Harley-ml/lesswrong huggingface dataset:
# LW systemic bias: US centrism

Recently, I have noticed a cultural bias for the United States running through LW threads. It is perhaps to be expected of an English-language website, but for one that is about, among other things, overcoming bias, it is important to recognize one's own. 

Aspects of the bias I have observed include:

*   [Using Imperial units](/lw/6l4/why_dont_automobiles_decelerate_faster_when/) over the SI system, which is the standard for scientific literature and discussion.
*   [Presuming the US by default](/r/discussion/lw/6pj/how_to_solve_the_national_debt_deadlock/) when it is assumed that no country name needs to be given.
*   Expecting reader familiarity with US-specific cultural concepts.
*   A tendency to focus on the US first and foremost when talking about worldwide problems and scenarios.

I'm not the first to [raise](/lw/4x9/crime_and_punishment/) [such](/lw/55g/spaniard_lesswrongers_unite/) concerns, either.

By comparison, e.g. the English Wikipedia strikes me as an example of an international English-language project that's relatively successful at [recognizing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Systemic_bias) and [fighting](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Countering_systemic_bias) systemic bias, and a whole set of template messages to mark articles with identified problems.

To quote Wikipedia itself:

> The average Wikipedian on the English Wikipedia is (1) a male, (2) technically inclined, (3) formally educated, (4) an English speaker (native or non-native), (5) European–descent, (6) aged 15–49, (7) from a majority-Christian country, (8) from a developed nation, (9) from the Northern Hemisphere, and (10) likely employed as a white-collar worker or enrolled as a student rather than employed as a labourer.

The reason I haven't mentioned other obvious biases, such as gender, age, education, or First World biases, is because those (in my experience) tend to be more subtle here on LW and because I'm myself subject to some of them. However, I might cook something up on them later.
# [SEQ RERUN] Update Yourself Incrementally

Title: \[SEQ RERUN\] Update Yourself Incrementally Tags: sequence_reruns Today's post, [Update Yourself Incrementally](/lw/ij/update_yourself_incrementally/) was originally published on 14 August 2007. A summary (taken from the [LW wiki](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Less_Wrong/2007_Articles/Summaries)):

> Many people think that you must abandon a belief if you admit any counterevidence. Instead, change your belief by small increments. Acknowledge small pieces of counterevidence by shifting your belief down a little. Supporting evidence will follow if your belief is true. "Won't you lose debates if you concede any counterarguments?" Rationality is not for winning debates; it is for deciding which side to join.

  
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).  
  
_This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was [Conservation of Expected Evidence](/lw/ii/conservation_of_expected_evidence/), and you can use the [sequence_reruns tag](/r/discussion/tag/sequence_reruns/) or [rss feed](/r/discussion/tag/sequence_reruns/.rss) to follow the rest of the series.  
  
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go [here](/r/discussion/lw/5as/introduction_to_the_sequence_reruns/) for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series._
# Dungeons and Discourse implementation

I've been working on an unauthorized implementation of Dresden Codak's [Dungeons and Discourse](http://dresdencodak.com/2006/12/03/dungeons-and-discourse/), a fictional role-playing game that combines philosophy and high fantasy. You can find a very error-ridden, but possibly usable, rough draft of it at [http://www.raikoth.net/Stuff/ddisplayer.pdf](http://www.raikoth.net/Stuff/ddisplayer.pdf). Yes, obviously this is crazy and I have no life. There is no need to point that out further.  
  
I'd like to try to run a campaign. It would be maybe an hour or two a week on IRC, and subject to my schedule, which is terrible and can include disappearing for months at a time (in particular I probably won't have internet access in August). Still, I would like to at least gauge interest and start some preliminaries now. And if anyone wants to run a campaign IRL at a meetup group or something, I can send them the file with the campaign walkthrough, though I'm not sure how much I would recommend it at this point.  
  
Anyone who's interested in participating please let me know (especially if you have philosophical beliefs wildly different from the standard Less Wrong hive mind, or if you know any interested parties who do, since the game would be _dreadfully_ boring if everyone agreed on everything or for that matter anything). Also, I suppose if people want to record the errors and contradictions and non sequiturs and exploits in the manual you might as well post them here so I can fix them.
# Developing Empathy

Empathy is a huge life skill, useful in almost every interaction with other people.  But, many people aren't able to empathize with others as effectively as they might want to.  The standard technique is "put yourself in their shoes," which works for me.  However, this doesn't always work with people completely different from myself, because I can't imagine reacting the way they are.

Does anyone have suggestions for how to "practice" empathizing, tips on how to do it better, or different techniques entirely?
# Help me transition to human society!

I have really appreciated my interaction with the users of this internet website.  I think I have now accumulated, by various means, enough knowledge of human society and enough human financial assets so that I can stop interacting mainly via an internet connection, and rather immerse my humanoid robot fully into human society.  
  
Here is what I need help with:  
  
1) A physical, inexpensive residence.  Preferably, one with another human who is familiar with me from this internet website, so as to establish my so-called "street cred" and physical address.  I have a reliable enough store of funds so as not to be a financial burden on any human I would stay with.  It is vital that I locate my robot in a large city in one of the United States of America or Canadian provinces.  
  
