Harley-ml/lesswrong huggingface dataset:
# Don't depend on others to ask for explanations

I'm often reluctant to ask for explanations on LW, and to typical-mind a bit I think this may be true of others as well. This suggests that when you're writing something for public consumption, it's better to err on the side of too much rather than too little explanation. If there's too much explanation, people can just skip over it (and you can make it easier by putting explanations that may be "too much" in parentheses or footnotes), but if there's too little explanation people may never ask for it. So in the future if you ever think something like, "I'll just write down what I think, and if people don't understand why, they can ask" I hope this post will cause you to have a second thought about that.

To make it clearer that this problem can't be solved by just asking or training people to be less reluctant to ask for explanations, I think there are often "good" reasons for such reluctance. Here's a list that I came up with during a previous [discussion with Raymond Arnold (Raemon)](https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/dDnCPmW3kgf2MjepX/is-competition-good/comment/MsCg7Cb2GdkpktyvZ):

1. I already spent quite some time trying to puzzle out the explanation, and asking is like admitting defeat.
2. If there is a simple explanation that I reasonably could have figured out without asking, I look bad by asking.
3. It's forcing me to publicly signal interest, and maybe I don't want to do that.
4. Related to 3, it's forcing me to raise the status of the person I'm asking, by showing that I'm interested in what they're saying. (Relatedly, I worry this might cause people to withhold explanations more often than they should.)
5. If my request is ignored or denied, I would feel bad, perhaps in part because it seems to lower my status.
6. I feel annoyed that the commenter didn't value my time enough to preemptively include an explanation, and therefore don't want to interact further with them.
7. My comment requesting an explanation is going to read by lots of people for whom it has no value, and I don't want to impose that cost on them, or make them subconsciously annoyed at me, etc.
8. By the time the answer comes, the topic may have left my short term memory, or I may not be that interested anymore.
# Everyday belief in diminishing returns is resistant to diminishing returns

_Epistemic status: A mental piton, to hang your climbing rope on_

The second half hour of cardio you do in a day matters less to your overall happiness and health than the first half hour you do, the second quarter-hour, the first quarter-hour; knitting this into our base mental framework is why the [law of diminishing returns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminishing_returns) is such a "Wow!" moment for a lot of beginner econ students.

The problem with consistently _applying_ the law of diminishing returns to everyday life, however, is that it's boring. People don't become socially-renowned Zen masters through 1 pomodoro of samadhi a day. All they get are improvements to their overall mood and the occasional boring [state of pure pleasure and equanimity](https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-iii-the-samatha-jhanas/26-the-wide-world-of-jhana/). People don't become \[in\]famous computer hackers by spending 2, not-especially-well-planned hours a week learning how to [automate the boring stuff with Python](https://automatetheboringstuff.com/); they just learn enough to be a little dangerous.

It doesn't _feel_ like you're using a glitch in the Matrix disguised as a psuedoscientific law. But that's exactly what you're doing.

Understand: **Most people do _not_ have the discipline to do just 15 minutes of something. They have to do 0, or 45. This is your _actual_ competition.**

You can routinely beat the average, in almost every everyday domain, by applying the law of diminishing returns to your own life ruthlessly and consistently. Or perhaps I should say, ruthlessly and consistently _enough_?
# On Becoming Clueless

It is said that every year the IQ needed to destroy the world drops by one point.

Well, yes, but let me add a different spin on the problem:

Every year, the IQ needed to make sense of the world raises by one point.

If your IQ is 100 and you want to see yourself in 2039 just ask somebody with IQ 80 and listen carefully.

I know that some people are troubled about prospects of those less intellectually gifted in the modern knowledge-based economy. And yes, it's troubling that we are heading towards some kind of intellectual elitism. But, on the other hand, it may be just a temporary thing. At the end we will all, village idiots and von Neumanns alike, end up having no clue.

What are we going to do then?
# The MA Estate Tax is Broken

There's a [common misconception](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/7/18171975/tax-bracket-marginal) that crossing the boundary into a higher tax bracket hurts you. In a sensibly designed tax system how much money you have after taxes, as a function of how much money you have before taxes, should only go up. The Massachusetts estate tax, however, is not sensibly designed.

Nominally, it's a graduated system. Let's say when you die your only possession a big pile of cash. If it's $100k then you pay 0% on your first $40k, 0.8% on your next $50k, and then 1.6% on the rest, for a total of $200 (0.6%). It ramps up to eventually reach a marginal rate of 16% at $10M.

Except if your big pile of cash is under $1M, you're not required to file at all, and you actually pay $0. What you pay looks like:

![](https://www.jefftk.com/ma-estate-tax.png)

You can see that someone dying with $1,000,001 is paying $37k, while someone dying with $999,999 is paying $0.

Here's the marginal tax rate, what you pay per dollar you die with:

![](https://www.jefftk.com/ma-estate-tax-marginal-rate.png)

That peak isn't 100%, though, it's 3,700,000%. Your millionth dollar sure costs you!

