Harley-ml/lesswrong huggingface dataset:
# Look for the Next Tech Gold Rush?

In early 2000, I registered my personal domain name weidai.com, along with a couple others, because I was worried that the small (sole-proprietor) ISP I was using would go out of business one day and break all the links on the web to the articles and software that I had published on my "home page" under its domain. Several years ago I started getting offers, asking me to sell the domain, and now they're coming in almost every day. A couple of days ago I saw the first six figure offer ($100,000).

In early 2009, someone named Satoshi Nakamoto emailed me personally with an announcement that he had published version 0.1 of Bitcoin. I didn't pay much attention at the time (I was more interested in Less Wrong than Cypherpunks at that point), but then in early 2011 I saw a LW article about Bitcoin, which prompted me to start mining it. I wrote at the time, "thanks to the discussion you started, I bought a Radeon 5870 and started mining myself, since it looks likely that I can at least break even on the cost of the card." That approximately $200 investment (plus maybe another $100 in electricity) is also worth around six figures today.

Clearly, technological advances can sometimes create gold rush-like situations (i.e., first-come-first-serve opportunities to make truly extraordinary returns with minimal effort or qualifications). And it's possible to stumble into them without even trying. Which makes me think, maybe we _should_ be trying? I mean, if only I had been _looking_ for possible gold rushes, I could have registered a hundred domain names optimized for potential future value, rather than the few that I happened to personally need. Or I could have started mining Bitcoins a couple of years earlier and be a thousand times richer.

I wish I was already an experienced gold rush spotter, so I could explain how best to do it, but as indicated above, I participated in the ones that I did more or less by luck. Perhaps the first step is just to keep one's eyes open, and to keep in mind that tech-related gold rushes do happen from time to time and they are not impossibly difficult to find. What other ideas do people have? Are there other past examples of tech gold rushes besides the two that I mentioned? What might be some promising fields to look for them in the future?
# Gauging interest for a Tokyo area meetup group

I'd like to gauge interest in an (english-language) Tokyo area meetup - given Tokyo's size, if a couple people are interested, it would be good to pick a location/day that's convenient for everybody. Otherwise I will announce a date and time and wait in a cafe with a book hoping that somebody will turn up.

I have been to several LW gatherings and have met consistently awesome and nice people, so if any Tokyo lurkers are reading this, I can assure you it's totally worth it to come! Please make yourself heard in the comments if you are interested.
# Jokes Thread

This is a thread for rationality-related or LW-related jokes and humor. Please post jokes (new or old) in the comments.

\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-

Q: Why are Chromebooks good Bayesians?

A: Because they frequently update!

\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-

A super-intelligent AI walks out of a box...

\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-

Q: Why did the psychopathic utilitarian push a fat man in front of a trolley?

A: Just for fun.
# Announcing the 2014 program equilibrium iterated PD tournament

Last year, AlexMennen ran a [prisoner's dilemma tournament](/lesswrong.com/lw/hmx/prisoners_dilemma_with_visible_source_code) with bots that could see each other's source code, which was dubbed a "[program equilibrium](/lw/hmx/prisoners_dilemma_with_visible_source_code/93ty)" tournament. This year, I will be running a similar tournament. Here's how it's going to work: Anyone can submit a bot that plays the iterated PD against other bots. Bots can not only remember previous rounds, as in the standard iterated PD, but also run perfect simulations of their opponent before making a move. Please see the [github repo](https://github.com/pdtournament/pdtournament) for the full list of rules and a brief tutorial.

There are a few key differences this year:

1) The tournament is in Haskell rather than Scheme.

2) The time limit for each round is shorter (5 seconds rather than 10) but the penalty for not outputting Cooperate or Defect within the time limit has been reduced.

3) Bots cannot directly see each other's source code, but they can run their opponent, specifying the initial conditions of the simulation, and then observe the output.

All submissions should be emailed to pdtournament@gmail.com or PM'd to me here on LessWrong by September 15th, 2014. LW users with 50+ karma who want to participate but do not know Haskell can PM me with an algorithm/psuedocode, and I will translate it into a bot for them. (If there is a flood of such requests, I would appreciate some volunteers to help me out.)
# Me and M&Ms

Ah, delicious dark chocolate M&Ms, colorfully filling a glass jar with your goodness. How do I love thee? About four of you an hour. Here's a brief rundown of my most recent motivation hacking experiment. 

1\. Gwern has an [interesting article](http://www.gwern.net/Conscientiousness%20and%20online%20education) arguing that Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) may shift the learning advantage from intelligence toward conscientiousness (actually he's not sure about the intelligence part). This shift occurs because MOOCs select for higher-quality instruction and better feedback, broadly speaking and over time, but it's much harder to stay on task without a malevolent instructor and bad grades breathing down your neck. This thesis jives with my own experience; if I get stuck on a math problem, I just google "an intuitive approach to x," and I usually find a couple of people begging to teach me the concept. But it's harder to get started and to stay focused than in a classroom.

