Harley-ml/lesswrong huggingface dataset:
# Helping the kids post

Sometimes I tell the kids "sorry, I can't do that with you right now, I'm writing a blog post". A few months ago Lily (then 5y) came up to me and asked if I would help her write a post. We sat down on the couch, she dictated, I typed, and out came a [post about bridges](https://www.lilywise.com/bridges). Since then she's asked me to record [about a dozen](https://www.lilywise.com/about) more.

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/lily-blog-posts-overview.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/lily-blog-posts-overview-big.png)

Some of the posts are fully initiated by her ([podcasts](https://www.lilywise.com/podcasts)) but other times I'll ask if she'd like to write one with me. Perhaps we've just done something interesting together ([static and balloons](https://www.lilywise.com/experiments)), or maybe she has something she wants to tell people about ([tricky situations with my sister](https://www.lilywise.com/tricky)).

First she'll dictate the post body, then I'll ask about a title, then I'll ask about colors. Sometimes her color preferences can be a bit much, and I kind of regret [learning the CSS for polka-dotted backgrounds](https://www.lilywise.com/amusement). I'll ask if she wants any pictures on the post, and we'll either look through my photo archive or go take a picture of something. I'll usually take pictures during activities if I think there's a chance she'll want to use a picture in a post; at some point that kind of anticipation will be her job, but not yet.

When it's done I'll date it and add it to the [index page](https://www.lilywise.com/about). Lily will often ask me to post it in the [Anna and Lily](https://www.facebook.com/groups/2264685517005985/) Facebook group. Yesterday she wrote something and wanted to post it to [LessWrong](https://www.lesswrong.com/) so more people would see it. I expected she wouldn't get the same kind of reception there as on Facebook, but I helped her make [an account](https://www.lesswrong.com/users/lilywise). She had trouble deciding what she wanted to write, though, and didn't end up posting anything.

Her younger sister Anna has written [several](https://www.annakaufmanwise.com/about) as well, though her attention span is a lot shorter and the posts are less coherent. She clearly misses her cousins a lot.

*Comment via: [facebook](https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100155846903392)*
# My dad got stung by a bee, and is mildly allergic. What are the tradeoffs involved in deciding whether to have him go the the emergency room?

**Facts:**

*   My dad is 61, and reasonably healthy.
*   20 minutes ago, he got stung by a bee, on the ear.
*   When he's been stung (or bitten by ants) in the past, the area around the sting/bite has swollen considerably, but he has never gone into anaphylaxis.

*   However, I'm concerned that this situation has a larger risk of obstructing the airway, simply because the sting is on his head.

*   We removed the stinger within 5 minutes of being stung, and he took a dose of Diphenhydramine (Benadryl).
*   He lives in Maricopa, Arizona, US, where (according the [the John Hopkins Cornavirus dashboard](https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6)), there have been 2,491 total COVID-19 cases, and 70 deaths.

**Questions:**

*   Does anyone know of figure such as "If the patient starts do develop symptoms in their mouth or throat, their risk of full blow anaphylaxis is \[X\]%?"

*   I think that number in particular, is pretty crux-y.

*   Which resources should I be referring to.
*   How should I be weighing the risks of bringing him to the emergency room in light of the current pandemic?

\[**Update:** it seems like the base-rate of anaphylaxis from bee stings is 3%, when anaphylaxis occurs, it usually starts within within a few minutes.

**The key question I have left is if "large local swelling", can block the air ways when it the swelling is on the head or face.**\]

Thank you!

Eli
# The Hammer and the Mask - A call to action

Epistemic status: Pretty confident, seems obviously correct.

Summary: We should promote widespread use of reusable silicone masks to stop the spread of SARS-CoV-2.

**Masks and transmission of SARS-CoV-2**
----------------------------------------

SARS-CoV-2 spreads mainly through respiratory droplets. Most of the discussion of mask usage to prevent transmission has so far been centered on surgical masks and disposable filtering facepiece particle (FFP) masks (also called respirators sometimes). Surgical masks do not form an airtight seal to the face and thus can't reliably prevent transmission. Achieving a tight fit with FFP masks is tricky and at least requires some practice. A [recent post](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yKYg6D7HNxLuJDcLS/hammer-and-mask-wide-spread-use-of-reusable-particle) on LessWrong suggested the use of reusable masks with replaceable filters and body made out of silicone, such as this:

![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Air-Purifying_Respirator.jpg)

([North 7700 Series Half Mask Air-Purifying Respirator](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Air-Purifying_Respirator.jpg) / PD-USGOV-HHS-CDC)

These masks (_also_ sometimes called respirators) are available in different sizes and can be equipped with filters of N99 / P3 standard. Safe usage should be much easier to achieve than with FFP masks due to the mask body having a flexible silicone edge that can form a tight seal with the face. Additionally, they are equipped with one-way valves that prevent the filters from being soaked by the wearers' breath. They are more expensive than the other mask types (~50$), but can be easily mass-produced using injection molding. Thus, widespread use of such masks seems highly desirable and might play a big part in reducing effective transmission rates without requiring severe social-distancing measures. Compared to the economic costs of these measures, the cost of providing these masks to everyone, at least in industrialized countries, seems to be negligible. (_**Much**_ more detail can be found in the [previously mentioned post](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yKYg6D7HNxLuJDcLS/hammer-and-mask-wide-spread-use-of-reusable-particle).)

