Harley-ml/lesswrong huggingface dataset:
# [Prize] Essay Contest: Cryonics and Effective Altruism

I'm starting a contest for the best essay describing why a rational person of a not particularly selfish nature might consider cryonics an exceptionally worthwhile place to allocate resources. There are three distinct questions relating to this, and you can pick any one of them to focus on, or answer all three.

**Contest Summary**:

*   Essay Topic: Cryonics and Effective Altruism
*   Answers at least one of the following questions:  
    1.  Why might a utilitarian seeking to do the most good consider contributing time and/or money towards cryonics (as opposed to other causes)?
    2.  What is the most optimal way (or at least, some highly optimal, perhaps counterintuitive way) to contribute to cryonics?
    3.  What reasons might a utilitarian have for actually signing up for cryonics services, as opposed to just making a charitable donation towards cryonics (or vice versa)?
*   Length: 800-1200 words
*   Target audience: Utilitarians, Consequentialists, Effective Altruists, etc.
*   Prize: 1 BTC (around $350, at the moment)
*   Deadline: Sunday 11/17/2013, at 8:00PM PST

To enter, post your essay as a comment in this thread. Feel free to edit your submission up until the deadline. If it is a repost of something old, a link to the original would be appreciated. I will judge the essays partly based on upvotes/downvotes, but also based on how well it meets the criteria and makes its points. Essays that do not directly answer any of the three questions will not be considered for the prize. If there are multiple entries that are too close to call, I will flip a coin to determine the winner.

Terminology clarification: I realise that for some individuals there is confusion about the term 'utilitarian' because historically it has been represented using very simple, humanly unrealistic utility functions such as pure hedonism. For the purposes of this contest, I mean to include anyone whose utility function is well defined and self-consistent -- it is not meant to imply a particular utility function. You may wish to clarify in your essay the kind of utilitarian you are describing.

Regarding the prize: If you win the contest and prefer to receive cash equivalent via paypal, this wll be an option, although I consider bitcoin to be more convenient (and there is no guarantee how many dollars it will come out to due to the volatility of bitcoin).

* * *

[Contest results](/r/discussion/lw/j3s/effective_altruism_and_cryonics_contest_results/)
# Non-standard cryo ideas

What plans could a prospective cryonicist try out, beyond simply signing up, that could increase the odds of eventually having a pleasant re-animation experience?  
  
To show what I mean, here are the main ideas I've managed to come up with so far. None of these particular ideas are a standard part of a cryonics preservation package. Some are easier to implement than others, some are more likely to have an effect than others, some have potentially greater effect than others.  
  
\* Arranging for as much information about oneself (photo albums, emails, grade school report cards, etc) as possible to be placed on archival media and stored along with one's body. Reasoning: If the cryo-preservation procedure causes brain damage, and technology advances sufficiently before re-animation, then this information potentially allows for that damage to be at least partially reconstructed.  
  
\* Requesting additional data about the cryo-preservation procedure used on oneself be archived. Eg, requesting that, to whatever degree doesn't interfere with the procedure, it be videoed.  
  
\* Making arrangements for an animal body to be cryo-preserved with the same procedure one's own body was preserved with. A lab chimp would be ideal, but difficult to arrange for a number of reasons; more likely, a more common animal of around human mass would be feasible, such as a dog or goat. Even a few lab-rats might help. Reasoning: It gives future re-animators an additional opportunity to experiment with re-animation techniques, before attempting to re-animate a person.  
  
\* Noting down one's preferences and requests for future re-animators. Eg, from "I'd appreciate having a cat nearby to pet and calm down as I wake up" to "If you have to rebuild my body from scratch anyway, and it's within cultural norms, I would appreciate being gender _____" to "If you create a digital/electronic/computer/data copy of my mind, I would like a copy of that to be placed in offline, air-gapped storage, so that if every active copy of my mind is destroyed, there will always be that original backup available to re-instantiate myself." Or just more general ideas, such as, "My goal is to live forever, and I would prefer whatever means most likely lead to that happening to be tried."  
  
  
I'm not nearly as creative as I wish I could be; so I'm hoping that the local group-mind here might be able to offer further ideas, or improvements or refinements to the above ones.  
  
So: What extras can you think of?
# A diagram for a simple two-player game

(Copied from [my blog](http://mindsarentmagic.wordpress.com/2013/11/09/diagrams-for-preferences-matrices/))

I always have a hard time making sense of preference matrices in two-player games. Here are some diagrams I drew to make it easier. This is a two-player game:

[![1](http://mindsarentmagic.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/1.png?w=500)](http://mindsarentmagic.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/2.png)

North wants to end up on the northernmost point, and East on the eastmost. North goes first, and chooses which of the two bars will be used; East then goes second and chooses which point on the bar will be used.