2\. Given that knowledge [compounds](http://www.mccurley.org/advice/hamming_advice.html) and grants increasing advantages, I'd really like to keep taking advantage of MOOCs. Some MOOCs are better than others, but many are better than your standard college course - and they're **free**. For a non-technical guy getting technical, like me, it's a [golden age of education](https://www.class-central.com/). So, it would be great if I were highly conscientious. Gwern points out that conscientiousness is a relatively stable Big Five personality trait.

3\. The question then becomes, can conscientiousness be developed? Well, I'm not a Cartesian agent, so wouldn't it make sense to reward myself for conscientiousness? Enter the M&Ms. I set a daily target for pomodoros. When I finish a pomodoro, I get a big peanut M&M or two small ones. If I finish two in a row, I get two servings, and so on. In this way, I encourage myself to get started, and then to keep going to build [Deep](http://calnewport.com/blog/2009/06/22/on-the-value-of-hard-focus/) [Focus](http://calnewport.com/blog/2012/11/27/some-notes-on-deep-working/). Each pomodoro becomes cause for celebration, and I find my rapid progress through pomodoros (and chocolate) energizing, where long periods of distraction were tiring.

This has worked fantastically well for the last two weeks. I hit my pomodoro target for paid work, then switch to educational work. I plan to keep it up, and maybe I'll use chocolate as motivation somewhere else as well. Now back to my M&Ms, green, yellow, blue, orange, brown, red . . .
# MIRI 2014 Summer Matching Challenge and one-off opportunity to donate *for free*

**Edit: This post is obsoleted by [this post](/lesswrong.com/lw/koz/miris_2014_summer_matching_challenge); please see that one instead.**

MIRI are currently holding a donation-matching challenge, until Friday 15th August. You can donate and track its progress by going to the [Donations page](https://intelligence.org/donate/).

Also, to [quote](https://www.facebook.com/MachineIntelligenceResearchInstitute/posts/720683127969074) the MIRI Facebook page:

> Stellar, a long awaited new cryptocurrency and distributed payment network, made by the founder of Mt. Gox and Ripple, just launched.  
>   
> You can support MIRI for free by signing up. Every new Stellar user gets 6000 STR, and can send an additional 1000 STR to another user for FREE!  
>   
> Our Stellar username is “miri”.  
>   
> This is an awesome opportunity to get in on the ground floor of an exciting and promising new digital currency project while also supporting MIRI.

[Registering for Stellar](https://launch.stellar.org/#/register) requires just a username and password, no e-mail or verification required. To get the free Stellar, you have to have Facebook Platform turned on (see the first setting on [this page](https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications)) and allow the Stellar App to temporarily integrate with your account. Send 1000 STR to 'miri' or their address (gHhshpzDcfRsie2qxjjHqrsTRe3JSCaUeN), and you will get back the 1000 STR. Once you receive back the 1000 STR, you can then [remove the Stellar app](https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications) like any other in your [Facebook settings](https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications).

**Edit: The promotion seems to have been reduced.** See [these](/lw/ko4/miri_2014_summer_matching_challenge_and_oneoff/b6qb) two [comments](/r/lesswrong/lw/ko4/miri_2014_summer_matching_challenge_and_oneoff/b6yo).

**Edit2: The promotion seems more-or-less gone now; consider the part of this post about Stellar irrelevant.**

I did this and it took me maybe three minutes (including time to take notes). The Stellar website is self-explanatory. If you encounter difficulties at any point in the process, or if I've forgotten some part of the process, feel free to comment on this post to that effect.

To track follow-up on threads like this: If you donate because of this thread, please indicate that in [this comment](/r/lesswrong/lw/ko4/miri_2014_summer_matching_challenge_and_oneoff/b6kx) (you can do so anonymously there if you prefer), and feel free to state that you have donated as a reply to that comment.

(If you're thinking free cryptocurrency is too good to be true, and wondering what the founders get out of it: My understanding is the reason this works is that early investment in a cryptocurrency bolsters it, so that giving away some for free at the start is actually a smart thing to do at first for the founders. No gimmicks or tricks about it asking for card details or anything dodgy like that.)
# LW client-side comment improvements

All of these things I mentioned in the most recent open thread, but since the first one is directly relevant and the comment where I posted it somewhat hard to come across, I figured I'd make a post too.

Custom Comment Highlights
-------------------------

NOTE FOR FIREFOX USERS: this contained a bug which has been squashed, causing the list of comments not to be automatically populated (depending on your version of Firefox). I suggest reinstalling. Sorry, no automatic updates unless you use the Chrome extension (though with >50% probability there will be no further updates).

You know how the highlight for new comments on Less Wrong threads disappears if you reload the page, making it difficult to find those comments again? [Here is a userscript you can install to fix that](https://github.com/bakkot/LWComments) (provided you're on Firefox or Chrome). Once installed, you can set the date after which comments are highlighted, and easily scroll to new comments. See [screenshots](http://imgur.com/a/GGLly). Installation is straightforward (especially for Chrome, since I made an [extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/less-wrong-comment-highli/ncicfpeiadllklmilbjpengagphcpgbp) as well).

