Harley-ml/lesswrong huggingface dataset:
# Decision-Making Training for Software Engineering

I recently read [this post](https://www.shadowboxtraining.com/news/2021/07/23/observations-on-nine-months-of-decision-making-training/) that discusses the author’s experience leading military decision-making trainings for ROTC cadets during the pandemic. I’m going to briefly discuss what those decision-making trainings looked like, and how the principles could be adapted to teach software engineering effectively.

To quote from that article, a Tactical Decision Game (TDG) is a *“deceptively simple military decision-making exercises usually consisting of no more than a map and a few paragraphs of text describing a situation. Students are placed in the role of the commander of a unit with a mission and a specified set of resources. You have some information about the enemy, but not as much as you’d like. Then something unexpected happens, upending the situation and requiring you to come up with a new action plan on the spot. Then, after issuing your new orders, you must explain your assessment of the new situation and the rationale behind your decision.”*

So, you are given some initial information and make a guess on what to do based on that information. Then you are given more information and you have to figure out something new to do. That sounded a lot to me like watching software requirements change over time, and getting to see whether your initial data structures and code shape hold up to changes.

To adapt these trainings for software engineering, you could imagine a programmer be given a set of requirements, and they implement code for those requirements. Then, they have to either add or change the functionality. This will lay bare any issues with code maintainability that the old approach had. Run enough games like this, possibly paired with suggestions for improvement that clearly would have been easy to refactor or change, and programmers will learn how to write more maintainable code. I think this would be an excellent addition to any college “computer science” curriculum that wants to teach software engineering, and have a high amount of value for the amount of effort it takes.
# Contribution-Adjusted Utility Maximization Funds: An Early Proposal

> Right now in Effective Altruism (or Rationality), we have a few donor funds with particular focus areas. In this post I propose a new type of fund that’s instead focused on maximizing the combined utility functions of its particular donors. The fund goals would be something like, “Maximize the combined utility of our donors, adjusted for donation amount, in any way possible, abiding by legal and moral standards.” I think that this sort of fund structure is highly theoretical, but in theory could some particular wants that aren’t currently being met.
> 
> For this document, I call these funds "Contribution-Adjusted Utility Maximization Funds", or CAUMFs. This name is intentionally long; this idea is early, and I don't want to pollute the collective namespace.
> 
> This fund type has two purposes.
> 
> 1.  It’s often useful for individuals to coordinate on non-charitable activities. For example, research into best COVID risk measures to be used by a particular community.
> 2.  These funds should help make it very clear that donations will be marginally valuable for the preferences of the donor. Therefore, donating to these funds should be safe on the margin. Hopefully this would result in more total donations.
> 
> You can picture these funds as somewhere between bespoke nonprofit advising institutions, [cooperatives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative), and small governments. If AI and decision automation could cut down on labor costs, related organizations might eventually be much more exciting.
# Art Meet

It has been said that choir is one of the best community onramps because it creates a way for people to appear in ratspace without the events being About ratspace.  But this only works if you happen to sing.  So, perhaps there should be more such things about more such activities.  I have decided to try a fairly low-effort trial balloon of an art meet where:

*   we will hang out in my backyard and draw
*   I might make cookies or something if I feel like it but no promises
*   my four-year-old cohost has agreed to share her colored pencils and crayons
*   I can also provide basic printer paper and may or may not have acquired charcoal by then
*   I can put random objects from my house out for people to draw if they want
*   The table has slats, so I can supply large books to use as drawing backings
*   you can bring your own art supplies, but as mentioned above, my cohost is four, so this is kind of an "oil pastels yes, an entire dipdye setup perhaps no" deal

My backyard contains eight chairs and I think one of them might be broken.  Only some of them are in the shade of the table umbrella at any given time.  Some extra chairs might be collectable from the inside of the house.  We also have a hammock and the shade sail may or may not be installed by then.  If you are willing to sit on the ground of my extremely weedy garden, there is space for you.  If you want a chair, you can come iff demand isn't overwhelming.  I don't have a Facebook account, so email me to check chair availability, tell me what kind of dessert you are deathly allergic to, solicit an opinion on an edge case art supply, or find out where Valinor (my house) is.

If this goes well I might keep doing it, get more dedicated supplies for it, etc.

Event will be canceled in case of rain, bad air quality, or unforeseen emergency.  Please come only if you are fully vaccinated (my cohost is an exception because she is four).  My household possesses rapid test kits and if there is any nervousness about exposures we can set you up with one of those day-of, but we are not requiring masks; that's what being outside is for.  If you are also in choir you are welcome to hang around from 3-5:30 should this be convenient for you but no one here will be in Hospitality Mode at that time.  It is OK to come late and/or leave early.  If my four year old cohost gets particularly antsy and abandons the meet I may find it necessary to send people home or take departures from the meet in order to relieve coparents.
# What do we know about vaccinating children?