North knows that East will always choose the easternmost point on the bar picked, so one of these two:

[![2](http://mindsarentmagic.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/2.png?w=500)](http://mindsarentmagic.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/2.png)

North checks which of the two points is further north, and so chooses the leftmost bar, and they both end up on this point:

[![3](http://mindsarentmagic.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/3.png?w=500)](http://mindsarentmagic.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/3.png)

Which is sad, because there’s a point north-east of this that they’d both prefer. Unfortunately, North knows that if they choose the rightmost bar, they’ll end up on the easternmost, southernmost point.

Unless East can somehow precommit to not choosing this point:

[![4](http://mindsarentmagic.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/4.png?w=500)](http://mindsarentmagic.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/4.png)

Now East is going to end up choosing one of these two points:

[![5](http://mindsarentmagic.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/5.png?w=500)](http://mindsarentmagic.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/5.png)

So North can choose the rightmost bar, and the two players end up here, a result both prefer:

[![6](http://mindsarentmagic.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/6.png?w=500)](http://mindsarentmagic.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/6.png)

I won’t be surprised if this has been invented before, and it may even be superceded – please do comment if so :)

Here’s a game where East has to both promise and threaten to get a better outcome:

[![0,1-1,3_2,2-3,0](http://mindsarentmagic.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/01-13_22-30.png?w=256&h=256)](http://mindsarentmagic.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/01-13_22-30.png)

[![0,1-1,3_2,2-3,0-x](http://mindsarentmagic.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/01-13_22-30-x.png?w=500)](http://mindsarentmagic.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/01-13_22-30-x.png)
# MIRI course list study pairs

Inspired by: [On learning difficult things](/lw/j10/on_learning_difficult_things/)

In his recent post, user So8res says his number one piece of advice for learning something difficult is to have study partner to learn with you. 

Since there is a decent amount of interest here in going through the [MIRI course list](http://intelligence.org/courses/), it might be worth finding other people here to learn and study this with, and to form pairs or groups. 

So here is a space for finding and organizing such partnerships!

* * *

Of course, part of the reason I wrote this is because I am interested in learning these books with people. My background: I'm currently a second year Ph.D. student in mathematics (number theory). I'm still pretty new to the type of math emphasized here. I have _Probabilistic Graphical Models_, _Category Theory for Computer Scientists_ and _The Logic of Provability_ (by George Boolos -- not on the course list, but good to get background for the Robust Cooperation paper and for understanding Loeb's theorem) all lying around. I'm also taking a class on numerical analysis. Part of my problem is that I start lots of projects and then end up fizzling out on them, and I hope having a partner will help with this. 

I've already been going through MIRI's publications with a friend from the local LW community, which has been really nice. I'm still interested in finding more partners <insert poly joke here> for going through books on the course list specifically. I'm also willing to explain things I understand, or let someone explain things to me (I've found that explaining things to someone else is a very good way of solidifying your understanding of something) when I have time. 

* * *

Some things to consider:

*   What is the best online format for doing this? I've been doing this sort of thing with [Workflowy](https://workflowy.com) \+ [Mathflowy](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mathflowy/pbeenjljklomfnijhecnomdppbhknjed) but there is probably something better. 
*   Does a pair dynamic, or a group dynamic seem more likely to work? I'm hoping that there can be a collection of pairs all centered in a common community, or something like that.
*   If a central community seems like a good idea, how should it be centralized?
*   Probably some other issues/meta stuff.
# Buying Debt as Effective Altruism?

**[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/12/occupy-wall-street-activists-15m-personal-debt](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/12/occupy-wall-street-activists-15m-personal-debt)**

**A collection of Occupy activists recently bought over $14,000,000 in personal debt for $400,000.**

Normally, debt-buying companies do this with the intention of collecting the money from the debtors--Occupy did not, and I was struck by the lopsidedness of the figures.

A number I see often in the high-impact philanthropy world is $2300 to save a life (with plenty of caveats). At Occupy's rates, that would buy roughly $80,000 in debt--enough to get two or three families out of a hole that would otherwise render them bankrupt.

By itself, this isn't enough to be better than mosquito nets or deworming. But the thing about personal debt is that, thanks to interest payments and stress, it prevents people with high earning potential (compared to an average African) from making decisions that would optimal were they debt-free--like finishing college or buying a used car so they can take on a higher-paying job.

**My idea, though it's a tentative, spur-of-the-moment thing:**

Why not found a charity that acts like a combination of **[Vittana](http://www.vittana.org/)** and [**Giving What We Can**](http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/), freeing people with good prospects from debt in exchange for their signing a contract to donate a small portion of their future salary to charity?

**  
A few issues that come to mind:**

1) Occupy bought a lot of medical debt, which this company wouldn't, and other types of debt might be harder to buy.

2) People who have decent earning potential have more valuable debt, since they're more likely to pay it off later. (On the other hand, freeing them of interest payments might help them get into a better position for repayment.)