Bonus: works even if you're logged out or don't have an account, though you'll have to set the highlight time manually.

  

---

Delay Before Commenting
-----------------------

[Another script](https://gist.github.com/bakkot/4f688ed3021dd0d36449) to add a delay and checkbox reading "In posting this, I am making a good-faith contribution to the collective search for truth." before allowing you to comment. Made in response to [a comment](/r/discussion/lw/kmk/open_thread_july_28_august_3_2014/b64n) by army1987.

  

---

Slate Star Codex Comment Highlighter
------------------------------------

Edit: You no longer need to install this, since Scott's added it to his blog. Unless you want the little numbers in the title bar.

  

[Yet another script](https://github.com/bakkot/SlateStarComments), to make finding recent comments over at Slate Star Codex a lot easier. Also comes in [Chrome extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/slatestarcomments/aobpboihcjnlhbnjckjaeafncnpaageh) flavor. See [screenshots](http://imgur.com/a/ThOgM). Not directly relevant to Less Wrong, but there's a lot of overlap in readership, so you may be interested.

#####   

##### Note for LW Admins / Yvain

These would be straightforward to make available to all users (on sufficiently modern browsers), since they're just a bit of Javascript getting injected. If you'd like to, feel free, and message me if I can be of help.
# Why humans suck: Ratings of personality conditioned on looks, profile, and reported match

The [recent OKCupid blog](http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/we-experiment-on-human-beings/), which gwern mentioned in Media Open Thread, investigated the impact of three different factors on users' perceptions of each other: authority (reported match %), profile text (present or absent), and looks.

On the bright side, the authority versus reality match-up came out tied:

![](http://cdn.okccdn.com/blog/humanexperiments/full-matrix.png)

If you don't consider that a good outcome, you're not yet sufficiently cynical.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what are a thousand words worth?

![Ratings with and without profile text](http://cdn.okccdn.com/blog/humanexperiments/profile-text-experiment.png)

... Approximately nothing.

And the winner is...

![](http://www.usnews.com/dims4/USNEWS/0c1ab31/2147483647/resize/652x/quality/85/?url=%2Fcmsmedia%2F28%2Fba%2F4e8f442b4833aa14366184b5b37e%2F140729-cupidex2-graphic.53.48%20AM.png)
# Meditations on Löb's theorem and probabilistic logic [LINK]

A post on my own blog following a MIRIx workshop from two weekends ago.

http://qmaurmann.wordpress.com/2014/08/10/meditations-on-l-and-probabilistic-logic/

Reproducing the intro:

This post is a second look at _The Definability of Truth in Probabilistic Logic_, a preprint by Paul Christiano and other Machine Intelligence Research Institute associates, which I first read and took notes on a little over one year ago.

In particular, I explore relationships between Christiano et al’s probabilistic logic and stumbling blocks for self-reference in classical logic, like the liar’s paradox (“This sentence is false”) and in particular Löb’s theorem.

The original motivation for the ideas in this post was an attempt to prove a probabilistic version of Löb’s theorem to analyze the truth-teller sentences (“This sentence is \[probably\] true”) of probabilistic logic, an idea that came out of some discussions at a MIRIx workshop that I hosted in Seattle.
# What is the difference between rationality and intelligence?

Or to ask the question another way, is there such a thing as a theory of bounded rationality, and if so, is it the same thing as a theory of general intelligence?

The LW Wiki defines general intelligence as "ability to efficiently achieve goals in a wide range of domains", while instrumental rationality is defined as "the art of choosing and implementing actions that steer the future toward outcomes ranked higher in one's preferences". These definitions seem to suggest that rationality and intelligence are fundamentally the same concept.

However, rationality and AI have separate research communities. This seems to be mainly for historical reasons, because people studying rationality started with theories of unbounded rationality (i.e., with logical omniscience or access to unlimited computing resources), whereas AI researchers started off trying to achieve modest goals in narrow domains with very limited computing resources. However rationality researchers are trying to find theories of bounded rationality, while people working on AI are trying to achieve more general goals with access to greater amounts of computing power, so the distinction may disappear if the two sides end up meeting in the middle.

We also distinguish between rationality and intelligence when talking about humans. I understand the former as the ability of someone to overcome various biases, which seems to consist of a set of skills that can be learned, while the latter is a kind of mental firepower measured by IQ tests. This seems to suggest another possibility. Maybe (as Robin Hanson recently argued on his blog) there is no such thing as a simple theory of how to optimally achieve arbitrary goals using limited computing power. In this view, general intelligence requires cooperation between many specialized modules containing domain specific knowledge, so "rationality" would just be one module amongst many, which tries to find and correct systematic deviations from ideal (unbounded) rationality caused by the other modules.

I was more confused when I started writing this post, but now I seem to have largely answered my own question (modulo the uncertainty about the nature of intelligence mentioned above). However I'm still interested to know how others would answer it. Do we have the same understanding of what "rationality" and "intelligence" mean, and know what distinction someone is trying to draw when they use one of these words instead of the other?