Here's another way of looking at it: $1M gives $963k after tax, which is the same amount you'd get if you'd just started with $963k.

![](https://www.jefftk.com/ma-estate-tax-money-remaining.png)

While $37k is a lot of money, it's still only 3.7% of $1M, so it's a barely noticeable blip if you look at it with some perspective:

![](https://www.jefftk.com/ma-estate-tax-money-remaining-in-perspective.png)

Still, this does lead people to do weird things around the $1M mark, so a better system would just be to give each person a $1M exemption and then charge higher rates on estates over $1M to keep it revenue neutral. If you die with less than $1M you don't have to file, but also wouldn't owe any tax if you did.

(This doesn't get into the various ways that richer people and people with better planning can set up their finances so they avoid estate taxes, countering a lot of the intentional progressive setup. And it also doesn't get into additional complications around situations where you have to file despite having a net value of under $1M.)

_Comment via: [facebook](https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100112562211262)_
# Deducing Impact

![](https://i.imgur.com/lyRy0fS.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/OIDCLpl.png)

[​](​![](https://i.imgur.com/x3myqQ1.png)![](https://i.imgur.com/x3myqQ1.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/G1UgvEf.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/lCPSncS.png )

  

![](https://i.imgur.com/EZa5fmw.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/UHf85nd.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/EZa5fmw.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/apep62R.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/p278IRN.png)

The solution comes in the next post! Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves.

Reminder: Your sentence should explain impact from all of the perspectives we discussed (from XYZ to humans).
# How good is the case for retraining yourself to sleep on your back?

I frequently hear the advice that it's better to sleep on the back and worthwhile to learn to sleep on your back. Are there any studies that backup that advice. Otherwise are there other good arguments? Personal experience is also welcome.
# Happy Petrov Day!

I don't care much about feast days or memorial days. Assumption of Mary? Meh. Slovak Constitution Day? Shrug. Labour Day? Real socialism had sucked all the joy out of that one.

The only one that I do observe is [Petrov Day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident#Incident). Not that I do anything special. I don't even take a day off from work. I just take few minutes to contemplate.

But now I am thinking that maybe, on this festive occasion, I should do a little bit more, maybe something that's public, something that has at least a slight feeling of a ceremony.

And given that while browsing the newspapers today I haven't found a single mention of the event, no op-eds, no commemorative articles, no historical analysis, I decided to write a witness report of my own, no matter how petty and unimportant it may be.

On September 26th, 1983 I was ten years old. I was attending 4th grade of the Czech school by Czechoslovak embassy in London. The authorities didn't want socialist kids to mingle with capitalist kids, so we weren't allowed to attend local schools. (There were sporadic, unsuccessfull, attempts to mix the kids from different socialist countries though.) The school resided in a family house in Hampstead and there were approximately forty kids attending. I don't remember that particular day, but given that it was in autumn and that it was in London, I assume it was raining. It was Monday. We used to live close to the school, several Czechoslovak families close to each other and so, same as every morning, one of the mothers walked us to the school. Kids that lived further away were driven in by a minibus. There were four grades in the school, two teachers and two classrooms. Kindergarten was in a separate room near the entrance. Me and my friend, we once did a puppet show for the kindergarteners. We had only one puppet (a chicken) and so I have no idea what the other one of us was doing. The memories have faded in the meantime. There was a narrow room with no windows in the basement that served as a library. My favourite book was about cars: A hand-illustrated compendium of models from the very beginning of automobilism up to the seventies. One of the cars was called Zaporozhets which was a bit puzzling and mysterious because it sounded like it should have horns. The room was also used for more nefarious purposes, when the boys were all too interested in what's under girls' skirts and the girls were not unwilling to give them a peek. In the afternoon, back at home, we used to play with Lego and my new chemistry set. Mostly mixing all chemicals together and obtaining a boring greyish liquid. We even had an experimental vegetable garden where we successfully grew carrots 2 cm in length. Me and my sister, we used to sleep in a bunk bed. When she got angry she used to hit me with a book called "Fish and Fishing". I was older and had longer hands though, so I was able to keep her at a safe distance.

And yes, we did our homework because we thought the next day was coming. We had no idea that we were almost burned alive that day.
# Long-term Donation Bunching?

Let's say you're a relatively well-off American with an income of $100k and have taken the [Giving What We Can](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/) pledge to donate 10% of your money to the most effective charities you can find. The standard deduction in the US is currently $12k, which means if you were to donate $10k/year it effectively wouldn't be tax deductible. \[1\]

The standard EA suggestion here is [Donation Bunching](https://www.benkuhn.net/bunching): instead of donating $10k every year donate $20k half the years and $0 the other half. In the years where you donate you itemize your deductions, in the others you take the standard deduction. Considered over two years, $8k of the $20k (40%) is deductible.