In Germany, the BioNTech vaccine has been approved for children:

> At the end of May, the Comirnaty mRNA vaccine developed by BioNTech / Pfizer was approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) as the first COVID-19 vaccine in this age group for children and adolescents aged 12 and over. -- [Robert Koch Institute](https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/Infekt/Impfen/ImpfungenAZ/COVID-19/Infoblatt_Impfung_Kinder_und_Jugendliche.html) 

But it is still not generally recommended for this age group:

> There is currently no general vaccination recommendation of the STIKO for children and adolescents from 12 to 17  
> Years, but only for children and teens with a specific risk. -- [STIKO informational material Robert Koch Institute](https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/Infekt/Impfen/ImpfungenAZ/COVID-19/Infoblatt_Impfung_Kinder_und_Jugendliche.pdf?__blob=publicationFile)   

I have four generally healthy boys aged 10 to 17. Only the oldest is already vaccinated, being basically an adult. I am inclined to get them all vaccinated with BioNTech because the risk-benefit tradeoff with such a safe vaccine seems obvious. 

For a cautious view of the risks, see e.g. this LessWong post: 

> conditional on a kid catching COVID, ... a ~2% chance of a miserable months-long ordeal until they recover, plus (overlapping) ~1% chance of a big-deal long-term latent problem ... -- [Young kids catching COVID: how much to worry?](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xkD2ToMRRDDhAbBoj/young-kids-catching-covid-how-much-to-worry ) 

Nature has an article about the general topic: 

> Thus far, the vaccines seem to be safe in adolescents[^1^](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01898-9#ref-CR1)... A potential link between the Pfizer vaccine and heart inflammation ... the risk of these conditions is ... about 67 cases per million second doses in adolescent males aged 12–17, and 9 per million in adolescent females in the same age group. -- [Should children get COVID vaccines? What the science says](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01898-9)

So my question is: What else do we know about the risk-benefit trade-off of vaccines for children? When and based on what criteria should children get vaccinated? What other considerations should be taken into account (the nature article mentioned fairness, for example)?
# How to get mRNA after J&J

The [viral vector vaccines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccine#Adenovirus_vector_vaccines) ([J&J](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janssen_COVID-19_vaccine), [AstraZeneca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford%E2%80%93AstraZeneca_COVID-19_vaccine)) are much better than nothing, even against [Delta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2_Delta_variant). But they're also substantially worse than what you get from the [mRNA ones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccine#RNA_vaccines) ([Pfizer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizer%E2%80%93BioNTech_COVID-19_vaccine) and [Moderna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderna_COVID-19_vaccine)), especially the single-shot J&J ([study](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.19.452771v1.full), [NYT](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/20/health/coronavirus-johnson-vaccine-delta.html)). People who got J&J could [likely benefit from an mRNA shot](https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/1407334172042022912), and while the CDC has [not recommended it](https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/booster-may-be-needed-jj-shot-delta-variant-spreads-some-experts-already-taking-2021-06-25/) some places like [SF General Hospital](https://abc7news.com/coronavirus-sf-general-hospital-supplemental-vaccine-jj-shot/10926455/) are offering supplemental doses.

One of my housemates had received J&J and decided to get a supplemental mRNA shot. Here's what worked for them:

1.  Got to the nearest [CVS](https://www.cvs.com/immunizations/covid-19-vaccine).
2.  Ask what vaccine they have; if they only have J&J, try somewhere else.
3.  Say yes when they verify that this is your first shot.
4.  CVS asked for their name and birthdate, which they gave, but they weren't asked for ID or insurance. Possibly if you are you would need to decline?

This requires lying to the pharmacy, never something to take lightly, and there could potentially be negative medical/legal/financial consequences, but with the information we currently have it seems like something to consider.
# Sunzi's《Methods of War》- Potential

This is a translation of Chapter 5 of *The Art of War* by Sunzi. No English sources were used.

---

> 孙子曰：凡治众如治寡，分数是也；斗众如斗寡，形名是也；三军之众，可使必受敌而无败者，奇正是也；兵之所加，如以碫投卵者，虚实是也。

To command the many as if commanding the few; to combat the many as if combating the few; the three armies can receive enemy attacks without being defeated, can attack like a stone thrown at an egg.

> 凡战者，以正合，以奇胜。故善出奇者，无穷如天地，不竭如江海。终而复始，日月是也。死而更生，四时是也。声不过五，五声之变，不可胜听也；色不过五，五色之变，不可胜观也；味不过五，五味之变，不可胜尝也；战势不过奇正，奇正之变，不可胜穷也。奇正相生，如循环之无端，孰能穷之哉！

Conventional combat achieves typical results. Invent surprises to achieve victory. Elite soldiers have the creativity of Heaven and Earth, the tirelessness of a river flowing into the sea. They finish and start again like the sun and the moon. They die and are reborn like the four seasons.