**Call to action**
------------------

Given the plausibility and potential benefit of the idea described above, it is urgent that we take action to promote it or figure out if it is wrong. I strongly encourage the readers of this post to:

*   Share the idea widely and try to convince influential people.
*   Buy a mask for yourself, friends, and family; wear them when you're in public (or generally close to people that you don't live with) to protect yourself and others and increase social acceptance.
*   Use 3D printers and share potential designs; distribute self-made masks to people in need of protective equipment.
*   Reach out to groups which are at high risk of infections and with an interest in protecting themselves (e.g. nurses in nursing homes).
*   Suggest further ideas and point out potential problems in the comments.
# Every system seems random from the inside

_\[Cross-posted from [Grand, Unified, Crazy](https://grandunifiedcrazy.com/2020/04/19/every-system-random-inside/). This builds on a lot of stuff I wrote from before I was cross-posting to Less Wrong, but should be mostly intelligible on a general intuition of what a "computational system" is.\]_

I’ve been working on a post on predictions which has rather gotten away from me in scope. This is the first of a couple of building-block posts which I expect to spin out so I have things to reference when I finally make it to the main point. This post fits neatly into my old (2014!) [sequence on _systems theory_](https://grandunifiedcrazy.com/2014/01/16/roadmap-2-systems-theory/) and should be considered a belated addition to that.

Systems can be [deterministic or random](https://grandunifiedcrazy.com/2014/01/23/systems-determinism-and-randomness/). A system that is random is, of course… random. I’m glad the difficult half of this essay is out of the way! Kidding aside, the interesting part is that from the inside, _a system that is deterministic also appears random_. This claim is technically a bit stronger than I can really argue, but it guides the intuition better than the more formal version.

Because [no proper subsystem can perfectly simulate its parent](https://grandunifiedcrazy.com/2014/02/17/recursive-abstractions-and-approximate-models/), every inside-the-system simulation must ultimately exclude information, either via the use of lossy abstractions or by choosing to simulate only a [proper, open subsystem](https://grandunifiedcrazy.com/2014/01/27/subsystems-and-closure/) of the parent. In either case, the excluded information effectively appears in the simulation as randomness: fundamentally unpredictable additional input.

This has some interesting implications if [reality is a system](https://grandunifiedcrazy.com/2014/02/20/reality-as-a-system/) and we’re inside it, as I believe to be the case. First it means that we cannot ever conclusively prove whether the universe is deterministic (a la Laplace’s Demon) or random. We can still make some strong probabilistic arguments, but a full proof becomes impossible.

Second, it means that we can safely assume the existence of “atomic randomness” in all of our models. If the system is random, then atomic randomness is in some sense “real” and we’re done. But if the system is deterministic, then we can pretend atomic randomness is real, because the information necessary to dispel that apparent randomness is provably unavailable to us. In some sense the distinction doesn’t even matter anymore; whether the information is provably unavailable or just doesn’t exist, our models look the same.
# Databases of human behaviour and preferences?

Hey there, lesserwrongers!

Starting on some of the computer science/neuroscience of my ideas for [deducing human preference](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/m2bwD87ctjJDXC3SZ/ultra-simplified-research-agenda).

To do this, it would be useful to have datasets of human behaviour in relatively restricted situations. Possibly datasets of people playing simple games, or solving certain puzzles, or responding to messages, or something similar?

The question is intentionally vague, so that readers can come up with suggestions. What is needed is that the dataset be largish (more than a thousand humans at least), and be of real humans making non-trivial decisions in not-too-complicated circumstances.

Any suggestions?
# What are good defense mechanisms against dangerous bullet biting?

Some beliefs seem to naively imply radical and dangerous actions. But there often are rational reasons to not act on those beliefs. Knowing those reasons is really important for those that don't have a natural defense mechanism. 

Most people have a natural defense mechanism which is to not taking ideas seriously. If you just follow what others do, it's less likely that an error in your explicit reasoning will lead you to doing something radical and dangerous. The more likely you are to make such errors, the most (evolutionary and individually) advantageous it is for you to have a conformist instinct.

The answer to this question is mostly meant for people to which I want to share ideas that are dangerous if taken at face value / object-level (I want to make sure they have those defense mechanisms first; I encourage you do the same, and do your due diligences when discussing dangerous ideas; this post is not sufficient). I want to advocate to smart people to take ideas more seriously, but I don't want them to fully repress their conformist instincts, especially if they haven't built in explicit defense mechanisms. This post should also be useful for people already not having those defense mechanism. And also useful to people that want to better understand the function of conformity (although conformity is not the only defense mechanism).

