Harley-ml/lesswrong huggingface dataset:
# Should I be afraid of GMOs?

I was raised to believe that genetically-modified foods are unhealthy to eat and bad for the environment, and given a variety of reasons for this, some of which I now recognize as blatantly false (e.g., human genetic code is isomorphic to fundamental physical law), and a few of which still seem sort of plausible.

Because of this history, I need to anchor my credence heavily downward from my sense of plausibility.

The major reasons I see to believe that GMOs are safe are:

*   I would probably think they were dangerous even if they were safe, due to my upbringing.
*   In general, whenever someone opposes a particular field of engineering on the grounds that it's unnatural and dangerous, they're usually wrong.
*   It's not quite obvious to me that introducing genetically-engineered organisms to a system is significantly more dangerous than introducing non-native naturally-evolved organisms.

The major reason I see to believe that GMOs are dangerous is:

*   I might believe they were safe even if they were dangerous, due to "yay science" (which was also part of my upbringing).
*   We are designing self-replicating things and using them [without reliable containment](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Genetic_pollution#Genetic_engineering), thereby effectively releasing them into the wild.

So: [green goo](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Gray_goo), yes or no?
# What bothers you about Less Wrong?

Or, what do you want to see more or less of from Less Wrong?

I'm thinking about community norms, content and topics discussed, karma voting patterns, et cetera. There are already posts and comment sections filled with long lists of proposed technical software changes/additions, let's not make this post another one. 

My impression is that people sometimes make discussion posts about things that bother them, and sometimes a bunch of people will agree and sometimes a bunch of people will disagree, but most people don't care that much (or they have a life or something) and thus don't want to dedicate a post just to complaining. This post is meant to make it socially and cognitively easy to offer critique.

I humbly request that you list downsides of existing policies even when you think the upsides outweigh them, for all the obvious reasons. I also humbly request that you list a critique/gripe even if you don't want to bother explaining why you have that critique/gripe, and even in cases where you think your gripe is, ahem, "irrational". In general, I think it'd be really cool if we erred on the side of listing things which might be problems even if there's no obvious solution or no real cause for complaint except for personal distaste for the color green (for example).

_I arrogantly request that we try to avoid impulsive downvoting and non-niceness for the duration of this post (and others like it)._ If someone wants to complain that Less Wrong is a little cultish without explaining why then downvoting them to oblivion, while admittedly kind of funny, is probably a bad idea.  :)
# How to (un)become a crank

Ahhh, a human interest post. Well, sort of. At least it has something _besides_ math-talk.

In the extreme programming community they have a saying, ["three strikes and you refactor"](http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?ThreeStrikesAndYouRefactor). The rationalist counterpart would be this: once you've noticed the same trap twice, you'd be stupid to fall prey to it the third time.

Strike one is Eliezer's post [The Crackpot Offer](/lw/j8/the_crackpot_offer/). Child-Eliezer thought he'd overthrown Cantor's theorem, then found an error in his reasoning, but felt a little tempted to keep on trying to overthrow the damned theorem anyway. The right and Bayesian thing to do, which he ended up doing, was to notice that once you've found your mistake there's no longer any reason to wage war on an established result.

Strike two is Emile's [comment](/lw/5jv/no_coinductive_datatype_of_integers/43hr) on one of my recent posts:

> I find it annoying how my brain keeps saying "hah, I bet I could" even though I explained to it that it's mathematically provable that such an input always exists. It still keeps coming up with "how about this clever encoding?, blablabla" ... I guess that's how you get cranks.

Strike three is... I'm a bit ashamed to say that...

...strike three is about me. And maybe not only me.

There's a certain vibe in the air surrounding many discussions of decision theory. It sings: maybe the central insight of game theory (that multiplayer situations are not reducible to single-player ones) is wrong. Maybe the slightly-asymmetrized Prisoner's Dilemma has a single right answer. Maybe you can get a unique solution to [dividing a cake by majority vote](/lw/135/timeless_decision_theory_problems_i_cant_solve/) if each individual player's reasoning is "correct enough". But honestly, where exactly is the Bayesian evidence that merits anticipating success on that path? Am I waging war on clear and simple established results because of wishful thinking? Are my efforts the moral equivalent of counting the reals or proving the consistency of PA within PA?

An easy answer is that "we don't know" if our inquiries will be fruitful, so you can't prove I must stop. But that's not the Bayesian answer. The Bayesian answer is to honestly tally up the indications that future success is likely, and stop if they are lacking.

So I want to ask an object-level question and a meta-level question:

1) What evidence supports the intuition that, contra game theory, single-player decision theory has a "solution"?

2) If there's not much evidence supporting that intuition, how should I change my actions?

(I already have tentative answers to both questions, but am curious what others think. Note that you can answer the second question without knowing any math :-))
# Lesswrongers from the German-speaking world, unite! 

As far as I can tell, there never has been a LW-meetup in a german-speaking country. This is crazy!

There should be enough Lesswrongers from Germany, Austria or Switzerland to achieve a reasonable group size!

To be a bit more specific, how about meeting in Munich? It's relatively in the middle of the three countries, but it's fine if you propose another city!