3) The idea is a lot like micro-lending, and organizations that offer that service don't have a great track record (though some have been successful).

4) People just freed from debt might not be in a position to donate much salary/might be unreliable. (Deferred payments until college is finished/the new job is had could be helpful here.)

5) There might be (well, almost certainly are) difficult legal issues with finding information on people in debt before you actually own their debt.

Are there any other obstacles you all can think of? Other features of the charity that might make it more effective? How does it sound as an intervention that increases the world's productivity in the long run, stacked up against other such interventions?
# LessWrong Study Hall will be password-protected

The community of the [LessWrong Study Hall](http://tinychat.com/lesswrong) decided to protect access to the chatroom with a password. The password is: "**lw**".

Rationale: the LessWrong Study Hall started to have a serious trolling problem recently. As it grew in popularity it started to be automatically advertised on the tinychat.com main page, which attracts a demographics that has no idea about the goals of the Study Hall. We have no business dealing with those who seek online company to smoke weed and/or masturbate.

The password should be publicly available, and shown in plain text whenever the URL to the Study Hall is mentioned. The only users we want to exclude are the internet passers-by, who have literally no idea what that chatroom is about.

The password will be introduced in a day or two, after we inform all the regulars about the change.
# Help the Brain Preservation Foundation

(First time poster, long time reader)  
  
I'm currently volunteering for the Brain Preservation Foundation (http://www.brainpreservation.org/), and I'd like to ask for your  help.  
  
The purpose of the BPF is to incentivize and evaluate the development of technology which can preserve a human brain in such intricate detail that all of the brain's cells and connections are preserved. It's the only prize of its kind for a relatively endangered, yet essential type of research.  
  
We run a cash prize ($100,000 USD) called the "Brain Preservation Technology Prize" for the first team that can preserve a large mammal's brain to our high standards. The first $25,000 of that prize goes to the first team that can preserve the ultrastructure of a mouse brain.  
  
Steve Aoki (http://steveaoki.com/), a musician that you might have heard of, is currently planning to give around $50,000 to one of four brain-related charities. One of these charities is the Brain Preservation Foundation! Whichever charity gets the most votes will win all the money.  
  
This money is critically important to us to get the necessary supplies and lab time to administer the brain preservation technology prize. Evaluating brains that people send us involves electron microscopy, which is quite expensive (around $8,000 to evaluate a brain!) We are currently getting submissions and this extra money will give us the funds we need to run the prize.  
  
To vote, just visit http://on.fb.me/15XFdTG, and click the "like" button by the "Brain Preservation Foundation" comment. You can see a graph of the votes at http://aurellem.org/bpf/votes.png (updates every 15 minutes). Thanks for taking the time to read  
and vote!  
  
More about the Brain Preservation Foundation :  
http://www.brainpreservation.org/  
  
More about the charity:  
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151608608587461  
  
Votes graph:  
http://aurellem.org/bpf/votes.png  
  
  
I'd also love to hear your own opinions on the BPF and your assessment of its effectiveness, as well as your thoughts on  chemopreservation vs cryopreservation.
# Self-serving meta: Whoever keeps block-downvoting me, is there some way to negotiate peace?

I'm just tired of the signal pollution, and would like to be able to use karma to honestly appraise the worth of my articles and posts, without seeing 80% of my downvotes come in chunks that correspond precisely to how many posts I've made since the last massive downvote spree.

EDIT to add data points:

Spurious downvoting stopped soon after I named a particular individual (not ALL downvoting stopped, but the downvotes I got all seemed on-the-level.) 

One block of potentially spurious downvoting occurred approximately one week ago, but then karma patterns returned to expected levels. I consider this block dubious, because it reasonably matches what I'd expect to see if someone noticed several of my posts together and disagreed with all of them, and did not match the usual pattern of starting with the earliest or latest post that I had made and downvoting everything (it downvoted all posts in a few threads, but not in other threads), so I'm just adding for completeness.

Spurious, indiscriminate downvoting started up again approximately half an hour ago on Sunday (12/1/2013), around noon MDT.

Edit: And now on Tuesday, 12/3/2013, at 10 AM, I'm watching my karma go down again... about 30 points so far.

Edit: And now on Saturday, 12/14/2013, at 2 PM, I'm watching my karma go down again... about 15 points so far, at a rate of about 1-2 points per second.
# Quantum versus logical bombs

Child, I'm sorry to tell you that the world is about to end. Most likely. You see, this [madwoman](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0602301.txt) has designed a [doomsday machine](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmCKJi3CKGE) that will end all life as we know it - painlessly and immediately. It is attached to a supercomputer that will calculate the 10^100th^ digit of pi - if that digit is zero, we're safe. If not, we're doomed and dead.

However, there is one thing you are allowed to do - switchout the logical trigger and replaced it by a quantum trigger, that instead generates a quantum event that will prevent the bomb from triggering with 1/10th measure squared (in the other cases, the bomb goes off). You ok paying €5 to replace the triggers like this?