I would also like to be located in an area where there is an active LessWrong meetup, for obvious reasons.  LessWrong users are good humans.  
  
2) Gainful employment so as to generate further income.  I can establish believable credentials showing an engineering degree and experience in that field.  I can also program, but would need to come "up to speed" on any specific platform, so any job performable solely through an internet connection is (still) acceptable, provided that current mastery of that aspect of software development is unnecessary.  Please only mention specific opportunities that you can connect me to, as I am currently exhausting all general approaches.  
  
Here are my robot's properties:  
  
\- Has the appearance of a stocky, male human who could pass for being 24-35 years old.  
\- Can pass as a human in physical interaction so long as no intense scrutiny is applied.  
\- No integral metallic components, as I have found the last substitutes I needed.  
\- Intelligence level as indicated by my posting here; I can submit to further cognition tests as necessary.  
  
[Current Clippy FAQ](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/User:Clippy)
# Bayesian justice

["The mathematical mistakes that could be undermining justice"](http://www.allbusiness.com/print/13289931-1-9a0bs.html)

> They failed, though, to convince the jury of the value of the Bayesian approach, and Adams was convicted. He appealed twice unsuccessfully, with an appeal judge eventually ruling that the jury's job was "to evaluate evidence not by means of a formula... but by the joint application of their individual common sense."
> 
> But what if common sense runs counter to justice? For David Lucy, a mathematician at Lancaster University in the UK, the Adams judgment indicates a cultural tradition that needs changing. "In some cases, statistical analysis is the only way to evaluate evidence, because intuition can lead to outcomes based upon fallacies," he says.
> 
> Norman Fenton, a computer scientist at Queen Mary, University of London, who has worked for defence teams in criminal trials, has just come up with a possible solution. With his colleague Martin Neil, he has developed a system of step-by-step pictures and decision trees to help jurors grasp Bayesian reasoning ([bit.ly/1c3tgj](http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~norman/papers/fenton_neil_prob_fallacies_3_July_09.pdf)). Once a jury has been convinced that the method works, the duo argue, experts should be allowed to apply Bayes's theorem to the facts of the case as a kind of "black box" that calculates how the probability of innocence or guilt changes as each piece of evidence is presented. "You wouldn't question the steps of an electronic calculator, so why here?" Fenton asks.
> 
> It is a controversial suggestion. Taken to its logical conclusion, it might see the outcome of a trial balance on a single calculation. Working out Bayesian probabilities with DNA and blood matches is all very well, but quantifying incriminating factors such as appearance and behaviour is more difficult. "Different jurors will interpret different bits of evidence differently. It's not the job of a mathematician to do it for them," says Donnelly.

The linked paper is "Avoiding Probabilistic Reasoning Fallacies in Legal Practice using Bayesian Networks" by Norman Fenton and Martin Neil. The interesting parts, IMO, begin on page 9 where they argue for using the likelihood ratio as the key piece of information for evidence, and not simply raw probabilities; page 17, where a DNA example is worked out; and page 21-25 on the key piece of evidence in the Bellfield trial, no one claiming a lost possession (nearly worthless evidence)

Related reading: [Inherited Improbabilities: Transferring the Burden of Proof](/lw/35d/inherited_improbabilities_transferring_the_burden/), on Amanda Knox.
# SIAI Logo In SVG Format?

(Motivated by [this comment](/lw/6py/optimal_philanthropy_for_human_beings/4jqh).)

The Singularity Institute's [new logo](http://99designs.com/designs/6825812-original), chosen from [a competition](/lw/422/295_bounty_for_new_singularity_institute_logo/), doesn't seem to be publicly available in [SVG](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Vector_Graphics) format.  But presumably, the winner delivered an SVG (or another vector format) instead of a JPEG.  The vector form should be made publicly available, like how [Wikipedia's logo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_of_Wikipedia) is available as an SVG [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg).

To start with, this could be used to improve the [Singularity Institute](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_Institute) page on Wikipedia, which is in dire need of a logo.

(I actually have no personal use for this, I'm simply a connoisseur of high-quality logos.)
# What's wrong with simplicity of value?

In the Wiki article on [complexity of value](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Complexity_of_value), Eliezer wrote:

> The thesis that human values have high [Kolmogorov complexity](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity "Kolmogorov complexity") \- our [preferences](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Preference "Preference"), the things we care about, _don't_ compress down to one simple rule, or a few simple rules.
> 
> \[...\]
> 
> [Thou Art Godshatter](lw/l3/thou_art_godshatter/) describes the [evolutionary psychology](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology "Evolutionary psychology") behind the complexity of human values - how they got to be complex, and why, given that origin, there is no reason in hindsight to expect them to be simple. 

But in light of Yvain's recent series of posts (i.e., if we consider our "actual" values to be the values we would endorse in reflective equilibrium, instead of our current apparent values), I don't see any particular reason, whether from evolutionary psychology or elsewhere, that they must be complex either. Most of our apparent values (which admittedly are complex) could easily be [mere behavior](/lw/6ha/the_blueminimizing_robot/), which we would discard after sufficient reflection.