From the arrangements of five[^1] musical notes can be heard infinite sounds. From the arrangements of [five colors](https://www.lsusr.com/blog/history-of-color-in-chinese.html) can be seen infinite colors. From the arrangements of five flavors can be tasted infinite flavors.

[^1]: "Five musical notes" refers to the pentatonic scale.

The use of military power is limited to invention and convention. From convention and invention can be arranged infinite strategies.

> 激水之疾，至于漂石者，势也；鸷鸟之疾，至于毁折者，节也。故善战者，其势险，其节短。势如彍弩，节如发机。

Turbulent water can move a boulder in one swift impulse. A raptor can kill its prey in one swift swoop. The skilled at war create precarious tension and abrupt release like the rhythm of the bolt(s) fed through a repeating crossbow.

> 纷纷纭纭，斗乱而不可乱；浑浑沌沌，形圆而不可败。乱生于治，怯生于勇，弱生于强。治乱，数也；勇怯，势也；强弱，形也。

Though the battlefield is chaotic, your command structure must be in order.

- Numbers: one side is in chaos = the other side is ordered
- Potential: one side is cowardly = the other side is brave
- Form: one side is weak = the other side is strong

> 故善动敌者，形之，敌必从之；予之，敌必取之。以利动之，以卒待之。

Those skilled at war move the enemy via the situation, the enemy follows the situation; provide bait, the enemy will seize it. Do not let your own troops be so moved.

> 故善战者，求之于势，不责于人故能择人而任势。任势者，其战人也，如转木石。木石之性，安则静，危则动，方则止，圆则行。

Those skilled at war seek out potential by placing the right talent in the right circumstances like placing wood and stone. Wood and stone stand still on flat terrain, rolls down steep terrain. A square is easy to stand still. A round shape is easy to roll.

> 故善战人之势，如转圆石于千仞之山者，势也。

To command troops as if rolling a round stone down a 10,000-foot mountain. This is called "potential".
# Training Better Rationalists?

I was recently listening to a podcast discussion that included two people that had been involved in military special operations units -- one in the Navy SEALs and one in the US Army Special Forces. I was struck by their extremely high level of training, dedication, commitment, and overall ability -- but also by also how this had in large part been squandered on fighting a destructive and unproductive war in Afghanistan, supporting questionable CIA operations, and so on.

It occurs to me that people in the rationalist community are at least notionally working on much more important causes, but with far less training, commitment, personal skill, etc.

This leads to my question -- what would it look like if similar levels of training effort, funding, selection, etc. were going into preparing rationalists to do as much good in the world as possible as is currently going into preparing elite military units? (I don't think that this would necessarily look much like elite military training, to be clear!)  
  
If this first exercise comes up with anything that seems promising -- are there ways that we could potentially 80/20 this and get much of the goods without high costs?  
  
*(nb: this post is just personal musings and not "official" on behalf of CFAR or any other organization.)*
# Why not more small, intense research teams?

Why are we not fostering more teams of say 2-5 people that   
  
a) work full-time on the same or closely related problems  
  
b) live together or very close  
  
c) spend most of their work time collaborating in-person  
  
?  
  
I'm aware of student groups etc. but these fail both a) and c).  
  
Plausibly this has advantages over both individuals (more perspectives, motivation, etc.) and larger orgs (tighter feedback loops and communication, more flexibility, much easier to hire, etc.).
# What are some good pieces on civilizational decay / civilizational collapse / weakening of societal fabric? 

I've often heard rationalist and EAs talk about civilizational collapse, or civilizational decay: the set of trends whereby society seems to be becoming increasingly less functional, and might at some point fail entirely.

Some examples: 

*   In Eliezer's [Local Validity as a Key to Sanity and Civilization](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WQFioaudEH8R7fyhm/?commentId=LWzFnLpLQMncn4dJS)
*   Anna's [interview](https://podtail.com/fi/podcast/clearer-thinking-with-spencer-greenberg/lines-of-retreat-and-incomplete-maps-with-anna-sal/) with Spencer Greenberg
*   A lot of the discussion around covid seems to claim or imply that the US used to be better at responding to that sort of thing.
*   Tweets like [this](https://twitter.com/ben_r_hoffman/status/1420952766780936192?s=20) one (which is not intended to be representative, but is just one that I is on top of mind)

Note that I'm not confident that all of these people are talking about precisely the same phenomenon. In fact, I'm pretty sure that they're not, but they are all *looking in a similar direction.*

I'd like to get more orientation on how to thinking about these, and related ideas, including read whatever analyses, or speculations, that currently exist on this topic or cluster of topics. 

