Harley-ml/lesswrong huggingface dataset:
# Curriculum suggestions for someone looking to teach themselves contemporary philosophy

Hello LessWrong,

I just (finally) finished _Good and Real_, by Gary Drescher. It was a very stimulating read, and I'd like to continue learning philosophy on my own. However, I'm running into a bootstrapping problem. I don't know what I don't know, and therefore, I don't know where I should get started. I've tried searching the LessWrong archive to see if anyone has made a post outlining a curriculum for someone looking to teach themselves the fundamentals of modern philosophy and logic, but either my Google-fu is weak or no such post exists. So, what should someone who is looking to reduce the inferential distance between themselves and modern philosophical thought read, and in what order?

Or, do you all think this is a quixotic quest that I should give up on?
# Great big ocean waves in an even bigger blank spot

[The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean](http://www.amazon.com/The-Wave-Pursuit-Rogues-Freaks/dp/0767928857) is a book about very big ocean waves-- the science, the danger (mostly to ships), and the surfers.

Really big waves weren't scientifically verified until about ten years ago-- part of the problem was that even though sailors had been reporting huge waves, scientists had a theory that big waves (maybe over 80', though I don't have a sharp dividing line) required very rare conditions. Once satellite surveillance for waves was possible, it turned out that big waves were fairly common, and might explain why a ship or two per week disappears.

[Russell Wynn](https://noc.ac.uk/people/rbw1): "The way the radar system works, the very big ones are difficult to measure," he said. When behemoth waves appeared in the satellite data, the space agencies considered these readings to be errors, and they were automatically deleted. "They give you missing value code instead, which is really annoying. We shout at them for that."

The reason I'm posting this is that I've become very skeptical about any theory which claims that something which is well-attested and physically possible is actually not happening.
# A disclaimer about my effective philanthropy posts (in connection with astronomical waste)

My recent posts [Robustness of Cost-Effectiveness and Effective Philanthropy](/lw/hif/robustness_of_costeffectiveness_estimates_and/) and [Earning to Give vs. Altruistic Career Choice Revisited](/lw/hjn/earning_to_give_vs_altruistic_career_choice/) concern optimal philanthropy, and I’ll be writing more posts about optimal philanthropy in the near future.

My use of examples from prosaic domains such as global health has given rise to some confusion, because some members of the Less Wrong community believe that existential risk reduction is by far the best target for optimal philanthropy, and also believe that effective philanthropy in the context of global health is very disanalogous to effective philanthropy in the context of x-risk reduction. For example, [Eliezer wrote](/lw/hjn/earning_to_give_vs_altruistic_career_choice/929n) 

> …talking about AMF \[[Against Malaria Foundation](http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/AMF)\] in the same breath as x-risk just seems really odd. The key issues are going to be very different when you're trying to do something so near-term, established, without scary ambiguity, etc. as AMF.

I believe that studying the issues surrounding philanthropic opportunities in areas such as global health is in fact helpful for better understanding how to assess x-risk reduction opportunities. My reasons for thinking this don’t fit into a few sentences, and fully understanding them requires understanding some of my thoughts about more prosaic domains. So I’ll respond to Eliezer’s comment at a later date.

For now, I’ll just remark:

1.  My discussion of prosaic philanthropic domains should not be interpreted as carrying the connotation that I think that they offer more promising philanthropic opportunities than x-risk reduction charities do (though in some cases I believe that they may be).  
    
2.   I believe that the points that I raise in connection with prosaic philanthropic domains will eventually offer input that's helpful for thinking about optimal philanthropy within the [astronomical waste framework](http://www.lesswrong.com/lw/hjb/a_proposed_adjustment_to_the_astronomical_waste/).  
    
3.  My reason for restricting my discussion to prosaic philanthropic domains (in some posts) is to keep the discussion from become muddled by simultaneously considering of many orthogonal issues.

**Note:** I formerly worked as a research analyst at [GiveWell](http://www.givewell.org). All views expressed are my own.
# Reductionism sequence now available in audio format

The sequence "[Reductionism](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Reductionism_(sequence))", which includes the subsequences "[Joy in the Merely Real](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Joy_in_the_Merely_Real)" and "[Zombies](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Zombies_(sequence))", is now available as a [professionally read podcast](http://castify.co/channels/43-reductionism).

Thanks to those who've been listening, let us know how your experience has been thus far and what you think of the service by dropping an email to support@castify.co.
# Other prespective on resolving the Prisoner's dilemma

Sometimes I see new ideas that, without offering any new information, offers a new perspective on old information, and a new way of thinking about an old problem. So it is with [this lecture](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFqmmzYVVJM) and the [prisoner's dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma).

