Harley-ml/lesswrong huggingface dataset:
# Shit Rationalists Say?

I assume everyone has run across at least one of the "Shit X's Say" format of videos? Such as [Shit Skeptics Say](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjyGeDKhEoM&feature=player_embedded). When done right it totally triggers the in-group warm-fuzzies. (Not to be confused with the nearly-identically formatted "Shit X's Say to Y's" which is mainly a way for Y's to complain about X's).

What sort of things do Rationalists often say that triggers this sort of in-group recognition which could be popped into a short video? A few I can think of...

You should sign up for cryonics. I want to see you in the future.

…intelligence explosion…

What’s your confidence interval?

You know what they say: one man’s Modus Ponens is another man’s Modus Tollens

This may sound a bit crazy right now, but hear me out…

What are your priors?

When the singularity comes that won’t be a problem anymore.

I like to think I’d do that, but I don’t fully trust myself. I am running on corrupted hardware after all.

I want to be with you, and I don’t foresee that changing in the near future.

…Bayesian statistics…

So Omega appears in front of you…

What would you say the probability of that event is, if your beliefs are true?

Others?
# "Politics is the mind-killer" is the mind-killer

Summary: I propose we somewhat relax our stance on political speech on Less Wrong.

Related: [The mind-killer](/lw/ee/the_mindkiller/), [Mind-killer](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Mind-killer)

A recent series of posts by a well-meaning troll ([example](/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/5r7j)) has caused me to re-examine our "no-politics" norm.  I believe there has been some unintentional creep from the original intent of [Politics is the Mind-Killer](/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller).  In that article, Eliezer is arguing that discussions here (actually on _Overcoming Bias_) should not use examples from politics in discussions that are not about politics, since they distract from the lesson.  Note the final paragraph:

> I'm not saying that I think _Overcoming Bias_ should be apolitical, or even that we should adopt Wikipedia's ideal of the [Neutral Point of View](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view).  But try to resist getting in those good, solid digs if you can possibly avoid it.  If your topic legitimately relates to attempts to ban evolution in school curricula, then go ahead and talk about it - but don't blame it explicitly on the whole Republican Party; some of your readers may be Republicans, and they may feel that the problem is a few rogues, not the entire party.  As with Wikipedia's NPOV, it doesn't matter whether (you think) the Republican Party really _is_ at fault.  It's just better for the spiritual growth of the community to discuss the issue without invoking [color politics](/lw/gt/a_fable_of_science_and_politics/).

So, the original intent was not to ban political speech altogether, but to encourage us to come up with less-charged examples where possible.  If the subject you're really talking about is politics, and it relates directly to rationality, then you should be able to post about it without getting downvotes strictly because "politics is the mind-killer".

It could be that this drift is less of a community norm than I perceive, and there are just a few folks (myself included) that have taken the original message too far.  If so, consider this a message just to those folks such as myself.

Of course, politics would _still_ be off-topic in the comment threads of most posts.  There should probably be a special open thread (or another forum) to which drive-by political activists can be directed, instead of simply saying "We don't talk about politics here".

David_Gerard makes a similar point [here](/lw/9em/open_thread_january_1531_2012/5onr) (though FWIW, I came up with this title independently).
# Help! Name suggestions needed for Rationality-Inst!

The Singularity Institute wants to spin off a separate rationality-related organization.  (If it's not obvious what this would do, it would e.g. develop things like the [rationality katas](/lw/9hb/position_design_and_write_rationality_curriculum/) as material for local meetups, high schools and colleges, bootcamps and seminars, have an annual conference and sessions in different cities and so on and so on.)

We can't think of a name for this organization.

We can't think of any names that seem good enough to be audience-tested.

We don't have any ideas good enough that we'd want to mention them in this post.

Help.
# HPMOR: What could've been done better?

_**Warning:** As per the [official spoiler policy](/lw/2tr/harry_potter_and_the_methods_of_rationality/2v1l), the following discussion may contain **unmarked spoilers** for up to the current chapter of_ the Methods of Rationality. _Proceed at your own risk._

Assume HPMOR was written by a super-intelligence implementing the CEV of Eliezer Yudkowsky and assorted literary critics. What would it have written differently?

... is what I want to know, but that's hard to answer. So here's an easier question:

In what ways do you think Eliezer's characterisations/world-building/plot-fu are sub-optimal? <[optional](/lw/ka/hold_off_on_proposing_solutions)\> How could they be made less sub-optimal? </optional>

(My own ideas are in the comments.)

To put it another way... Assume a group of intrepid fanfic writers in the late 2020s are planning to write a reboot. What parts of Eliezer's story do you think they should tweak?

And just to make sure we're all on the same page: Eliezer isn't going to go back and change anything he's written to bring it in line with anything suggested here. This is _purely_ an "Ah, just consider the possibilities!" thread.

... which means that we can safely suggest drastic rewrites encompassing 30 chapters or something. Or change fundamental facts about the world.

(Exercise due restraint on this one. Getting rid of the Ministry/the Noble Houses/blood purism would probably turn the story into something completely different; this isn't what we're trying to do here.)

