Harley-ml/lesswrong huggingface dataset:
# [META] Retributive downvoting: Why?

Several people posted recently in a [thread on women](/lw/fmc/lw_women_minimizing_the_inferential_distance/), mostly espousing feminist views - only to find that someone had declined to respond to their post, but instead browsed their history and downvoted every single comment or article they had ever posted.

I have two questions:

1\. Why would you come to a site like this and pollute the karma system? How does it make you smarter? How does it make anyone else on the site smarter?

2\. What would be a good technical workaround? In my mind, some system that detects mass-downvoting and flags a user for review would be preferable, but what should happen then? Should the system be more lenient to higher-karma posters? Who should perform the review process? What should be done with those whom the reviewer ascertains are abusing the karma system? I would prefer some kind of lesson that is more corrective than retributive - it seems to me that people who would perform this behavior are exactly the sort of people who need some of the lessons that this site provides. Any ideas?
# [LINK] "Moral Machines" article in the New Yorker links to SI paper

[Link](http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/11/google-driverless-car-morality.html)

> Within two or three decades the difference between automated driving and human driving will be so great you may not be legally allowed to drive your own car, and even if you are allowed, it would immoral of you to drive, because the risk of you hurting yourself or another person will be far greater than if you allowed a machine to do the work.
> 
> That moment will be significant not just because it will signal the end of one more human niche, but because it will signal the beginning of another: the era in which it will no longer be optional for machines to have ethical systems.

The discussion itself is mainly concerned with the behavior of self-driving cars and robot soldiers rather than FAI, but Marcus does obliquely reference the prickliness of the problem. After briefly introducing wireheading (presumably as an example of what can go wrong), he links to [http://singularity.org/files/SaME.pdf](http://intelligence.org/files/SaME.pdf), saying:

> Almost any easy solution that one might imagine leads to some variation or another on the Sorceror’s Apprentice, a genie that’s given us what we’ve asked for, rather than what we truly desire.

He also mentions FHI and Yale Bioethics Center along with SingInst:

> A tiny cadre of brave-hearted souls at [Oxford](http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/), [Yale](http://www.yale.edu/bioethics/bioethicsscholars.shtml), and the [Berkeley California Singularity Institute](http://intelligence.org/research/) are working on these problems, but the annual amount of money being spent on developing machine morality is tiny.

It's a mainstream introduction, and perhaps not the best or most convincing one, but I think it's a positive development that machine ethics is getting a serious treatment in the mainstream media.
# New WBE implementation

It usually isn't profitable to pay attention to science news, since science journalists largely misintrepret new "breakthroughs". But I am somewhat interested in this story about "artificial brains" coming out of Canada.

Most large neuron simulations I've read about before [don't actually do anything](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/23/epfl_bluebrain_markram_modha/). But apparently there's a somewhat large [new WBE implementation](http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/science/Canadian+scientists+create+functioning+virtual/7628972/story.html) at the University of Waterloo that performs sub-humanly on several tasks while having [similar weaknesses](http://www.technewsdaily.com/15714-artificial-brain-mimics-human.html) to human brains.

  

Curious what others think of this recent development.
# [Link] Ideology, Motivated Reasoning, and Cognitive Reflection: An Experimental Study

**Related to:** [Knowing About Biases Can Hurt People](/lw/he/knowing_about_biases_can_hurt_people/)

HT: [Marginal Revolution](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/12/ideology-motivated-reasoning-and-cognitive-reflection-an-experimental-study.html)  
[](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2182588)

[Paper.](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2182588)

> Social psychologists have identified various plausible sources of ideological polarization over climate change, gun violence, national security, and like societal risks. This paper reports a study of three of them: the predominance of heuristic-driven information processing by members of the public; ideologically motivated cognition; and personality-trait correlates of political conservativism. The results of the study suggest reason to doubt two common surmises about how these dynamics interact. First, the study presents both observational and experimental data inconsistent with the hypothesis that political conservatism is distinctively associated with closed-mindedness: conservatives did no better or worse than liberals on an objective measure of cognitive reflection; and more importantly, both demonstrated the same unconscious tendency to fit assessments of empirical evidence to their ideological predispositions. Second, the study suggests that this form of bias is not a consequence of overreliance on heuristic or intuitive forms of reasoning; on the contrary, subjects who scored highest in cognitive reflection were the _most_ likely to display ideologically motivated cognition. These findings corroborated the hypotheses of a third theory, which identifies motivated cognition as a form of information processing that rationally promotes individuals’ interests in forming and maintaining beliefs that signify their loyalty to important affinity groups. The paper discusses the normative significance of these findings, including the need to develop science communication strategies that shield policy-relevant facts from the influences that turn them into divisive symbols of identity.
# [Link] Contesting the “Nature” Of Conformity: What Milgram and Zimbardo's Studies Really Show

Here is a paper in PLOS Biology re-considering the lessons of some classic psychology experiments invoked here often ([via](http://www.metafilter.com/122403/Contesting-the-Nature-Of-Conformity-What-Milgram-and-Zimbardos-Studies-Really-Show)).