I'm not sure about the date, but how about sometime in July or August? We would have plenty of time until then. But I'm happy if you propose another date!

I don't know if I'm merely shouting in the void, but I hope some aspiring rationalists are out there!

So If you're interested in such a meeting, please make a comment!

**Added:** Oh, and if you are not from a German-speaking country you are welcome, too!
# Official Less Wrong Redesign: Special pages

Following along from [Louie](/user/louie)'s [post](/lw/5by/official_less_wrong_redesign_call_for_suggestions/) and the discussion around it…

[User:orthonormal](/user/orthonormal/) [suggested (and many seconded)](/lw/5by/official_less_wrong_redesign_call_for_suggestions/3zb8) a better Welcome section and improvements to the About page.  
[User:bentarm](/user/bentarm/) [suggested](/lw/5by/official_less_wrong_redesign_call_for_suggestions/3z6d) doing something with the comment help link, [User:jimrandomh](/user/jimrandomh/) [suggested](/lw/5by/official_less_wrong_redesign_call_for_suggestions/3z6f) making it a wiki page, and [User:Alicorn](/user/Alicorn/) [requested](/lw/5by/official_less_wrong_redesign_call_for_suggestions/3z7g) that it be more extensive.

Responding to the above suggestions, we propose adding functionality to Less Wrong. We'll add a special page type that collects its content from the wiki. We propose that [/about](/about), [the home page](/), the comment help text, and each user's user page be of this type (I imagine that this change to the homepage may be controversial).

We propose that those pages link to:

*   [http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Lesswrong:Homepage](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Lesswrong:Homepage)
*   [http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Lesswrong:Aboutpage](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Lesswrong:Aboutpage)
*   [http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Lesswrong:Commentmarkuphelp](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Lesswrong:Commentmarkuphelp)
*   and each user's wiki userpage if an exact name match exists.

I've very clumsily populated those pages with starting content but hope that we can test the idea by inviting you wonderful people to make those pages be good before we develop the feature. (Which is an invitation - if you don't hate this idea, go, edit, and make good.)

  

**Detail:**  
These pages would cache wiki content for at least several hours, so would be fast to render. They would include a publicly usable "refetch content from the wiki" button (detailed placement, wording and design to follow) so that if the source page was spammed anyone could fix it on the wiki then clear the cache. If abuse became a problem we could easily "[protect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protection_policy)" those pages.
# I want to save myself

Related to: [People who want to save the world](/r/discussion/lw/5p2/people_who_want_to_save_the_world/) 

I have recently been diagnosed with cancer, for which I am currently being treated with good prognosis. I've been reevaluating my life plans and priorities in response. To be clear, I estimate that the cancer is responsible for much less than half the total danger to my life. The universals - X-risks, diseases I don't have yet, traffic accidents, etc. - are worse.

I would like to affirm my desire to Save Myself (and Save The World For Myself). Saving the world is a prerequisite simply because the world is in danger. I believe my values are well aligned with those of the LW community; wanting to Save The World is a good applause light but I believe most people want to do so for selfish reasons. 

I would also like to ask LW members: why do you prefer to contribute (in part) towards humankind-wide X-risk problems rather than more narrow but personally important issues? How do you determine the time- and risk- tradeoffs between things like saving money for healthcare, and investing money in preventing an unfriendly AI FOOM?

It is common advice here to focus on earning money and donating it to research, rather than donating in kind. How do you decide what portion of income to donate to SIAI, which to SENS, and which to keep as money for purely personal problems that others won't invest in? There's no conceptual difficulty here, but I have no idea how to quantify the risks involved.
# Seeking suggestions: Less Wrong Biology 101

I’ve been a reader and occasional commenter here for a while now, but previously have not had a solid idea of what I could or wanted to contribute to the community in posting.  In light of recent [comments](/r/discussion/lw/5ro/what_bothers_you_about_less_wrong/47iv) stating an interest in more posts that offer concrete, factual information as well as remembering lukeprog’s call for such things in his [Back to the Basics of Rationality](/lw/3mm/aiming_both_high_and_low/) post, I am considering a series of condensed posts about biology.  As someone who has spent my formal education on biologically-focused engineering (bioengineering BS, now studying bioinformatics under a chemical engineering department for my PhD) but has always had the bulk of my friends in electrical engineering, computer science, and more traditional chemical engineering, I’ve gotten used to offering such condensed explanations whenever biology works its way into a discussion.  From what I’ve seen on LW thus far, the community educational base leans more in those (non-biology) directions, so I believe this is a niche that could use filling. 

Since biology is a _rather_ broad subject, and you could all go read Wikipedia or a textbook if you wanted a very detailed survey course, my intent is to pick targeted topics that are relevant to current events and scientific developments.  Each post would focus on one such event/Awesome New Study, discussing the biological background and potential implications, including either short explanations or links to the basics needed to understand the subject.  If there are any political ties to the subject, I will withhold my explicit opinions on those aspects unless asked in the comments. 