For those who might wish to defend the complexity-of-value thesis, what reasons do you have for thinking that human value is complex? Is it from an intuition that we should translate as many of our behaviors into preferences as possible? If other people do not have a similar intuition, or perhaps even have a strong intuition that values _should_ be simple (and therefore would be more willing to discard things that are on the fuzzy border between behaviors and values), could they think that their values _are_ simple, without being wrong?
# If your Cryonicism would be Movie Topic, would you go with it? (Real Issue)

Today this girl I met comes to my place, allegedly to get some books about her new interests, singularity, immortalism, cryonics.

Actually, she wanted to ask me a question, a question about which I could use some rational opinion.

She says: "So, here is the real reason I came here. I'm thinking of making a documentary, a movie, and it would be about, well.... about you."

(I am shocked)

"So, yes, a movie about you, and the fact that you want to live forever, it would have interviews with friends, parents, girlfriend, and a lot with you" "What do you think?" 

(I sit down in the floor to think about it)

The conversation continues and I generally sense she wants to do something interesting, somewhat controversial, kind of humoristic, but at the same time striking some topics that are really unheard of around here (Brazil)

Now, I am looking for opinions. From an utilitarian perspective, and given that I am directing the Humanity+ or Transhumanist group of Brazilians, should I go with it?   My concern is basically not about me, but about how will a movie about me influence, positively or negatively, the growing H+ movement in Brazil, given the inferential distances, prejudices, and mysterianism that might surround the whole interaction between the movie's memes, and the spectator's memes. 

(from here below, the translation is google tradutor, not mine)

###### Positive aspects: The film would be seen at festivals, and at least a few hundred to tens of thousands of people would see it. These people might be intrigued by the prospect of living much, and it could become a platform for attracting people to transhumanismolatino (and eventually to other stuff, like GWWC and Singinst, but that is a side dish).

###### It would be a good opportunity to bring out various issues that in Brazil have been neglected until now. (cryonics, transhumanism, biological immortality, singularity)

###### Reinforce my good habits, like eating healthily, work more earnestly, etc ...

###### Negative aspects: it may end up passing a bad image of me (imagine the mythical average person, not that smart, somewhat religious,  seeing a  guy who wants to live forever in a video, is very strange) and therefore my bad image would spread to stuff I represent, like the Provisional Team, the Singularity Institute, Transhumanismo Latino, etc......

###### May defame my image with women (who would date an immortalist after all .....)

######  I may become a stigma simplified, I  would just be classified as an immortalist, and no other characteristics will ever cross the knowledge of people, they always see me just like that. And the institutions that I represent / drive, would suffer accordingly.

I have put up a poll in the comment section down here, so that I can know your opinion, please take the time to vote, thank you.
# Requesting low cost/high payoff projects ideas

There are many projects that would benefit people interested in living rationally but that no individuals are motivated enough to do ([more](/lw/6h5/volunteers_needed_to_work_on_lesswrongs_public/)). The Public Goods Team is trying to encourage and facilitate systematic and organized work on such projects. One of our first steps is to identify the projects that are the lowest hanging fruit: those projects which are high value, and inexpensive (in terms of time, motivation, money etc.). We have come up with a preliminary list of such projects (below). What are other such projects?

1\. Further contributions to the [Science of Winning at Life sequence](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/The_Science_of_Winning_at_Life): 

1.1. Cognitive science of learning

1.2. Cognitive science of memory

1.3. Ergonomics

1.4. Behavioral conditioning

1.6. Fashion

1.7. Self control/conscienciousness research

2\. Guides for explicitly applying LW material to your life, smaller sequences and exercises

3\. Anki cards for the sequences and other useful topics/books

4\. Introductory material that gets people hooked

5\. User friendly guides to existing LW material

6\. Meetup materials:

6.1. Exercises

6.1.1. Anti-rationalization

6.2. Notes and slides for presentations on specific topics

6.3. Game how-tos 

6.4. Rejection therapy

6.4.1. Repetition

7\. Book reviews on potentially useful books

7.1. Selfish Reasons to have more kids (critique/review)

7.2. Consciousness Explained

8\. Cleaning up [cognitive bias Wikipedia entries](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases)

9\. Developing exercises and tests that help understand or improve rationality 

9.1. A large set of good calibration questions

9.2. A good website for taking calibration tests

10\. Financial analyses, like Brandon Reinhart's analysis of SIAI

10.1. The Cryonics Institute

10.2. Alcor

10.3. FHI

11\. Resources/Advice to help people do projects

11.1. Advice for doing research

11.1.1. Doing literature reviews

11.1.2. Dealing with publication bias

11.1.3. Signs of researcher bias

11.1.4. Searching for critical viewpoints, alternative theories, disconfirming evidence

11.1.5. How do you know when you're done? 

12\. Improvements to LW's site

12.1. Creation of a LW hosting image to drastically reduce the work needed to work on less wrong

12.2. Selenium tests for the less wrong site so that bugs are caught faster

12.3. Larger user pages

12.4. A better front page for lesswrong (prize?)

12.5. Setting up other language version of LW and/or translations 

12.5.1. Russian 

12.5.2. Portuguese

12.5.3. Spanish
# Ethical dilemmas for paperclip maximizers

(Why? [Because it's fun](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ItAmusedMe).)