**ETA:** To clarify, I'm asking about the difference between general intelligence and rationality as theoretical concepts that apply to all agents. Human rationality vs intelligence may give us a clue to that answer, but isn't the main thing that I'm interested here.
# [LINK] Speed superintelligence?

From Toby Ord:

> Tool assisted speedruns (TAS) are when people take a game and play it frame by frame, effectively providing super reflexes and forethought, where they can spend a day deciding what to do in the next 1/60th of a second if they wish. There are some very extreme examples of this, showing what can be done if you really play a game perfectly. For example, [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZawBtWi1Jc) shows how to winSuper Mario Bros 3 in 11 minutes. It shows how different optimal play can be from normal play. In particular, on level 8-1, it gains 90 extra lives by a sequence of amazing jumps.
> 
> Other TAS runs get more involved and start exploiting subtle glitches in the game. For example, [this page](http://tasvideos.org/GameResources/DOS/Nethack.html) talks about speed running NetHack, using a lot of normal tricks, as well as luck manipulation (exploiting the RNG) and exploiting a dangling pointer bug to rewrite parts of memory.

Though there are limits to what AIs could do with sheer speed, it's interesting that great performance can be achieved with speed alone, that this allows different strategies from usual ones, and that it allows the exploitation of otherwise unexploitable glitches and bugs in the setup.
# [meta] Future moderation and investigation of downvote abuse cases, or, I don't want to deal with this stuff

Since the [episode with Eugine_Nier](/lw/kfq/moderator_action_eugine_nier_is_now_banned_for/), I have received three private messages from different people asking me to investigate various cases of suspected mass downvoting. And to be quite honest, I don't want to deal with this. Eugine's case was relatively clear-cut, since he had engaged in systematic downvoting of a massive scale, but the new situations are a lot fuzzier and I'm not sure of what exactly the rules should be (what counts as a permitted use of the downvote system and what doesn't?).

At least one person has also privately contacted me and offered to carry out moderator duties if I don't want them, but even if I told them yes (on what basis? why them and not someone else?), I don't know what kind of policy I should tell them to enforce. I only happened to be appointed a moderator because I was in the list of top 10 posters at a particular time, and I don't feel like I should have any particular authority to make the rules. Nor do I feel like I have any good idea of what the rules should be, or who would be the right person to enforce them.

In any case, I don't want to be doing this job, nor do I particularly feel like being responsible for figuring out who should, or how, or [what the heck](http://www.beardsandpixels.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/i-never-asked-for-this-210x210-13638063411.jpg). I've already started visiting LW less often because I dread having new investigation requests to deal with. So if you folks could be so kind as to figure it out without my involvement? If there's a clear consensus that someone in particular should deal with this, I can give them mod powers, or something.
# An example of deadly non-general AI

In a [previous post](/r/discussion/lw/ksa/the_metaphormyth_of_general_intelligence/), I mused that we might be focusing too much on general intelligences, and that the route to powerful and dangerous intelligences might go through much more specialised intelligences instead. Since it's easier to reason with an example, here is a potentially deadly narrow AI (partially due to Toby Ord). Feel free to comment and improve on it, or suggest you own example.

It's the standard "pathological goal AI" but only a narrow intelligence. Imagine a medicine designing super-AI with the goal of reducing human mortality in 50 years - i.e. massively reducing human population in the next 49 years. It's a narrow intelligence, so it has access only to a huge amount of human biological and epidemiological research. It must gets its drugs past FDA approval; this requirement is encoded as certain physical reactions (no death, some health improvements) to people taking the drugs over the course of a few years.

Then it seems trivial for it to design a drug that would have no negative impact for the first few years, and then causes sterility or death. Since it wants to spread this to as many humans as possible, it would probably design something that interacted with common human pathogens - colds, flues - in order to spread the impact, rather than affecting only those that took the disease.

Now, this narrow intelligence is less threatening than if it had general intelligence - where it could also plan for possible human countermeasures and such - but it seems sufficiently dangerous on its own that we can't afford to worry only about general intelligences. Some of the "AI superpowers" that Nick mentions in his book (intelligence amplification, strategizing, social manipulation, hacking, technology research, economic productivity) could be enough to cause devastation on their own, even if the AI never developed other abilities.

We still could be destroyed by a machine that we outmatch in almost every area.
# Another type of intelligence explosion

I've [argued](/r/discussion/lw/ksa/the_metaphormyth_of_general_intelligence/) that we might have to worry about [dangerous non-general intelligences](/r/discussion/lw/kte/an_example_of_deadly_nongeneral_ai/). In a series of back and forth with Wei Dai, we agreed that some level of general intelligence (such as that humans seem to possess) seemed to be a great advantage, though possibly one with diminishing returns. Therefore a dangerous AI could be one with great narrow intelligence in one area, and a little bit of general intelligence in others.

The traditional view of an intelligence explosion is that of an AI that knows how to do X, suddenly getting (much) better at doing X, to a level beyond human capacity. Call this the _gain of aptitude _intelligence explosion. We can prepare for that, maybe, by tracking the AI's ability level and seeing if it shoots up.