With that, let the nit-picking begin!!
# [META] My Negative Results

Yesterday, I made a post asking if anyone else had noticed LW being particularly slow. I offered to collect data on this, and was fairly sure (Probably about 80%) that it would show that LW loaded slower than other webpages. I took the post down after about 20 seconds (sorry if I confused you) since it was almost entirely insubstantial, and resolved to collect some actual data to report.

So I did that. Data was taken using [this](http://www.numion.com/stopwatch/) website. I was on my school's wireless network at the time, running Firefox 8.0. I didn't think to disable my addons before doing this, but I was running Adblock Plus, FastestFox, Greasemonkey, IE Tab 2, Movable Firefox Button, Omnibar, and Web of Trust. Data points were generated at the following websites. Each website was measured five times.  
http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/new  
http://lesswrong.com  
http://lesswrong.com/user/RobertLumley  
http://lesswrong.com/promoted/  
http://predictionbook.com  
http://predictionbook.com/predictions  
http://predictionbook.com/users/rlumley  
http://www.nature.com/news/index.html  
http://volokh.com/  
http://online.wsj.com/public/page/news-opinion-commentary.html  
http://www.webdiplomacy.net/index.php

After doing this, I downloaded an offline copy of each of these websites, and calculated load time per byte of website size. I plotted these results. To my surprise, LessWrong ended up being one of the fastest, although PredictionBook could use some work. I considered deleting the obvious outlier, but trends are clear even with it in there, and all things equal, I'd rather not delete data. Data points (in groups of 5) correspond to the webpages above, in order, ie. the first five points are from the discussion page of LW.

![](http://images.lesswrong.com/t3_9m5_0.png)

Surprisingly, LW is still one of the best even when only raw load time is compared. But the discussion page (remember, that's the first 5 points) takes somewhat longer than the other pages:  
  
![](http://images.lesswrong.com/t3_9m5_1.png)  
  
The excel spreadsheet used to generate this can be viewed [here](https://skydrive.live.com/?sc=documents&mkt=en-us#!/view.aspx?cid=3199CD9857175D9F&resid=3199CD9857175D9F!178).  
  
Since there is no real problem here, and it was all in my head, I considered not publishing this, but after [all](/lw/7io/pressure_to_publish_increases_scientists/) [of](/lw/1ib/parapsychology_the_control_group_for_science/) [the](/lw/iw/positive_bias_look_into_the_dark/) [discussion](/lw/1gc/frequentist_statistics_are_frequently_subjective) we have about positive bias, I wasn't about to turn around and do the same thing. So here they are: my negative results.
# Efficient Charity: Cheap Utilons via bone marrow registration

This topic is not really related to the things normally discussed here, but I think it's really important, and it might interest Less Wrongers, especially since many of us are interested in ethics and utility calculations that are essentially cost-benefit analyses. Bone marrow donation in the United States is managed by the National Marrow Donor Program. Because typing donors for matching purposes can be costly, they often require people signing up to donate to pay a registration fee, which probably prevents a lot of people from signing up. These costs are being covered until the end of the month by a corporate sponsor, which means that right now, all you need to do if you live in the US is go to [http://marrow.org/Join/Join\_Now/Join\_Now.aspx](http://marrow.org/Join/Join_Now/Join_Now.aspx) and fill out a simple questionnaire. You will be sent a kit to collect a cheek swab, and then you will be entered into the donor database. Doing this does not require you to donate if a match comes up.

The reason I think this might interest Less Wrongers is that this is a really cheap way to improve the world. According to their website, about 1 in 500 potential donors are actually asked to donate, so registering doesn't actually make it all that likely that you will be asked to do anything more. If you ARE a match for someone who needs a donation, the cost to you is at most the temporary pain of marrow extraction (many donors are asked only for blood cells), whereas the other person’s chance to live is much improved. This looks like a huge net positive.

Unfortunately I only found out about this a few days ago, and it only occurred to me today that this might be a forum of people who would respond to the argument "you can make the world better at little cost to yourself." However, I ask that you go to the website and spend a few minutes signing up. This is like buying a 1 in 500 lottery ticket that SAVES SOMEONE’S LIFE. If the Singularity hits and an FAI can generate perfectly matched marrow for anyone who needs it from totipotency-induced cells, that will be wonderful, but this is a chance to make sure one more person gets there.
# Faustian bargains and discounting

I was reading TV Tropes on Hell, and it occurred to me: If your discounting was sufficiently hyperbolic, or indeed plain exponential with a low enough time preference, it would in some sense be rational to take a literal Faustian bargain. The integral to infinite time of some constant amount of torture per unit time, discounted exponentially or hyperbolically, is finite; enough worldly power and pleasure would outweight it. 

But this clashes rather strongly with my intuition. Notice that the argument doesn't depend on hyperbolic discounting; no preference pumping is involved. It works just fine with exponentials and a high decay constant. Or, if the worldly pleasures were strong enough, a low decay constant, that is, a high time preference, such as (I assume) most LWers have. For example, would you take eternal torture for a guarantee of living until the heat-death of the universe, 10^130 years from now, with all the refinements of Fun Theory along the way? Intuition says no, infinity being infinity, but then again intuition is notoriously bad at dealing with very large and very small numbers. If I calculate the thing in time-discounted utilons, it seems to me that my decay constant has to be very tiny indeed for me to care about what happens at the end of \*10^130\* years. 