But we could do better than that! You can deduct up to 60% of your income if you're donating cash, so you could have five years of donating $0 and one year of donating $60k. Considered over six years, $48k of the $60k (80%) is deductible. \[2\]

This sounds great, right? Money donated to effective charities does much more good than money collected by the government, and with a bit of planning you can effectively move 80% of your donations to being pre-tax. But I don't think it's a good idea!

Over time people change, and a very common way people change as they get older is to turn inward. You start out as a bright-eyed idealist, enthusiastic about making the world a better place and willing to make sacrifices for what you believe in. Then you burn out working too many hours doing something that doesn't feel as effective as you thought it would be, or you start feeling a pull to have kids and focus your efforts there, or you just stop feeling so motivated by altruism, or dozens of other things, and after a few years the idea of giving your money to people who need it more still sounds nice but isn't a priority anymore.

While we don't have good data on the rate at which this happens, in a [small sample](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mZWFEFpyDs3R6hD3r/empirical-data-on-value-drift) about half of people in the effective altruism movement in 2013 were no longer involved five years later. If you think your current self is correct to be altruistic and don't want to leave donations up to a likely less-generous future person then bunching donations over several years is harmful: the substantial possibility that you don't actually donate outweighs the tax savings. \[3\]

(Thanks to someone I talked to at the [SSC Boston Meetup](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/19/boston-meetup-this-friday/) for asking me the question that got me thinking about this.)

  
\[1\] Specifically, unless you had other reasons to itemize your tax deductions, you would do better to take the $12k standard deduction.

\[2\] This ignores inflation and investment income, but they aren't large enough to change the picture much over a ~6 year window.

\[3\] Depending on your views on discount rates ("how much better is it to give this year than next?") it might also not be so good.

*Comment via: [facebook](https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100113036306172)*
# Attainable Utility Theory: Why Things Matter

_If you haven't read the prior posts, please do so now. This sequence can be spoiled._

![](https://i.imgur.com/8sVtTT3.png )

![](https://i.imgur.com/KOgtb77.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/M5Ad0y3.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/n0YpPTs.png ) ![](https://i.imgur.com/7qhXiqy.png )

![](https://i.imgur.com/wPCFMZS.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/Bsftgge.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/lN63MSs.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/8i3EpOJ.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/LaaWktm.png )

![](https://i.imgur.com/HSnZ04N.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/NM4aDfl.png ) ![](https://i.imgur.com/WNk1BrR.png )
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

![](https://i.imgur.com/I0yeEVZ.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/XZb4N1l.png)![](https://i.imgur.com/nc1vTVX.png)![](https://i.imgur.com/UBO9YKH.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/RSoj9Cz.png)![](https://i.imgur.com/O0BqpNx.png)
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[​](​![](https://i.imgur.com/AecZKTq.png)![](https://i.imgur.com/AecZKTq.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/RzasnHy.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/VGA7zYH.png)
------------------------------------

![](https://i.imgur.com/oojPFBI.png )

![](https://i.imgur.com/kbjOPEG.png )

![](https://i.imgur.com/kr6sUam.png )

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
==========

![](https://i.imgur.com/PWJmONq.png)

[​](​![](https://i.imgur.com/gtgIF77.png)![](https://i.imgur.com/gtgIF77.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/hqEX2r1.png )

![](https://i.imgur.com/yaWfaOv.png )

![](https://i.imgur.com/FuBQCP0.png)
# The Thinking Ladder - Wait But Why

[The Thinking Ladder](https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/09/thinking-ladder.html) is the latest post in a huge ongoing Wait But Why series called [The Story of Us](https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/story-of-us.html).

> Our beliefs make up our perception of reality, they drive our behavior, and they shape our life stories. History happened the way it did because of what people believed in the past, and what we believe today will write the story of our future.

> So it seems like an important question to ask: Why do we actually come to believe the things we end up believing?

It's a great introduction to many core rationality and LessWrong concepts which is fun and accessible to a general audience.

I recommend the whole series and really all of Wait But Why.
# What's your favorite notetaking system?

Abram recently wrote up the [Zettelkasten](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NfdHG6oHBJ8Qxc26s/the-zettelkasten-method-1) system for notetaking while doing research. Do you have an opinion on an alternative system, and if so, what is it?

Things you might optionally include but should not let the lack of preclude answering:

*   How the system works
*   Plusses and minuses of the system
*   Who or what problems you think it works especially well and poorly for
*   Comparisons to other notetaking systems.
*   Your final judgement of the system.
# Elimination of Bias in Introspection: Methodological Advances, Refinements, and Recommendations

[Radek Trnka](https://philpapers.org/s/Radek%20Trnka) & [Vit Smelik](https://philpapers.org/s/Vit%20Smelik)

_[New Ideas in Psychology](https://philpapers.org/asearch.pl?pub=724)_ 56 (2020)

**Abstract**

Building on past constructive criticism, the present study provides further methodological development focused on the elimination of bias that may occur during first-person observation. First, various sources of errors that may accompany introspection are distinguished based on previous critical literature. Four main errors are classified, namely attentional, attributional, conceptual, and expressional error. Furthermore, methodological recommendations for the possible elimination of these errors have been determined based on the analysis and focused excerpting of introspective scientific literature. The following groups of methodological recommendations were determined: 1) a better focusing of the subject’s attention to their mental processes, 2) providing suitable stimuli, and 3) the sharing of introspective experience between subjects. Furthermore, the potential of adjustments in introspective research designs for eliminating attentional, attributional, conceptual, and expressional error is discussed.
# Please Take the 2019 EA Survey!