Note that the defense mechanisms are not meant as [fully general counterargument](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Fully_general_counterargument). They are not insurmontable (at least, not always), they just indicate when it's prudent to want more evidence.

As a small tangent, is also often has a positive externality to do exploration:
> Like it’s rational for any individual to be pursuing much more heavily exploitation based strategy as long as someone somewhere else is creating the information and part of what I find kind of charming and counterintuitive about this is that you realize people who are very exploratory by nature are performing a public service.
(source: [Computersciencealgorithmstacklefundamentalanduniversalproblems.Cantheyhelpuslivebetter,oristhatafalse hope?](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/brian-christian-algorithms-to-live-by/))

I will post my answer below.
# How likely is the COVID-19 apocalyptic scenario?

This apocalyptic scenario:

1) We develop no long-term immunity, no vaccines, perhaps because the mutation rate is too high.

2) The disease causes permanent lung damage, making each successive infection worse for the patient.

3) No antivirals get developed, or at least not ones which can be produced in extremely large quantities.

is perhaps the most important consideration right now, and I'm not sure how much discussion there is about it. The probability of it seems hard to estimate, but it should nevertheless be attempted, because the stakes are so high.

Uncertainty
-----------

Covid seems to leave permanent lung damage even in young people. Let's say you are 30, get the disease now and recover. Say the vaccine does not get developed, the disease stays with us and you get it again in a few years. Now it's going it be worse. It still may not kill you. Let's say that no effective antivirals get developed which can help you. In a few years you get it again, and this straw breaks the camel's back, now you're dead.

The virus apparently has a mutation rate which is on the high end, unexpectedly large rate of mutation. This makes the vaccine less probable. How much less? No idea.

Some say that antivirals "look promising" but what does that actually mean? No idea. What are they going to cost? What is the theoretical maximum which could be produced on this planet? No idea.

As someone who is not an expert in medicine/biology, every estimate I attempt is going to have a large entropy. Information about this disease we got from various institutions in the past few months was highly biased, because of their incentives. What are the incentives of the people who claim that antivirals look promising? Are the companies just trying to make their product look better, in order to increase the funding provided to them?

The fact that I don't have a clear picture on this bothers me... Where to even get info on this? Are people talking about it but I'm not aware of it? Please, if you have an opinion, leave your subjective probability estimate in the comments, along with the reasoning behind it.

Society
-------

The apocalyptic scenario would surely have huge impact on society. The totalitarian regimes would perhaps deal with this better than free ones, which would either tip the balance of power in favour of China, or it would offer an incentive for the free regimes to turn totalitarian. Even without totalitarianism, a large percentage of the population dying means a lot of people at critical positions (e.g. nuclear power plant engineers) would need to be replaced fast. Also, it means a lot of people at head positions in various organizations would need to be replaced. Will they be replaced successfully?

I hope there is a research group somewhere which is investing, or plans to invest, at least 100 man-hours into investigating the worst-case scenario and estimating the probability of it.
# Last chance for assessing Kurzweil

Thanks to everyone who've already contributed to [assessing Kurzweil's 1999 predictions for 2019](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GhDfTAtRMxcTqAFmc/assessing-kurzweil-s-1999-predictions-for-2019).

I'll be closing that to new volunteers in a few days, but there's still time to be part of it ^_^

Cheers!

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/lcns2pquftpasr7/2019-predictions.jpg?raw=1)
# Retracting on Facebook

Sometimes I'm in a Facebook discussion and someone says something they wish they hadn't. Maybe it turns out to be wrong, or misleading, or insensitive. One way I've seen this poorly handled is posting a follow-up comment:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/fb-retraction-in-comment-thread.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/fb-retraction-in-comment-thread-big.png)

The problem is that the top-level post is still there, and Facebook will often choose to show it to people without showing them the reply. Or people will read the big text and skim over the reply.

At the other extreme, full deletion has different downsides:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/fb-retraction-deleted-post.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/fb-retraction-deleted-post-big.png)

If you're deleting something with replies, those comments disappear, even ones people may have put a lot of work into. Plus people are even less likely to know you retracted your claim.

For simple retractions, where once people know you don't endorse it anymore it's no longer harmful, an edit can work well:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/fb-retraction-as-top-level-edit.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/fb-retraction-as-top-level-edit-big.png)

It's not confusing, and people can still read the comments if the discussion is helpful.

If you really don't want people to gloss over your retraction, you can edit to remove it fully:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/fb-retraction-as-full-blanking.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/fb-retraction-as-full-blanking-big.png)

If people really want to see the context, they can look at the edit history:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/fb-retraction-show-edit-history.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/fb-retraction-show-edit-history-big.png)

In extreme cases, like if you accidentally outed someone, changing the privacy setting on your post to "only me" lets you keep anyone else from seeing it:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/fb-retraction-privacy-only-me.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/fb-retraction-privacy-only-me-big.png)

This way if someone has a comment they wrote that they'd like to still have, they can write to you and ask for a copy.