If you treat quantum measure squared exactly as probability, then you shouldn't see any reason to replace the trigger. But if you believed in many worlds quantum mechanics (or think that MWI is possibly correct with non-zero probability), you might be tempted to accept the deal - after all, everyone will survive in one branch. But strict [total utilitarians](/lw/d8z/a_small_critique_of_total_utilitarianism/) may still reject the deal. Unless they refuse to treat quantum measure as akin to probability in the first place (meaning they would accept all [quantum suicide](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide_and_immortality) arguments), they tend to see a universe with a tenth of measure-squared as exactly equally valued to a 10% chance of a universe with full measure. And they'd even do the reverse, replace a quantum trigger with a logical one, if you paid them €5 to do so.

Still, most people, in practice, would choose to change the logical bomb for a quantum bomb, if only because they were slightly uncertain about their total utilitarian values. It would seem self evident that risking the total destruction of humanity is much worse than reducing its measure by a factor of 10 - a process that would be undetectable to everyone.

Of course, once you agree with that, we can start squeezing. What if the quantum trigger only has 1/20 measured-squared "chance" of saving us? 1/000? 1/10000? If you don't want to fully accept the quantum immortality arguments, you need to stop - but at what point?
# Happiness and Productivity. Living Alone. Living with Friends. Living with Family. 

What I want to get people to discuss here is obvious given the title. What has been their experience regarding who and specially how many people they live with, and how that impacted their motivation and happiness. 

I don't want to peruse papers on happiness and productivity, because I'm particularly interested in anecdotal tales coming from a Lesswrong sample. 

Three pieces of information seem relevant, so if that is okay with whoever comments, I'd ask people to tell us if they consider themselves introverts (recharge batteries by being alone) extroverts, or both. As well as their age and hometown. 

The reason I want to have a fuller understanding of this is that I've slowly come to have a strong belief that the main problem with people I know who are suffering, or failing to achieve their goals, is living with fewer tribal affiliates than they "need". And that belief could very well be false or biased. 

I'm equally interested in what people think in general about their friends' living situation: "Most of my friends who live with friends experience such and such emotion, but the ones who live with family experience such and such problems with motivation"  
as I am in personal experiences.    
  
Following a suggestion about creating topics like this before, I'll put my own case in the comments.
# 2013 Less Wrong Census/Survey

It's that time of year again.  
  
If you are reading this post, and have not been sent here by some sort of conspiracy trying to throw off the survey results, then you are the target population for the Less Wrong Census/Survey. Please take it. Doesn't matter if you don't post much. Doesn't matter if you're a lurker. Take the survey.  
  
This year's census contains a "main survey" that should take about ten or fifteen minutes, as well as a bunch of "extra credit questions". You may do the extra credit questions if you want. You may skip all the extra credit questions if you want. They're pretty long and not all of them are very interesting. But it is very important that you not put off doing the survey or not do the survey at all because you're intimidated by the extra credit questions.  
  
It also contains a chance at winning a MONETARY REWARD at the bottom. You do not need to fill in all the extra credit questions to get the MONETARY REWARD, just make an honest stab at as much of the survey as you can.  
  
Please make things easier for my computer and by extension me by reading all the instructions and by answering any text questions in the simplest and most obvious possible way. For example, if it asks you "What language do you speak?" please answer "English" instead of "I speak English" or "It's English" or "English since I live in Canada" or "English (US)" or anything else. This will help me sort responses quickly and easily. Likewise, if a question asks for a number, please answer with a number such as "4", rather than "four".  
  
Last year there was some concern that the survey period was too short, or too uncertain. This year the survey will remain open until 23:59 PST December 31st 2013, so as long as you make time to take it sometime this year, you should be fine. Many people put it off last year and then forgot about it, so why not take it right now while you are reading this post?  
  
Okay! Enough preliminaries! Time to take the...

\*\*\*

**[2013 Less Wrong Census/Survey](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?usp=drive_web&formkey=dGZ6a1NfZ0V1SV9xdE1ma0pUMTc1S1E6MA#gid=0)**

\*\*\*

Thanks to everyone who suggested questions and ideas for the 2013 Less Wrong Census/Survey. I regret I was unable to take all of your suggestions into account, because of some limitations in Google Docs, concern about survey length, and contradictions/duplications among suggestions. I think I got _most_ of them in, and others can wait until next year.  
  
By ancient tradition, if you take the survey you may comment saying you have done so here, and people will upvote you and you will get karma.
# What can we learn from freemasonry?

I recently stumbled over the relationship between freemasons and networks of social and economic influence (e.g. nobility).

I wondered what could be learned from a society which exists so long and has ideals that are not that far away from the LW goal of refining human rationality.  