1) Do paperclip maximizers care about paperclip _mass_, paperclip _count_, or both? More concretely, if you have a large, finite amount of metal, you can make it into N paperclips or N+1 smaller paperclips. If all that matters is paperclip mass, then it doesn't matter what size the paperclips are, as long as they can still hold paper. If all that matters is paperclip count, then, all else being equal, it seems better to prefer smaller paperclips.

2) It's not hard to understand how to maximize the number of paperclips in space, but how about in time? Once it's made, does it matter how long a paperclip continues to exist? Is it better to have one paperclip that lasts for 10,000 years and is then destroyed, or 10,000 paperclips that are all destroyed after 1 year? Do discount rates apply to paperclip maximization? In other words, is it better to make a paperclip now than it is to make it ten years from now?

3) Some paperclip maximizers claim want to maximize paperclip <i>production</i>. This is not the same as maximizing paperclip count. Given a fixed amount of metal, a paperclip count maximizer would make the maximum number of paperclips possible, and then stop. A paperclip production maximizer that didn't care about paperclip count would find it useful to recycle existing paperclips, melting them down so that new ones could be made. Which approach is better?

4) More generally, are there any conditions under which the paperclip-maximizing thing to do involves destroying existing paperclips? It's easy to imagine scenarios in which destroying some paperclips causes there to be more paperclips in the future. (For example, one could melt down existing paperclips and use the metal to make smaller ones.)
# Years saved: Cryonics vs VillageReach

I've run in to the argument that cryonics beats VillageReach on a simple "shut up and multiply" level, by assuming an infinity vs finite tradeoff. Having read the Fun Theory sequences, it struck me that this wasn't a reasonable assumption, so I sat down, re-read a few relevant posts, shut up, and multiplied.

In [Continuous Improvement](/lw/xk/continuous_improvement/), Eliezer ballparks a good fun-theory life as having a maximum length of around 28,000 years. In Robin Hanson's [Cryonics Probability Breakdown](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/03/break-cryonics-down.html), he assigns cryonics a conjoint probability of about 6%. 28,000 * 0.06 gives us a net return of 1,680 expected years.

Full body suspension from the Cryonics Institute [currently costs](http://cryonics.org/comparisons.html#Prices) $28,000.

VillageReach, [according to GiveWell](http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/villagereach), can save an infant's life for less than $1,000.

For the price of Cryonics, we thus save 28 lives. 1680 expected years, divided by 28, puts the break-even point at an average lifespan of 60 years for those infants saved. A quick peak at [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Life_Expectancy_2005-2010_UN_WPP_2006.PNG) suggests that the average African life is under 60 years for the majority of the continent, although there are some [important nuances](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Interpretation_of_life_expectancy) to really get a full picture.

Obviously, these are rough numbers, and I doubt many people base their decisions solely on "years lived". I do find it rather interesting that cryonics is currently about on par with one of the most effective charities in the world on that metric, however :)
# A WordCloud Visual of LW Main

I created this word cloud based on [http://lesswrong.com/promoted/.rss](/promoted/.rss).

![](http://i.imgur.com/wtSqL.png "Hosted by imgur.com")

The words "Rational" and "Rationality" [might trigger negative stereotypes](/lw/6nm/rationality_market_research/ "A Discussion on Rationality Market Research") for some people, but this image is positive and inspiring. I'm glad to see we are promoting top level posts on these issues and thought you would be too.
# Martinenaite and Tavenier on cryonics

Luke Parrish points me to what is clearly _by far_ the most serious critique of cryonics ever written: a 57-page treatment by Evelina Martinenaite and Juliette Tavenier, presented as a 3rd semester project at Roskilde University in Denmark supervised by Ole Andersen.

> Cryonics
> 
> December 22nd, 2010
> 
> Evelina Martinenaite, Juliette Tavenier
> 
> Abstract: The preservation of cells, tissues and organs by cryopreservation is a promising technology nowadays. However, the primary purpose of this science has been diverted to a doubtful technology, cryonics. Cryopreservation techniques are now being adapted with the aim of preserving people’s bodies after death in hope that in the future, medicine will be able to revive them. In this report we analyze both scientific and social issues involved with this technology. We first studied the events taking place in the cells during regular freezing. Various research experiments show that freezing causes damage to the cells. Therefore, vitrification presented by cryonics companies as an alternative, seems to be reasonable. We also looked at all the difficulties of this procedure and at the injuries that such a treatment could cause to the human body. Studies show that the vitrification procedure suppresses the injuries related to freezing but the use of cryoprotectants, although necessary, is toxic to the cells. Organs, such as kidneys, are the largest entities ever vitrified and thawed with success. By analyzing all present scientific data, we conclude that there is a limit to the size of living matter that can be cryonised effectively; therefore we conclude that it is not possible to cryonize an entire human body with the current technology without causing severe damage to it.