So should I discard my intuition, and take such a bargain if Mephistopheles should suddenly turn up? (Noting that in 10^130 years, I might learn a thing or two about getting out of such difficulties...) Or alternatively, should I stop discounting future utilons?
# Hacking Less Wrong made easy: Vagrant edition

The Less Wrong Public Goods Team has already brought you an easy-to use [virtual machine](/lw/7fv/hacking_on_lesswrong_just_got_easier/) for hacking Less Wrong.

But virtual boxes can cut both ways: on the one hand, you don't have to worry about setting things up yourself; on the other hand, not knowing how things were put together, having to deal with a "black box" that doesn't let you use your own source code editor or pick an OS - these can be offputting. To me at least, these were [trivial inconveniences](/lw/f1/beware_trivial_inconveniences/) that might stand in the way of updating my copy of the source and making some [useful tweaks](/lw/9m2/the_neglected_virtue_of_curiosity/5sfh).

Enter [Vagrant](http://vagrantup.com/) \- and a little work I've done today for LW hackers and would-be hackers. Vagrant is a recent tool that allows you to treat virtual machine configurations _as source code_.

Instead of being something that someone possessed of arcane knowledge has put together, a virtual machine under Vagrant results from executing a series of source code instructions - and this source code is available for you to read, review, understand or change. (Software development should be a process of knowledge capture, not some hermetic discipline where you rely on the intransmissible wisdom of remote elders.)

Preliminary (but tested) results are up on [my Github repo](https://github.com/Morendil/lesswrong) \- it's a fork of the offiical LW code base, not the real thing. (One this is tested by someone else, and if it works well, I intend to submit a pull request so that these improvements end up in the main codebase.) The following assumes you have a Unix or Mac system, or if you're using Windows, that you're command-line competent.

Hacking on LW is now done as follows (compared to using the VM):

*   The following prerequisites are unchanged: git, Virtualbox
*   Install the following prerequisites: Ruby, rubygems, Vagrant
*   Download the Less Wrong source code as follows: **git clone git@github.com:Morendil/lesswrong.git**
*   Enter the "lesswrong" directory, then build the VM with: **vagrant up** (may take a while)
*   Log into the virtual box with: **vagrant ssh**
*   Go to the "**/vagrant/r2**" directory, and copy **example.ini** to **development.ini**
*   **Change** all instances of "password" in development.ini to "reddit"
*   You can now start the LW server with: **paster serve --reload development.ini port=8080**
*   Browse the URL http://localhost:8080/

The cool part is that the "/vagrant" directory on the VM is mapped to where you checked out the LW source code on your own machine: it's a shared directory, which means you can use your own code editor, run grep searches and so on. You've broken out of the black box!

If you try it, please report your experience in the thread below.
# Doing Science! Open Thread Experiment Results

Early in the month I announced that I was doing an experiment: I was going to start two Open Threads in January (one on the 1st, and the other on the 15th) and compare the number of comments on these threads to those of other months. My hypothesis was that having two Open Threads would raise the overall number of comments.

The reason for this experiment was recent discussions regarding how useful threads such as these were quickly buried. Well, the experiment is over now, and here are the results:

I did a search for Open Threads, and entered all the monthly ones I could find into an Excel spreadsheet. I made them into a graph, and I discovered an anomaly. There was an 8-month timespan from February 2010-September 2010, in which the comment counts were extremely high (up to 2112). Many of these threads had 2, 3, or 4 parts, because they were getting filled up.

I wasn't around LW back then, and I don't feel like reading through them all, so I don't know why this time period was so active. My current hypothesis (with P=.75) is that anomalous time period was before the Discussion section was created. I'm sure I could look it up to see if I'm right, but I bet one of the long-term LWers already knows if this is true or not, so I'll crowd-source the info. (Comment below if you know that I am correct or incorrect in my hypothesis.)

Now for the data:

The January 1-15, 2012 thread had:  122 comments  
The January 16-31, 2012 thread had:  236 comments

For a grand total of:  **358 comments in Jan 2012  
  
**

The average Open Thread had: 448.6 comments  
The median Open Thread had:  204    comments  
The average OT of the past 14 mo's:  126.5 comments

  
So overall, the January thread had LESS than the average monthly thread, but more than the median. 

IF however we look at the past 14 months (which was the end of the anomaly), then the January 2012 Open Thread had almost THREE TIMES the average.

My original hypothesis had probabilities assigned to various increases in comment rate, but I was way off because I didn't at all think it would shrink (if we include the anomaly) or that it would be 300% bigger (if we don't)

Here's a handy-dandy chart, because everything is better with pictures in!

![](http://images.lesswrong.com/t3_9of_1.png?v=69934ccbbae0bc895ad2c5861fd9d17e)
# von Neumann probes and Dyson spheres: what exploratory engineering can tell us about the Fermi paradox

Not entirely relevant to the main issues of lesswrong, but possibly still of interest: my talk entitled "[von Neumann probes and Dyson spheres: what exploratory engineering can tell us about the Fermi paradox](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTfuI-9jIo&feature=plcp&context=C3f6a5ecUDOEgsToPDskKi-IqIea_gLUuUI6IVFvM_)".