Does anyone have suggestions?
# Moving Away From The GPL

When I first got into open source, I published everything as [GPL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License). It seemed only fair: I make my code freely available, but in exchange people who use it need to do the same. There is a major long-standing hole in the GPL, however, which is that it only applies to software that runs on your device.

For example, if my friends and I write some [spiffy software](https://github.com/jeffkaufman/bucket-brigade) to let people [sing together over the internet](https://echo.jefftk.com), licensing under the GPL wouldn't prevent someone from making a copy with private server-side enhancements.

The [FSF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation) offers the [AGPL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License) ([license text](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html)) to close this gap: it requires you to provide the source code even if you're only making the software available over a network. This restores the key freedom of [copyleft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft), the right to the source for the software you're using.

With web and mobile apps, many things that previously ran on your local computer now run in the cloud. With virtual desktop services like [Windows 365](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows#Windows_365), this can extend even to programs that weren't originally conceived as running over a network. So I'm struggling to see a good case for the regular GPL: if you care about copyleft, the AGPL just seems better, closing an important loophole.

On the other hand, as I've thought more about this I've realized that copyleft isn't a priority for me. Yes, people releasing their changes back would be nice, but I care much more about people being able to use the software for anything they want. With [Bucket Brigade Singing](https://github.com/jeffkaufman/bucket-brigade), [Whistle Synth](https://github.com/jeffkaufman/whistle-synth), and my other projects, if someone used my code to make a slick commercial project I'd see that as a good thing: now more people can try out these ideas. The open source versions will still exist, just as I released them, and can still be extended by people who want to work together in the open.

*Comment via: [facebook](https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100225437069142)*
# A map: "Global Catastrophic Risks of Scientific Experiments"

*I can't embed an image here for some reasons, may be it is too large, so here is a link on pdf*

[http://immortality-roadmap.com/risks%20of%20scientific%20experiments4.pdf](http://immortality-roadmap.com/risks%20of%20scientific%20experiments4.pdf)
# Great Negotiation MOOC on Coursera

Course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/negotiation  
  
Tldr: If you're young and haven't studied negotiation, it's probably worth spending ~10hr engaging with this course when you get a chance.  
  
The MOOC is based on the first course in Yale's MBA program apparently.  He claims it isn't watered down, but probably a smart 10yo could follow it.  
  
Probably the best MOOC I've found in terms of usefulness X content quality X accessibility/engagingness.  
  
It starts by establishing a simple model of negotiation as seeking equally beneficial positive-sum interactions and gradually addresses complications.  It even explores some techniques that are a bit on the "dark arts" side.
# Combining two posts: Blankface (Scott Aa) and Is Science Slowing Down? (Scott Al)

(First time poster, hope this works. Will also be posting to complexityblog as well.)

Some papers result from taking two papers and combining them. Perhaps nobody else had read both of them so you can say something new! Or (looking over this post) it may guide people to two really good papers, or in this case two really good posts. 

This blog will draw from two excellent blog posts.

Scott Aaronson  blogged on his website on  Aug 2, 2021 about [blankfaces](https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/3722233/1648249705477846335#), people who let stupid or undefined rules dictate what you can do  without apology (see his post for a better explanation). One example that struck me I quote

*No, I never applied for that grant. I spend two hours struggling to log in to a web portal designed by the world's top blankfaces until I finally gave up in despair. *

Scott Alexander blogged  on Less Wrong on Nov 26, 2018  about [Is science slowing down?](https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/3722233/1648249705477846335#) which answers with an emphatic *yes.* His point is science-per-researcher is much less than it used to be, and he has graphs and stats to prove it (see his post for the evidence and some speculation as to why this is) One of the reasons he gave struck me which I quote

*Certain features of the modern academic system like undepaid PhD's, interminably long postdocs, endless grant writing drudgery, and clueless funders have lowered productivity. The 1930's academic system was ineed 25x more effective at getting researchers to actually do good research.*

Scott Alexander later downplays this reason, though I think there is still something to it. 

(I note that he gives other reasons as well, most notably for our field that the low hanging fruit is gone. Our lack of progress on P vs NP is likely that its a hard problem, rather than the reason above. Of course, if its solved tomorrow by an outsider without funding, I will happily be proven wrong.) 

Scott Alexander hits upon two types of blankfaces (without using the term).

*Grant writing drudgery*: the rules for how to submit get more and more detailed an onerous. This is  what Scott Aaronson was alluding to. There are other ways its drudgery as well. 

*Clueless Funders*: the people deciding who gets funded might not know the area (actually in my experience the grant I've reviews have been quite good and the problem is more not enough money to award all that are deserving.) 

SO I pose the following non-rhetorically as always

1) How big a factor is the slowing down of science that blankfaces get in the way?

2) What can we do about it?
# Calculated Clairvoyance

In *Steven Universe*, there is a character called Sapphire who has the ability to see into the future. For the entirety of the show, it is presented to us as an innate ability which Sapphire can do naturally.