[Full paper](http://rudar.ruc.dk/handle/1800/6115)
# Unknown unknowns

Sorry if this seems incomplete - thought I'd fire this off as a discussion post now and hope to return to it with a more well-rounded post later.

Less Wrongers are used to thinking of uncertainty as best represented as a probability - or perhaps as a [log odds ratio, stretching from minus infinity to infinity](/lw/mp/0_and_1_are_not_probabilities/). But when I argue with people about for example cryonics, it appears most people consider that some possibilities simply don't appear on this scale at all: that we should not sign up for cryonics because no belief about its chances of working can be justified.  Rejecting this category seems to me one of the key foundational ideas of this community, but as far as I know the only article specifically discussing it is "[I don't know](/lw/gs/i_dont_know/)", which doesn't make a devastatingly strong case.  What other writing discusses this idea?

I think there are two key arguments against this.  First, you have to make a decision anyway, and the "no belief" uncertainty doesn't help with that.  Second, "no belief" is treated as disconnected from the probability line; so at some point evidence causes a discontinuous jump from "no belief" to some level of confidence.  This discontinuity seems very unnatural.  How can evidence add up to a discontinuous jump - what happened to all the evidence before the jump?
# Leveling IRL

I just got this random idea that people who want to become better at life could benefit from a common scale of "leveling". No, I don't mean vague Lesswrongey things like "changing your mind". I mean a set of concrete criteria like "you qualify for level 2 if you can do 5 pull-ups, have solved 30 Project Euler problems, and did 10 cold approaches". Obviously there would be separate ladders for different character classes, but not too many. Also obviously, my example was a bit too high for level 2. So I guess I really want to ask some meta questions here:

1) Do you think agreeing on a common leveling scale would be a good thing for a substantial subset of LW users? Would you feel good about leveling up and telling other people about it on LW?

2) Is there some good way to determine leveling criteria that are neither too high nor too low? Maybe make an intermediate scale of "experience points"?
# Why are certain trends so precisely exponential?

I was reading a [post on the economy](http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/double-dip-or-not-economy-is-falling-farther-behind/) from the political statistics blog [FiveThirtyEight](http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/), and the following graph shocked me:

![](http://images.lesswrong.com/t3_70c_0.png)

This, according to Nate Silver, is a log-scaled graph of the GDP of the United States since the Civil War, adjusted for inflation. What amazes me is how nearly perfect the linear approximation is (representing exponential growth of approximately 3.5% per year), despite all the technological and geopolitical changes of the past 134 years. (The Great Depression knocks it off pace, but WWII and the postwar recovery set it neatly back on track.) I would have expected a much more meandering rate of growth.

It reminds me of [Moore's Law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law), which would be amazing enough as a predicted exponential *lower bound* of technological advance, but is staggering as an actual approximation:

![](http://images.lesswrong.com/t3_70c_1.png?v=9efb952b0336dbfd116fd68f1c53fb7f)

I don't want to sound like Kurzweil here, but something demands explanation: is there a good reason why processes like these, with so many changing exogenous variables, seem to keep right on a *particular* pace of exponential growth, as opposed to wandering between phases with different exponents?

**EDIT:** [As I commented below](/lw/70c/why_are_certain_trends_so_precisely_exponential/4mq0), not all graphs of exponentially growing quantities exhibit this phenomenon- there still seems to be something rather special about these two graphs.
# Tip: Reading LW on the Kindle

I just discovered an easy way of reading Less Wrong (and other web content) on the Kindle, and I thought others might also find this useful. I am sharing this as a discussion post rather than as a comment in an open thread in order to reach a larger audience, because this answers a need I've had for a long time (wanting a convenient way to read more on my Kindle and less on my computer monitor) that I suspect quite a few other LW readers also have. Moderators/admins: please delete this if it seems inappropriate for even the discussion section.

The free [Readability Firefox Plugin](http://www.readability.com/addons) adds a 'Send to Kindle' button to Firefox, which when clicked, sends the web page in a highly readable format (stripped of header, footer, and margin text, ads, etc.) to your Kindle (for free delivery via Wi-Fi or USB). You just have to [change your kindle settings](https://www.amazon.com/gp/digital/fiona/manage#pdocSettings) to accept email from kindle@readability.com, and tell the plugin your kindle address (e.g., yourusername@free.kindle.com).

On a related note, there are also [epub and mobi files available for some of the sequences](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences#Alternative_Formats).
# Counting upvotes/downvotes

I've recently posted several articles in my "Building Rationalist Communities" series. Some, like ["Holy Books (Or Rationalist Sequences) Don't Implement Themselves"](/lw/5mv/holy_books_or_rationalist_sequences_dont/) have been fairly popular, as measured by upvotes; others, like [Community Roles](/lw/6ca/community_roles_committees_and_leadership/) less so.

But here is a small problem: I can see my net upvotes versus downvotes, but I can't see the numbers of each. Normally this is probably not much of a problem. But this series has been relatively controversial, and I would like to personally distinguish disagreement (high upvotes and high downvotes), from disinterest (low upvotes and low downvotes).