[Contesting the “Nature” Of Conformity: What Milgram and Zimbardo's Studies Really Show](http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001426)

To me the crux of the paper comes from this statement in the abstract:

> This suggests that individuals' willingness to follow authorities is conditional on identification with the authority in question and an associated belief that the authority is right.

Plus this detail from the Milgram experiment:

> Ultimately, they tend to go along with the Experimenter if he justifies their actions in terms of the scientific benefits of the study (as he does with the prod “The experiment requires that you continue”) [\[39\]](http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001426#pbio.1001426-Burger1). But if he gives them a direct order (“You have no other choice, you must go on”) participants typically refuse. Once again, received wisdom proves questionable. The Milgram studies seem to be less about people blindly conforming to orders than about getting people to believe in the importance of what they are doing [\[40\]](http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001426#pbio.1001426-Reicher2).
# LessWrong podcasts

Today we're announcing a partnership with [Castify](http://castify.co/) to bring you Less Wrong content in audio form. Castify gets blog content read by professional readers and delivers it to their subscribers as a podcast so that you can listen to Less Wrong on the go. The founders of Castify are big fans of Less Wrong so they're rolling out their beta with some of our content.

  

![Castify](http://louie.divide0.net/castify.png)  

 Note: The embedded player (above) isn't live as of this posting, but should be deployed soon.

  
To see how many people will use this, we're having the entire[Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Mysterious_Answers_to_Mysterious_Questions) core sequence read and recorded. We thought listening to it would be a great way for new readers to get caught up and for others to check out the quality of Castify's work. We will be adding more Less Wrong content based on community feedback, so let us know which content you'd like to see more of in the comments.

  

For instance: Which other sequences would you like to listen to? Would there be interest in an ongoing podcast channel for the promoted posts?
# Prediction Sources

I'd like to become better calibrated via [PredictionBook](http://predictionbook.com/) and other tools, but coming up with well-specified predictions can be very time-consuming. It's handy to be provided with a stock of specific claims to make predictions (or post-dictions) about, as with CFAR's [Credence Game](http://www.acritch.com/credence-game/).

Therefore, I asked Jake Miller and Gwern put together a list of prediction sources. Feel free to suggest others!

Prediction Sites
----------------

*   [PredictionBook.com](http://predictionbook.com) ([new](http://predictionbook.com/predictions)) ([upcoming](http://predictionbook.com/predictions/future))
*   [DAGGRE](http://daggre.org/info/)
*   [Bets of Bitcoin](http://betsofbitco.in) ([new](http://betsofbitco.in/list?status=available&category=All&sorting=-moderationTime)) ([upcoming](http://betsofbitco.in/list?status=available&category=All&sorting=deadlineTime))
*   [Inkling](http://home.inklingmarkets.com) ([new](http://home.inklingmarkets.com/recent/markets)) ([upcoming](http://home.inklingmarkets.com/expiring/markets))
*   [NITLE](http://markets.nitle.org/markets) ([new](http://markets.nitle.org/markets)) ([upcoming](http://markets.nitle.org/expiring/markets))
*   [Foresight Exchange](http://www.ideosphere.com/fx-bin/ListClaims) (new: "Sort order: date created") (upcoming: "Sort order: date due")
*   [LongBets](http://longbets.org) ([new](http://feeds.feedburner.com/longbets))
*   [Intrade](http://intrade.com) ([new](http://www.intrade.com/v4/misc/recentpredictions/))
*   [Hollywood Stock Exchange](http://hsx.com) ([upcoming](http://www.hsx.com/security/feature.php?type=upcoming))
*   [Iowa Electronic Markets](http://tippie.uiowa.edu/iem/markets/)
*   [Betfair](http://www.betfair.com)
*   [IARPA forecasting challenge](https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&tab=core&id=50468b8c167fb9d60152085803622f55)
*   [the simExchange](http://www.simexchange.com/frontpage.php)
*   [BETDAQ](http://www.betdaq.com/UI/)
*   [Nadex](http://nadex.com) (private; logged-in-only access)
*   [Saunder School of Business Prediction Markets](http://predictionmarkets.ca/) (opens 2013)
*   [Predict Wall Street](http://www.predictwallstreet.com/)
*   [Prediction Machine](http://predictionmachine.com/Picks)
*   [iPredict](https://www.ipredict.co.nz/) ([new](https://www.ipredict.co.nz/app.php?do=browse&tag=4)) ([upcoming](https://www.ipredict.co.nz/app.php?do=browse&tag=3))
*   [SBRodds](http://www.sbrforum.com/betting-odds/)
*   [TeamRankings](http://www.teamrankings.com/)
*   [Vitibet](http://www.vitibet.com/)
*   [ScoresPro](http://www.scorespro.com/)
*   [Betting Advice](http://www.bettingadvice.com/pick.aspx)
*   [Soccer Vista](http://www.soccervista.com/)
*   [Lee's Movie Predictions](http://www.leesmovieinfo.net/movie-predictions.php)
*   [GoldDerby](http://www.goldderby.com/)
# Programming Thread