But in one of the final episodes of the show, Sapphire, while supposedly teaching a class on predictions, is seen to be explicitly discussing multiplications of probability to arrive at estimates of the future.

This reflects a larger problem I see with advice: people giving reasons and philosophies for things that can make you happy that are entirely separate from the reasons and philosophies they used themselves to become happy.

The post [*Life can be better than you think*](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/25LmKByWpJh6ND45w/life-can-be-better-than-you-think) is a great example of this, where the author was severely depressed until they began taking anti-depressants, but a large part of the post is dedicated to explaining his life philosophy of happiness.

But which came first: the life philosophy, or the happiness?

Battling an energy disorder, my own life provides frequent examples of this: whenever I am tired, my thoughts tend towards pessimism and misery, but whenever I have energy they tend towards optimism and joy. It becomes second nature to list out long stretches of philosophical reasoning that justify being happy, but in truth I know the reasoning *isn't the reason why I feel happy.* I feel happy because I have energy.

Any other reason is a type of [fake justification](https://www.readthesequences.com/Fake-Justification); it *may* be a way to *become* happy, but is certainty not what caused me be to be happy in the first place.

Sure, maybe it's possible to become happy just from integrating these long chains of reasoning. This *may* have been what Naval Ravikant did (or, probably more likely, his low-level interventions — like sleep, working out, and improving relationships — led to better high-level realisations.)

Maybe it's useless and unhelpful to encourage scepticism on people's advice on being happy. Ideas should be discussed on their own first, after all, before you make a single statement about the states of mind that brought about the idea.

But I think, if you're really trying to be happy, what caused the state of mind to bring about any optimistic philosophy is the most important factor, and the thing to try first. Be it better sleep, antidepressants if you need them, better friends, or more meaningful work.

Whatever brings about the states of mind that bring about the philosophy is what you really want, not necessarily the philosophy itself.
# Fermi Fingers

When doing Fermi estimates in my head, I sometimes lose track of powers of ten: _...that's three billion widgets, divided by fifty widgets per person is somewhat under a hundred million people, times $20 per person is somewhat under $2 billion... or, wait, did I drop a zero, should that have been somewhat under a_ billion _people? Did I have three billion or thirty billion widgets? Shoot._

I find that it helps a lot to count on my fingers like a common third-grader! It's a lot harder to misplace fingers than to misplace the idea of a decimal point (probably because fingers... exist). Specifically, my calculations tend to go much more smoothly if I represent the $\log_{10}$ of the accumulator on my fingers:

> ![](https://i.imgur.com/h8Yxjyh.png)

(I use "palm up/down" to represent the sign of the log, since it often flip-flops during the calculation.)

A couple of worked examples:

- Is it worth joining this social movement? How many hours does it take to save a QALY?

    |   |   |
    |-|-|
    | Well, if there are 1M people... | ![](https://i.imgur.com/cHx8IU2.png) (1e6 people) |
    | and each person spends 10hr/wk... | ![](https://i.imgur.com/NVa8DVC.png) (1e7 hr/wk) |
    | for 2 years = 100 wk... | ![](https://i.imgur.com/eUBdbKT.png) (1e9 hr) |
    | and thereby we make 100M people's lives... | ![](https://i.imgur.com/nlZEPHS.png) (1e1 hr/life) |
    | 1% better... | ![](https://i.imgur.com/Y2JuPvc.png) (1e3 hr/QAL) |
    | and a life is 100 years... | ![](https://i.imgur.com/nlZEPHS.png) (1e1 hr/QALY) |

    then that averages to 10hr/QALY.

- How many potential rationalists are there in Seattle?

    |   |   |
    |-|-|
    | Well, if 1/1000 people are receptive to the Message... | ![](https://i.imgur.com/MhcISt1.png) (1e-3/person) |
    | and there are 2M people in King County... | ![](https://i.imgur.com/usCB9a8.png) (1e3.3 people) |
    | and half of those are in Seattle... | ![](https://i.imgur.com/tD83F6U.png) (1e3 people) |

    then there are 1000 potential rationalists.

This will break down once in a while, when intermediate values wander outside the range of $10^{\pm 10}$ ([or $^{\pm 35}$ if you're weird](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/N6w4y94u5gvtRM74k/what-are-some-real-life-inadequate-equilibria?commentId=rCzjNLj7WebuiMJmE)), but it's served me quite well for a couple years.
# Halpern’s paper - A refutation of Cox’s theorem?

What implications does the paper “A Counter Example to Theorems of Cox and Fine” by J. Y. Halpern have for Cox’s theorem and probability theory as extended logic? This is the description of the paper:

“Cox's well-known theorem justifying the use of probability is shown not to hold in finite domains. The counterexample also suggests that Cox's assumptions are insufficient to prove the result even in infinite domains. The same counterexample is used to disprove a result of Fine on comparative conditional probability.”