If you have a comment in a nested thread where you need to clear the edit history, delete your comment and post a new one like "I deleted my comment above because...".

If you have a top-level comment you need to delete, there aren't any great options. The best you can do is manually screenshot the thread in case someone asks for their comments, and then delete it.

So, please do retract things when needed! Just be thoughtful about it.

*Comment via: [facebook](https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100157925188492)*
# Why do you have a personal rationalist blog instead of using LessWrong? Why don't you cross-post all your relevant blog posts?

to those it applies

also see: [Site Guide: Personal Blogposts vs Frontpage Posts](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5conQhfa4rgb4SaWx/site-guide-personal-blogposts-vs-frontpage-posts)
# What are your favorite examples of distillation?

I'm a big fan of the [Distill](https://distill.pub) machine learning journal and the ideas of [Research Debt](https://distill.pub/2017/research-debt/) and distillation. I consider Distill and LessWrong great repositories for distillations of ML / AI and some math topics. However, I've recently been hankering for distillations from other fields with which I'm somewhat familiar -- biology, algorithms, economics-- or even not that familiar.  ([John Wentworth](https://www.lesswrong.com/users/johnswentworth)'s recent series of posts on aging and constraints are good examples of one form posts like this could take.)

So, I figured I'd ask here: what are your favorite examples of distillation in different fields? I'm open to more ML / AI related posts but am especially excited about responses in the fields I mentioned above or other different fields (I would include math here too). Ideal answers would be posts that optimally trade off:

- Describing a non-trivial topic.
- Not "dumbing it down".
- Being accessible to non-experts.
# Training Regime Day 21: Executing Intentions

Introduction
============

It is written about the first of the [Twelve Virtues](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7ZqGiPHTpiDMwqMN2/the-twelve-virtues-of-rationality):

> Curiosity seeks to annihilate itself; there is no curiosity that does not want an answer.

The main flaw of the Twelve Virtues is that they are _epistemic_ in nature.

It is written about the first of the _applied_ virtues:

> Intentions seek to annihilate themselves; there is no intention that does not want to be executed.

The Technique
=============

This is the [simple, yet awesome](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SimpleYetAwesome) technique to end all techniques:

1\. Have an intention

2\. Execute it

Exercise
========

Spend 15 minutes to 2 hours executing intentions.

> I had many intentions

> They were all executed

> What were their crimes?
# [Link] COVID-19 causing deadly blood clots in younger people

Great rundown at [https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1617381.html](https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1617381.html)

Summary: plenty of evidence that COVID-19 is causing blood clots in younger people, which leads to noticeable increases in strokes and cardiac arrests, which may not be counted in the official statistics as of now.
# Emergency Central Planning

[Central planning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_planning) generally hasn't worked out very well for countries, and essentially the whole world has moved over to [markets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_economy). So why are there strong calls for governments to run disaster response, instead of leaving that to markets? For example, governments directly:

*   distributing food and water after a hurricane or earthquake.
    
*   [building out](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/04/army-corp-engineers-hospitals-coronavirus/610195/) and running new covid-19 hospital facilities, instead of agreeing to fund treatment.
    
*   negotiating with foreign factories to produce more masks and arranging importation, instead of announcing they'll pay some elevated price to anyone who can supply them.
    

Normally, everyone is the best authority on what they need. We have a wide range of requirements and preferences, and competition means there are high rewards for resolving mismatches between what people want and what's available. People are also normally able to project their needs out into the future, because the world changes relatively slowly.

Once a disaster strikes, both of these invert. Basic needs become much more important, and these vary a lot less between people: we need food, water, shelter. In the current crisis we're very short on N95 masks, and while doctors probably do have opinions on Ambu vs Teleflex, mostly we just need a lot more of them, quickly. Additionally, people are dealing with something where they don't have much experience, and aren't going to be as good at planning around.

Then you can potentially get the upside of having professionals whose job it is to work full time on preparation, figuring out what disasters are likely and how we're going to want to respond. This is not something the US has been handling well, but perhaps when this is over it will be easier to communicate the need for funding this kind of "we probably don't need it, but if we do it's super important" work.