But the example above hints at another kind of potentially dangerous intelligence explosion. That of a very intelligent but narrow AI that suddenly gains intelligence across other domains. Call this the _gain of function_ intelligence explosion. If we're not looking specifically for it, it may not trigger any warnings - the AI might still be dumber than the average human in other domains. But this might be enough, when combined with its narrow superintelligence, to make it deadly. We can't ignore the toaster that starts babbling.
# Conservation of Expected Jury Probability

The New York Times has a [calculator](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/20/nyregion/jury-duty-quiz.html) to explain how getting on a jury works. They have a slider at the top indicating how likely each of the two lawyers think you are to side with them, and as you answer questions it moves around. For example, if you select that your occupation is "blue collar" then it says "more likely to side with plaintiff" while "white collar" gives "more likely to side with defendant". As you give it more information the pointer labeled "you" slides back and forth, representing the lawyers' ongoing revision of their estimates of you. Let's see what this looks like.

Initial

![](http://www.jefftk.com/nyt-jury-duty-unknown.png)

Selecting "Over 30"

![](http://www.jefftk.com/nyt-jury-duty-over-30.png)

Selecting "Under 30"

![](http://www.jefftk.com/nyt-jury-duty-under-30.png)

For several other questions, however, the options aren't matched. If your household income is under $50k then it will give you "more likely to side with plaintiff" while if it's over $50k then it will say "no effect on either lawyer". This is not how [conservation of expected evidence](/lw/ii/conservation_of_expected_evidence/) works: if learning something pushes you in one direction, then learning its opposite has to push you in the other.

Let's try this with some numbers. Say people's leanings are:

| income | probability of siding with plaintiff | probability of siding with defendant |
| --- | --- | --- |
| >$50k | 50% | 50% |
| <$50k | 70% | 30% |

Before asking you your income the lawyers' best guess is you're equally likely to be earning >$50k as <$50k because $50k's the median \[1\]. This means they'd guess you're 60% likely to side with the plaintiff: half the people in your position earn over >$50k and will be approximately evenly split while the other half of people who could be in your position earn under <$50k and would favor the plaintiff 70-30, and averaging these two cases gives us 60%.

So the lawyers best guess for you is that you're at 60%, and then they ask the question. If you say ">$50k" then they update their estimate for you down to 50%, if you say "<$50k" they update it up to 70%. "No effect on either lawyer" can't be an option here unless the question gives no information.

  
\[1\] Almost; the median income in the US in 2012 was $51k. ([pdf](http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr12-02.pdf))
# Announcing The Effective Altruism Forum

The Effective Altruism Forum will be launched at effective-altruism.com on September 10, British time.

Now seems like a good time time to discuss why we might need an Effective Altruism Forum, and how it might compare to LessWrong.

**About the Effective Altruism Forum**

The motivation for the Effective Altruism Forum is to improve the quality of effective altruist discussion and coordination. A big part of this is to give many of the useful features of LessWrong to effective altruists, including:

*   Archived, searchable content (this will begin with archived content from effective-altruism.com)
*   Meetups
*   Nested comments
*   A karma system
*   A dynamically upated list of external effective altruist blogs
*   Introductory materials (this will begin with [these](/effectivealtruism.org/resources/#reading) articles)

The Effective Altruism Forum has been designed by Mihai Badic. Over the last month, it has been developed by Trike Apps, who have built the new site using the LessWrong codebase. I'm glad to report that it is now basically ready, looks nice, and is easy to use.

I expect that at the new forum, as on the effective altruist [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/groups/effective.altruists/) and [Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/smartgiving) pages, people will want to discuss the which intellectual procedures to use to pick effective actions. I also expect some proposals of effective altruist projects, and offers of resources. So users of the new forum will share LessWrong's interest in instrumental and epistemic rationality. On the other hand, I expect that few of its users will want to discuss the technical aspects of artificial intelligence, anthropics or decision theory, and to the extent that they do so, they will want to do it at LessWrong. As a result, I  expect the new forum to cause:

*   A bunch of materials on effective altruism and instrumental rationality to be collated for new effective altruists
*   Discussion of old LessWrong materials to resurface
*   A slight increase to the number of users of LessWrong, possibly offset by some users spending more of their time posting at the new forum.

At least initially, the new forum won't have a wiki or a Main/Discussion split and won't have any institutional affiliations.

**Next Steps:**

It's really important to make sure that the Effective Altruism Forum is established with a beneficial culture. If people want to help that process by writing some seed materials, to be posted around the time of the site's launch, then they can contact me at ry \[dot\] duff \[at\] gmail.com. Alternatively, they can wait a short while until they automatically receive posting priveleges.

It's also important that the Effective Altruism Forum helps the shared goals of rationalists and effective altruists, and has net positive effects on LessWrong in particular. Any suggestions for improving the odds of success for the effective altruism forum are most welcome.
# Persistent Idealism

When I talk to people about [earning to give](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/31/join-wall-street-save-the-world/), it's common to hear worries about "backsliding". Yes, you say you're going to go make a lot of money and donate it, but once you're surrounded by rich coworkers spending heavily on cars, clothes, and nights out, will you follow through? Working at a [greedy company in a selfishness-promoting culture you could easily become corrupted](https://www.facebook.com/groups/effective.altruists/permalink/727166167339743/?comment_id=733509863372040) and lose initial values and motivation.