Edit: You can access the paper here - https://arxiv.org/abs/1105.5450

A similar question seems have been posted (but not answered) here:
1. https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/190187/297721
2. https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/190184/297721
3. https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/189757/297721

Why is Cox’s theorem being disputed? Are there any non-sequiturs in the proof that Professor Jaynes give for it in his book? If not, then how can it be disputed?
# Purple Lipstick

Wilfred's date had stood him up four times out of four.  Wilfred opened his notebook even though he never actually got any work done. He didn't know why he kept coming back to Nostalgia Cafe.

The entry bell jingled. Susan's suit was rumpled. She seemed tense, like a tiger with poachers encroaching on its habitat. Wilfred caught her eye. She sat down opposite him, right in front of the big window.

"Can I buy you a coffee?" said Wilfred.

"I should get you one. I'm sorry for being late. Something unexpected came up at work," said Susan.

"I don't mind. This cafe always gives me a sense of *wabi sabi*," said Wilfred.

"Does it? *Sōdesu ka?*" said Susan. She narrowed her eyes. "That's a strange word to hear from a scholar of Zoroastrian fire temples."

"*Sōdesu ka.* It does/is. You're an archaeology afficionado? I thought you just liked me for my rugged good looks," said Wilfred.

"Don't change the subject. What makes you interested in the *atashkada*?" said Susan.

"Eternal fires are expensive, even in the best of times, which antiquity was not. Legends say the early fire temples were gigantic bonfires. I want to know why," said Wilfred.

"Tradition," said Susan.

"A tradition has to start somewhere," said Wilfred.

"With the Scythians, obviously," said Susan.

"I always thought of the Zoroastrians as having exterminated the Scythians," said Wilfred.

"History is never that simple," said Susan.

"Then what do you think happened?" said Wilfred.

"I'm going to get a coffee. Do you want a coffee?" said Susan.

"Let me get you one," said Wilfred.

"Nonsense. Sit tight and try to figure out what happened to the Scythians," said Susan. She got up.

Wilfred forced himself to look out the window instead of following Susan. The Scythians didn't burn eternal fires—at least not with the seriousness of the early Zoroastrians. Wilfred could understand the purpose of burning ritual fires. The question is, why would you have to burn one forever?

"Speaking of which, one of the fire temples went out a couple weeks ago," said Wilfred.

"*Sōdesu ka?*" said Susan.

"*Sōdesu*," said Wilfred, "Tuesday, actually."

"I'm sorry about that," said Susan.

Wilfred knew she means "I'm sorry for missing our date," but his brain pieced together something else entirely.

"What did you say you did for a living again?" said Wilfred.

"I didn't," said Susan. She carefully drew a purple lipstick across her lips, "I'm a federal agent."

"No you're not," said Wilfred.

Susan relaxed down her shoulders. "The Scythians believed in an evil daeva which would disappear when you shined light on it. They kept it at bay by lighting fires at night. The *atashkada* were built by the sedentary Zoroastrians to contain it forever." she said.

"You know this from the historical record?" said Wilfred.

"Nope," said Susan. She slid her badge over to Wilfred. It had three arrows pointing toward each other.

"What are the colored stripes?" said Wilfred.

"Red is license to kill. Blue is deep cover," said Susan.

"And purple?" said Wilfred.

"Mnestics," said Susan. She kissed him.
# Dangerous Virtual Worlds

Once, I played a virtual reality game where robots attack you and you shoot them. This was a very fun and compelling experience despite being rather basic. In fact, it was *too* compelling -- the experience was so intense that I had to stop playing, as I thought that if things got significantly more intense I might have a heart attack and die!

This experience got me thinking something along the lines of: "Huh, virtual reality technology is rather primitive, but already an experience can be that intense? What will it look like once virtual reality environments have much more time, thought, and technical advancement put into them?" The prospect seemed pretty worrisome to me for the future of the technology and how it might impact society and civilization. (Of course, fears of negative ramifications of virtual reality are by no means new, but having a direct experience of it made me put more thought into the matter.)

However, I brought this up in an online conversation recently, and another user, ohAitch, made a very interesting point in reply -- many of our friends spend huge amounts of time on *textual fiction,* such that virtual reality might well not be a big important step!

This made me realize something -- *for many people, these dangerous virtual worlds are already here*. For some people it is the virtual socialization of Facebook or Twitter. For others, it might be non-VR games like World of Warcraft or Counter-Strike -- there have been multiple cases of people dying at their seats after playing games for hours on end in Internet cafés. For others, it can indeed be textual fiction as ohAitch said -- webfiction, online fandoms, and the like can be very consuming.