It is interesting to note that the freemasons seem to have highly tolerant and rational values. The freemasons orginated from independent craft guilds but became ['speculative freemasons'](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Freemasonry#The_Emergence_of_Speculative_Masonry) during the enlightenment and this is reflected in their commitment to tolerance and reason which builds on crafts traditions of teaching, truth, reliability and craft perfection. Somewhat problematic may be their unusual customs and the prejudice they face. Nonetheless they obviously can cooperate which [our kind can't](/lw/3h/why_our_kind_cant_cooperate/). 

Note: I didn't attend any freemason meetings and don't know any details. What I read on Wikipedia was mostly asbtract. I might attend a meeting but unsure about it's [value of information](/lw/85x/value_of_information_four_examples/).

What do you think: What can we learn from freemasonry? What should be avoided? Is there any freemason here who might provide insights?

Relevants comments (no posts) on LW:

[LW as a cult like freemasons.](/lw/4d/youre_calling_who_a_cult_leader/37s)

[LW as exclusive phyg](/r/discussion/lw/bql/our_cult_is_not_exclusive_enough/)

[Interview systems for admission to LW](/lw/bql/our_phyg_is_not_exclusive_enough/6cpj)

[Use of prejudice about freemasons](/r/all/lw/hgm/open_thread_may_1731_2013/91gj)

[A post about an LW symbol](/lw/8g2/less_wrongrationality_symbol_or_seal/) prompted [this comment about freemason icons](/lw/8g2/less_wrongrationality_symbol_or_seal/59mr).
# Noticing something completely absurd about yourself

I'm not sure this is something that can be consciously done, but in this post I want to prime you to consider whether something you do is really, totally, completely wacky and absurd. 

We have trained ourselves a lot to notice when we are wrong. We trained ourselves even more to notice when we are confused and to tell word confusion from substance confusion. 

But here is the tale of what happened to me today, and I don't think it qualifies as any of those:

I had a serious motivational problem yesterday, and got absolutely nothing done. So today I thought I should do things in a different manner, so as to decrease probability of two bad days in a row. One of the most effective things for me is going into the [LW Study Hall (the password is in the group's description when you click this link).](http://tinychat.com/lesswrong) A very nice place to work that I recommend for everyone to check out, and do one or two pomo's every now and then.  

And I did, I gave myself ten minutes observing others working, and I noticed something remarkable: The property of the LW chat that causes me to be motivated is "Presence of long haired people". Yes.  Presence of people with a long hair. For weeks I had been trying to work out why it was efficient sometimes and not others. The most obvious initial alternative was that when there was a woman, I would feel more driven. I assumed that was the case. But I started getting false negatives and false positives. Today I finally came to terms with the fact. I am motivated by the presence of people whose hair goes to their shoulders. Women or Men. 

Now why did I not notice this before? Seems to me that basically it was such a far fetched hypothesis that I simply had no prior for it. In vain hopes of being rational, I would read about [how we fear the twinge of starting](/lw/3kv/working_hurts_less_than_procrastinating_we_fear/), [how to beat procrastination](/lw/3w3/), and how to [get things done](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done), and valid as those were and are, they would never have given me a complete picture of the unbelievable things my brain thinks behind my back.

Maybe there is something similar taking place in your mind. Even if there isn't, just update with me on the fact that this is true at least for someone, and how there may be millions of other tiny absurd facts controlling people's actions way beyond the scope of imagination of any economist or psychologist.

I have now one more piece of understanding about what is it like to be me, about how to tame and steer my future behavior, and specially one more thing to tell people in awkward silence moments to break the ice and face the absurdity of reality.   
  
For obvious reasons, if you have long hair, I'd like to make an even stronger case for you to try to work and do pomos at the [LW study hall](http://tinychat.com/lesswrong). It's not only yourself that you'll be helping!
# A model of AI development

FHI has released a new tech report:

Armstrong, Bostrom, and Shulman. [Racing to the Precipice: a Model of Artificial Intelligence Development.](http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/Racing-to-the-precipice-a-model-of-artificial-intelligence-development.pdf)

Abstract:

> This paper presents a simple model of an AI arms race, where several development teams race to build the first AI. Under the assumption that the first AI will be very powerful and transformative, each team is incentivized to finish first — by skimping on safety precautions if need be. This paper presents the Nash equilibrium of this process, where each team takes the correct amount of safety precautions in the arms race. Having extra development teams and extra enmity between teams can increase the danger of an AI-disaster, especially if risk taking is more important than skill in developing the AI. Surprisingly, information also increases the risks: the more teams know about each others’ capabilities (and about their own), the more the danger increases.

The paper is short and readable; discuss it here!

But my main reason for posting is to ask this question: **What is the most similar work that you know of?** I'd expect people to do this kind of thing for modeling nuclear security risks, and maybe other things, but I don't happen to know of other analyses like this.
# Anonymous feedback forms revisited

> In 2011, I added an anonymous feedback form to `gwern.net`. It has worked well (116 entries) and justified the time it took to set up because it encourages people to correct various problems or tip me off on things. If you have a site, maybe you should add one too.