First off, this is a totally reasonable concern. People do change, and we are pulled towards thinking like the people around us. I see two main ways of working against this:

1.  Be [public with your giving](http://www.jefftk.com/p/make-your-giving-public). Make [visible](http://www.jefftk.com/p/giving-half) [commitments](http://www.jefftk.com/p/joining-giving-what-we-can) and then [list your donations](http://www.jefftk.com/donations). This means that you can't slowly slip away from giving; either you publish updates saying you're not going to do what you said you would, or you just stop updating and your pages become stale. By making a public promise you've given friends permission to notice that you've stopped and ask "what changed?"
2.  Don't just surround yourself with coworkers. Keep in touch with friends and family. Spend some time with other people in the effective altruism movement. You could throw yourself entirely into your work, maximizing income while sending occasional substantial checks to GiveWell's top picks, but without some ongoing engagement with the community and the research this doesn't seem likely to last.

One implication of the "won't you drift away" objection, however, is often that if instead of going into earning to give you become an activist then you'll remain true to your values. I'm not so sure about this: many people who are really into activism and radical change in their 20s have become much less ambitious and idealistic by their 30s. You can call it "burning out" or "selling out" but decreasing idealism with age is very common. This doesn't mean people earning to give don't have to worry about losing their motivation—in fact it points the opposite way—but this isn't a danger unique to the "go work at something lucrative" approach. Trying honestly to do the most good possible is far from the default in our society, and wherever you are there's going to be pressure to do the easy thing, the normal thing, and stop putting so much effort into altruism.
# [LINK] Could a Quantum Computer Have Subjective Experience?

Yet another exceptionally interesting [blog post](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1951) by Scott Aaronson, describing his talk at the Quantum Foundations of a Classical Universe workshop, videos of which should be posted soon. Despite the disclaimer "**My talk is for entertainment purposes only; it should not be taken seriously by anyone**", it raises several serious and semi-serious points about the nature of conscious experience and related paradoxes, which are generally overlooked by the philosophers, including Eliezer, because they have no relevant CS/QC expertise. For example:

*   Is an [FHE-encrypted](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption#Fully_homomorphic_encryption) sim with a lost key conscious?
*   If you "untorture" a reversible simulation, did it happen? What does the untorture feel like?
*   Is Vaidman brain conscious? (You have to read the blog post to learn what it is, not going to spoil it.)

Scott also suggests a model of consciousness which sort-of resolves the issues of cloning, identity and such, by introducing what he calls a "digital abstraction layer" (again, read the blog post to understand what he means by that). Our brains might be lacking such a layer and so be "fundamentally unclonable". 

Another interesting observation is that you never actually kill the cat in the Schroedinger's cat experiment, for a reasonable definition of "kill".

There are several more mind-blowing insights in this "entertainment purposes" post/talk, related to the existence of p-zombies, consciousness of Boltzmann brains, the observed large-scale structure of the Universe and the "reality" of Tegmark IV.

I certainly got the humbling experience that Scott is [the level above mine](/lw/ua/the_level_above_mine/), and I would like to know if other people did, too.

Finally, the standard [bright dilettante](/lw/h8n/litany_of_a_bright_dilettante/) caveat applies: if you think up a quick objection to what an expert in the area argues, and you yourself are not such an expert, the odds are extremely heavy that this objection is either silly or has been considered and addressed by the expert already.
# Hal Finney has just died.

Hal Finney has just died.

[http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2014-August/082585.html](http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2014-August/082585.html)

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ab/dying_outside/](/lw/1ab/dying_outside/)

I'm very sad to see him go.
# Calibrating your probability estimates of world events: Russia vs Ukraine, 6 months later.

Some of the comments on the [link](/lw/js0/link_poking_the_bear_podcast/) by James_Miller exactly six months ago provided very specific estimates of how the events might turn out:

James_Miller:

*   The odds of Russian intervening militarily = 40%.
*   The odds of the Russians losing the conventional battle (perhaps because of NATO intervention) conditional on them entering = 30%.
*   The odds of the Russians resorting to nuclear weapons conditional on them losing the conventional battle = 20%.

Me:

"Russians intervening militarily" could be anything from posturing to weapon shipments to a surgical strike to a Czechoslovakia-style tank-roll or Afghanistan invasion. My guess that the odds of the latter is below 5%.

A bet between James_Miller and solipsist:

I will bet you $20 U.S. (mine) vs $100 (yours) that Russian tanks will be involved in combat in the Ukraine within 60 days. So in 60 days I will pay you $20 if I lose the bet, but you pay me $100 if I win.

While it is hard to do any meaningful calibration based on a single event, there must be lessons to learn from it. Given that [Russian armored columns are said to capture key Ukrainian towns](http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russian-and-ukraine-troops-battle-in-south-prompting-fears-of-widescale-invasion/2014/08/28/04b614f4-9a6e-40f4-aa21-4f49104cf0e4_story.html) today, the first part of James_Miller's prediction has come true, even if it took 3 times longer than he estimated.