My questions, then, are the following:

*   _Is_ this something that people here would find interesting/useful in the general sense?  (While I do enjoy talking to myself, doing so on this topic has gotten a bit old, so I really do want to know if no one really thinks this will be helpful.)
*   How long/in-depth would you like?  This question is intended to gauge what my background explanation: background links ratio should be.
*   And most importantly, **what are some topics you would like to see discussed?**

* * *

**UPDATE:** Having followed the comments so far and done some preliminary outlining, I'm leaning toward a more organized progression of topics that will still tie into current interests and developments, but not be centered on them.  A bit more thought and putting ideas to text indicated that I could group the interest areas into biological categories (molecular, populations, developmental, neuro, etc) fairly easily, which would then allow for a 'foundations' post to introduce each major category, followed by posts that go over What We Know Now, Why We Care, and Where It's Going.
# Ontological Crises in Artificial Agents' Value Systems by Peter de Blanc

I saw [this](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1105.3821v1) go by on arXiv, and thought it deserved a discussion here.

> Decision-theoretic agents predict and evaluate the results of their actions using a model, or ontology, of their environment. An agent's goal, or utility function, may also be specified in terms of the states of, or entities within, its ontology. If the agent may upgrade or replace its ontology, it faces a crisis: the agent's original goal may not be well-defined with respect to its new ontology. This crisis must be resolved before the agent can make plans towards achieving its goals. We discuss in this paper which sorts of agents will undergo ontological crises and why we may want to create such agents. We present some concrete examples, and argue that a well-defined procedure for resolving ontological crises is needed. We point to some possible approaches to solving this problem, and evaluate these methods on our examples.

I'll post my analysis and opinion of this paper in a comment after I've taken some time to digest it.
# ANKI flashcard deck: Cognitive Biases and Related Terms

I have shared an [ANKI flashcard deck](http://ankisrs.net/) called "Cognitive Biases and Related Terms," which is an upgrade of another shared deck. The deck is composed of most [cognitive biases listed on Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases), and a few other related terms, with links embedded in the cards for easy reference to articles. Including the links is both time-consuming and a major improvement in usability from the original deck, as thoroughly defining many of these concepts cannot be done on a single card. I also improved the formatting and fixed a bunch of definitions.

I have been devoting ~20 minutes/day to memorizing this deck with positive results.

To download the deck, open ANKI and then select File>Download>Shared Deck. Search for "Cognitive Biases and Related Terms." You are able to modify the deck through ANKI and share your own updated version.
# Rationalist horoscopes: A low-hanging utility generator.

The other day, I had an idea. It occurred to me that daily horoscopes - the traditional kind - might not be as useless as they seem at first glance: They usually give, or at least hint at, suggestions for specific things to do on a given day, which can be a useful cue, allowing the user to put less effort into finding something useful to do with their time. They can also act as a reminder of important concepts, rather like spaced repetition, and have the possibility of serendipitously giving the perfect advice in a situation where the user would otherwise not have thought to apply a particular concept.

This seems like something that many people here would find useful, if they weren't so vague, and if they were better calibrated to make useful suggestions. So, after [getting some feedback](/lw/5rb/rationalist_horoscopes_lowhanging_utility/), and with the help of [PeerInfinity](/user/PeerInfinity/) (who did most of the coding and is currently hosting the program), I put together a tool to provide us with a daily 'horoscope', chosen from a list provided by us and weighted toward advice that has been reported to work. The horoscopes are displayed [here](http://actuallyusefulhoroscopes.tumblr.com/), with an RSS feed available [here](http://actuallyusefulhoroscopes.tumblr.com/rss). Lists of the horoscopes in the program's database can be found [here](http://peerinfinity.com/horoscopes/index.php), with various sorting options.

One of the features of this program is that the chance of a given horoscope being displayed are affected by how well it has worked in the past. Every day, there is an option to vote on the previous day's horoscope, rating it as 'harmful', 'useless', 'sort of useful', 'useful', or 'awesome'. The 'harmful' and 'useless' options give the horoscope -15 and -1 points respectively, while the other three give it 1, 3, or 10 points. If a horoscope's score becomes negative, it is removed from the pool of active horoscopes; otherwise, its chance of being chosen is based on the average value of the votes it has received compared to the other horoscopes, disregarding recently-used ones.

There is still a need for good horoscopes to be added to the database. Horoscopes should offer a specific suggestion for something to do that will take less than an hour of sustained effort (all-day mindfulness-type exercises or 'be on the lookout for X' are fine) and that can be accomplished on the same day that the horoscope is read. Horoscopes should not make actual predictions, but may make prediction-like statements that are likely to be true on any given day, like "you will talk to a friend today". Horoscopes can be submitted [here](http://actuallyusefulhoroscopes.tumblr.com/submit), or left in the comments. **EDIT:** Any comment anywhere on the site that contains the phrase "Horoscope version:" or "Horoscope:" should now automatically be emailed to me, so feel free to horoscope-ify new posts in their comments, unless this comes to be considered spam.
# How To Be More Confident... That You're Wrong

One of the main Eliezer Sequences, consisting of dozens of posts, is [How To Actually Change Your Mind](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/How_To_Actually_Change_Your_Mind). Looking at all those posts, one gets the feeling that changing one’s mind must be Really Hard. But maybe it doesn't have to be that hard. I think it would much easier to change your mind, if you instinctively thought that your best ideas are almost certainly still far from the truth. Most of us are probably aware of the overconfidence bias, but there hasn't been much discussion on how to practically reduce overconfidence in our own ideas.