Abstract:  The Fermi paradox is the contrast between the high estimate of the likelihood of extraterritorial civilizations, and the lack of visible evidence of them. But what sort of evidence should we expect to see? This is what exploratory engineering can tell us, giving us estimates of what kind of cosmic structures are plausibly constructable by advanced civilizations, and what traces they would leave. Based on our current knowledge, it seems that it would be easy for such a civilization to rapidly occupy vast swathes of the universe in a visible fashion. There are game-theoretic reasons to suppose that they would do so. This leads to a worsening of the Fermi paradox, reducing the likelihood of "advanced but unseen" civilizations, even in other galaxies.

The slides from the talk can be found [here](http://api.viglink.com/api/click?format=go&key=9f37ca02a1e3cbd4f3d0a3618a39fbca&loc=http%3A%2F%2Flesswrong.com%2Flw%2F9pj%2Fvon_neumann_probes_and_dyson_spheres_what%2F5t8g%3Fcontext%3D3&v=1&libid=1328175784771&out=http%3A%2F%2Fdl.dropbox.com%2Fu%2F163098%2FFermi%2520Paradox%2520Stuart%2520Talk.pptx&ref=http%3A%2F%2Flesswrong.com%2Fmessage%2Finbox%2F&title=lukeprog%20comments%20on%20von%20Neumann%20probes%20and%20Dyson%20spheres%3A%20what%20exploratory%20engineering%20can%20tell%20us%20about%20the%20Fermi%20paradox%20-%20Less%20Wrong&txt=Uploaded&jsonp=vglnk_jsonp_13281759489711) (thanks, Luke!).
# Looking for information on cryonics

###### Disclaimer: English is a foreign language for me. If you find any mistakes please inform me.

I am currently looking for information on cryonics since I have the intention to sign up. My current organization of choice is the Cryonics Institute with their one-time fee of $1,250 at sign-up and $28,000 for cryo-preservation which is an excellent offer given my age. I understand that most people choose to pay for cryopreservation by life-insurance. Since the cost of cryopreservation is lower than the €30,000 most insurers here in Germany take as minimum payout I still would have money left and wonder if I could put this money in some kind of trust to pay for "revival" and have some money in that future. Do any of you have plans like that and could share their information?

Also, do I understand correctly that the $28,000 at the Cryonics Institute are for cryopreservation only and that $88,000 figure is for cryopreservation, standby and transport to Michigan? In that case I of course need to get life insurance with higher pay-out but at my age that should not be a problem.

Are there any other institutes that offer cryopreservation of at least the brain that I should consider? I know of Alcor (expensive, I do not see the benefits) and KryoRus (seems cheap and require continuous funding that could be handled by a trust fund). Are there more I should know of?

If you have ideas, information I should consider or question I need to have answered, please feel free to reply in the comments.
# Knowledge ready for Ankification

[Spaced repetition](http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition) is a powerful learning tactic, and [Anki](http://ankisrs.net/) is a good tool for it. There are some LW-relevant Anki decks [here](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Spaced_repetition#SR_decks). But I wish there were more.

Which sets of knowledge are (1) likely useful to LWers, and (2) straightforward to encode into Anki decks without needing to be familiar with that field?

Some examples:

1.  Purves et al.'s [glossary of cognitive neuroscience](http://www.sinauer.com/cogneuro/glossary.html) (preferably including a brain-image for each brain _anatomy_ term).
2.  The meaning of each [concept](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Category:Concepts) in the LW wiki.
3.  The meaning of each bolded term in _[AIMA](http://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Modern-Approach-3rd/dp/0136042597/)_.

Which other sets of knowledge would you like to see Ankified? Please **link to the actual knowledge set** you'd like to see encoded.
# Elevator pitches/responses for rationality / AI

I'm trying to develop a large set of elevator pitches / elevator responses for the two major topics of LW: rationality and AI.

An elevator pitch lasts 20-60 seconds, and is not necessarily prompted by anything, or at most is prompted by something very vague like "So, I heard you talking about 'rationality'. What's that about?"

An elevator response is a 20-60 second, highly optimized response to a commonly heard sentence or idea, for example, "Science doesn't know everything."

Examples (but I hope you can improve upon them):

"So, I hear you care about rationality. What's that about?"

> Well, we all have beliefs about the world, and we use those beliefs to make decisions that we think will bring us the most of what we want. What most people don't realize is that there is a mathematically optimal way to update your beliefs in response to evidence, and a mathematically optimal way to figure out which decision is most likely to bring you the most of what you want, and these methods are defined by probability theory and decision theory. Moreover, cognitive science has discovered a long list of predictable mistakes our brains make when forming beliefs and making decisions, and there are particular things we can do to improve our beliefs and decisions. \[This is the abstract version; probably better to open with a concrete and vivid example.\]

"Science doesn't know everything."

> As the comedian Dara O'Briain once said, science _knows_ it doesn't know everything, or else it'd _stop_. But just because science doesn't know everything doesn't mean you can use whatever theory most appeals to you. _Anybody_ can do that, and use whatever crazy theory they want.