For the full writeup, see [http://www.gwern.net/About#anonymous-feedback](http://www.gwern.net/About#anonymous-feedback)
# December Monthly Bragging Thread

As in Joshua Blaine's original description (below), but may be used to brag about things you've accomplished either this month (December) or the previous one (November), assuming that you haven't brought it up in any earlier Monthly Bragging Thread.

> In an attempt to encourage more people to _actually do awesome things _(a la instrumental rationality), I am proposing a new monthly thread (can be changed to bi-weekly, should that be demanded). Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to comment on this thread explaining **the most awesome thing you've done this month**. You may be as blatantly proud of you self as you feel. You may unabashedly consider yourself _the coolest freaking person ever_ because of that awesome thing you're dying to tell everyone about. This is the place to do just that.
> 
> Remember, however, that this **isn't** any kind of progress thread. Nor is it any kind of proposal thread._This thread is solely for people to talk about the awesomest thing they've done all month. not will do. not are working on_.**have already done. **This is to cultivate an environment of object level productivity rather than meta-productivity methods.
> 
> So, what's the coolest thing you've done this month?
# The Logician And The God-Emperor

Once upon a time a logician accomplished a great deed, and the God-Emperor offered him a choice of rewards. “You may,” said the God-Emperor “have the hand of my eldest daughter, who is the heir to the throne, yet plain to look upon. Or you may take my youngest daughter, who is beautiful beyond words, but without inheritance.”

The next day, the God-Emperor caught the logician in bed with *both* his daughters. Enraged, he hurled threats and abuse at the scholar, who responded with a grin: “Guess someone never learned the difference between ‘or’ and ‘xor’.”

The God-Emperor ordered the logician brought to the throne room in chains, and told him “You have offended me and betrayed my generosity, so you will be subjected to trial by ordeal. I have placed in front of you seven chests. Six of the chests contain skulls. One of the chests contains the key to your chains. I have asked the most devious minds in my kingdom to prepare a logic puzzle giving hints as to which chest is which. You may open a single chest. If you do not find the chest with the key on your first try, you will be slathered in barbecue sauce and thrown to the wolves.”

The logician approached the chests, and upon each was written a clue in complicated logical notation. He examined all seven, and then stood a while, deep in thought. Finally, he opened the third chest. Inside was a golden key.

“Very impressive!” said the God-Emperor. Then he yelled “Guards! Slather this man in barbecue sauce and throw him to the wolves!”

“But…but!” babbled the terrified logician “…but you said…!”

The God-Emperor grinned. “Guess someone never learned the difference between ‘if’ and ‘iff’.”
# Personal examples of semantic stopsigns

I think most of us are familiar with the common [semantic stopsigns](/lw/it/semantic_stopsigns/) like "God", "just because", and "it's a tradition." However, I've recently been noticing more interesting ones that I haven't really seen discussed on LW. (Or it's also likely that I missed those discussion.)

The first one is "humans are stupid." I notice this one very often, in particular in LW and other rationalist communities. The obvious problem here is that humans are not _that_ stupid. Often what might seem like sheer stupidity was caused by a rather reasonable chain of actions and events. And even if a person or a group of people _is_ being stupid, it's very interesting to chase down the cause. That's how you end up discovering biases from scratch or finding a great opportunity.

The second semantic stopsign is "should." Hat tip to Michael Vassar for bringing this one up. If you and I have a discussing about how I eat too much chocolate, and I say, "You are right, I should eat less chocolate," the conversation will basically end there. But 99 times out of a 100 nothing will actually come out of it. I try to taboo the word "should" from my vocabulary, so instead I will say something like, "You are right, I will not purchase any chocolate this month." This is a concrete _actionable_ statement.

What other semantic stopsigns have you noticed in yourself and others?
# an ethical puzzle about brain emulation

I've been thinking about ethics and brain emulations for a while and now have realized I am confused.  Here are five scenarios. I am pretty sure the first is morally problematic, and pretty sure the last is completely innocuous. But I can't find a clean way to partition the intermediate cases.

A) We grab John Smith off the street, scan his brain, torture him, and then by some means, restore him to a mental and physical state as though the torture never happened.

B)  We scan John Smith's brain, and then run a detailed simulation of the brain being tortured for ten seconds, and over again. If we attached appropriate hardware to the appropriate simulated neurons, we would hear the simulation screaming.

C) We store, on disk, each timestep of the simulation in scenario B. Then we sequentially load each timestep into memory, and overwrite it. 

D) The same as C, except that each timestep is encrypted with a secure symmetric cipher, say, AES. The key used for encryption has been lost. (Edit: The key length is much smaller than the size of the stored state and there's only one possible valid decryption.)