This is a thread for people who want to learn programming, whether they are non-programmers, beginners, or advanced programmers who want to learn more. If you would like to discuss programming _with other people from the LW community_, this is the right place.

While programming is not a central topic of this website, it is related to many ideas discussed here. About a third of LW users described their profession as "Computers" in the [recent survey](/lw/fp5/2012_survey_results/). Some users have expressed desire to learn programming. Some users have recommended learning programming to others. There are many other websites (or books, etc.) for learning programming, but talking with the people you already know, following our traditions of rational discourse, could be an advantage.

So this is the experiment. Unlike Open Thread, it has a specific topic, and the beginners are encouraged to ask their programming questions, even if they are completely unrelated to the usual LW topics. Especially the open-ended questions like "how...?" and "why...?". (Maybe we are already strong enough to survive even the mindkilling questions like "which programming language is the best?".)

Here are some older LW articles about programming:

*   [Why learning programming is a great idea even if you'd never want to code for a living](http://lesswrong.com/lw/2rb/why_learning_programming_is_a_great_idea_even_if/)
*   [I want to learn programming](http://lesswrong.com/lw/4yv/i_want_to_learn_programming/)
*   [Are Functional languages the future of programming?](http://lesswrong.com/lw/55y/are_functional_languages_the_future_of_programming/)
*   Colonization models: [a programming tutorial](http://lesswrong.com/lw/5q1/colonization_models_a_programming_tutorial_part_12/);[a tutorial on computational Bayesian inference](http://lesswrong.com/lw/5q7/colonization_models_a_tutorial_on_computational/)
*   [Khan Academy: Introduction to programming and computer science](http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/6gz/khan_academy_introduction_to_programming_and/)
*   [Free Tutoring in Math/Programming](/lw/7vd/free_tutoring_in_mathprogramming/)
*   [More intuitive programming languages](http://lesswrong.com/lw/bqu/more_intuitive_programming_languages/)
*   [Learn to code](/lw/cnh/psa_learn_to_code/)
*   [What is the best programming language?](/lw/cnp/what_is_the_best_programming_language/)
*   [Computer Science and Programming: Links and Resources](/lw/cpz/computer_science_and_programming_links_and/)
*   [Advice On Getting A Software Job](/lw/di2/advice_on_getting_a_software_job/)
*   [Checking for the Programming Gear](/lw/efm/checking_for_the_programming_gear/)

Here are some other resources:

*   [Computer Science @ Khan Academy](http://www.khanacademy.org/cs)
*   [Project Euler](http://projecteuler.net/) \- problems to test your programming skills
*   [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/) \- for specific questions

...and there are also many links within the articles.

And here is the place for _your_ questions:
# Procedural Knowledge Gaps, part 2

With Alicorn's permission, I'm resurrecting [this thread](/r/lesswrong/lw/453/procedural_knowledge_gaps/).

>  I am beginning to suspect that it is surprisingly common for intelligent, competent adults to somehow make it through the world for a few decades while missing some ordinary skill, like mailing a physical letter, folding a fitted sheet, depositing a check, or reading a bus schedule. Since these tasks are often presented atomically - or, worse, embedded implicitly into other instructions - and it is often possible to get around the need for them, this ignorance is not self-correcting. One can Google "how to deposit a check" and similar phrases, but the sorts of instructions that crop up are often misleading, rely on entangled and potentially similarly-deficient knowledge to be understandable, or are not so much instructions as they are tips and tricks and warnings for people who already know the basic procedure. Asking other people is more effective because they can respond to requests for clarification (and physically pointing at stuff is useful too), but embarrassing, since lacking these skills as an adult is stigmatized. (They are rarely even considered skills by people who have had them for a while.)  
>   
> This seems like a bad situation. And - if I am correct and gaps like these are common - then it is something of a collective action problem to handle gap-filling without undue social drama. Supposedly, we're good at collective action problems, us rationalists, right? So I propose a thread for the purpose here, with the stipulation that all replies to gap announcements are to be constructive attempts at conveying the relevant procedural knowledge. No asking "how did you manage to be X years old without knowing that?" - if the gap-haver wishes to volunteer the information, that is fine, but asking is to be considered poor form.