"But you can't expect people to act rationally. We are emotional creatures."

> But of course. Expecting people to be rational is irrational. If you expect people to usually be rational, you're ignoring an enormous amount of evidence about how humans work.

"But sometimes you can't wait until you have all the information you need. Sometimes you need to act right away."

> But of course. You have to weigh the cost of new information with the expected value of that new information. Sometimes it's best to just act on the best of what you know right now.

"But we _have_ to use intuition sometimes. And sometimes, my intuitions are pretty good!"

> But of course. We even have lots of data on which situations are conducive to intuitive judgment, and which ones are not. And sometimes, it's rational to use your intuition because it's the best you've got and you don't have time to write out a bunch of probability calculations.

"But I'm not sure an AI can ever be conscious."

> That won't keep it from being "intelligent" in the sense of being very good at optimizing the world according to its preferences. A chess computer is great at optimizing the chess board according to its preferences, and it doesn't need to be conscious to do so.

Please post your own elevator pitches and responses in the comments, and vote for your favorites!
# Fireplace Delusions [LINK]

Sam Harris, in his recent article called _[The Fireplace Delusion](http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-fireplace-delusion "THE FIREPLACE DELUSION")_, tries to make you feel what it's like to react to a cached belief being irreparably destroyed. Just incase you forgot what your apostasy (if you had one, of course) was like in its early stages.

What are some of the Fireplace Delusions you've come across in your days?

EDIT: [WOODSMOKE HEALTH EFFECTS](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17127644 "WOODSMOKE HEALTH EFFECTS")
# lesswrong.ru domain for translation project?

 Hello.

  
Me and a group of a fellow aspiring rationalists work on [Russian translation of LessWrong](http://lesswrong.ru/).  
  
The project is considerable; I think it is worthy of a paid second-level domain.  
  
Too bad rationality.ru is already taken. So are rationalist.ru, ratio.ru and similar others.  
  
Well, there is an option. Would it be impudent of us to store our translations in the lesswrong.ru?
# Is Sunk Cost Fallacy a Fallacy?

I just finished the first draft of my essay, ["Are Sunk Costs Fallacies?"](http://www.gwern.net/Sunk%20cost); there is still material I need to go through, but the bulk of the material is now there. The formatting is too gnarly to post here, so I ask everyone's forgiveness in clicking through.

To summarize:

1.  sunk costs are probably issues in big organizations
    *   but maybe not ones that can be helped
2.  sunk costs are not issues in animals
3.  they appear to be in children & adults
    *   but many apparent problems can be explained as part of a learning strategy
4.  there are few clear indications sunk costs are genuine problems
5.  much of what we call 'sunk cost' looks like simple carelessness & thoughtlessness

(If any of that seems unlikely or absurd to you, click through. I've worked very hard to provide multiple citations where possible, and fulltext for practically everything.)

I started this a while ago; but Luke/SIAI paid for much of the work, and that motivation plus academic library access made this essay more comprehensive than it would have been and finished months in advance.
# [Link] Cognitive Sciences Stack Exchange opened

This is probably of interest to many here: [Cognitive Sciences Stack Exchange](http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/).

For those who aren't in the know, the [Stack Exchange](http://stackexchange.com/) family of forums is a set of sites where users may post questions and answers. They are divided by subject matter, each trying to collect a community of experts who can collectively answer any well-defined question relating to the domain. The [about Stack Exchange page](http://stackexchange.com/about) boasts that 90% of questions get great answers, "often stunningly quickly". Probably the most famous SE site is [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com), the computer programming site that started it all.

I find the creation of a Cogsci SE to be quite exciting, as it seems like it could quickly become an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the subject matter. I encourage people to take a look and contribute if they can, or lurk if they can't - there are a number of interesting questions and answers already. (For instance, I found [this answer](http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/a/155/262) about biofeedback quite interesting.) I already contributed [one answer](http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/a/277/262) myself.

In addition to helping contribute to an improved understanding of cognitive science, this might also be a good opportunity for LWers to make a bit of a name for themselves among net-savvy cogsci academics. No idea if that's actually useful, but it might be a bit of a pleasant ego boost if you don't have anything better to do with your time. ;-)
# The Singularity Institute needs remote researchers (writing skill not required)

The Singularity Institute needs researchers capable of doing literature searches, critically analyzing studies, and summarizing their findings. The fields involved are mostly psychology (biases and debiasing, effective learning, goal-directed behavior / self help), computer science (AI and AGI), technological forecasting, and existential risks.

Gwern's work (e.g. on [sunk costs](http://www.gwern.net/Sunk%20cost) and [spaced repetition](http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition)) is near the _apex_ of what we need, but you don't need to be _as_ skilled as Gwern or write as much as he does to do most of the work that we need.

Pay is hourly and starts at $14/hr but that will rise if the product is good. You must be available to work at least 20 hrs/week to be considered.

Perks:

*   Work from home, with flexible hours.
*   Age and credentials are irrelevant; only the product matters.
*   Get paid to research things you're probably interested in anyway.
*   Contribute to human knowledge in immediately actionable ways. We need this research because we're about to _act_ on it. Your work will not fall into the journal abyss that most academic research falls into.