I offer two suggestions in that vein for your consideration.

1\. Take the outside view. Recall famous scientists and philosophers of the past, and how far off from the truth their ideas were, and yet how confident they were in their ideas. Realize that they are famous because, in retrospect, they were more right than everyone else of their time, and there are countless books filled with even worse ideas. How likely is it that your ideas are the best of our time? How likely is it that the best ideas of our time are fully correct (as opposed to just a bit closer to the truth)?

2\. Take a few days to learn some cryptology and then design your own cipher. Use whatever tricks you can find and make it as complicated as you want. Feel your confidence in how unbreakable it must be (at least before the Singularity occurs), and then watch it taken apart by an expert in minutes. Now feel the sense of betrayal against your “self-confidence module” and vow “never again”.
# What makes Less Wrong awesome?

Recently I asked ["What bothers you about Less Wrong?"](/r/discussion/lw/5ro/what_bothers_you_about_less_wrong/). It might be worth going back and checking out what people had to say, to see if there's something you can do to make Less Wrong more fun for everyone. (A few people made cool posts in response to complaints about lack of technical discussion, for instance.)

Let's hear the other side. What is cool about Less Wrong? What drew you in, what makes you stay, what makes you obsessively read every comment of every post? Is they're something we're doing right that we should be doing more? Bonus points for pointing out how we can make our awesome traits even more awesome, or how to make our awesomeness more obvious to outside folk who'd appreciate it. Whatever it is, add it to the comments.
# Official Less Wrong Redesign: Nearly there

Design sketches
---------------

1\. Notes on differences between these images and what we're planning on implementing:

![](http://images.lesswrong.com/t3_5ut_0.png?v=a36683d87cfb12f65548cd2428daddf6)

2\. Meetup widget in sidebar, listing the 5 nearest meetups occurring in the next 2 weeks, linking to:  
(something like right-click & "Open Image in new tab" will help here)

![](http://images.lesswrong.com/t3_5ut_2.png?v=b71ab37d8cd1eb6680719d3c14197d16)

![](http://images.lesswrong.com/t3_5ut_1.png?v=ef3f41f155cf6e814df2052288fd41d0)

3\. New headers:

![](http://images.lesswrong.com/t3_5ut_3.png?v=78f25bee1b1abfa9b88576ec382ecf5a)

![](http://images.lesswrong.com/t3_5ut_4.png?v=8c895929c29448f17bc414f9b81f8ea3)

![](http://images.lesswrong.com/t3_5ut_5.png?v=ee98fd231ce5e2a2d9ee209887506e13)
# Dissolution of free will as a call to action

Accepting determinism and the insuing dissolution of free will is often feared as something that would lead to loss of will and fatalism. [Gary Drescher](http://www.amazon.com/Good-Real-Demystifying-Paradoxes-Bradford/dp/0262042339) and [Eliezer](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Free_will_(solution)) spend considerable effort explaining this as a fallacy. 

The one thing I don't remember mentioned is the opposite effect (but maybe I missed it) - if you experienced a failure to accomplish something, the free will explanation is likely to make you stop investigating the root cause, leaving it as a mystery. Once you accept determinism you **know** that a failure is determined by your mental algorithms, and should be much more motivated to push the investigation further, [making yourself stronger](/lw/h8/tsuyoku_naritai_i_want_to_become_stronger/).
# LessWrong Power Reader (Greasemonkey script, updated)

I posted [this script](http://www.ibiblio.org/weidai/lesswrong_comments_reade.user.js) previously to Open Thread, but it got broken by the discussion/main split-up and also didn't work in Firefox 4. It's now updated and fixed for Firefox 4. The original description follows. See the [previous thread](/lw/2nz/less_wrong_open_thread_september_2010/2l9m) for some additional questions and answers. (ETA: Firefox 4 seems to have made the script much faster, so try it again if you were previously put off by the slowness.)

For those who may be having trouble keeping up with "Recent Comments" or finding the interface a bit plain, I've written a [Greasemonkey](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/) script to make it easier/prettier. Here is a [screenshot](http://www.ibiblio.org/weidai/lw_screenshot.png).

Explanation of features:

*   loads and threads up to 400 most recent comments on one screen
*   use \[↑\] and \[↓\] to mark favored/disfavored authors
*   comments are color coded based on author/points (pink) and recency (yellow)
*   replies to you are outlined in red
*   hover over \[+\] to view single collapsed comment
*   hover over/click \[^\] to highlight/scroll to parent comment
*   marks comments read (grey) based on scrolling
*   shows only new/unread comments upon refresh
*   date/time are converted to your local time zone
*   click comment date/time for permalink

To install, first get Greasemonkey, then click [here](http://www.ibiblio.org/weidai/lesswrong_comments_reade.user.js). Once that's done, use [this link](/reader) to get to the reader interface.