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/army-corps-of-engineers-builds-out-hospital.jpg)](https://www.jefftk.com/army-corps-of-engineers-builds-out-hospital-big.jpg)

I don't think this is the only way to handle disasters: if law and custom allow prices to freely move in response to changes in what's available and what people are buying, then price signals are still a very strong tool. Both market and centralized approaches have downsides in crisis situations, with markets magnifying existing inequality, and centralization magnifying existing government incompetence. But people all suddenly wanting the same few things they didn't anticipate they would want dramatically levels the playing field between the two approaches.
# A Book Review

Someone wrote a blog post reviewing a book by some sociologist named Murray. Never heard of him. Anyway, I couldn't get through the whole thing because the reviewer has this _really obnoxious_ writing style that uses way too many italics and exclamation points (as well as occasional weirdly out-of-place cuss words?!), but I did notice that he (?) links to _Less Wrong_ a few times, which is something I don't see "in the wild" very often these days, so I "thought it couldn't hurt" to share the link here in case one of you happens to find it interesting?? (April 2020, ~11,200 words)
# Training Regime Day 24: Resolve Cycles 2

Introduction
============

Two anecdotes that I claim have something in common:

> Scene: me at office hours having worked on an algebra problem for 3+ hours.

> TA: The solution involves matrices

> Me: <realizes answer>

  

> Scene: friend asking me for help solving a reasonably difficult CS problem that I don't know the answer to.

> Friend: I tried X, Y and Z and nothing is working.

> Me: Well, can't you just do A? Seems like it should work.

> Friend: ...yeah that works.

  

In the example case, I already _knew_ the solution involved matrices, but telling me "there exists a solution" let me solve the problem almost immediately. In the second example, someone was like "can you help me solve this?" and I figured out how to do it faster than I would have normally

The important part of the first example is that telling someone "there exists a solution" is implicitly telling them "there exists a solution _and I expect you to be able to find it_." The important thing about the second part is that asking someone to help you with something suggests that you _expect them to be able to help_.

It's all about expectation, you see.

Expectation Cycles
==================

When someone _expects_ me to be able to solve a problem, then I start thinking about the problem in a different way. I go from trying-to-solve to just solving. I stop thinking about how I might approach the problem, and just start approaching it. I stop wondering about the tools I might need and just do the obvious thing.

To turn this into a technique, you need to figure out a way to reliably generate expectation for yourself. People's brains work differently - there is no reliable and consistent way that works for everyone. Sometimes, the standard [resolve cycle](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/d922gAtBM8JNzkKKJ/p/R9uj2T9NZd4ta3hrG) can accomplish this for you. If it does not, there are other tricks to try:

1\. Tell your friend that you're going to solve your problem in N minutes

2\. Pretend your friend is the one with the problem and they're asking you for help

3\. Pretend someone you trust has told you that your problem has a solution they expect you to be able to find

A caveat with this technique is that if you _can't_ solve the problem after you've expected yourself to be able to solve it, then it _hurts_. In order to leverage your full power to solve a problem, you have to _expect_ to solve it. The corresponding implication is that if you don't solve it, then you will feel the pain of failing to live up to expectation.

Exercise
========

Try and find a method to generate expectations about yourself, then use it to solve one of the problems in your life in a shorter amount of time/effort than you would have otherwise.
# I do not like math

I do not like math very much.

I do not find math completely boring. If I were stuck in a prison cell I'd happily do math until I expired from a ruptured spline. Insofar as I have escaped prison, I have attempted to escape math too.

Avoiding math was particularly difficult while I earned my bachelor's degree with majors in physics and (a-hem) **pure mathematics**. Undaunted, I found many ways to avoid doing real math while ostensibly doing math.

The lowest-hanging fruit to go unpicked was proofs. Many math classes are nothing but a professor proving a single theorem. We were never tested on anything but the conclusion. Students majoring in math are expected to pay intrinsic interest to these lectures. I daydreamed through them all. A mathematician writing a proof of a theorem is strong Bayesian evidence the theorem is true. Lots of other students watched the professors for errors. Transparency is the best disinfectant. This is good enough for me. With so much transparency, reading the proofs felt redundant, like irradiating my hands and then washing them. I wash my hands of, well, washing my hands.

My favorite method of avoiding math is proof by contradiction. Proof by contradiction assumes a theorem is false and then contradicts itself with a counterexample. It's obscenely dissatisfying.

Alas, some things are not provable by contradiction. This called for last resorts. Unable to do real math, I performed a physics substitution. I  translated the math problem into physics, solved the problem and then translated it back into pure mathematics. In this way, calculus became kinematics, real analysis became electrodynamics, complex analysis became quantum mechanics, group theory became gauge theory and linear algebra became machine learning.

I didn't start gauge theory and machine learning until after I had nearly failed my algebra classes. Oops. Aside from this hiccup, my degree in pure mathematics became a cozy math supplement to my physics degree.

My professors taught me lots of math despite my best efforts to the contrary. For this I am grateful. Math was the second-hardest subject I've ever studied. Some day I hope to be good enough at math that I can work out how to not come across as "weird" in an informal social setting.
# Since the "Will COVID-19 survivors suffer lasting disability at a high rate?" thread was posted, has new information emerged that may update those estimates?

[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h4GFHbhxE2pfiadhi/will-covid-19-survivors-suffer-lasting-disability-at-a-high](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h4GFHbhxE2pfiadhi/will-covid-19-survivors-suffer-lasting-disability-at-a-high)
# What is the alternative to intent alignment called? 

