-we-play-the-game/)

Posting here is a more reliable way to engage with me than commenting there, but they have a robust comment section of other Magic players.
# New GreaterWrong feature: image zoom + image slideshows

[GreaterWrong](https://www.greaterwrong.com) now has a new feature: **image zoom / slideshows**.

Whenever a post contains images (such as [this recent post about embedded world-models](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/efWfvrWLgJmbBAs3m/embedded-world-models)), you can click on any image…

![Clicking an image to enlarge](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/4faw0ibj7zu96nr/Screenshot%202018-11-04%2002.35.18.png?dl=0)

… to show an enlarged, “lightbox” style view of it:

![Enlarged image in “lightbox”](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/diki3yzlfi1lhnn/Screenshot%202018-11-04%2002.17.05.png?dl=0)

You can then page through *all* the images in the post with the arrow keys, or by clicking the next/previous image buttons at the left/right edges of the screen:

![Going to the next image](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/efokaxqbyjce9u9/Screenshot%202018-11-04%2002.19.09.png?dl=0)

Use the scroll wheel to zoom in or out:

![Zoomed in on an image](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/vnldm05aw1tsmrf/Screenshot%202018-11-04%2002.18.56.png?dl=0)

When zoomed in, you can drag around the screen to pan (just like Google Maps, etc.).

Hit the space bar to reset size/position.

Hit Escape to close the slideshow/lightbox.

*Edited to add:* You can also hit [accesskey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_key)-L to start or resume the slideshow. (On Mac Chrome, for example, that’s Control-Option-L.)
# Burnout: What it is and how to Treat it.

I reviewed the scientific literature on burnout to create a better definition and treatment plan.

Tl;dr

Social support == Good.

Sleep == Good.

Ambiguity == Bad.

Vacations == Meh.

  

I expect a lot of value in the comments and want to keep them all in one place, so comments will be disabled here.
# Is Copenhagen or Many Worlds true? An experiment. What? Yes.

If this paper is right, an experiment should be possible.

Building it also doesn't seem that hard to do technically, so I think it could be interesting to watch in the coming months/years.

If Many Worlds dies, we would seem to have a perpetual motion machine of the second kind. But if the second law of thermodynamics prevails, Copenhagen should provably be wrong.

All, if this paper is right. Does somebody find a mistake?
# Update the best textbooks on every subject list

I occasionally refer back to lukeprog's [Best Textbooks on Every Subject](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xg3hXCYQPJkwHyik2/the-best-textbooks-on-every-subject?postId=xg3hXCYQPJkwHyik2&view=postCommentsTop) post. I thought it might be a good idea to direct people back to it in the hopes of updating the list, for the following reasons:

*   Old lesswrong is fully integrated now, so we can do it from this site.
*   It hasn't been significantly updated in 8 years; since then it seems like the community has both diversified and increased in size, so hopefully we can both broaden and deepen the list.
*   In the interim there have been several rounds of people who have done various levels of [MIRI's research guide](https://intelligence.org/research-guide/), and it seems like there is richer engagement with the fields surrounding rationality.
*   A lot of textbooks get published in 8 years; new ones may be improvements over the old, or we may have gained textbooks for fields which lacked them previously.
*   I would be particularly interested in anything which accounts for the replication crisis, especially with respect to important fields like behavioral economics.

At ChristianKI's suggestion:

> Here are **the rules:**

> 1\. Post the title of your favorite textbook on a given subject.

> 2\. You must have read at least two other textbooks on that same subject.

> 3\. You must briefly name the other books you've read on the subject and explain why you think your chosen textbook is superior to them.
# Real-time hiring with prediction markets

_Epistemic status: speculation_

I have a couple of assumptions about hiring:

*   It is difficult and often unpleasant.
*   No one is very good at it.
*   It has a lot of hidden costs.

I have a further assumption about the need for labor:

*   The people doing the work now have the best information about the amount and type of work needed.

Most of the time I have seen a new position open up, it worked approximately like this: management notices a shortfall -> they make a case for a new position -> there will be negotiation with senior management/HR/finance about the needs and available resources -> greenlight to post a job opening and collect applications. This seems like costs begin to pile up until management takes notice, and then continue during the hiring process. The goal is usually to get a pool of qualified applicants, and then make the lowest offer that will get accepted. Controlling _explicit_ costs like compensation seems to be the dominant concern; there is little to none for lost productivity.

I think if a prediction market were implemented where current employees bet on the value of applicants (their future colleagues), we could get better hiring decisions. If we combine this with continuous hiring, which is to say always accepting applications, we can cut out the entire above process.

As new applications come in, the market will price them. A high price is worth a look, because it means the team wants to add them. Price inflation overall implies the team is in need - though I am not clear on where additional funds would come from.

It seems like this leads to a condition where a company could hire productive people as soon as it needs them, without even having to recognize that need. This sounds ideal to me.
# Rationality Is Not Systematized Winning

>"Rationality is systematized winning" is a slogan that was adopted to patch a bug in human cognition. Namely our endless capacity to delude ourselves about how we did in an attempt to save face. The concept seems to have been absorbed, but I'm skeptical it's translated into more effective action. Certainly it produced many essays on why winning isn't happening. But the fact that we've been publishing essentially the same essay for a decade now implies something fairly fundamental is wrong. This slogan was chosen because it patches the bug, but I fear at the cost of neutering our ability to focus.
# Aligned AI, The Scientist

The problem with constructing an aligned AI is that any active utility function or attempt at world optimization is likely to succumb to the Goodhart's law in one of its many forms, as discussed here and elsewhere by the good people of MIRI. I wonder if a more passive approach is worth considering, or may have been considered already.

Humanity is a part of the Universe, and building and organizing accurate knowledge about the Universe is what science is. Not using the scientific knowledge to advance specific interests or goals, e.g. technological advancements or personal gain, but for the knowledge's sake. Such a scientifically-minded agent would not be interested in modifying the Universe, and would limit any effects to the minimum needed to understand it. A part of this scientific research would be to understand humanity as deeply as possible, including what we humans imagine an aligned AI would look like even though we do not fully understand it ourselves at this point.

Presumably at some point such an AI would understand the universe and the humans in it enough to basically serve as a safe DWIM (do what I mean) genie. It would be inherently safe because doing anything unsafe, or agreeing to do anything unsafe would mean that the genie does not understand the part of the Universe that is the humanity. After all, we would not want to do anything that has unsafe and unintended consequences. "Unsafe" includes doing nothing at all: an AI that would prevent humans from doing anything would not understand humans, and so would not understand the universe. In other words

**Aligned AI is AI the scientist, not AI the engineer.**

This is, of course, is easier said than done. Learning all about the world while actively minimizing any impact on the world is something that we humans often strive to do when trying to understand the ecosystem of the Earth, with mixed results. Still, sometimes we succeed, and, odds are, so could an agent smarter than us.
# Switching hosting providers today, there probably will be some hiccups

We are switching hosting providers today from Meteor Galaxy to Amazon AWS (mostly because they have better autoscaling and are cheaper). This will involve a bunch of DNS server changes, and will be the first time we hook up our new autoscaling system to the full brunt of LessWrong traffic, so I expect there will be some problems as we try to calibrate our load balancer and everything.

Things should be stable by tonight. Sorry for the inconvenience.