I've placed the script is in the public domain. EDIT: Chrome is supported as of version 1.0.5 of the script.

On a related note, [here](http://www.ibiblio.org/weidai/lesswrong_user.php) is a way to view all posts and comments of a particular LW user as a single HTML page.

EDIT - Version History:

*   1.0.5
    *   loads comments directly from LW instead of through another server
    *   added Chrome support
    *   auto checking/notification of new versions
    *   can specify a starting point to load comments from (if you want, you can read all LW comments, 400 at a time, by starting at comment ID 1)
    *   can collapse all comments under a post
*   1.0.6 (10/4/2011)  
    *   misc bug fixes
    *   number of comments loaded changed to 800
    *   tested on Firefox 7.0 and Chrome 14.0
*   1.0.7 (11/10/2011)  
    *   bug fixes
    *   number of comments loaded changed to 800 on Chrome
*   1.0.8 (7/16/2012)  
    *   fixed broken parsing (pengvado)
    *   tested on Firefox 13.0.1 and Chrome 20.0
# Free Stats Textbook: Principles of Uncertainty

Joseph Kadane, emeritus at Carnegie Mellon, released his new statistics textbook _Principles of Uncertainty_ as a [free pdf](http://uncertainty.stat.cmu.edu/). The book is written from a Bayesian perspective, covering basic probability, decision theory, conjugate distribution analysis, hierarchical modeling, MCMC simulation, and game theory. The focus is mathematical, but computation with R is touched on. A solid understanding of calculus seems sufficient to use the book. Curiously, the author devotes a fair number of pages to developing the [McShane integral](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henstock%E2%80%93Kurzweil_integral#McShane_integral), which is equivalent to Lebesgue integration on the real line. There are lots of other unusual topics you don't normally see in an intermediate statistics textbook.

Having came across this today, I can't say whether it is actually very good or not, but the range of topics seems perfectly suited to Less Wrong readers.
# Link: If you don't already read Bad Science

So there's this blog called Bad Science, consisting mostly of the articles that medical doctor Ben Goldacre writes for the Guardian.  It's about pseudoscience, medicine and medical research.  And also _awesome_.

The recent article was a wonderful bit of emotional whiplash, and is about as subject I think is useful to keep in mind when contemplating research.  But really, I recommend reading everything.  

[http://www.badscience.net/2011/05/existential-angst-about-the-bigger-picture/](http://www.badscience.net/2011/05/existential-angst-about-the-bigger-picture/)

Also, the second-most-recent article, which should appeal to LW-types:  

[http://www.badscience.net/2011/05/we-should-so-blatantly-do-more-randomised-trials-on-policy/](http://www.badscience.net/2011/05/we-should-so-blatantly-do-more-randomised-trials-on-policy/)
# Dominus' Razor

You are probably familiar with [Hanlon’s Razor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor), the adage that you should never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity. In Bayesian terms, stupidity is sufficiently abundant that even fairly strong evidence of harmful intent can’t overcome the base rate. However, there is something of a converse, which to my knowledge doesn’t have an eponymous name. In honor of a [recent post](http://blog.plover.com/tech/stadiometer.html) by Mark Dominus, I propose Dominus’ Razor: _Never attribute to complete stupidity what can adequately be explained by ordinary stupidity and a good reason_.

Dominus, well-known as a Perl programmer, found that astonishingly bad code looks better (if still bad) after hearing the reasons for its development. For instance, one program passed data between functions by writing it to a temporary file, only to read it back again. It turns out the programmer did this for debugging purposes, an admirable goal, even if done in non-standard ways.

The Razor is one more explanation for the frequent failure of [other-optimization](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Other-optimizing). People and institutions usually have some reason for doing what they do, even if they’ve since forgotten or never knew in the first place. “Evolution is cleverer than you are” ([Orgel’s Second Rule](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orgel's_rule)) and “Free markets are cleverer than you are” are two related rules of thumb. Something that looks obviously stupid was probably implemented to meet some non-obvious need or constraint.

In the end, this is another way of saying to not expect short [inferential distances](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Inferential_distance). Based on personal observation, this community does a good job anticipating inferential jumps when playing the role of the sender, but not quite as well when acting as the receiver. Even if someone is wrong, be careful not to [dismiss them entirely](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Least_convenient_possible_world).
# Teachable Rationality Skills

Recent brainstorming sessions at SIAI (with participants including Anna, Carl, Jasen, Divia, Will, Amy Willey, and Andrew Critch) have started to produce lists of rationality skills that we could potentially try to teach (at Rationality Boot Camp, at Less Wrong meetups, or similar venues).  We've also been trying to break those skills down to the [5-second level](/lw/5kz/the_5second_level/) (step 2) and come up with ideas for exercises that might teach them (step 3) although we haven't actually composed those exercises yet (step 4, where the actual work takes place).