I'll start off with one of my own: What kinds of exercise can I do at home (I do have 5- and 20-pound weights), and what are good ways to get motivation to do so regularly?
# What information has surprised you most recently? 

Information that surprises you is interesting as it exposes where you have been miscalibrated, and allows you to correct for that. 

I suspect the users of LessWrong have fairly similar beliefs, so it is probable that information that has surprised you would surprise others here, so it would be useful for them if you shared them. 

**Example**: In a discussion with a friend recently I realised I had massively miscalibrated on the percentage of the UK population who shared my beliefs on certain subjects, in general the population was far more conservative than I had expected.

In retrospect I was [assuming my own personal experience was more representative than it was](/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/), even when attempting to correct for that.
# Claiming Connotations

I was chasing links a few days ago and ran into [Disputing Definitions](/lw/np/disputing_definitions/) from the sequences (again), and was thinking about the idea of having definition-argument participants expand their definition of a word to dissolve the dispute. And I thought, I've tried it a couple of times, and I don't think it has ever actually worked. 

I think something else is going on here: People arguing about the "true" definition of a word are trying to lay social claim to its connotations by dictating its denotation.  
  
Consider an atheist gay-rights supporter and a Christian gay-rights opponent. The former says "homosexuality is not immoral" the latter says "homosexuality is immoral."  
  
Expand on "immoral." Perhaps the atheist considers an act immoral if it harms someone else without their consent, while the Christian considers an act immoral if it goes against the teachings of the Bible.  
  
The expanded forms look like:  
  
A: "Homosexuality does not harm anyone without their consent.  
B: "Homosexuality goes against the teachings of the Bible.  
  
The atheist is unlikely to disagree with B; Leviticus 18:22 is pretty straightforward. He won't \*care\* that homosexuality is against biblical teachings, but he won't disagree that it does. The Christian may disagree with A, but assume for the sake of argument that he doesn't.  
  
It would seem the factual disagreement has been dissolved; they [aren't actually contradicting each other](/lw/sz/moral_error_and_moral_disagreement/), they are making \*entirely orthogonal statements.\*  
  
Present the above analysis to both sides, though, and I suspect that instead of acknowledging the dissolution, they would fall to arguing over the \*correct\* definition of the \*label\* "immoral." Even after the expansion is presented. This has happened to me a couple of times.  
  
Question: If they're not arguing about the biblical status or harm status of homosexuality, and they acknowledge that they mean entirely different things by the label "immoral," what are they actually contesting when they argue the proper denotation of that label?  
  
This seems to me to be the reversed version of [sneaking in connotations](/lw/ny/sneaking_in_connotations/). For that someone applies a word to a case for which it is denotationally true but connotation-ally questionable, as when referring to Martin Luther King, Jr as a [criminal](/lw/e95/the_noncentral_fallacy_the_worst_argument_in_the/).  
  
Arging over definitions, though, strikes me as trying to \*lay claim\* to connotations rather than sneak them in. If you can dictate the denotation of a commonly-used but disputed word, then you succeed in applying its connotations to all cases that match that denotation. "Homosexuality is a larommi act" does not have the same impact as "Homosexuality is an immoral act," even if the two words are given the same literal definition.
# New Sequences and General Update From Castify

You may have noticed [the announcement last week](/lw/fr2/lesswrong_podcasts/) of Less Wrong's partnership with [Castify](http://castify.co/) to create Less Wrong podcasts. We're happy to announce that we now offer three new sequences. For those who want to try us out, we are also offering Eliezer's seminal essay, The Simple Truth, as a standalone 99¢ purchase (it's also part of the Map and Territory sequence).

Our channels:

*   [The Simple Truth](http://castify.co/channels/3-less-wrong-the-simple-truth)
*   [Map and Territory](http://castify.co/channels/4-less-wrong-map-and-territory)
*   [Ethical Injunctions](http://castify.co/channels/2-less-wrong-ethical-injunctions)
*   and our pilot sequence, [Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions](http://castify.co/channels/1-less-wrong-mysterious-answers-to-mysterious-questions)

We have audio samples on our site if you're curious.

In other news, we're still working to make the promoted posts available as a monthly subscription. We'll keep you up to date with the progress on that. It's still a few weeks away.

Side note: Because of user feedback, we have removed the one year download restriction for sequences purchased. However, we have added a clause in our terms of service that gives you a minimum of two years to download the audio, if only because [living forever is hard](/lw/5qm/living_forever_is_hard_or_the_gompertz_curve/), even for digital goods.