If you're interested, **[apply here](http://tinyurl.com/remote-researchers)**.

Why post this job ad on LessWrong? We need people with some measure of [genuine curiosity](/lw/96j/what_curiosity_looks_like/).

Also see [Scholarship: How to Do It Efficiently](/lw/5me/scholarship_how_to_do_it_efficiently/).
# Sticky threads?

It annoys me that there's no way to sticky a thread in the discussion section. 

Therefore, I propose creating an **LW wiki page called "Stickies"**, where sticky-worthy threads would be linked to. Would that be acceptable?

These are the threads I'm planning to add: 

*   the current [Welcome to LW thread](/lw/90l/welcome_to_less_wrong_2012/)
*   the current [MoR Discussion thread](/lw/7jd/harry_potter_and_the_methods_of_rationality/)
*   the current [Rationality Quotes thread](/lw/9pk/rationality_quotes_february_2012/) (OK, they're posted in Main, but still...)
*   the current [Open Thread](/r/discussion/lw/9p9/open_thread_february_114_2012/)
*   the current [Media Thread](/r/discussion/lw/9t4/february_2012_media_thread/)
*   the current ['What are you working on?' thread](/r/discussion/lw/9t2/what_are_you_working_on_february_2012/)

**ETA**: Following a [tip-off](/r/discussion/lw/9tz/sticky_threads/5u86) by peaigr, I re-purposed the [Special Threads](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Special_threads) wiki page for this. (The stickies are in the 'periodic threads' section.) Now if there were a way to make this page more conspicuous...

Meanwhile, dbaupp has [submitted](/r/discussion/lw/9tz/sticky_threads/5u8i) a [feature request](https://code.google.com/p/lesswrong/issues/detail?id=283).
# [LINK] Refuting common objections to cognitive enhancement

I've tended to think that bioethics is maybe the most profoundly useless field in mainstream philosophy. I might sum it up by saying that it's superficially similar to machine ethics _except_ that the objects of its warnings and cautions are all unambiguously good things, like cognitive enhancements and life extension. In an era when we should by any reasonable measure be making huge amounts of progress on those problems—and in which one might expect bioethicists to be encouraging such research and helping weigh it against yet another dollar sent to the Susan G. Komen foundation or whatever—one mostly hears bioethicists quoted in the newspaper urging science to slow down. As if doubling human lifespans or giving everyone an extra 15 IQ points would in some way run the risk of "destroying that which makes us human" or something.

Anyway, this has basically been my perspective as a newspaper reader—I don't read specialty publications in bioethics. And perhaps it should come as no surprise that bioethics' usefulness to mainstream discourse would be to reinforce status quo bias, whether that's a true reflection of the field or not. In any case, it was a welcome surprise to see [an interview in _The Atlantic_ with Allen Buchanan](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/02/why-cognitive-enhancement-is-in-your-future-and-your-past/252566/), who apparently is an eminent bioethicist (Duke professor, President's Council on Bioethics), entirely devoted to refuting common objections to cognitive enhancement.

Some points Buchanan makes, responding to common worries:

*   There's no good reason to think the human body and its capabilities are anywhere near their maximum.
*   Technologies that make human lives better tend to have egalitarian effects in the long run (he mentions cell phones), even if they're at first available only to the wealthy.
*   A much smarter human population will probably be morally, as well as cognitively, enhanced—the "evil genius" problem isn't necessarily a realistic one to worry about.
*   Many people worry that the use of cognitive enhancement by people who are willing to self-experiment is unfair to those who don't want to or fear the risks. Buchanan points out that this problem could be largely alleviated by more research into safety and efficacy of drugs with cognitive enhancement potential. The current atmosphere of fear, dubious legal status, and unwillingness to do large-scale testing surrounding cognitive enhancement is counterproductive in this regard.
*   As cool as it would be to be a cognitively enhanced person in today's world, it would be _so much cooler_ to be a cognitively enhanced human in a world of other enhanced humans.

I doubt any of these points will be at all surprising or novel to LW readers, but I was really pleased to see them covered in a mainstream publication, and to know that bioethics has people like Buchanan who are more interested in what we stand to gain from technology than what we stand to lose.

[Via Brian Leiter.](http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2012/02/the-ethics-of-cognitive-enhancement.html)
# Bayesian RPG system?

This is one of those sleep-deprived middle-of-the-night ideas which I'm reasonably likely to regret posting in the morning once I really wake up - but which, at least at the moment, thinking on my more-corrupted-than-standard hardware, seems like a cool idea.

Most role-playing games have a system for determining whether or not certain actions are successful or not. Most of the time, these can be described as setting a target number, and rolling one or more dice, with various modifiers - eg, you might have to roll a 13 or higher on a twenty-sided dice to correctly answer the sphinx's riddle, and having your handy Book of Ancient Puzzles to refer to may give you a +3 bonus to your die-roll.