The 2019 Effective Altruism Survey is now live at the following link: [https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/EAS2019LW](https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/EAS2019LW)

The average completion time for this year’s survey is 20 minutes.

The survey will close on the 15th of October at midnight BST.

The EA Survey provides valuable information about the demographics of the EA community, how people get involved, how they donate, what causes they prioritize, their experiences of EA, and more.

This year, we worked more closely than ever with the Centre for Effective Altruism, 80,000 Hours, and other EA organizations to identify questions that would be as valuable as possible to their work. Overall, we received more than 100 requests for questions to be included from various members of the EA community, which meant making many tough decisions about what questions we could include, while keeping the survey to an appropriate length.

This year, the Centre for Effective Altruism has generously donated a prize of $1000 USD that will be awarded to a randomly selected respondent to the EA Survey, for them to donate to any of the organizations listed on EA Funds. Please note that to be eligible, you need to provide a valid e-mail address so that we can contact you.

We would like to express our gratitude to the [EA Meta Fund](https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/3pxoLG7aRWtETC1lECC6LK) for supporting our work.
# Communication and Waking Hours

One of the ways technology interacts with culture is about who's job it is to avoid contacting people at bad times. With older technologies there were clear conventions based on their limitations:

*   Mail: you can send the letter whenever, and the person will deal with it when convenient.
    
*   Phone: don't call someone when they might be asleep, but if you work nights unplug your phone during the day.
    

It's more complicated now, though, because the new ways of contacting people all boil down to "a message goes from your phone to theirs" and their phone may or may not be configured to let them know about the message. I think the rules basically come down to:

*   If the default configuration is either always silent or has a nightly "quiet period" then you can send whenever and not worry about waking people.
    
*   Otherwise treat it as if it will wake people up unless you happen to know that this particular person has configured their app differently.
    

In the first category we have email, Slack, and probably some other apps. In the second we have phone, SMS, Whatsapp, FB Messenger, Hangouts, Signal, and almost everything else.

Overall this is a bad equillibrium: it would be better to at least have the option to send your message whenever, and if the person is asleep they'll get it in the morning. The receiver has a much better idea of when are ok times for notifications than the sender does . But there's currently no way to know how someone has their device configured, so you generally need to stay on the safe side and wait for a reasonable hour before sending.

If we did successfully move from "sender guesses do-not-disturb" to "receiver's device tracks do-not-disturb", however, it would be good to have some sort of override. For example, if you called me in the middle of the night ideally you would get an automated message saying that I'm asleep, but offering you the option to press a button to get reach me if it's urgent enough that you want to wake me up. Systems where calls from trusted contacts bypass do-not-disturb don't do this well: not every late-night call from my sister is intended to wake me up, and there are people who may need to contact me urgently that I won't have thought to configure in my phone.
# What funding sources exist for technical AI safety research?

What funding sources exist? Who are they aimed at - people within academia, independent researchers, early-career researchers, established researchers? What sort of research are they aimed at - MIRI-style deconfusion, ML-style approaches, more theoretical, less theoretical? What quirks do they have, what specific things do they target?

For purposes of this question, I am not interested in funding sources aimed at strategy/infrastructure/coordination/etc, only direct technical safety research.
# Open & Welcome Thread - October 2019

*   If it’s worth saying, but not worth its own post, here's a place to put it.

*   You can also make a [shortform post](http://www.lesslong.com/).

*   And, if you are new to LessWrong, here's the place to introduce yourself.

*   Personal stories, anecdotes, or just general comments on how you found us and what you hope to get from the site and community are welcome.

If you want to explore the community more, I recommend [reading the Library,](https://www.lesswrong.com/library) [checking recent Curated posts](https://www.lesswrong.com/?view=curated), [seeing if there are any meetups in your area](https://www.lesswrong.com/community), and checking out the [Getting Started](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2rWKkWuPrgTMpLRbp/lesswrong-faq-1#Getting_Started) section of the [LessWrong FAQ](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2rWKkWuPrgTMpLRbp/lesswrong-faq-1).

The Open Thread sequence is [here](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/yai5mppkuCHPQmzpN).
# Survival and Flourishing Fund Applications closing in 3 days

The grant round we announced a month ago for the new Survival and Flourishing Fund is closing in 3 days. We haven't gotten that many applications, so I would recommend applying.