Yes, virtual reality could certainly be immersive and dangerous in a way that some of the earlier things haven't been, could make it easier to fall down a slippery slope, and so on. I think there's a real threat there -- but there are also some threats that are *already here* and which it might be prudent to pay attention to. The risks of dangerous [lotus-eating](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KwdcMts8P8hacqwrX/noticing-the-taste-of-lotus) are real and present today, and if we only worry about what future things might bring we may miss the dangers that are already around us.

\[1\] I personally know people whose lives have in my view been substantially worsened by Twitter politics in particular.
# Founding a rationalist group at the University of Michigan

The Vision
----------

As far as I know, there aren't any LW-style university rationalist groups. I'll be attending the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) as a graduate student starting this fall, and plan to be there for 1.5-2 years. While I'm there, I'd like to start a LW group.

There should be a mix of activities. They should let people achieve a mix of learning, creativity, socializing, and activism. Here's the sort of event that might accomplish each:

*   **Learning:** A book club, perhaps combining writings from within and outside the LW-associated community
*   **Creativity:** A research club, lightning talks, or project lab
*   **Socializing:** Careful outdoor gatherings for the foreseeable future
*   **Activism:** Focused on building, maintaining, and positively shaping the local LW community, and connecting with the small existing EA community at UM

I might call it simply the UM LessWrong Community. After Julia Galef's book *Scout Mindset*, I've also considered the name The Scout Society.

Here are some key subgoals:

1.  **Be sustainable.** This community should develop healthy norms about when to directly support its members, when to point them to campus resources, and when to exclude people who are behaving in destructive ways. It also needs all members to contribute toward making it good, and should demand and enable personal initiative.
2.  **Be useful.** We should start by trying to identify our own and each others' needs, understand why they're not being adequately met, and create events and oppotunities that address those problems.
3.  **Be proud.** This means making ourselves proud, by doing our duty, achieving success/utility, and converging on the truth. It also means taking pride in ourselves, and open about who we are.
4.  **Be fast.** Do things efficiently, try things out.
5.  **Be awesome.** Fun, beauty, and pleasure are important. This means art, music, houseplants, food, games, and exploration.

How Can I Help?
---------------

1.  PM me if you know people living in Ann Arbor who might be good fits and interested in participating.
2.  Suggest reading assignments for a monthly book club that combine some literature from near the LW-sphere with something far from it. It should take maybe 5 hours. A collection of blog posts, part of a book. Be liberal with your ideas.
3.  Describe your idea of what unique needs a university rationalist club could fulfill, as opposed to all the other student organizations and social clubs out there.
4.  Share a story about your experience with a rationalist community, or founding a student club.
# Erratum for "From AI to Zombies"

Is there any erratum for the "From AI to Zombies" book? There are so many essays, and many of them are written more than 10 years ago. It seems very likely that since then the errors or imprecisions were discovered.

To be specific, I have a very low belief in the chapter on quantum mechanics. It discusses just Copenhagen and many-worlds interpretation, ignoring all others that were already existing at this moment. What about [Quantum Bayesianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Bayesianism), for example?

And two more personal accounts:

1) A couple of years ago I was at the conference, where few talks discussed [this](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05739-8) quite famous gedankenexperiment. When they were looking at different interpretations, according to them the many-world one was quite vaguely formulated, not allowing to make a definitive answer in the problem they considered. 

2) About five years ago I talked with my friend about "From AI to Zombies". He was studying interpretations of quantum mechanics way more than I did. He said something like "Great book but the quantum mechanics chapter is over-simplified".
# New GPT-3 competitor

AI21 has trained a new language model, Jurassic-1, whose largest version has 178 billion parameters (GPT-3 had 175 billion). [This paper](https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/60fd4503684b466578c0d307/61138924626a6981ee09caf6_jurassic_tech_paper.pdf) gives limited technical details.

There already were several models that used far more parameters than GPT-3, but they were either mixture of expert models or only word embeddings. They required much less compute to train/use, but were less powerful than a dense transformer like GPT-3 or the new Jurassic-1. 

The interesting thing about Jurassic-1 is that it really doesn’t go much beyond GPT-3. It has a larger vocabulary and slightly optimized architecture. Jurassic-1 only has a bit more parameters than GPT-3, whereas [prior trends](https://openai.com/blog/ai-and-compute/) indicated that any GPT-3 successor would use at least an order of magnitude more parameters. Since GPT-3, much work has gone towards improving transformer architecture (e.g., linear time self attention and neural architecture search), but little of that is visible in Jurassic-1. Maybe companies don’t think it’s economically viable to scale beyond GPT-3 or run many experiments with different architectures at that scale?