How insane and awful an idea would it be to have an RPG system whose core mechanic wasn't based on linear probabilities like that... but, instead, on decibels of Bayesian probability? For example, instead of a bonus adding a straight +3 to a d20, or increasing your odds by 15% no matter how easy the task or how skilled you are, the bonus adds +3 decibels: changing your odds from 50% to 66% if you started out with a middling chance, but only increasing it from 90% to 95% if you're already very skilled.

(And now, back to sleep, and to see how much karma I've lost come the morning...)
# New book from leading neuroscientist in support of cryonics and mind uploading

[Sebastian Seung](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Seung)'s new book _[Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are](http://www.amazon.com/Connectome-How-Brains-Wiring-Makes/dp/0547508182/)_ is very well-written, and aimed at a broad audience.

The penultimate chapter explains why cryonics might make sense given our current understanding of the brain.

The final chapter does the same for mind uploading.

Transhumanism continues its march into the mainstream.

Despite its flaws, I recommend the book.
# Beyond Reasonable Doubt? - Richard Dawkins [link]

[A new article looking at the jury system rationally and scientifically.](http://richarddawkins.net/articles/644734-beyond-reasonable-doubt)

Excerpt:

> Courtroom dramas accurately portray the suspense that hangs in the air when the jury returns and delivers its verdict. All, including the lawyers on both sides and the judge, are on tenterhooks and hold their breath while they wait to hear the foreman of the jury pronounce the words, “Guilty” or “Not guilty”. However, if the phrase “beyond reasonable doubt” means what it says, there should be no doubt of the outcome in the mind of anybody who has sat through the same trial as the jury. That includes the judge who, as soon as the jury has delivered its verdict, is prepared to give the order for execution — or release the prisoner without a stain on his character.
> 
> And yet, before the jury returned, there was enough “reasonable doubt” in that same judge’s mind to keep him on tenterhooks waiting for the verdict.
> 
> You cannot have it both ways. Either the verdict is beyond reasonable doubt, in which case there should be no suspense while the jury is out. Or there is real, nail-biting suspense, in which case you cannot claim that the case has been proved “beyond reasonable doubt”.

This really struck me as something that could have been on LW's front page.
# Anyone want a LW Enhancement Suite?

[Reddit Enhancement Suite](http://redditenhancementsuite.com/)

If anyone cares, I could _probably_ port this to work on LW without too much trouble. Optimistically it'd just involve opening up the source and replacing _reddit.com_ with _lesswrong.com._ More realistically, there'd probably be a lot of baked-in assumptions about DOM structure that'd need to be updated to have the UI enhancements make sense.

Anyway, this is mostly just a straw poll to see how many others would be interested in such a thing.
# Pooling resources for valuable actuarial calculations

It occurred to me this morning that, if it's actually valuable, _generating true beliefs about the world_ must be someone's comparative advantage. If truth is instrumentally important, important people must be finding ways to pay to access it. I can think of several examples of this, but the one that caught my attention was **actuarial science**.

I know next to nothing about what actuaries actually do, but Wikipedia says:

> "Actuaries mathematically evaluate the likelihood of events and quantify the contingent outcomes in order to minimize losses, both emotional and financial, associated with uncertain undesirable events."

Why, that sounds right up our alley. 

So what I'm wondering is: for those who can afford it, wouldn't it be worth contracting with actuaries to make important personal decisions? Not merely with regards to business, but everything else as well? My preliminary ideas include:

*   Lifestyle choices to reduce personal risk of death
*   Health and wellness decisions
*   Vehicle choice for economic and safety considerations
*   Where to send your kid to college and otherwise improve life success

Lastly, if consulting actuaries is worth doing as a wealthy individual, shouldn't it also be worth doing as a group? Couldn't we pool money to get excellent information about questions that haven't yielded answers to our research attempts?

If I am not misunderstanding the work that actuaries do, there may indeed be low-hanging fruit here.
# Counterfactual Coalitions

Politics is the mind-killer; our opinions are largely formed on the basis of which tribes we want to affiliate with. What's more, when we first joined a tribe, we probably didn't properly vet the effects it would have on our cognition.    
   
One illustration of this is the apparently contingent nature of actual political coalitions, and the prima facie plausibility of others. For example,

*   In the real world, animal rights activists tend to be pro-choice.
*   But animal rights & fetus rights seems just as plausible coalition - an expanding sphere of moral worth.

   
This suggests a de-biasing technique; inventing plausible alternative coalitions of ideas. When considering the counterfactual political argument, each side will have some red positions and some green positions, so hopefully your brain will be forced to evaluate it in a more rational manner.  
   
Obviously, political issues are not all orthogonal; there is mutual information, and you don't want to ignore it. The idea isn't to decide your belief on every issue independently. If taxes on beer, cider and wine are a good idea, taxes on spirits are probably a good idea too. However, I think this is reflected in the "plausible coalitions" game; the most plausible reason I could think of for the political divide to fall between these is lobbying on behalf of distilleries, suggesting that these form a natural cluster in policy-space.  
   