See you in the comments.
# Do I really not believe in God? Do you?

Well, I used to think that I do not believe in anything supernatural that affects what happens to me, but I'm wondering if maybe I actually do [alieve](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alief_(belief)) in it. For example, a few days ago I had a close call in traffic, and when a collision I fully expected to happen just a second prior did not transpire, I mentally thanked... whom? I definitely had a clear feeling of gratitude for escaping, and I don't normally mean it literally when I say "Thank God!". So, who or what did I feel thankful to? I've never been religious, and I got rid of most of my superstitions over the years, but apparently there is still something there, and I do not know how to react to this knowledge.

What would be the proper reaction after a close call? Shrug and say "got lucky this time, should be more cautious next time"? What about when waiting for a diagnosis, what does sort-of-praying "please, please, let everything be OK" say about one's true beliefs? I know that I am much better at not blaming the world when something bad happens to me by chance than at not thanking the world when something good happens. Should it not be symmetric? Which part of a normally non-religious person wakes up and asserts itself in a crisis situation out of their control? Should it be embraced, suppressed, worked on?
# Rational subjects and rational practitioners

Half-closing my eyes and looking at the [recent topic of morality](/lw/fv3/by_which_it_may_be_judged/) from a distance, I am struck by the following trend.

In mathematics, there are no substantial controversies. (I am speaking of the present era in mathematics, since around the early 20th century. There were some before then, before it had been clearly worked out what was a proof and what was not.) There are few in physics, chemistry, molecular biology, astronomy. There are some but they are not the bulk of any of these subjects. Look at biology more generally, history, psychology, sociology, and controversy is a larger and larger part of the practice, in proportion to the distance of the subject from the possibility of reasonably conclusive experiments. Finally, politics and morality consist of nothing but controversy and always have done.

Curiously, participants in discussions of all of these subjects seem equally confident, regardless of the field's distance from experimental acquisition of reliable knowledge. What correlates with [distance from objective knowledge](http://xkcd.com/435/) is not uncertainty, but controversy. Across these fields (not necessarily within them), opinions are firmly held, independently of how well they can be supported. They are firmly defended and attacked in inverse proportion to that support. The less information there is about actual facts, the more scope there is for [continuing the fight](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Arguments_as_soldiers) instead of [changing one's mind](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/How_To_Actually_Change_Your_Mind). (So much for the Aumann agreement of Bayesian rationalists.)

Perhaps mathematicians and hard scientists are not more rational than others, but work in fields where it is easier to be rational. When they [turn into crackpots](http://xkcd.com/793/) outside their discipline, they were actually that irrational already, but have wandered into an area without safety rails.
# [LINK] Should we live to 1,000?

Peter Singer, makes a (refreshingly simple) ethical case for anti-aging research, and endorses increased funding.

[http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-ethics-of-anti-aging-by-peter-singer](http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-ethics-of-anti-aging-by-peter-singer)

> On which problems should we focus research in medicine and the biological sciences? There is a strong argument for tackling the diseases that kill the most people –diseases like malaria, measles, and diarrhea, which kill millions in developing countries, but very few in the developed world.
> 
> Developed countries, however, devote most of their research funds to the diseases from which their citizens suffer, and that seems likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Given that constraint, which medical breakthrough would do the most to improve our lives?
> 
> If your first thought is “a cure for cancer” or “a cure for heart disease,” think again. Aubrey de Grey, Chief Science Officer of SENS Foundation and the world’s most prominent advocate of anti-aging research, argues that it makes no sense to spend the vast majority of our medical resources on trying to combat the diseases of aging without tackling aging itself. If we cure one of these diseases, those who would have died from it can expect to succumb to another in a few years. The benefit is therefore modest.
> 
> \[...\]
> 
> De Grey has set up SENS Foundation to promote research into anti-aging. By most standards, his fundraising efforts have been successful, for the foundation now has an annual budget of around $4 million. But that is still pitifully small by the standards of medical research foundations. De Grey might be mistaken, but if there is only a small chance that he is right, the huge pay-offs make anti-aging research a better bet than areas of medical research that are currently far better funded.
# Noisy Reasoners

One of the more interesting papers at this year's [AGI-12 conference](http://agi-conference.org/2012/) was Finton Costello's [Noisy Reasoners](http://www.mindmakers.org/attachments/download/250/paper_61.pdf). I think it will be of interest to Less Wrong:

> This paper examines reasoning under uncertainty in the case where the AI reasoning mechanism is itself subject to random error or noise in its own processes. The main result is a demonstration that systematic, directed biases naturally arise if there is random noise in a reasoning process that follows the normative rules of probability theory. A number of reliable errors in human reasoning under uncertainty can be explained as the consequence of these systematic biases due to noise. Since AI systems are subject to noise, we should expect to see the same biases and errors in AI reasoning systems based on probability theory.
# Why (anthropic) probability isn't enough

[A technical report](http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/anthropics-why-probability-isnt-enough.pdf) of the Future of Humanity Institute (authored by me), on why anthropic probability isn't enough to reach decisions in anthropic situations. You also have to choose your decision theory, and take into account your altruism towards your copies. And these components can co-vary while leaving your ultimate decision the same - typically, EDT agents using SSA will reach the same decisions as CDT agents using SIA, and altruistic causal agents may decide the same way as selfish evidential agents.