[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CcAnPPKmPmbXxtWME/survival-and-flourishing-fund-grant-applications-open-until](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CcAnPPKmPmbXxtWME/survival-and-flourishing-fund-grant-applications-open-until)

From the original announcement post:

> The plan is to make a total of $1MM-$2MM in grants to organizations working on the long term flourishing and survival of humanity.

> At this point in time SFF can only make grants to charities and not individuals, so if you have a project or organization that you want to get funding for, you will have to either already be part of an established charity, found one, or be sponsored by an existing charity.
# [Link] What do conservatives know that liberals don't (and vice versa)? 

I am a PhD student currently conducting research on political polarization and persuasion.  I am running an experiment that requires a database of trivia questions which conservatives are likely to get correct, and liberals are likely to get wrong (and vice versa).  Our pilot testing has shown, for example, Democrats (but not Republicans) tend to overestimate the percentage of gun deaths that involve assault-style rifles, while Republicans (but not Democrats) tend overestimate the proportion of illegal immigrants who commit violent crimes. Similarly, Democrats (but not Republicans) tend to overestimate the risks associated with nuclear power, while Republicans (but not Democrats) underestimate the impact of race-based discrimination on hiring outcomes.

Actually designing these questions is challenging, however, because it’s difficult to know which of one’s political beliefs are most likely to be ill-informed.  As such, I am running a crowdsourcing contest in which we will pay $100 for any high-quality trivia question submitted (see contest details here: [https://redbrainbluebrain.org/](https://redbrainbluebrain.org/)).  The only requirements are that participants submit a question text, four multiple choice answers, and a credible source.  The deadline for submissions is October 15th, 2019 at 11:59 p.m.

My intuition is that the LessWrong community will be particularly good at generating these kinds of questions given their commitment to belief updating and rationality. If you don't have the time to participate in the contest, I welcome any ideas about potential topics that might be a fruitful source of these kinds of questions. Would also appreciate any clues as to what other communities may be particularly good at generating these kinds of questions.
# AI Alignment Open Thread October 2019

Continuing the experiment from August, let's try another open thread for AI Alignment discussion. The goal is to be a place where researchers and upcoming research can ask small questions they are confused about, share early stage ideas and have lower-key discussions.
# What are your strategies for avoiding micro-mistakes?

I've recently been spending more time doing things that involve algebra and/or symbol manipulation (after a while not doing these things by hand that often) and have noticed that small mistakes cost me a lot of time. Specifically, I can usually catch such mistakes by double-checking my work, but the cost of not being able to trust my initial results and redo steps is very high. High enough that I'm willing to spend time working to reduce the number of such mistakes I make even if it means slowing down quite a bit or adopting some other costly process.

If you've either developed such strategies for avoiding making such mistakes or would good at it in the first place, what do you do?

Two notes on the type of answers I'm looking for:

1\. I should note that one answer is just to use something like WolframAlpha or Mathematica, which I do. That said, I'm still interested in not having to rely on such tools for things in the general symbol manipulation reference class as I don't like relying on my computer being present to do these sorts of things.

2\. I did do some looking around for work addressing this (found [this](https://artofproblemsolving.com/news/articles/stop-making-stupid-mistakes) for example), but most of it suggested basic strategies that I already implement like being neat and checking your work.
# Eight O'Clock is Relative

When Lily was little we used an [analog rotary timer outlet](https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00P76URH8) to turn on a light so she would know when it was ok to get up. The goal wasn't to wake her, but to let her know when it was ok to come downstairs. This worked ok, but it wasn't very precise. It was good to maybe the nearest 15min, and would drift.

As she got better at reading we switched to a clock, and taught her that when the first digit was "8" she could get up:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/lily-clock-eight.jpg)](https://www.jefftk.com/lily-clock-eight-big.jpg)  
*pictured: a clock that is not saying "time to get up"*

This worked pretty well, but as she got close to starting kindergarten we needed to move her bedtime and waketime earlier. We did this gradually, about 15min at a time, over the course of a couple weeks. Since she can't tell time yet and was only reading the most significant digit she wasn't going to be able to learn that 7:45, then 7:30, then 7:15, etc meant time to get up. So I did the easy thing, and started setting her clock early. First fifteen minutes fast, then thirty minutes fast, until eventually it was an hour fast.

It's now the first week of school and her clock reads "8:00" at 7am. At this point switching it to the correct time and teaching her she can get up if it is "7:??" would have made sense, but there was enough going on that we didn't get to it.

Now we're a month in, she's gotten faster with her morning routine, and she could be sleeping later. So I've pushed her clock to only be 48 minutes fast instead of an hour, and it reads "8:00" at 7:12am.

All of this is pretty silly: she's pretty close to learning to tell time, and having one clock in the house that doesn't match the others is going to start confusing her. And it already confuses adults sometimes (mostly me) since who expects a clock to be 48min fast?