In case the idea can be more clearly grokked by examples, I'll post some in the comments.
# Seeking education

This will not be a long post; I have a simple question to ask: if you wanted to educate yourself to graduate level in mathematics, but didn't actually want to go to university, what would you do? I would ask for text-book recommendations, but I don't want to limit your responses (however, bear in mind that the wikipedia articles on, say, cardinality or well-ordering go over my head – they may skim my hairline, but over they go). Also bear in mind that while I personally have A-levels (British qualifications) in both Maths and Further Maths (which is to say, I know some calculus at least), there are probably plenty of people on lesswrong who don't and who desire the same information – so assume as much ignorance as you feel necessary (it's a shame, actually, that there isn't a sequence here on lesswrong for maths). What do you advise (if you think the query ill-defined, I would like to know that as well)?
# Impressions from a panel discussion on AGI 

I went to [this event](http://pitp.physics.ubc.ca/quant_lect/2012/tallinn.html) to listen to [Jaan Tallinn](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaan_Tallinn), [Scott Aaronson](http://www.scottaaronson.com/) and [Don Eigler](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Eigler) discuss the AGI, the Singularity and the \[F\]AI research. Not surprisingly, Jaan, whose ideas are significantly influenced by what EY preaches, advocated the urgent need for research into AGI friendliness as much as the AGI research proper.

Scott was rather more laid back, estimating that a "FOOMable" AGI is probably 10,000 years away, and that, while the AGI problem is already really really hard, the FAI problem is harder still, so expending significant effort on the FAI problem before we understand the AGI issues better is probably not a good use of resources.

Don, who makes atom-sized gates in his lab, suggested that the Moore's law will probably level out before the AGI becomes a reality. When asked, he said that he can see another 10^3-10^4 times improvement in chip complexity with technological innovations only, without the need for new scientific breakthroughs. This includes both the miniaturization of gates to near-atomic size and introducing 3D layouts with multiple interconnects. He expects the latter to be a significant breakthrough, provided the power consumption and dissipation issues are solved. 10^4 times corresponds to about 30-50 years given the current slope.

A large chunk of the discussion was rehashing the standard points about the FAI (Pascal's wager type of arguments and counterarguments, augmentation and upload as some ways around UFAI, etc.), all of which have been discussed here to no end, so I will not repeat it.

The video of the event will apparently be posted eventually, no time frame given. I have a marginal quality voice recording with my phone, available if anyone really wants to listen.

If any of the Vancouver LWers attended, please feel free to share your impressions.
# Not insane. Unsane.

_Edit :Excellent suggestions in the comments. Two of them stood out for me:_

1.  _"Untaught" may be better.  It is less connoted (if at all), conveys about the right meaning, and can be understood by about anyone ([thanks, shminux](/lw/a61/not_insane_unsane/5w8w)).  
    _
2.  _Using a word to name a category can raise walls around it. In this case, we must be extra careful not to stigmatize the very people we'd like to join us ([thanks, daenerys](/lw/a61/not_insane_unsane/5wcd))._

We often use "insane" to describe people whose behaviour or beliefs are below the [sanity waterline](/lw/1e/raising_the_sanity_waterline/ "I'd rather link to a definition on the wiki, but…"). But as most must would agree here, you cannot call someone insane with a straight face just because he happens to believe in [magic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God "God (Wikipedia)").

I'm currently watching [Future by Design](http://futurebydesignthemovie.com/), a documentary featuring [Jacque Fresco](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacque_Fresco "Wikipedia") and the [Venus Project](http://www.thevenusproject.com/ "Official site"). Jacque came up with this word, "unsane", to describe people who basically, aren't rational because they haven't been exposed to the right ideas yet.  Which would be different from "insane", which is more about _irrevocably_ irrational people.

I like this word, because there isn't the tone of accusation we find in "insane". This neutrality makes it easier to say that we can do something about it. _Insanity_ should be [eradicated like vermin](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Affective_death_spiral "Mind the Spiral of Hate, though"). _Unsanty_ on the other hand can be [fixed](/lw/1e/raising_the_sanity_waterline/).

So, do you think this word, "Unsanity" might be worth using?
# SI wants to hire a remote LaTeX guru

The Singularity Institute needs to hire 1-2 people who are fluent in LaTeX to help us transform past and future SI publications from looking like [this](http://intelligence.org/upload/ai-resource-drives.pdf) to looking like [this](http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Dewey-Learning-what-to-value.pdf).

As with the [remote researcher positions](/r/discussion/lw/9t8/the_singularity_institute_needs_remote/), pay is hourly and starts at $14/hr but that will rise if the product is good. You must be available to work at least 20 hrs/week to be considered.

Perks:

*   Work from home, with flexible hours.
*   Age and credentials are irrelevant; only the product matters.

If you're interested, contact luke@intelligence.org and describe past LaTeX work you've done, with attached PDF examples.
# Draft of Muehlhauser & Salamon, 'Intelligence Explosion: Evidence and Import'

Anna Salamon and I have finished a draft of "[Intelligence Explosion: Evidence and Import](http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Muehlhauser-Salamon-Intelligence-Explosion-Evidence-and-Import.pdf)", under peer review for _[The Singularity Hypothesis: A Scientific and Philosophical Assessment](http://singularityhypothesis.blogspot.com/)_ (forthcoming from Springer).

Your comments are most welcome.

**Edit**: As of 3/31/2012, the link above now points to a preprint.