Also, Jurassic-1 is a unidirectional model, like GPT-3 (meaning it's forced to process text from left-to-right). This means GPT-3 can only process a given word using the context provided by the previous words. This causes unidirectional models problems for most tasks other than text generation. For example, other than GPT-3, all the top models in the [SuperGLUE](https://super.gluebenchmark.com/leaderboard/) benchmark leaderboard are bidirectional models. It's interesting AI21 chose to compete with OpenAI using a model that provides the same class of service (text generation) as GPT-3, rather than specialize in, e.g., text classification, where a bidirectional model would be better.
# Coase's "Nature of the Firm" on Polyamory

It occurred to me that Coase's views on [The Nature of the Firm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_the_Firm) might help explain why polyamory in its modern form is not particularly common or popular.

That sentence might be enough for you to grok what I'm getting at, and honestly that's the form in which the thought first came to be, but nevertheless let me try to explain what I mean.

Coase's original essay -- and the whole body of thought proceeding from it -- seeks to answer why coorporations / firms emerge. That is, it seeks to ask where people are *hired* for indefinite periods of time, for less-precisely-defined work rather than *contracted* for definite amounts of time, for precisely-defined work. If you believe in a strong version of efficiency of markets, you might expect it to almost always be cheaper to contract than to hire, because the allocation of resources by a market should be more efficient than the allocation of resources within a non-market organization. Why wouldn't my software company just hire a contractor for everything they needed to be done, rather than relying on me, a non-expert in many things they would like me to do?

The answer, of course, is that there are transaction costs to using the market. There's a cost to searching for and finding a trustworthy contractor, which is avoided by keeping me around. There's the cost of a stronger asymmetry of information and asymmetry of benefit in the case of the contractor, which makes me a little more trustworthy because I'm going to be stuck with the code I write for a longer period of time. And so on and so forth.

Polyamory seems like an attempt to unbundle a group of frequently-bundled relationship goods in a way analogous to how contracting different workers can be an attempt to unbundle a group of frequently-bundled commercial goods. Vis, in polyamory you frequently unbundle from each other the following:

\- Sexual satisfaction

\- Intellectual companionship

\- Long-term companionship and dependency

\- Childbearing and rearing

Or even decompose these further: i.e., different flavors of sex and different flavors of companionship. But finding someone for each of these involves transaction costs. So you have the costs of searching for and finding trustworthy people in all these roles. And you have the stronger asymmetry of information and of benefit because of the more ephemeral nature of the relationships.

This is really just a rephrase of things I know other people have said about the disadvantages of polyamory. But it was satisfying to me to realize that it looked pretty clearly like an instance of a larger phenomenon.  
  
([x-post](https://1a3orn.com/sub/essays-coase-polyamory.html))
# You are invited to apply to the Guild of the ROSE

The Guild of the R.O.S.E. is an organization dedicated to improving the world, created by rationalists, for rationalists. We provide a support structure of a small Cohort for you to join, and a wider Guild to learn from.

As a member you will attend weekly classes using a flipped classroom model, in which readings and lectures are attended to asynchronously, while the class is hands-on activities and discussion. There will also be competitions with other Cohorts, and other extracurricular activities such as raising money for charity and Fermi Estimation challenges.

Our first Beta session will take place on **September 1st**. Our courses will begin with a series of classes on ‘Quantified Self-Assessment’, ‘Practical Decision Theory’, ‘Context and Communication’, and ‘Practical Social Networking’. Most future courses will broadly fall under the skills of Communication, Critical Thinking, and Meta-Skills (how to most effectively acquire skills).

Unlike the [Alpha phase](https://guildoftherose.org/articles/alpha-retrospective) of the “Guild of Servants” (our previous moniker), the Beta phase has no set end date. We will continue the classes until we stress test the limits of our resources to our satisfaction. In addition to the application process on our website, accepted attendees will be contacted regarding a modest monthly fee for Guild Dues on [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/guildoftherose).

If you are ready to join a community of people striving to help each other bloom, join the ROSE today at [guildoftherose.org](https://guildoftherose.org). We are also holding a public [online mixer](https://www.lesswrong.com/events/fHk2ydjAnv5XDrzib/guild-of-the-rose-mixer) on August 28th.  
 

![](https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/RfAIZb5evP6LPAWtT8VVfoxNm52-wI0NcHpwk3p_Vq9BR05hlNabscPi31vqJPobCGj8NUZ9MLurTLz2Ozr7Vxkxyngt0zKEw-rHKapCKMKMO-58hhjlW5u_r5sgvbifnQ)
# Open and Welcome Thread – August 2021

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

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 invited. This is also the place to discuss feature requests and other ideas you have for the site, if you don't want to write a full top-level post.

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). If you want to orient to the content on the site, you can also check out the new [Concepts section](https://www.lesswrong.com/tags/all).

The Open Thread tag is [here](https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/open-threads?sortedBy=new). The Open Thread sequence is [here](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/yai5mppkuCHPQmzpN).