On the other hand I'm not sure where to go next. I could just leave things alone until she points out that it's weird, at which point she'll know time well enough that I can set it correctly and suggest she not get up before 7:12am. Or I could get a [more accurate outlet timer](https://smile.amazon.com/FosPower-Electrical-Outlets-Programmable-Capacity/dp/B07958YD8R/), which would have the benefit of also working for our younger daughter? Not sure yet.

(When we were little we had analog clocks in the house, and my dad made a wooden demonstration clock for us. When the hands on the real clock matched the hands on the wooden clock, it was time to get up. I think this worked well, though I remember one weekend when my youngest sister seemed to sleep a really long time, and it turned out she had slept past her normal waking time of 7am and so was still waiting for the hands to come around again.)

*Comment via: [facebook](https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100114434504172)*
# Who lacks the qualia of consciousness?

Over on Facebook (I don't know if it's possible to link to a Facebook post, but h/t Alexander Kruel) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/gwern/status/1180246754849181698?s=19&fbclid=IwAR2XowrlbemqMAtZUuS9KoDsIn0DlX5Ud9gmVWPv1yQLX7Rq1Kxgjc3e36Q), the subject of missing qualia has come up. Some people are color-blind. This deficiency can be objectively demonstrated by tasks such as the Ishihara patterns. Some people cannot smell, and sometimes do not discover this until well into adulthood. Some people cannot form mental imagery, which was undiscovered until Galton wrote of it, but is now well-known enough to have a [Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia). Until they discover that others really do see with the mind's eye, aphantasics take the expression to be some sort of metaphor. But it is not. Some people, I think most, do see things in their mind's eye.

More recently of note is that some people [lack the qualia of long-term memory](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0028393219302647) (see section 1.4): they can know that things involving them happened, but not re-experience them as a participant.

I want to put the following question: **Does anyone here lack the qualia of consciousness?**

If you do lack this then you won't know what I'm talking about. So I shall try to describe the experience. I have a vivid sensation of my own presence, my own self. This is the thing I am pointing at when I say that I am conscious. Whether I sit in meditation or in the midst of life, there I am. Indeed, more vividly in meditation, because then, that is where I direct my attention. But only in dreamless sleep is it absent.

Some people claim by meditation to have seen through what they claim is the illusion of consciousness. I am uncertain whether they have self-modified to ablate the faculty of having this experience, or merely philosophised themselves into believing there can't be any such thing, and insisting that they are not experiencing what they are experiencing.

But there may be some people out there who have never had any experience of themselves such as I have described. In effect, almost p-zombies. The original p-zombies are by definition indistinguishable in behaviour from everyone else, including talk about consciousness. But people without this experience of self, quasi-p-zombies, or q-zombies for short, may imitate the discourse as aphantasics or anosmics may, but without real understanding. **I invite anyone who recognises themselves to be a q-zombie to put their hand up.** Note that this is a question about whether you actually have this experience, not what you think about its possibility or nature.
# Advanced Dances

[BIDA](https://www.bidadance.org/) is hosting its first advanced dance [this afternoon](https://www.facebook.com/events/2394062140916848/), before our regular dance:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/2019-10-06--double-dance.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/2019-10-06--double-dance-big.png)

I've been thinking a lot about it. If you had asked me ten years ago whether BIDA would ever do advanced dances I would probably have said no. A major goal with BIDA is to be welcoming, especially to newcomers, and a dance where people aren't welcome unless they already know how to dance seems antithetical. So why do I think having one is good for our community?

Over time I've gotten a better understanding of the different roles contra dancing plays in people's lives, and a common pattern is that someone will start coming, get excited about it, dance a lot for a while, come less often, and then stop attending, over the course of about five years. The pattern is not universal, but it is pretty common, and one driver is no longer finding contra to be as interesting as before. Some people stop dancing much, others move on to more complex styles.

This is where I see an occasional advanced dance fitting in: when you have a hall where everyone already knows how to dance the caller can choose more interesting dances. Or run more no-walkthroughs and spend less time teaching. The dancers spend less time helping people around them learn to dance, and more time coming up with interesting variations. People also want to be at dances with their friends, and if you have a pool of people who only want to come a few times a year they'll normally not see much of each other. But an advanced dance can bring coordination, where many of them attend at once without a "how about we all come to this specific dance" discussion. A community where people stay involved longer is a healthier one, and helping people maintain ties they formed dancing is good on its own.

On the other hand, this needs to be a rare event. Not only does it lose its coordination power if scheduled too frequently, but if advanced dances started to take the place of regular dances then new people wouldn't be able to get into contra. The thing where you can walk in off the street and start dancing, without attending any sort of lesson, learning entirely as you go, is one of the best things about the dance; it's really important that we don't lose this. So for now this is a one-off event, but we may have others if this feels like it's meeting a need.