The bulk of this post will mainly go into the comments, which I'll try to keep to the following format:  A top-level comment is a major or minor skill to teach; upvote this comment if you think this skill should get priority in teaching.  Sub-level comments describe 5-second subskills that go into this skill, and then third-level comments are ideas for exercises which could potentially train that 5-second skill.  If anyone actually went to the work of composing a specific exercise people could run through, that would go to the fourth-level of commenting, I guess.  For some major practicable arts with a known standard learning format like "Improv" or "Acting", I'll put the exercise at the top and guesses at _which skills it might teach_ below.  (And any plain old replies can go at any level.)

I probably won't be able to get to all of what we brainstormed today, so here's [a PNG of the Freemind map](http://images.lesswrong.com/t3_5x8_0.png?v=768eb3d2d6c3e55d569bf94b7865090d) that I generated during our session.
# Sequence translations: Seeking feedback/collaboration

(...and also _permission_ from Eliezer, who has the right to veto this whole idea should he so desire.) 

In the hope of launching a collaborative project, I've set up Wordpress sites for translations of the [Sequences](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences) into [French](http://rationalite.wordpress.com), [Italian](http://xrazionalita.wordpress.com), and [Spanish](http://xracionalidad.wordpress.com); and to get things started, I've put up [my](http://rationalite.wordpress.com/2011/05/28/001-lart-martial-de-la-rationalite/) [own](http://xrazionalita.wordpress.com/2011/05/28/001-l%E2%80%99arte-marziale-della-razionalita/) [attempts](http://xracionalidad.wordpress.com/2011/05/28/el-arte-marcial-de-le-racionalidad/) at translating the first post, [The Martial Art of Rationality](/lw/gn/the_martial_art_of_rationality/). 

I'm looking for collaborators. At the very least, I'm hoping to find folks who would be willing to proofread my translations and help improve them -- in particular to help me purge them of the inevitable mistakes, non-native shibboleths, and typos with which they're bound to be infused. Beyond that, it would of course be nice to have people contribute translations of their own of entire posts. (I'll keep plugging away myself no doubt, but if I'm the only one, it will take a very long time to complete.)  

If you'd like to translate articles yourself into one of these languages, send me a PM so I can add you as an author on the appropriate blog(s). Proofreading my work can be done either privately or in comments here on LW; I'd probably prefer to reserve the comments sections of the actual sites for discussion of the posts' content (in the target languages), although this isn't an inflexible demand. 

Also, one would like to add more languages, of course...
# Existing Absurd Technologies

When attempting to introduce non-rationalists to the ideas of cryonics or Strong AI, it appears that their primary objections tend to be rooted in the absurdity heuristic. They don't believe they inhabit a universe where such _weird_ technologies could actually work. To deal with this, I thought it would be useful to have a cache of examples of technologies that have actually been implemented that did, or ideally, still do, challenge our intuitions about the way the universe works.

The first example that comes to my mind is computers in general; imagine what Ernest Rutherford, let alone Benjamin Franklin, would have thought of a machine that uses electricity to calculate, and do those calculations so fast that they can express nearly _anything_ as calculations. Nothing we know about how the universe works says it shouldn't be possible, indeed it obviously is knowing what we do now, but imagine how weird this would have seemed back when we were just coming to grips with how electricity actually worked.

I suspect there may be better examples to challenge the intuitions of people who've grown up in an age where computers are commonplace though. So does anyone have any to volunteer?
# Brief question about Conway's Game of LIfe and AI

Conway’s Game of Life is Turing-complete. Therefore, it is possible to create an AI in it. If you created a 3^^3 by 3^^3 Life board, setting the initial state at random, presumably somewhere an AI would be created. Would this AI somehow take over the whole game board, if given enough time?

Would this be visible from the top, as it were?

EDIT: I probably meant 3^^^3, sorry. Also, by generating at random, I meant 50% chance on. But any other chance would work too, I suspect.
# Should a rationalist be concerned about habitat loss/biodiversity loss?

It's an interesting question that I'm pondering.

Now, while I do question the intellectual honesty of this blog, I'll link to it anyways, since the evidence does seem interesting, at the very least: [http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/04/where-are-the-corpses/](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/04/where-are-the-corpses/)

[http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/19/species-extinction-hype-fundamentally-flawed/](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/19/species-extinction-hype-fundamentally-flawed/)

It does seem that environmentalism can mimic some qualities of religion (I know, since I used to be an environmentalist myself). As such, it can cause many extremely intelligent people to reject evidence that goes against their worldview. 

Furthermore, it's also possible that computational chemistry may soon be our primary agent for drug discovery, rather than discovering more biological compounds in certain ecosystems (that being said, drug discovery is entirely different from drug synthesis, and discovering a gene that codes for a particular protein and splicing it into an E Coli bacterium is going to be far easier than anything computational chemistry can do in the near future). 

With that all being said, what now? I do believe that there is something of value that does get lost as habitat gets destroyed. But it's hard to quantify value in these cases. Certain animals, like crows, chimpanzees, orcas, and elephants, are cognitively advanced enough to have their own cultures. If one of their subcultures get destroyed (which can be done without a fullscale extinction), then is anything valuable that gets lost? (besides value for scientific research that has potential to be applicable elsewhere?) And is it more important to worry about these separate cultures, as compared to worrying about different subspecies of the same animal? Certainly, we're now beginning to discover novel social networks in dolphins and crows. But most of these animals are not at risk of extinction, and even the chimpanzees and bonobos will only get extinct in the wild (at the very worst). There are other less advanced animals that have a higher risk of permanent extinction. 