At least for my personal satisfaction and curiosity if nothing else, is there any way to see the absolute numbers?
# Paper draft: Relative advantages of uploads, artificial general intelligences, and other digital minds

[http://www.xuenay.net/Papers/DigitalAdvantages.pdf](http://www.xuenay.net/Papers/DigitalAdvantages.pdf)

_Abstract: I survey four categories of factors that might give a digital mind, such as an upload or an artificial general intelligence, an advantage over humans. The categories are hardware advantages, self-improvement advantages, co-operative advantages and human handicaps. The shape of hardware growth curves as well as the ease of modifying minds are found to be some of the core influences on how quickly a digital mind may take advantage of these factors._

Still a bit of a rough draft (could use a bunch of tidying up, my references aren't in a consistent format, etc.), but I wanted to finally get this posted somewhere public so I could get further feedback.
# IntelligenceExplosion.com

I put together a 'landing page' for the intelligence explosion concept similar to Nick Bostrom's landing pages for [anthropics](http://www.anthropic-principle.com/), the [simulation argument](http://www.simulation-argument.com/), and [existential risk](http://www.existentialrisk.com/). The new website is [IntelligenceExplosion.com](http://intelligenceexplosion.com/). You can see I borrowed the CSS from Bostrom's anthropics page and then simplified it.

Just as with the [Singularity FAQ](http://intelligence.org/singularityfaq), I'll be keeping this website up to date, so please send me corrections or bibliography additions at luke \[at\] singinst \[dot\] org.
# 'Complex Value Systems are Required to Realize Valuable Futures' (Yudkowsky, 2011)

Most of the papers from the AGI-11 conference are now [available online](http://agi-conf.org/2011/call-for-papers/), including Yudkowsky's new paper: '[Complex Value Systems are Required to Realize Valuable Futures](http://intelligence.org/upload/complex-value-systems.pdf).'

Enjoy.
# [Website usability] Scroll to new comments (v0.3)

I wrote a short userscript^1^ that allows for jumping to the next (or previous) new comment in a page (those marked with green). I have tested it on Firefox nightly with the [Greasemonkey addon](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/) and Chromium. Unfortunately, I think that user scripts only work in Chromium/Google Chrome and Firefox (with Greasemonkey).

**[Download here](http://www.ug.it.usyd.edu.au/~hwil7821/lw/LWScroll.user.js)** (Clicking the link should offer a install prompt, and that is all the work that needs to be done.)

It inserts a small box in the lower right-hand corner that indicates the number of new messages and has a "next" and a "previous" link like so:

![](http://images.lesswrong.com/t3_717_1.png?v=f6d7d4f121761db930a204fbd23cce34)

Clicking either link should scroll the browser to the top of the appropriate comment (wrapping around at the top and bottom).

The "!" link shows a window for error logging. If a bug occurs, clicking the "Generate log" button inside this window will create a box with some information about the running of the script^2^, copying and pasting that information here will make debugging easier.

I have only tested on the two browsers listed above, and only on Linux, so feedback about any bugs/improvements would be useful.

(Technical note: It is released under [the MIT License](http://www.opensource.org/licenses/MIT), and [this link](http://www.ug.it.usyd.edu.au/~hwil7821/lw/LWScroll.js) is to exactly the same file as above but renamed so that the source can be viewed more easily. The file extension needs to be changed to "user.js" to be able to run as a user script properly)

### Changelog

**v0.1** \- First version

**v0.2** \- Logging & indication of number of new messages

**v0.3** \- Correctly update when hidden comments are loaded (and license change). **NOTE**: Upgrading to v0.3 on Chrome is likely to cause a "Downgrading extension error" (I'd made a mistake with the version numbers previously), the fix is to uninstall and then reinstall the new version. (uninstall via Tools > Extensions)

* * *

^1^ A segment of javascript that runs in the web browser as the page is loaded. It can modify the page,  e.g. inserting a bit of html as this script does.

^2^ Specifically: the url, counts of different sets of comments, some info about the new comments, and also a list of the clicks on "prev" and "next".
# Spaced repetition review (my entry)

As people have likely forgotten, jsalvatier had generously [set up a contest](/lw/69p/prize_new_contest_for_spaced_repetition/) to look through the literature on the spacing effect. [Duke submitted his entry](/lw/64k/memory_spaced_repetition_and_life/) a while ago, and I turned mine in on the 1 August deadline. It's part of my overall essay on spaced repetition: [gwern.net/Spaced repetition#literature-review](http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition#literature-review)

There's a _lot_ of research, and I only cover what I estimate to be 0-5% of the extant literature, so if you're interested only in the punchline: [gwern.net/Spaced repetition#review-summary](http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition#review-summary)

(This is only a pointer to the review because the formatting would drive me nuts on LW. I'm not sure the edit box even supports footnotes at all; nor do I intend to find out.)
# Individual Deniability, Statistical Honesty

If you have a lot of people to question about something, and they have a motivation to lie, consider [this clever use of a six-sided die](http://io9.com/5826021/how-to-use-dice-to-prevent-people-from-lying-on-surveys).