[Anthropics: why probability isn't enough](http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/27940/2012-2.pdf)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This paper argues that the current treatment of anthropic and self-locating problems over-emphasises the importance of anthropic probabilities, and ignores other relevant and important factors, such as whether the various copies of the agents in question consider that they are acting in a linked fashion and whether they are mutually altruistic towards each other. These issues, generally irrelevant for non-anthropic problems, come to the forefront in anthropic situations and are at least as important as the anthropic probabilities: indeed they can erase the difference between different theories of anthropic probability, or increase their divergence. These help to reinterpret the decisions, rather than probabilities, as the fundamental objects of interest in anthropic problems.
# Bad news for uploading

Recently, the Blue Brain Project published a paper arguing that human neurons don't form synapses at locations determined by learning, but just wherever they bump into each other.  See video and article [here](http://actu.epfl.ch/news/blue-brain-project-accurately-predicts-connections/).

For those people hoping to upload their brains by mapping out and virtually duplicating all the synapses—this means that won't work.  The synapse locations do not differ from human to human in any useful way.  Learning must be encoded in some modulation of each synapse's function.
# Statistical checks on some social science

[Simonsohn, a social scientist, investigates bad use of statistics in his field.](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/12/the-data-vigilante/309172)

A few good quotes:

> The three social psychologists set up a test experiment, then played by current academic methodologies and widely permissible statistical rules. By going on what amounted to a fishing expedition (that is, by recording many, many variables but reporting only the results that came out to their liking); by failing to establish in advance the number of human subjects in an experiment; and by analyzing the data as they went, so they could end the experiment when the results suited them, they produced a howler of a result, a truly absurd finding. They then ran a series of computer simulations using other experimental data to show that these methods could increase the odds of a false-positive result—a statistical fluke, basically—to nearly two-thirds.

Laugh or cry?:"He prefers psychology’s close-up focus on the quirks of actual human minds to the sweeping theory and deduction involved in economics."

> Last summer, not long after Sanna and Smeesters left their respective universities, Simonsohn laid out his approach to fraud-busting in an online article called [“Just Post It: The Lesson From Two Cases of Fabricated Data Detected by Statistics Alone”](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2114571). Afterward, his inbox was flooded with tips from strangers. People wanted him to investigate election results, drug trials, the work of colleagues they’d long doubted. He has not replied to these messages. Making a couple of busts is one thing. Assuming the mantle of the social sciences’ full-time Grand Inquisitor would be quite another.

This looks like a clue that there's work available for anyone who knows statistics. Eventually, there will be an additional line of work for how to tell whether a forensic statistician is competent.
# That Thing That Happened

I am emotionally excited and/or deeply hurt by what **st_rev** [wrote](http://st-rev.livejournal.com/385195.html) recently. You better take me seriously because you've spent a lot of time reading my posts already and feel invested in our common tribe. Anecdote about how people are tribal thinkers.

> That thing that happened shows that everything I was already advocating for is correct and necessary. Indeed it is time for everyone to put their differences aside and come together to carry out my recommended course of action. If you continue to deny what both you and I know in our hearts to be correct, you want everyone to die and I am defriending you.

I don't even know where to begin. This is what blueist ideology has been workign towards for decades if not millennia, but to see it written here is hard to stomach even for one as used to the depravity caused by such delusions as I am. The lack of socially admired virtues among its adherents is frightening. Here I introduce an elaborate explanation of how blueist domination is not just completely obvious and a constant thorn in the side of all who wish more goodness but is achieved by the most questionable means often citing a particular blogger or public intellectual who I read in order to show how smart I am and because people I admire read him too. Followed by an appeal to the plot of a movie. Anecdote from my personal life. If you are familiar with the obscure work of an academic taken out of context and this does not convince you then you are clearly an intolerant sexual deviant engaging in motivated cognition.