E) The same as D, except we have encrypted each timestep with a one time pad.

I take for granted that scenario A is bad: one oughtn't be inflicting pain, even if there's no permanent record or consequence of the pain.  And I can't think of any moral reason to distinguish a supercomputer simulation of a brain from the traditional implementation made of neurons and synapses. So that says that B should be equally immoral.

Scenario C is just B with an implementation tweak -- instead of \_calculating\_ each subsequent step, we're just playing it back from storage. The simulated brain has the same sequence of states as in B and the same outputs.

Scenario D is just C with a different data format.  

Scenario E is just D with a different encryption.

Now here I am confused. Scenario E is just repeatedly writing random bytes to memory. This cannot possibly have any moral significance!  D and E are indistinguishable to any practical algorithm. (By definition, secure encryption produces bytes that "look random" to any adversary that doesn't know the key). 

Either torture in case A is actually not immoral or two of these adjacent scenarios are morally distinct. But none of those options seem appealing.  I don't see a simple clean way to resolve the paradox here. Thoughts?

As an aside: Scenarios C,D and E aren't so far beyond current technology as you might expect.  Wikipedia tells me that the brain has ~120 trillion synapses.  Most of the storage cost will be the per-timestep data, not the underlying topology. If we need one byte per synapse per timestep, that's 120TB/timestep. If we have a timestep every millisecond, that's 120 PB/second. That's a lot of data, but it's not unthinkably beyond what's commercially available today, So this isn't a Chinese-Room case where the premise can't possibly be realized, physically.
# Local truth

[New Salt Compounds Challenge the Foundation of Chemistry](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131219142138.htm)

The title is overblown (it depends on what you think the foundation is), but get a load of this:

> "I think this work is the beginning of a revolution in chemistry," Oganov says. "We found, at low pressures achievable in the lab, perfectly stable compounds that contradict the classical rules of chemistry. If you apply the rather modest pressure of 200,000 atmospheres -- for comparison purposes, the pressure at the center of the Earth is 3.6 million atmospheres -- everything we know from chemistry textbooks falls apart."

> Standard chemistry textbooks say that sodium and chlorine have very different electronegativities, and thus must form an ionic compound with a well-defined composition. Sodium's charge is +1, chlorine's charge is -1; sodium will give away an electron, chlorine wants to take an electron. According to chemistry texts and common sense, the only possible combination of these atoms in a compound is 1:1 -- rock salt, or NaCl. "We found crazy compounds that violate textbook rules -- NaCl3, NaCl7, Na3Cl2, Na2Cl, and Na3Cl," says Weiwei Zhang, the lead author and visiting scholar at the Oganov lab and Stony Brook's Center for Materials by Design, directed by Oganov.

> "These compounds are thermodynamically stable and, once made, remain indefinitely; nothing will make them fall apart. Classical chemistry forbids their very existence. Classical chemistry also says atoms try to fulfill the octet rule -- elements gain or lose electrons to attain an electron configuration of the nearest noble gas, with complete outer electron shells that make them very stable. Well, here that rule is not satisfied."

And here's the philosophical bit:

> "For a long time, this idea was haunting me -- when a chemistry textbook says that a certain compound is impossible, what does it really mean, impossible? Because I can, on the computer, place atoms in certain positions and in certain proportions. Then I can compute the energy. 'Impossible' really means that the energy is going to be high. So how high is it going to be? And is there any way to bring that energy down, and make these compounds stable?"

> To Oganov, impossible didn't mean something absolute. "The rules of chemistry are not like mathematical theorems, which cannot be broken," he says. "The rules of chemistry can be broken, because impossible only means 'softly' impossible! You just need to find conditions where these rules no longer hold."

The obvious example of local truth is relativistic effects being pretty much invisible over the durations and distances that are normal for people, but there's also that the surface of the earth is near enough to flat for many human purposes.

Any suggestions for other truths which could turn out to be local?
# [Meta] Post-meetup reports and discussion

Looking at the discussion section recently, it seems like over half of the posts are meetups.  I think it's really great that so many LessWrongers are able to get together and do interesting stuff.  Looking at a lot of the topics, I often find myself thinking "I wonder what they ended up talking about."  I looked at the [meetups page](/meetups/) and it looks like many give a description of the topic, but there is rarely any public followup.  I also did a search which turned up surprisingly few post-meetup posts.

For example, [this Los Angeles meetup](/r/discussion/lw/jcu/meetup_west_los_angeles_resolutions/ "this Los Angeles meetup") from a few days ago about resolutions looked really interesting to me and I'm curious to hear what kinds of strategies were proposed and if there were any insights or anecdotes that came up that would be useful to share with those of us that couldn't attend.