Note that even the most pessimistic person in that conversation (James) was probably too optimistic. My estimate of 5% appears way too low in retrospect, and I would probably bump it to 50% for a similar event in the future.

Now, given that the first prediction came true, how would one reevaluate the odds of the two further escalations he listed? I still feel that there is no way there will be a "conventional battle" between Russia and NATO, but having just been proven wrong makes me doubt my assumptions. If anything, maybe I should give more weight to what James_Miller (or at least Dan Carlin) has to say on the issue. And if I had any skin in the game, I would probably be even more cautious.
# The Great Filter is early, or AI is hard

Attempt at the briefest content-full Less Wrong post:

Once AI is developed, it could "[easily](/lw/hll/to_reduce_astronomical_waste_take_your_time_then/)" [colonise](/lw/g1s/ufai_cannot_be_the_great_filter/) the universe. So the [Great Filter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter) (preventing the emergence of star-spanning civilizations) must strike before AI could be developed. If AI is easy, we could conceivably have built it already, or we could be on the cusp of building it. So the Great Filter must predate us, unless AI is hard.
# [question] Recommendations for fasting

I consider fasting for two weeks in October, but I'm unclear about it being beneficial in general or for what kind of fasting it might be beneficial and healthy. Thus this is a kind of request for rational discussion of this topic.

I looked for relevant LW posts but couldn't find clear evidence. I think this is an underrepresented and possibly underutilized lifestyle intervention.

As a starter you might look at

Wikipedia has [fasting](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasting) and [intermittent fasting](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting). The latter shows

> health benefits include stress resistance, increased insulin sensitivity, reduced morbidity, and increased life span.

But as I'm healthy and lean the benefits of intermittent fasting are likely small for me. What other benefits could there be?

I understand that [body cleansing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_cleansing) is not a real thing, but I wonder about the effects of fasting on the [gut flora](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut_flora). Could it be that fastig has a beneficial effect on your gut bacteria? Just because your body doesn't get rid of any poison this way as the greeks believed doesn't mean that fasting has no cleansing effects at all. It could be that you get rid of some harmful gut bacteria or other parasites (not that these are frequent these days).

Another thing is that fasting might activate and kind of train metabolism cycles which the body may loose over time otherwise. For me it might be too late (I'm 41) for that (mouse experiments show fasting tolerance is plastic with age), but maybe not. On the other hand I'm not very likely to ever need the ability to deal with lack of food (except possibly in case of severe illness of injury).

Links on LW: [Low hanging fruit: analyzing your nutrition](/lw/c7z/low_hanging_fruit_analyzing_your_nutrition/) and [If calorie restriction works in humans, should we have observed it already?](/lw/byy/if_calorie_restriction_works_in_humans_should_we/) both mention intermittent fasting but I gain little insight from these.

Also related is [Lifestyle interventions to increase longevity](/lw/jrt/lifestyle_interventions_to_increase_longevity/). (Intermittent) fasting is also mentioned on [Mental rebooting your brain](/lw/831/mental_rebooting_your_brain_on_porn/).

My current plan is to use [Buchinger](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Buchinger) style fasting with fruit juice, thin vegetable broth and protein additions (which kind of protein I'm still unclear). I will reduce exercise to balance and walking level types.

I'm also unclear how to measure and track the effect of this diet. Sure I will track weight. But should I track satisaction somehow?

What do you think?
# [LINK] Article in the Guardian about CSER, mentions MIRI and paperclip AI

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/30/saviours-universe-four-unlikely-men-save-world](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/30/saviours-universe-four-unlikely-men-save-world "The scientific A-Team saving the world from killer viruses, rogue AI and the paperclip apocalypse")

The article is titled "The scientific A-Team saving the world from killer viruses, rogue AI and the paperclip apocalypse", and features interviews with Martin Rees, Huw Price, Jaan Tallinn and Partha Dasgupta. The author takes a rather positive tone about CSER and MIRI's endeavours, and mentions x-risks other than AI (bioengineered pandemic, global warming with human interference, distributed manufacturing).

I find it interesting that the inferential distance for the layman to the concept of paperclipping AI is much reduced by talking about paperclipping _America,_ rather than the entire universe: though the author admits still struggling with the concept. Unusually for an journalist who starts off unfamiliar with these concepts, he writes in a tone that suggests that he takes the ideas seriously, without the sort of "this is very far-fetched and thus I will not lower myself to seriously considering it" countersignalling usually seen with x-risk coverage. There is currently the usual degree of incredulity in the comments section though.

For those unfamiliar with The Guardian, it is a British left-leaning newspaper with a heavy focus on social justice and left-wing political issues.
# Robin Hanson's "Overcoming Bias"  posts as an e-book.

At Luke Muehlhauser's request, I wrote a script to scrape all of Robin Hanson's posts to [Overcoming Bias](http://www.overcomingbias.com/) into an e-book; here's a first beta release. Please comment here with any problems—posts in the wrong order, broken links, bad formatting, missing posts. Thanks!