> Consider well: do you want to be on the wrong side of history? If you persist, millions or billions of people you will never meet will be simultaneously mystified and appalled that an issue so obvious caused such needless contention. They will argue whether you were motivated more by stupidity, malice, raw interest, or if you were a helpless victim of the times in which you lived. Characters in fiction set in your era will inevitably be on (or at worst, join) the right side unless they are unredeemable villains. (Including historical figures who were on the other side, lest they lose all audience sympathy.).  
>   
> Remember: it's much more important what hypothetical future people will consider right than what you or current people you respect do. And you and I both know they'll agree with me.

While sympathetic to this criticism I must signal my world-weariness and sophistication by writing several long paragraphs about how this is much too optimistic and we are in grave danger of a imminent and eternal takeover by our opponents. The only solution is to begin work on an organization dedicated to preventing this which happens to give me access to material resources and attractive females.

Ciphergoth proves to be the lone voice of reason by encouraging us to recall what we all learned on 9/11:

> However, we must also consider if this is not also a lesson to us all; a lesson that my political views are correct.  
>   
> [http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.9.12.102423.271.html](http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.9.12.102423.271.html)
# Beware Selective Nihilism

In a [previous post](/lw/fyb/ontological_crisis_in_humans/), I argued that nihilism is often short changed around here. However I'm far from certain that it is correct, and in the mean time I think we should be careful not to discard our values one at a time by engaging in "selective nihilism" when faced with an ontological crisis, without even realizing that's what's happening. Karl recently reminded me of the post [Timeless Identity](/lw/qx/timeless_identity/) by Eliezer Yudkowsky, which I noticed seems to be an instance of this.

As I mentioned in the previous post, our values seem to be defined in terms of a world model where people exist as ontologically primitive entities ruled heuristically by (mostly intuitive understandings of) physics and psychology. In this kind of decision system, both identity-as-physical-continuity and identity-as-psychological-continuity make perfect sense as possible values, and it seems humans do "natively" have both values. A typical human being is both reluctant to step into a teleporter that works by destructive scanning, and unwilling to let their physical structure be continuously modified into a psychologically very different being. 

If faced with the knowledge that physical continuity doesn't exist in the real world at the level of fundamental physics, one might conclude that it's crazy to continue to value it, and this is what Eliezer's post argued. But if we apply this reasoning in a non-selective fashion, wouldn't we also conclude that we should stop valuing things like "pain" and "happiness" which also do not seem to exist at the level of fundamental physics?

In our current environment, there is widespread agreement among humans as to which macroscopic objects at time t+1 are physical continuations of which macroscopic objects existing at time t. We may not fully understand what exactly it is we're doing when judging such physical continuity, and the agreement tends to break down when we start talking about more exotic situations, and if/when we do fully understand our criteria for judging physical continuity it's unlikely to have a simple definition in terms of fundamental physics, but all of this is true for "pain" and "happiness" as well.

I suggest we keep all of our (potential/apparent) values intact until we have a better handle on how we're supposed to deal with ontological crises in general. If we convince ourselves that we should discard some value, and that turns out to be wrong, the error may be unrecoverable once we've lived with it long enough.
# Gun Control: How would we know?

I don't know how to keep this topic away from [http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics\_is\_the_mindkiller/](/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ "Politics As Mind Killer") , so I'm just going to exhort everyone to try to keep this about **rationality** and not about **politics as usual**.  I myself have strong opinions here, which I'm deliberately squelching.

So I got to thinking about the issue of gun control in the wake of a recent school shooting in the US, specifically from the POV of minimizing presumed-innocents getting randomly shot.  Please limit discussion to that \*specific\* issue, or we'll be here all year.

My question is not so much "Is strict gun control or lots of guns better for us \[in the sole context of minimizing presumed-innocents getting randomly shot\]?", although I'm certainly interested in knowing the answer to that, but I think if that was answerable we as a culture wouldn't still be arguing about it.

Let's try a different question, though: how would we know?

That is, what non-magical statistical evidence could someone give that would actually settle the question reasonably well (let's say, at about the same level as "smoking causes cancer", or so)?

As a first pass I looked at [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_intentional\_homicide\_rate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate "countries by homocide rate") and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_firearm-related\_death\_rate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate "countries by gun homocide rate") and I noted that the US, which is famously kind of all about the guns, has significantly higher rates than other first-world countries.  I had gone into this with a deliberate desire to **win**, in the less wrong sense, so I accepted that this strongly speaks against my personal beliefs (my default stance is that all teachers should have concealed carry permits and mandatory shooting range time requirements), and was about to update (well, utterly obliterate) those beliefs, when I went "Now, hold on.  In the context of first world countries, the US has relatively lax gun control, and we seem to rather enjoy killing each other.  How do I know those are causally related, though?  Is it not just as likely that, for example, we have all the homicidally crazy people, and that that leads to both of those things?  It doesn't seem to be the case that, say, in the UK, you have large-scale secret hoarding of guns; if that was the case, they'd be closer to use in gun-related homicides, I would think.  But just because it didn't happen in the UK doesn't mean it wouldn't happen here."