What we're prone to systematically underestimating, of course, is the possible permanent loss of micro-organisms. And of novel biological structures (and networks) that may be contained within them.
# [prize] Spaced Repetition literature review

**EDIT:** I am canceling this contest because I feel that the structure of the incentives were poorly thought out (see gwern's comments). I will be posting a new better structured contest in the near future (now [posted](/r/discussion/lw/69p/prize_new_spaced_repetition_literature_review_265/)). If you feel this is unfair or otherwise feel slighted, please contact me at my username at gmail.com.

I'm interested in [making projects happen](/lw/5zd/making_projects_happen/) on Less Wrong. In order to find out what works and to inspire others to try things too, I'm sponsoring the following small project:

Spaced Repetition is often mentioned on on Less Wrong as a technique for remembering things. I've started using Anki and it certainly seems to be useful. However, I haven't seen a good summary of evidence on Spaced Repetition. 

I hereby offer a prize to the first person to submit a good summary of the evidence on Spaced Repetition to the main page. The winner will get the prize, currently: $**265**** \+ 40 to charity (see comments)**

The summary should address at least the following questions:

*   What spacing is best?
*   How much does spaced repetition actually help memory?
*   Does spaced repetition have hidden benefits or costs?
*   Does the effectiveness vary across domains? How much?
*   Is there research on the kinds of questions that work best?
*   What questions do researchers think are most important?
*   Is there any interesting ongoing research? If so, what is it on?
*   What, if any, questions do researchers think it is important to answer? Are there other unanswered questions that would jump out at a smart person?
*   What does spaced repetition **not** do that people might expect it to?

The post should summarize the state of current evidence and provide citations to back up the claims in the article.

If you think you would benefit from the result of this project, please add to the prize! You can contribute to the prize on the [ChipIn page](http://jsalvatier.chipin.com/spaced-repetition-research-summary).

Whether the summary is 'good' will be judged by me. If there is a serious dispute, I'll agree to dispute resolution by any uninvolved party with more than 5k karma. 

If you have suggestions, questions or comments, please leave them in the comments. 

If you would like to work on this project, please say so in the comments below. Collaboration is encouraged. 

This project is tagged with the 'project' tag and listed on the  [Projects wiki](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Projects)  page.
# The Four-Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss - any LWers tried it?

I've just read the Four-Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss.  It seems on the face of it like _ridiculously_ valuable material, if true - like what the completed version of Michael Vassar's proposed reboot of dietary science would look like at the finish point if dieting turned out to be more susceptible to Munchkinism than in my wildest dreams.  Ferriss also talks the rationalist talk quite well in this book, much more so than in _Four-Hour Workweek_; he cites the experiments and occasionally says things like "I spent a lot of money on this and I expected it to work and it didn't work at all" or "I tried this and it seemed to work and I have no idea why it worked and I think it was probably a placebo effect."

Does the LessWrong hivemind have an opinion about 4HB?  Has anyone tried it and found that it doesn't work, or that it does work, or that it works but not as well as Ferriss thinks it should work?
# A Philosophical Treatise of Universal Induction (Link)

> **Abstract:** Understanding inductive reasoning is a problem that has engaged mankind for thousands of years. This problem is relevant to a wide range of fields and is integral to the philosophy of science. It has been tackled by many great minds ranging from philosophers to scientists to mathematicians, and more recently computer scientists. In this article we argue the case for Solomonoff Induction, a formal inductive framework which combines algorithmic information theory with the Bayesian framework. Although it achieves excellent theoretical results and is based on solid philosophical foundations, the requisite technical knowledge necessary for understanding this framework has caused it to remain largely unknown and unappreciated in the wider scientific community. The main contribution of this article is to convey Solomonoff induction and its related concepts in a generally accessible form with the aim of bridging this current technical gap. In the process we examine the major historical contributions that have led to the formulation of Solomonoff Induction as well as criticisms of Solomonoff and induction in general. In particular we examine how Solomonoff induction addresses many issues that have plagued other inductive systems, such as the black ravens paradox and the confirmation problem, and compare this approach with other recent approaches.

**Link:** [mdpi.com/1099-4300/13/6/1076/](http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/13/6/1076/)

**Download PDF Full-Text:** [mdpi.com/1099-4300/13/6/1076/pdf](http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/13/6/1076/pdf)

**Authors:** Samuel Rathmanner and Marcus Hutter

**Published:** 3 June 2011  

**Via:** [vetta.org/2011/06/treatise-on-universal-induction/](http://www.vetta.org/2011/06/treatise-on-universal-induction/)

![](http://xixidu.net/ag.png)
# Unconditionally Convergent Expected Utility

Expected utility can be expressed as the sum ΣP(X~n~)U(X~n~). Suppose P(X~n~) = 2^-n^, and U(X~n~) = (-2)^n^/n. Then expected utility = Σ2^-n^(-2)^n^/n = Σ(-1)^n^/n = -1+1/2-1/3+1/4-... = -ln(2). Except there's no obvious order to add it. You could just as well say it's -1+1/2+1/4+1/6+1/8-1/3+1/10+1/12+1/14+1/16-1/5+... = 0. The sum depends on the order you add it. This is known as [conditional convergence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditional_convergence).