*Comment via: [facebook](https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100114561624422)*
# Hybrid Lottery Admission

Last year we organized a new contra dance weekend, [Beantown Stomp](https://www.beantownstomp.com/) ([retrospective](https://www.jefftk.com/p/beantown-stomp-retrospective)). It sold out, and some people were frustrated that they didn't hear about it before we went to a waitlist. Since we're going to have a second one (March 20-22nd, put it in your calendar!) several people have suggested that we do a lottery this year. Looking at last years applications, however, I'm not so sure:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/beantown-stomp-2019-registrations.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/beantown-stomp-2019-registrations-big.png)

We admitted people first-come first-served and went to waitlist at the end of February for a weekend in late March. Everyone who applied before the weekend did end up getting in off the waitlist for at least part of it, though there were also people who would have liked to come who didn't try registering because they knew the weekend was sold out.

This year we're going to allow more people to attend, 250 instead of 200: there was no time last year where the hall was too full, and my worries about not being able to ventilate well enough were unfounded. So there should be less pressure on tickets, with more of them to go around.

So instead of jumping right in with a lottery, here's what I'm thinking: when we open registration the first 125 applications are accepted. Then if we get application #126 before registration has been open for a month, we pause registration and hold a lottery for the remaining 125 spots. This keeps the simplicity and immediacy of first-come first-served, unless demand is high enough that we need a lottery.

Thoughts? I don't know of other events that have done this: most have stayed first-come first-served until they start seeing all their tickets selling out right away, and then switched to a lottery. The hybrid proposal here is a way to get most of the benefits of both when you don't know which situation you're in yet.
# The Gears of Impact

![](https://i.imgur.com/hKhkvwg.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/IXogCtA.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/2r2DVFx.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/holekcV.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/SzFSiEc.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/wCRzqox.png) ![](https://i.imgur.com/BAWF2q1.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/UCGx4QR.png )

![](https://i.imgur.com/5YOlvLh.png)![](https://i.imgur.com/yA8wkQP.png)![](https://i.imgur.com/QXG2pVK.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/27F0KkU.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/B7rMciV.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/HIfRI7r.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/ye9suf7.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/sMgB7yR.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/lQ1jYfB.png )

![](https://i.imgur.com/b6pDiKi.png)

[​](​![](https://i.imgur.com/iRLXEeH.png)![](https://i.imgur.com/iRLXEeH.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/uRr6YqY.png )

![](https://i.imgur.com/67uR5SE.png)![](https://i.imgur.com/PFqi66W.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/GBVahyL.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/SATKmJJ.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/v338kDc.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/oqEeta9.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/epI7152.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/dvVEmBs.png) [​](​![](https://i.imgur.com/HShpS3u.png)![](https://i.imgur.com/HShpS3u.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/WjTqF2y.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/dLUrki7.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/lDbQW2b.jpg )

Scheduling: The remainder of the sequence will be released after some delay.

_Exercise: Why does instrumental convergence happen? Would it be coherent to imagine a reality without it?_

Notes

*   Here, our descriptive theory relies on our ability to have reasonable beliefs about what we'll do, and how things in the world will affect our later decision-making process. No one knows how to formalize that kind of reasoning, so I'm leaving it a black box: we _somehow_ have these reasonable beliefs which are _apparently_ used to calculate AU.
*   In technical terms, AU calculated with the "could" criterion would be closer to an optimal value function, while actual AU seems to be an on-policy prediction, _whatever that means_ in the embedded context. Felt impact corresponds to TD error.

*   This is one major reason I'm disambiguating between AU and EU; in the non-embedded context. In reinforcement learning, AU is a very particular kind of EU:  V∗(s), the expected return under the optimal policy.

*   Framed as a kind of EU, we plausibly use AU to make decisions.
*   I'm not claiming normatively that "embedded agentic" EU _should_ be AU; I'm simply using "embedded agentic" as an adjective.
# [Link] Book Review: ‘The AI Does Not Hate You’ by Tom Chivers (Scott Aaronson)

Scott Aaronson uploaded a [review](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4361) about [The AI Does Not Hate You](https://www.amazon.com/Rationalists-Artificial-Intelligence-Geeks-World/dp/1474608779/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=), a book by [Tom Chivers](https://twitter.com/TomChivers).

The book:

> This is a book about AI and AI risk. But it's also more importantly about a community of people who are trying to think rationally about intelligence, and the places that these thoughts are taking them, and what insight they can and can't give us about the future of the human race over the next few years.

The book has a dual purpose, it gives an account of the most important events that happened on the rationalist community while informing on the current state of the AI risk field. There's a Lesswrong discussion [here](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EYKBME45wWwRW3MLh/discussion-thread-the-ai-does-not-hate-you-by-tom-chivers().

This is to talk about Scott A. post. In the review he gives his opinions about the book, including his relationship with the rationalist community and his somewhat changing views on AI risk.

> Reading Chivers’s book prompted me to reflect on my own relationship to the rationalist community.