At that point I realized that I don't know, **even in theory**, how to tell what the answer to my question is, or what evidence would be strong evidence for one position or the other.  I am not strong enough as a rationalist or a statistician.

So, I thought I'd ask LW, which is full of people better at those things than I am.  :)

Have at.

-Robin
# New censorship: against hypothetical violence against identifiable people

New proposed censorship policy:

Any post or comment which advocates or 'asks about' violence against sufficiently identifiable real people or groups (as opposed to aliens or hypothetical people on trolley tracks) may be deleted, along with replies that also contain the info necessary to visualize violence against real people.

Reason: Talking about such violence makes that violence more probable, _and_ makes LW look bad; and numerous message boards across the Earth censor discussion of various subtypes of proposed criminal activity without anything bad happening to them.

More generally: Posts or comments advocating or 'asking about' violation of laws that are actually enforced against middle-class people (e.g., kidnapping, not anti-marijuana laws) may at the admins' option be censored on the grounds that it makes LW look bad and that anyone talking about a proposed crime on the Internet fails forever as a criminal (i.e., even if a proposed conspiratorial crime were in fact good, there would still be net negative expected utility from talking about it on the Internet; if it's a bad idea, promoting it conceptually by discussing it is also a bad idea; therefore and in full generality this is a low-value form of discussion).  

This is not a poll, but I am asking in advance if anyone has non-obvious consequences they want to point out or policy considerations they would like to raise. In other words, the form of this discussion is not 'Do you like this?' - you probably have a different cost function from people who are held responsible for how LW looks as a whole - but rather, 'Are there any predictable consequences we didn't think of that you would like to point out, and possibly bet on with us if there's a good way to settle the bet?'

Yes, a post of this type was just recently made.  I will not link to it, since this censorship policy implies that it will shortly be deleted, and reproducing the info necessary to say who was hypothetically targeted and why would be against the policy.
# META: Deletion policy

[http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Deletion_policy](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Deletion_policy)

This is my attempt to codify the informal rules I've been working by.

I'll leave this post up for a bit, but strongly suspect that it will have to be deleted not too long thereafter.  I haven't been particularly encouraged to try responding to comments, either.  Nonetheless, if there's something I missed, let me know.
# Morality Isn't Logical

What do I mean by "morality isn't logical"? I mean in the same sense that mathematics is logical but literary criticism isn't: the "reasoning" we use to think about morality doesn't resemble logical reasoning. All systems of logic, that I'm aware of, have a concept of proof and a method of verifying with high degree of certainty whether an argument constitutes a proof. As long as the logic is consistent (and we have good reason to think that many of them are), once we verify a proof we can accept its conclusion without worrying that there may be another proof that makes the opposite conclusion. With morality though, we have no such method, and people all the time make moral arguments that can be reversed or called into question by other moral arguments. (Edit: For an example of this, see [these](/lw/n3/circular_altruism/) [posts](/lw/1r9/shut_up_and_divide/).)

Without being a system of logic, moral philosophical reasoning likely (or at least plausibly) doesn't have any of the nice properties that a well-constructed system of logic would have, for example, consistency, validity, soundness, or even the more basic property that considering arguments in a different order, or in a different mood, won't cause a person to accept an entirely different set of conclusions. For all we know, somebody trying to reason about a [moral concept](/lw/tc/unnatural_categories/) like "fairness" may just be taking a random walk as they move from one conclusion to another based on moral arguments they encounter or think up.

In a [recent post](/lw/fv3/by_which_it_may_be_judged/), Eliezer said "morality is _logic_", by which he seems to mean... well, I'm still not exactly sure what, but one interpretation is that a person's cognition about morality can be described as an algorithm, and that _algorithm_ can be studied using logical reasoning. (Which of course is true, but in that sense both math and literary criticism as well as every other subject of human study would be logic.) In any case, I don't think Eliezer is explicitly claiming that an algorithm-for-thinking-about-morality constitutes an algorithm-for-doing-logic, but I worry that the characterization of "morality is logic" may cause some connotations of "logic" to be inappropriately [sneaked](/lw/ny/sneaking_in_connotations/) into "morality". For example Eliezer seems to (at least [at one point](/lw/sm/the_meaning_of_right/to4)) assume that considering moral arguments in a different order _won't_ cause a human to accept an entirely different set of conclusions, and maybe this is why. To fight this potential sneaking of connotations, I suggest that when you see the phrase "morality is logic", remind yourself that morality isn't logical.