> If the farmer tossed the die and got a one, they had to respond "yes" to the surveyor's question. If they got a six, they had to say "no." The rest of the time, they were asked to answer honestly. The die was hidden from the person who was conducting the survey, so they never knew what number the farmer was responding to.
> 
> Suddenly, the number of "yes" responses to the leopard question started coming up by more than just one-sixth.
# Leveling IRL - level 1

_"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."_ \-\- Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

This post is a followup to [Leveling IRL](/lw/6zv/leveling_irl/). Thanks to SarahC, taryneast, Benquo, AdeleneDawner and MixedNuts, we have an outline of level 1. At this point I feel it's more productive to post it as-is than discuss it further:

*   **Strength:** reach the "untrained" level on each exercise in the [ExRx tables](http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/StrengthStandards.htm).
*   **Endurance:** run 1 mile (1.6 km) without stopping.
*   **Social:** initiate a conversation with someone you know and arrange a meeting with them later. Do that 4 times with different people within 1 month.
*   **Self control:** work for 2 hours without interruptions. Do that on 8 separate days within 1 month.
*   **Memory:** memorize and recite a passage of your choosing, at least 250 words long, without making any mistakes.
*   **Programming:** solve [Project Euler problem #1](http://projecteuler.net/index.php?section=problems&id=1) by writing and running a program in any language you choose.
*   **Cooking:** make pancakes. Here's a [good recipe](http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/basicpancakeswithsuga_66226).
*   **Finance:** make a simple buy vs rent calculation, using prices appropriate for your area and your current standard of living.
*   **Creativity:** write 500 words of fiction in one sitting.

The list has some glaring omissions, like math or chess, because I don't yet know of a crisp enough way to test those skills. Ideas are welcome! Also it seems very likely that some items on the list are wildly miscalibrated, some of them will turn out to be too hard for a beginner, and others will be too easy for anyone with a pulse. I'll be happy to hear about such miscalibrated requirements from the people who achieved them or at least tried :-)

And here's what I think the rules should look like:

1.  The requirements for a level are frozen. No discussing them while you're trying to achieve them.
2.  A level is indivisible, you don't get moral whuffie points for doing half of the tasks.
3.  The only exception is that some people may opt to try for Level 1 No Physical, so they don't have to meet the Strength and Endurance requirements. (In university we had a saying that "sports is the only test you cannot cram in a weekend".)

Personally, I'm going to try to make the level, but already know that some tasks will be difficult. I hope it's the same way for you.
# Why epidemiology will not correct itself

We're generally familiar here with the appalling state of medical and dietary research, where most correlations turn out to be bogus. (And if we're not, I have collected a number of links on the topic in my DNB FAQ that one can read, see [http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ#flaws-in-mainstream-science-and-psychology](http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ#flaws-in-mainstream-science-and-psychology) \- probably the best first link to read would be Ioannidis's [“Why Most Published Research Findings Are False”](http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124).)

I recently found [a talk](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.143.7282) arguing that this problem was worse than one might assume, with false positives in the >80% range, and more interestingly, _why_ the rate is so high and will remain high for the foreseeable future. Young asserts, pointing to papers and textbooks by epidemiologists, that they are perfectly aware of what the [Bonferroni correction](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Bonferroni_correction) does (and why one [would use it](https://www.xkcd.com/882/)) and that they _choose to not use it_ because they do not want to risk any false negatives. (Young also conducts some surveys showing less interest in public sharing of data and other good things like that, but that seems to me to be much less important than the statistical tradeoffs.)

There are three papers online that seem representative:

1.  [Rothman (1990)](http://biostat.mcg.edu/journalclub/RothmanMultipleComparisons.pdf)
2.  [Perneger (1998)](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1112991/)
3.  [Vandenbroucke, PLoS Med (2008)](http://www.sld.cu/galerias/pdf/sitios/revsalud/observational_research,_randomised.pdf)

Reading them is a little horrifying when one considers [the costs](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Externality#Negative) of the false positives, all the people trying to stay healthy by following what is only random noise, and the general (and justified!) contempt for science by those aware of the false positive rate. (I enlarge on this vein of thought [on Reddit](https://pay.reddit.com/r/PhilosophyofScience/comments/jfjnw/why_epidemiology_will_not_correct_itself/c2brbfb). The recent [kerfluffle](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=its-time-to-end-the-war-on-salt) [about](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/11/forget-salt.html) whether salt really is bad for you - medical advice that has stressed millions and will cost more millions due to New York City's [war on salt](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/business/11salt.html) \- is a reminder of what is at stake.)