> The astounding progress in [deep learning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_learning) and [reinforcement learning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement_learning) and [GANs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_adversarial_network), which caused me (like everyone else, perhaps) to update in the direction of human-level AI in our lifetimes being an actual live possibility.
# When is pair-programming superior to regular programming?

When doing software development there are many choices that can affect your productivity. There are choices about how a company works. One of those is doing pair-programming over doing solo-programming. We recently had a consultant at our company who claimed that pair-programming is proven to be better but who couldn't point to evidence.

How does the case for pair-programming look like? What do we know? How can we rationally think about the question?
# Regularly Scheduled: Day-of Reminders

[Two years ago](https://www.jefftk.com/p/regularly-scheduled) I wrote [Regularly Scheduled](https://www.regularlyscheduled.com), a tool to make it easier for people to handle repeated events:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/regularly-scheduled-intro.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/regularly-scheduled-intro-big.png)

I mostly use it for a recurring dinner we host with some friends from college. It works well, and has been running with basically no maintenance. After twice now forgetting I was hosting dinner in the few days between RSVPing "yes" and people showing up at my house, however, I realized it needed to be sending reminder emails day-of. I [added these](https://github.com/jeffkaufman/standing-event/commit/7d2f077a00eed5f6452ee93930ba7bf5dffe6a36) today, and they look like:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/regularly-scheduled-day-of-reminder.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/regularly-scheduled-day-of-reminder-big.png)

They only go to people who RSVP'd yes; they're a reminder to come not a reminder to RSVP.

If you have an event you'd like to set up with it, feel free! Let me know if you run into any issues and I'll try to get the code back into my head.
# On Collusion - Vitalik Buterin

> ...if there is a situation with some fixed pool of resources and some currently established mechanism for distributing those resources, and it’s unavoidably possible for 51% of the participants can conspire to seize control of the resources, no matter what the current configuration is there is always some conspiracy that can emerge that would be profitable for the participants.

> **...This fact, the instability of majority games under cooperative game theory, is arguably highly underrated as a simplified general mathematical model of why there may well be no “end of history” in politics and no system that proves fully satisfactory; I personally believe it’s much more useful than the more famous [Arrow’s theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem), for example.**

I've found this post quite useful in thinking about mechanism design and problems of designing stable systems.
# Long Term Future Fund application is closing this Friday (October 11th)

Just a reminder that the Long Term Future Fund application is closing in two days. In past rounds we received 80% of our applications the day of the deadline, but I am not sure whether that is contingent on us reminding everyone that the application is closing soon, so I will continue creating these reminder posts for now.

As a reminder, here is an excerpt from the application form of what kinds of grants we are looking for:

> We are particularly interested in small teams and individuals that are trying to get projects off the ground, or that need less money than existing grant-making institutions are likely to give out (i.e. less than ~$100k, but more than $10k). Here are a few examples of project types that we're open to funding an individual or group for (note that this list is not exhaustive):  
>   
> \+ To spend a few months (perhaps during the summer) to research an open problem in AI alignment or AI strategy and produce a few blog posts or videos on their ideas  
> \+ To spend a few months building a web app with the potential to solve an operations bottleneck at x-risk organisations  
> \+ To spend a few months up-skilling in a field to prepare for future work (e.g. microeconomics, functional programming, etc).  
> \+ To spend a year testing an idea that has the potential to be built into an org.  
> We are also interested in applications for larger projects, or potential future long-term organizations that require more than $100k of funding.  
>   
> You can find more details on the kind of project we are likely to fund on the fund page (in particular I recommend reading our past recommendation writeups): https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/far-future
# CPH meetup 10/20/19

This is intended as a space for people curious about the world and critical of the methods of understanding it. It is primarily aimed at people interested in applying Bayesian Rationality(LessWrong, CFAR, etc.) to their critical methods but also welcomes Slate Star Codex readers, and others curious about the world.  

Last time the community seemed excited about a community member sharing their view on something they are knowledgeable about, and so without further ado I would like to present this weeks activity.  

Activity: Community Presentation  
[Carl Dybdahl](https://www.facebook.com/tailcalled) will be doing a presentation on the causes of gender dysphoria and transsexuality, where he will be talking about Blanchard's typology, research into gender issues, critiques of the model, and things that may be interesting to study in the future.  

Schedule:  
19.00 Informal meet and greet  
19:30 Activity begins  
21:00 Socialize  

This is the second meetups in a series that will last until December.

  

We are meeting in the aquarium.
# I would like to try double crux. 

Hello,

I would like to try double crux [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/exa5kmvopeRyfJgCy/double-crux-a-strategy-for-resolving-disagreement](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/exa5kmvopeRyfJgCy/double-crux-a-strategy-for-resolving-disagreement) with someone. My statement A is "There is God" (I indeed believe in it, it is not just for the sake of trying the technique). I have three cruxes (well, two and a half, to be honest), according to the rules I do not publish it here so that you would prepare your cruxes independently.

Thank you!