Paul defines intent alignment of an AI A to a human H as the criterion that A is trying to do what H wants it to do. What term do people use for the definition of alignment in which A is trying to achieve H's goals (whether or not H intends for A to achieve H's goals)?

Secondly, this seems to basically map on to the distinction between an aligned genie and an aligned sovereign. Is this a fair characterisation?

(Intent alignment definition from https://ai-alignment.com/clarifying-ai-alignment-cec47cd69dd6)
# Open & Welcome Thread—May 2020

If it’s worth saying, but not worth its own post, here’s a place to put it. (You can also make a [shortform post][1])

And, if you are new to LessWrong, here’s the place to introduce yourself. Personal stories, anecdotes, or just general comments on how you found us and what you hope to get from the site and community are welcome.

If you want to explore the community more, I recommend [reading the Library][2], [checking recent Curated posts][3], [seeing if there are any meetups in your area][4], and checking out the [Getting Started][5] section of the [LessWrong FAQ][6].

The Open Thread sequence is [here][7].

[1]: http://www.lesslong.com/
[2]: https://www.lesswrong.com/library
[3]: https://www.greaterwrong.com/index?view=featured
[4]: https://www.greaterwrong.com/index?view=events
[5]: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2rWKkWuPrgTMpLRbp/lesswrong-faq-1#Getting_Started
[6]: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2rWKkWuPrgTMpLRbp/lesswrong-faq-1
[7]: https://www.lesswrong.com/s/yai5mppkuCHPQmzpN
# Hate Crime Statistics

It's generally hard to tell whether long-term problems are getting better or worse from looking at news coverage or hearing about problems. Each gives you some information, but it's hard to tell how it compares to what was happening before. Quantitative data can help give some perspective, however, and I decided to look some into US [hate crime statistics](https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/ucr/hate-crime).

Since 1992 local police have reported crime information to the FBI under the [Uniform Crime Reports](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Crime_Reports) program, and then the FBI collates them into an annual report. There's some risk of underreporting, or changing reporting levels over time, but this seemed really hard to look into and I decided to just using the numbers as presented in the reports. I couldn't find an annual table, so I went through the 27 published reports and pulled out the number of incidents from each report's Table 1 ([raw data](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HI6-GulCcsSV6wIdE6x6YJgtQvZF6mo4MxVc0CBmhxg/edit#gid=1610932608)).

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/total-hate-crimes.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/total-hate-crimes-big.png)

There were ~30% more people in the US in 2018, though, so we should look at per-capita numbers instead:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/hate-crimes-per-million-americans.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/hate-crimes-per-million-americans-big.png)

The report breaks down crimes by the motivating bias. The five most common, anti-Black (34%), anti-Jewish (13%), anti-White (12%), anti-Gay (10%), and anti-Hispanic (6%) account for 75% of the total incidents:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/hate-crimes-per-million-americans-by-target-group.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/hate-crimes-per-million-americans-by-target-group-big.png)

The spike in 2001 is coded as "Anti-Other Ethnicity/National Origin" but it's probably anti-Arab with 9/11.

Instead of normalizing by the total population, however, for specific biases it would be clearer to normalize by the population of the affected group. For example, how many anti-Hispanic hate crimes are there compared to the number of Hispanic Americans? Here's what that looks like for the same five most common categories:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/hate-crimes-per-million-members-of-target-group.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/hate-crimes-per-million-members-of-target-group-big.png)

This is very sensitive to the size of the target group, however. I've taken the number of Black and Hispanic Americans from the Census (pretty good), the number of Jewish Americans from the Statistical Abstract of the US (ok), and the number of Gay Americans from the General Social Survey (not so good, and other sources can give pretty different numbers).

Statistics are fundamentally a summary, and they can't be our only window to the world. But for questions like, "is this better or worse than it was ten years ago" they're a very powerful tool.

*Comment via: [facebook](https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100160494200172)*
# What information on (or relevant to) modal immortality do you recommend?

Which information should I consume if I want to better understand the implications (or whether there are any implications) of modal immortality?

Modal immortality combines two premises:
- we live in a Big World: your brain configuration is instantiated many times in the multiverse
- functionalist view of mind: you are your function, not a specific instantiation
# "AI and Efficiency", OA (44✕ improvement in CNNs since 2012)

**Abstract: **

> We’re releasing an analysis showing that since 2012 the amount of compute needed to train a neural net to the same performance on ImageNet[^1^](https://openai.com/blog/ai-and-efficiency/#rf1) classification has been decreasing by a factor of 2 every 16 months. Compared to 2012, it now takes 44 times less compute to train a neural network to the level of AlexNet[^2^](https://openai.com/blog/ai-and-efficiency/#rf2) (by contrast, Moore’s Law[^3^](https://openai.com/blog/ai-and-efficiency/#rf3) would yield an 11x cost improvement over this period). Our results suggest that for AI tasks with high levels of recent investment, algorithmic progress has yielded more gains than classical hardware efficiency.
# Maths writer/cowritter needed: how you can't distinguish early exponential from early sigmoid

It's [well known](http://aleph.se/papers/A%20Sigmoid%20Dialogue.pdf) in FHI and similar circles, that it's impossible to distinguish an exponential (growth going up wildly) from a sigmoid/logistic curve (exponential growth until a turning point - an S shape) - until well after the turning point.