*   [robinhansonblogs-beta-2014-08-31.epub](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B058DTBqtxVLUjVfU0hFRUx4NG8/edit?usp=sharing)
*   [robinhansonblogs-beta-2014-08-31.mobi](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B058DTBqtxVLdXRRYVpGMnpEUWs/edit?usp=sharing)
# What steep learning curve do you wish you'd climbed sooner?

This is the question asked by [John Cook](http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2014/09/03/steep-learning-curves-you-wish-youd-climbed-sooner/) on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/JohnDCook). He lists responses from different people:

> *   R
> *   Version control
> *   Linear algebra
> *   Advanced math
> *   Bayesian statistics
> *   Category theory
> *   Foreign languages
> *   How to not waste time
> *   Women

Mine are: quantum mechanics, Python, cooking, the language of philosophy.

What learning curve do _you_ wish you'd climbed sooner? Give reasons and stories if you feel like it. Do you think other people should climb the same curves?
# I'm holding a birthday fundraiser

**EDIT: The fundraiser was successfully completed, raising the full $500 for worthwhile charities. Yay!**

Today's my birthday! And per [Peter Hurford's](/user/peter_hurford/overview/) suggestion, I'm holding a [birthday fundraiser](http://www.youcaring.com/nonprofits/kaj-s-donating-his-birthday/227034) to help raise money for MIRI, GiveDirectly, and Mercy for Animals. If you like my activity on LW or elsewhere, please consider giving a few dollars to one of these organizations via the [fundraiser page](http://www.youcaring.com/nonprofits/kaj-s-donating-his-birthday/227034). You can specify which organization you wish to donate in the comment of the donation, or just leave it unspecified, in which case I'll give your donation to MIRI.

If you don't happen to be particularly altruistically motivated, just consider it a birthday gift to me - it will give me warm fuzzies to know that I helped move money for worthy organizations. And if you are altruistically motivated but don't care about me in particular, maybe you still can get yourself to donate more than usual by hacky stuff like someone you know on the Internet having a birthday. :)

If someone else wants to hold their own birthday fundraiser, here are some tips: [birthday fundraisers](http://www.charityscience.com/birthday-fundraisers.html).
# A reason to see the future

I just learned of [The Future Library project](http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/05/margaret-atwood-new-work-unseen-century-future-library). In short, famous authors will be asked to write new, original fiction that will not be released until 2114. First one announced was Margaret Atwood, of The Handmaiden's Tale fame.

I learned of this when a friend posted on Facebook that "I'm officially looking into being cryogenically frozen due to The Future Library project. See you all in 2114." She meant it as a joke, but after a couple comments she now knows about CI, and she didn't yesterday.

What's one of the most common complaints we hear from Deathists? The future is unknown and scary and there won't be anything there they'd be interested in anyway. Now there will be, if they're Atwood fans.

What's one of the ways artists who give away most of their work (almost all of them nowadays) try to entice people to pay for their albums/books/games/whatever? Including special content that is only available for people who pay (or who pay more). Now there is special content only available for people who are around post-2113.

Which got me to thinking... could we incentivize seeing the future? I know it sounds kinda silly ("What, escaping utter annihilation isn't incentive enough??"), but it seems possible that we could save lives by compiling original work from popular artists (writers, musicians, etc), sealing it tight somewhere, and promising to release it in 100, 200, maybe 250 years. And of course, providing links to cryo resources with all publicity materials.

Would this be worth pursuing? Are there any obvious downsides, aside from cost & difficulty?
# [Link] 3 Short Walking Breaks Can Reverse Harm From 3 Hours of Sitting

I found the below link which is in the spirit of [Lifestyle interventions to increase longevity](/lw/jrt/lifestyle_interventions_to_increase_longevity/):

[3 Short Walking Breaks Can Reverse Harm From 3 Hours of Sitting](http://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/pages/articleviewer.aspx?year=9000&issue=00000&article=97944&type=abstract)"

The /.-summary:

> Medical researchers have been steadily building evidence that prolonged sitting is awful for your health. One major problem is that blood can pool in the legs of a seated person, causing arteries to start losing their ability to control the rate of blood flow. A new experimental study ([abstract](http://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/pages/articleviewer.aspx?year=9000&issue=00000&article=97944&type=abstract)) has discovered it's quite easy to negate these detrimental health effects:[all you need to do is take a leisurely, 5-minute walk for every hour you sit](http://news.indiana.edu/releases/iu/2014/09/slow-walking-sitting-study.shtml). "The researchers were able to demonstrate that during a three-hour period, the flow-mediated dilation, or the expansion of the arteries as a result of increased blood flow, of the main artery in the legs was impaired by as much as 50 percent after just one hour. The study participants who walked for five minutes for each hour of sitting saw their arterial function stay the same — it did not drop throughout the three-hour period. Thosar says it is likely that the increase in muscle activity and blood flow accounts for this."

One way to incorporate this into ones habits is to use [WorkRave](http://www.workrave.org/).