This is clearly something we want to avoid. Suppose my priors have an unconditionally convergent expected utility. This would mean that ΣP(X~n~)|U(X~n~)| converges. Now suppose I observe evidence Y. ΣP(X~n~|Y)|U(X~n~)| = Σ|U(X~n~)|P(X~n~∩Y)/P(Y) ≤ Σ|U(X~n~)|P(X~n~)/P(Y) = 1/P(Y)·ΣP(X~n~)|U(X~n~)|. As long as P(Y) is nonzero, this must also converge.

If my prior expected utility is unconditionally convergent, then given any finite amount of evidence, so is my posterior.

This means I only have to come up with a nice prior, and I'll never have to worry about evidence braking expected utility.

I suspect that this can be made even more powerful, and given any amount of evidence, finite or otherwise, I will [almost surely](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almost_surely) have an unconditionally convergent posterior. Anyone want to prove it?

Now let's look at [Pascal's Mugging](/). The problem here seems to be that someone could very easily give you an arbitrarily powerful threat. However, in order for expected utility to converge unconditionally, either carrying out the threat must get unlikely faster than the disutility increases, or the probability of the threat itself must get unlikely that fast. In other words, either someone threatening 3^^^3 people is so unlikely to carry it out to make it non-threatening, or the threat itself must be so difficult to make that you don't have to worry about it.
# Rewriting the sequences?

If this has been discussed before, then I ask for patience, and a point in the right direction.

I have been a lurker on Lesswrong for a while, and have mostly just been reading things, and only commenting occasionally. It wasn't long before I realised that the sequences played a very important role for understanding lots of what goes on here.

I have been trying to read them, but I've been getting very frustrated. Apart from being insanely long, they are not very easy to understand.

Take the first one I came to "The Simple Truth".

It is a very long story, and it is never really explained what the point is. Is it that truth is whatever helps you to survive? If it is, that seems obviously false.

It also took me quite a while to realise that all these posts are written by one person, that struck me as a bit odd for a "community" blog. So couldn't there be some work to improve the sequences, while also making it more of a community effort?

Maybe:

\* Some people could rewrite the key ones, and others could vote on them, or suggest changes

\* There could be summary posts alongside the sequences listing the key claims

Any other suggestions?
# Quantum computing for the determined (Link)

> 21 videos, which cover subjects including the basic model of quantum computing, entanglement, superdense coding, and quantum teleportation.
> 
> To work through the videos you need to be comfortable with basic linear algebra, and with assimilating new mathematical terminology. If you’re not, working through the videos will be arduous at best! Apart from that background, the main prerequisite is determination, and the willingness to work more than once over material you don’t fully understand.
> 
> In particular, you don’t need a background in quantum mechanics to follow the videos.
> 
> The videos are short, from 5-15 minutes, and each video focuses on explaining one main concept from quantum mechanics or quantum computing. In taking this approach I was inspired by the excellent [Khan Academy](http://www.khanacademy.org/).

**Link:** [michaelnielsen.org/blog/quantum-computing-for-the-determined/](http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/quantum-computing-for-the-determined/)

**Author:** Michael Nielsen

### The basics

*   [The qubit](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2q1PuI2RFI)
*   [Tips for working with qubits](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo-RZ27o3Uw)
*   [Our first quantum gate: the quantum NOT gate](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDDSjsQLv80)
*   [The Hadamard gate](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6gOp_o7Bi8)
*   [Measuring a qubit](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMbh0GgCN7I)
*   [General single-qubit gates](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWKuH9emuag)
*   [Why unitaries are the only matrices which preserve length](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foNuXVzOtW0)
*   [Examples of single-qubit quantum gates](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYfVRyBHnCA)
*   [The controlled-NOT gate](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLF-oHaXLtE)
*   [Universal quantum computation](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2okky5vD8k)

### Superdense coding

*   [Superdense coding: how to send two bits using one qubit](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5rCn593Dig)
*   [Preparing the Bell state](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2pYwsLMXo4)
*   [What’s so special about entangled states anyway?](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRglXdLI7KY)
*   [Distinguishing quantum states](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT0xj5lSFkY)
*   [Superdense coding redux: putting it all together](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uC7J5JbiJaE)

### Quantum teleportation

*   [Partial measurements](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG_9JWsrKtM)
*   [Partial measurements in an arbitrary basis](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU6M8EA2JRs)
*   [Quantum teleportation](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wZ35c3oYUE)
*   [Quantum teleportation: discussion](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfk7J1kBegw)

### The postulates of quantum mechanics (TBC)

*   [The postulates of quantum mechanics I: states and state space](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf_CyFwKbPQ)
*   [The postulates of quantum mechanics II: dynamics](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZqRUH1uSlE)
*   [The postulates of quantum mechanics III: measurement](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Amk46VKgaeg)