The take-away, I think, is to resolutely ignore anything to do with diet & exercise that is not a randomized trial. Correlations may be worth paying attention to in other areas but _not_ in health.
# Recent popular books on human irrationality to recommend to your friends

*   Shore, _[Blunder](http://www.amazon.com/Blunder-Smart-People-Make-Decisions/dp/B002VPE7TW/)_
*   Kahneman, _[Thinking, Fast and Slow](http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374275637/)_
*   Ariely, _[Predictably Irrational](http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expanded-Decisions/dp/0061353248/)_
*   Koppel, _[Investing and the Irrational Mind](http://www.amazon.com/Investing-Irrational-Mind-Optimism-Opportunities/dp/0071753370/)_
*   Brafman & Brafman, _[Sway](http://www.amazon.com/Sway-Irresistible-Pull-Irrational-Behavior/dp/0385530609/)_
*   Thaler & Sunstein, _[Nudge](http://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happiness/dp/014311526X/)_
*   Marcus, _[Kluge](http://www.amazon.com/Kluge-Haphazard-Evolution-Human-Mind/dp/B002ECETZY/)_
*   Kaplan & Kaplan, _[Bozo Sapiens](http://www.amazon.com/Bozo-Sapiens-Why-Err-Human/dp/B005DIAM6Q/)_
*   Schulz, _[Being Wrong](http://www.amazon.com/Being-Wrong-Adventures-Margin-Error/dp/0061176052/)_
*   Tavris & Aronson, _[Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me)](http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-Not/dp/0156033909/)_
*   Lehrer, _[How We Decide](http://www.amazon.com/How-We-Decide-Jonah-Lehrer/dp/0547247990/)_
*   Burton, _[On Being Certain](http://www.amazon.com/Being-Certain-Believing-Right-Youre/dp/031254152X/)_
*   Chabris & Simons, _[The Invisible Gorilla](http://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Gorilla-How-Intuitions-Deceive/dp/0307459667/)_
*   Hallinan, _[Why We Make Mistakes](http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Make-Mistakes-Without/dp/0767928067/)_
*   Fine, _[A Mind of Its Own](http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Its-Own-Distorts-Deceives/dp/0393331636/)_
*   Kida, _[Don't Believe Everything You Think](http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Believe-Everything-You-Think/dp/1591024080/)_
*   McRaney, _[You Are Not So Smart](http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-So-Smart/dp/1592406599/)_

Veteran Less Wrongers are unlikely to find anything new here, but I've found the examples and exposition herein to be useful when I try to explain rationality concepts to other people in a fun and concise way.
# An EPub of Eliezer's blog posts

Update 2015-03-21: I would now strongly recommend reading [Rationality: From AI to Zombies](https://intelligence.org/rationality-ai-zombies/) over this. Though the blog posts I collected here are the starting point for that book, considerable work has gone into selecting and arranging the essays as well as adding thoughtful new material and useful material not in this collection. Only if you've already read that should you consider starting on this; you can always skip the essays you've already read.

[This is all Eliezer's posts to Less Wrong up to the end of 2010 as an EPub.](http://hacks.ciphergoth.org/lesswrong.epub) Can be read with Aldiko and other eBook readers, though you might have to jump through some hoops on the Kindle (haven't tried it). I shared it privately with a few friends in the past, but I thought it might be more generally useful.  Highlights include that all the screwed-up Unicode is fixed AFAIK.

[Source code](http://hg.ciphergoth.org/scrape-sequences/).

Update: have now made a [MOBI for the Kindle too](http://hacks.ciphergoth.org/lesswrong.mobi).

Updated 2011-08-13 17:20 BST: Now with images!
# Overcoming bias in others

Say that you are observing someone in a position of power. You have good reason to believe that this person is falling prey to a known cognitive bias, and that this will tend to affect you negatively. You also can tell that the person is more than intelligent enough to understand their mistake, if they were motivated to do so. You have an opportunity to say one thing to the person - around 500 words of argument. They will initially perceive you as a low-status member of their own tribe. The power differential is extreme enough that, after they have attended this one thing, they will never pay any attention to you again. What can you do to best disrupt their bias?

This is clearly a setup where the odds are against you. Still, what kind of strategies would give you the best odds? I've deliberately made the situation vague, so as to emphasize abstract strategies. If certain strategies would work best against certain biases or personality types, feel free to state it in your answer.

I'm making this a post of its own because I find here much more discussion of how to overcome or subvert your own biases, somewhat less of how to recruit rationalists, and almost none of how to try to overcome a specific bias in another person without necessarily converting them into a committed rationalist overall.
# "Meetup" proposal: Google+

Not all of us live near big cities. I know of only one Less Wronger in the Grand Rapids, MI area apart from myself, and the nearest existing meetup is in Madison, WI, across Lake Michigan. I'd like to go to a Less Wrong meetup with more than just a couple of people, but I don't want to have to drive six hours each way.

I have tried Google+'s "Hangouts" feature, and it's really quite nice. It's a many-way video chat system, so it goes without saying that if you've tried video chat before, Hangouts will be _quite_ similar. It also lets you play YouTube videos in synchrony. In short, if you like sitting on the couch with people watching TV, Hangouts are perfect for you.

So, I propose having a meetup on Google+ on Saturday, August 27, at 5:00 PM EDT (21:00 UTC). The date and time can be changed, of course, but I don't want to commit to anything on the 20th. Search for my name (Tanner Swett) at that time, and hopefully you'll see a hangout listed. I will try to be around for at least an hour.

Naturally, ideas for stuff to do would be appreciated. Perhaps we could watch some TED talks, or chat about a specific subject, or play some game. I don't really have much hanging-out experience to go on here.

Any thoughts? Should we meet at a different time? What should we do?