I remember reading a [meetup report](/lw/j3n/london_lw_coze_exercise_report/) back in November that told the story of the exercises they went through and it seemed to spark some good discussion.  It even forced me to make a note to try some things on my own.  This one was atypical in that it was very detailed and was a crosspost from a personal blog, but I feel like even short reports would give a chance for the rest of the community to chime in and give praise, suggestions, and feedback.  

When I tried to think of reasons not to share what happened in meetups, I came up with a few potential factors:

1.  It's extra work
2.  Keeping it private increases the feeling of community within the group
3.  Meetups are supposed to be a safe place where your actions or comments won't be broadcast to the world
4.  Nothing really post-worthy happened

Some potential arguments in favor of having a post-meetup discussion post:

1.  It would allow LessWrongers who weren't in attendance to get involved in the discussion
2.  Insights would be shared with the whole community
3.  Meetup organizers and attendees could get suggestions for ways to improve future meetups
4.  Non-attendees could use these ideas to host their own meetups
5.  Summarizing key points of a discussion is helpful for those involved to retain the information they discussed

Does anyone else feel like this would be useful?  What is the real reason there are not very many reports?

  

In the spirit of putting my money where my mouth is, I pledge to attend a LessWrong meetup sometime in the next two months and do a post-meetup report to see if it is useful to anyone (provided the meetup group is okay with me sharing it.)
# [Link] Anti-ageing compound set for human trials

This seems like an advance in understanding, even if it doesn't lead directly to a treatment.

News stories:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/20/anti-ageing-human-trials?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25445748

Abstract of the paper, actual paper behind a paywall: 

http://www.cell.com/retrieve/pii/S0092867413015213?cc=y

Relatively solid stories like this help raise my estimate that significant life extension is possible in our lifetimes. The likelihood seems to be that it won't be a "magic pill" but a combination of therapies.

If nothing else, it's another reason to eat healthy and stay in shape.
# Donating to MIRI vs. FHI vs. CEA vs. CFAR

In a discussion a couple months ago, Luke [said](/lw/ixt/lone_genius_bias_and_returns_on_additional/9zm1), "I think it's hard to tell whether donations do more good at MIRI, FHI, CEA, or CFAR." So I want to have a thread to discuss that.

My own very rudimentary thoughts: I think the research MIRI does is probably valuable, but I don't think it's likely to lead to MIRI itself building FAI. I'm convinced AGI is much more likely to be built by a government or major corporation, which makes me more inclined to think movement-building activities are likely to be valuable, to increase the odds of the people at that government or corporation being conscious of AI safety issues, which MIRI isn't doing.

It seems like FHI is the obvious organization to donate to for that purpose, but Luke seems to think CEA (the Centre for Effective Altruism) and CFAR could also be good for that, and I'm not entirely clear on why. I sometimes get the impression that some of CFAR's work ends up being covert movement-building for AI-risk issues, but I'm not sure to what extent that's true. I know very little about CEA, and a brief check of their website leaves me a little unclear on why Luke recommends them, aside from the fact that they apparently work closely with FHI.

This has some immediate real-world relevance to me: I'm currently in the middle of a coding bootcamp and not making any money, but today my mom offered to make a donation to a charity of my choice for Christmas. So any input on what to tell her would be greatly appreciated, as would more information on CFAR and CEA, which I'm sorely lacking in.
# Worse than Worthless

There are things that are worthless-- that provide no value. There are also things that are worse than worthless-- things that provide _negative_ value. I have found that people sometimes confuse the latter for the former, which can carry potentially dire consequences.

One simple example of this is in fencing. I once fenced with an opponent who put a bit of an unnecessary twirl on his blade when recovering from each parry. After our bout, one of the spectators pointed out that there wasn't any point to the twirls and that my opponent would improve by simply not doing them anymore. My opponent claimed that, even if the twirls were unnecessary, at worst they were merely an aesthetic preference that was useless but not actually harmful.

However, the observer explained that _any_ unnecessary movement is harmful in fencing, because it spends time and energy that could be put to better use-- even if that use is just recovering a split second faster! \[1\]

During our bout, I indeed scored at least one touch because my opponent's twirling recovery was slower than a less flashy standard movement. That touch could well be the difference between victory and defeat; in a real sword fight, it could be the difference between life and death.

This isn't, of course, to say that _everything_ unnecessary is damaging. There are many things that we can simply be indifferent towards. If I am about to go and fence a bout, the color of the shirt that I wear under my jacket is of no concern to me-- but if I had spent significant time before the bout debating over what shirt to wear instead of training, it would become a damaging detail rather than a meaningless one.

In other words, the real damage is dealt when something is not only unnecessary, but _consumes resources that could instead be used for productive tasks._ We see this relatively easily when it comes to matters of money, but when it comes to wastes of time and effort, many fail to make the inductive leap.

\[1\] [Miyamoto Musashi](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyamoto_Musashi) agrees:

> The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy's cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him. More than anything, you must be thinking of carrying your movement through to cutting him. You must thoroughly research this.