Which means we can't effectively predict that turning point. And so can't distinguish when a sigmoid will have a turning point, even when we know it must have one.


![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/5aza6c9un8saetj/sigmoid_exponentials.png?raw=1)

But this doesn't seem to exist in the statistics literature; and it would be very useful to have such a paper or textbook to point to.

We don't have time to write a full paper ourselves, but is there someone on this list with statistical experience who would like to write or co-write such a paper?

Since this result is important and as yet unpublished, it's plausible that such a publication may get an extremely high number of citations.


Cheers!
# Introduction to forecasting worksheet 

I've written [this interactive notebook]( https://www.foretold.io/c/a30a859c-2131-4703-9368-2f7c7372fdd4/n/48f6e50a-68d9-4fe6-a8f2-27d5a627dc66 ) in [Foretold](foretold.io) prediction platform. It is meant to be completely beginner friendly and takes about 2 hours to go through. I've used it as the basis for a workshop, and the accompanying slides can be found at the bottom of the notebook.

From the notebook:

In this interactive notebook, our goal is to actively try out forecasting and learn several basic tools. After this, you will be able to more easily use forecasts in your daily life and decision making, understand broadly how forecasters go about predicting stuff, and you should know if this is something you want to dive into deeper and how to go about that. We have 5 sections:

1.  We will start immediately with several examples.
2.  Then go on to understand how probabilities _feel like_, and how to be more _calibrated_.
3.  Work on the technique of outside view and inside view reasoning.
4.  Briefly discuss several interesting techniques - research, combining models and changing scope.
5.  Try out some actual forecasts from start to finish!
# Tips/tricks/notes on optimizing investments

I've been optimizing various aspects of my investment setup recently, and will write up some tips and tricks that I've found in the form of "answers" here. Others are welcome to share their own here if they'd like. (Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, accountant, or investment advisor, and everything here is for general informational purposes only.)
# [link] How many humans will have their brain preserved? Forecasts and trends

http://lessdead.com/how-many-humans-will-have-their-brain-preserved-forecasts-and-trends

**Summary**:

> Doubling time for the number of people that got cryopreserved has been pretty consistently 9 years since the beginning.
# Multiple Arguments, Multiple Comments

This is partly a recommendation on how to format multiple different independent points or replies in any discussion forum, but it's also a post I'm going to use as a link to explain why I'm leaving comments all over the place so that I don't seem as weird/feel self conscious and don't have to explain it each time.

Oftentimes, when someone disagrees or simply wants to comment on something you've said, they'll have multiple independent critiques of it. The standard way I see this handled rhetorically is to quote your relevant material once, and write a long post, mixing those critiques together. Other times, someone will make multiple different points or arguments in favor of a single underlying idea, or even write completely unrelated paragraphs contained in the same post, that are replied to all at once, in quote->response, quote->response, quote->response format. This makes arguments hard to track as layers of->response->counter-response->counter-counter-response start to pile up each iteration of the comment chain.

To remedy this, when I can, I like to split up these independent points into multiple comments. This makes it much easier to follow the chain of argument, and to see which objections or justifications stand on their own, instead of hiding behind each other. It's much easier to see when this is done that someone doesn't reply, or gives up a particular idea. Even when people are correct, often most or all of their individual reasons for believing what they do are flawed, and even when they're incorrect, often the objections others raise are unsound, too. Leaving each argument naked to individual attack makes it easier to see, both for the writer and the commenter, that a paragraph is either silly or the main rhetorical pillar behind an idea or rebuttal.
# Kurzweil's predictions' individual scores

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/eea1ihml8b0pqde/graph.png?raw=1)

In [my post](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NcGBmDEe5qXB7dFBF/assessing-kurzweil-predictions-about-2019-the-results) on Kurzweil's 1999 predictions for 2019, I wrote:

>The (anonymised) data can be [found here](https://www.dropbox.com/s/hsqvmv1g8t3wroi/all_Kurzweil_done_without_names.xlsx?dl=0), and I encourage people to download and assess it themselves.

But it is, of course, not trivial for everyone to download a spreadsheet and wade through it, and you might want something in between a 5-number summary and a full spreadsheet.

So I decided to post a more detailed summary here, that should give people an easier overview. This table will show the actual prediction, the mean (ie how true or false the predictor found it), the standard deviation (how much spread there was in predictions) and the proportion of "3", ie "Cannot Decide" answers. This data is also available as a tab-separated file [here](https://www.dropbox.com/s/1sun9pc6iobrrzt/Kurzweil_Mean_Standard_Dev.tsv?dl=0).

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/eg6kakjsau1jhef/Kurzweil_individual_predictions.png?raw=1)
# Kids and Moral Agency

We were having some sort of discussion where the idea of a "moral agent" came up, and [Lily](https://www.lilywise.com/) asked what one was. I described the idea, including something along the lines of "if it hurts you is that it's fault?", and then asked her what counted. Her answers, with my ordering:

*   Rock: no
*   Ocean: no
*   Tree: no
*   Ants: no
*   Pigs: no
*   Monkeys: no
*   Babies: sort of
*   Morgan (9m cousin): sort of
*   Felix (18m cousin): in between
*   Oli (3y cousin): yes
*   [Anna](https://www.annakaufmanwise.com/) (4y sister): yes
*   [Ruthie](http://www.ruthiebyers.com/): yes
*   Fairies: yes
*   Anna pretending to be a baby: yes

I'm curious whether adults would give the same answers, or whether adults would typically consider moral agency to start later?
# Rationality Vienna [Virtual] Meetup, May 2020

1) Check-Ins & Round of Introductions  
2) Presentation (or recapitulation) of key ideas of Daniel Schmachtenberger by Anna Riedl  
3) Discussion  
  
We can stay online as long as someone wants to.  
  
To get an in-depth preparation on the topic beforehand, listen to:  
\- [Conversation between Schmachtenberger and Weinstein](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b4qKv1Ctv8)[  
-](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b4qKv1Ctv8
-) The Future Thinkers Podcast episodes with him  
\- And "The War on Sensemaking" on the Rebel Wisdom Podcast
# How to do remote co-working

The single biggest improvement to my productivity during this epidemic has been from co-working with friends on Skype.

This is really easy to do and doesn’t really need an explanation. But it took some activation energy for me to implement it reasonably well and so I’ll spell out what works for me. Hopefully, that’ll reduce the activation energy for some people.

I’ve entirely stolen this strategy from Jan Brauner who has been regularly co-working on video calls for years. But I’m not claiming this the uniquely best strategy.

1.  Find a co-working partner. There is no shortage of people looking now. You just have to write down a few names and ask them if they want to try co-working. This is very low commitment, they’re just signing up for one session. If you end up with multiple partners, you’ll just have more options.
2.  Set up an initial video call. During the call, share what your plans for the next session are. Then you hang up and work (or stay on call and maybe mute if you prefer).
3.  You both set a timer for e.g. 60 minutes and call each other again when it goes off. Then you tell each other how the session went and if there’s any way in which you’d like to improve. And you can just chat a bit, walk around, have a break. Finally, jump back to step 2) until you want to stop working.
4.  If you decide you want to work together regularly, agree on which days of the week you’ll co-work and at what time you start. Consistency is key.

I find that this works best with two or three people. The more people, the more coordination overhead and the less time everyone gets to reflect about their session in the break.
# What are examples of perennial discoveries?

Quotes are from a [private mailing list](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/long-term-world-improvement/x-fOE6Tn_3M/VqCOJUyyBgAJ) I'm part of. I asked the author if they wanted acknowledgement; I'll update if so.

Definition of "perennial discoveries": "These are science or engineering 'breakthroughs' that get announced in the press over and over and over, yet almost always fail to reach large-scale commercial use (the failure often not being reported)."

Motivation for asking: "I think it would be significantly easier to make sense of the world if there were a convenient, well-known list of 'perennial discoveries'. [...] A story on the list could be safely assumed to be unimportant, at least without much more information. Conversely, a story *not* on the list could be much more important than it might initially seem."
# Is there any scientific evidence for benefits of meditation?

Are there good reasons for a typical reader of LessWrong to invest their time and effort into meditation practice? I'm going to do a literature review and will keep adding answers here but contributions from others are more than welcome. Some ground rules for the **answers**:

*   Only links to scientific papers + ideally a short commentary (summary and criticism where applicable), please.
*   Studies that have been independently replicated are especially welcome. In such cases, please post the replications as well.
*   No meta-analyses, please. The last time I did a literature review on the subject, most papers were of embarrassingly low quality and a meta-analysis can easily obscure that. This rule does not introduce bias: if a meta-analysis is based on high quality studies, then those individual studies are admissible here.
*   For any supposed benefit, meditation should be compared with other means of gaining that benefit. Either in the linked paper, or in the commentary.
*   Participants' self-reporting on their internal mental states (emotions, thoughts, etc.) is not considered reliable or informative for the purpose of this post. Note: self-reporting on physical behaviours is admissible, although it's best if it's based on some tracking methodology rather than just memory.
*   If you aren't sure whether your contribution meets those criteria, **please post a comment instead of an answer**.

  

There are no rules for the comments, other than basic civility. Anything that contributes to the discussion, including criticism of the rules above, is more than welcome. In fact, I'm going to write in comments some of the backstory and my thoughts before embarking on the search for answers.