Now, I worked a lot with the prisoners dilemma, with superrationality, negotiations, fairness, retaliation, Rawlsian veils of ignorance, etc. I've studied the problem, and its possible resolutions, extensively. But the perspective of that lecture was refreshing and new to me:

_The prisoner's dilemma is resolved only when the off-diagonal outcomes of the dilemma are known to be impossible._

The "off-diagonal outcomes" are the "(Defect, Cooperate)" and the "(Cooperate, Defect)" squares where one person walks away with all the benefit and the other has none:

| (Baron, Countess) | Cooperate | Defect |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Cooperate | (3,3) | (0,5) |
| Defect | (5,0) | (1,1) |

Facing an identical (or near identical) copy of yourself? Then the off-diagonal outcomes are impossible, because you're going to choose the same thing. Facing [Tit-for-tat](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat) in an [iterated prisoner's dilemma](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iterated_prisoner%27s_dilemma#The_iterated_prisoners.27_dilemma)? Well, the off-diagonal squares cannot be reached _consistently_. Is the other prisoner a Mafia don? Then the off-diagonal outcomes don't exist _as written_: there's a hidden negative term (you being horribly murdered) that isn't taken into account in that matrix. Various [agents with open code](/lw/2ip/ai_cooperation_in_practice/) are essentially publicly declaring the conditions under which they will not reach for the off-diagonal. The point of many contracts and agreements is to make the off-diagonal outcome impossible or expensive.

As I said, nothing fundamentally new, but I find the perspective interesting. To my mind, it suggests that when resolving the prisoner's dilemma with probabilistic outcomes allowed, I should be thinking "blocking off possible outcomes", rather than "reaching agreement".
# CFAR workshop, June 15th, Salt Lake City UT

CFAR is experimenting with a mobile workshop, so we can bring our material to people who can't make it to Berkeley.  So, next week, we're running a one-and-a-half day workshop in Salt Lake City, Utah!

**Workshop Details**

On Saturday June 15th, CFAR will be running a workshop in the Salt Lake City area. We’ll be presenting selected material from [our four-day workshop](http://rationality.org/workshops/) and giving you the chance to consult with our instructors on how you can put these skills to work.

You’ll arrive for class at 10am on Saturday, and you and eleven other participants will spend the day learning highlights from our applied rationality curriculum: how to recognize and defuse a fight-or-flight response when it doesn't do you any good (you can’t outrun data you don’t like!), how to make sure your desire to complete a long-term project (say, writing a book) trickles down to motivate all the picayune steps along the way (doing a read-through to pick off unnecessary adjectives), and how to make the most of your intuitive judgments. Classes wrap up at 7pm, and then we’ll all go out for dinner, where you’ll have a chance to decompress and digest the day (along with your meal).

After dinner, if you’ve registered for the optional half-day, you’ll sleep over on site with the CFAR staff and play some fun, brain-teasing games. The evening is a time for unstructured conversation and collaboration. What are your pet projects and ambitions? Get feedback from classmates and instructors and start figuring out ways to make the most of your newfound skills.

The next morning, you’ll choose which of the previous day’s skills you really want to practice intensively. Catch any misunderstandings or sticking points while you’re still around to troubleshoot them with a CFAR instructor. At our four-day workshops, many participants report that our final-day review sessions are the point where they were finally able to internalize the material and start to use it instinctively.

After a half-day of review and reinforcement, we send you back out into the world, better prepared to make the most of your brain.

**Application Details**

The cost of the workshop will be $90 for the first day of instruction + $50 if you plan to stick around for the overnight and the second day of practice.

Registration is first come, first serve. Space is limited to 12. To sign-up, [fill out this two minute form](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1YESfkKL_5r4uHuV2A4eKCdEO0-mWs9gJTtCwfPimwUo/viewform).
# Useful Concepts Repository

**See also:** [Boring Advice Repository](/lw/gx5/boring_advice_repository/), [Solved Problems Repository](/lw/h2m/solved_problems_repository/), [Grad Student Advice Repository](/lw/h7d/grad_student_advice_repository/)

I often find that my understanding of the world is strongly informed by a few key concepts. For example, I've repeatedly found the concept of [opportunity cost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost) to be a useful frame. My previous post on [privileging the question](/lw/hba/privileging_the_question/) is in some sense about the opportunity cost of paying attention to certain kinds of questions (namely that you don't get to use that attention on other kinds of questions). [Efficient charity](/lw/3gj/efficient_charity_do_unto_others/) can also be thought of in terms of the opportunity cost of donating inefficiently to charity. I've also found the concept of [incentive structure](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incentive) very useful for thinking about the behavior of groups of people in aggregate (see [perverse incentive](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive)). 

I'd like people to use this thread to post examples of concepts they've found particularly useful for understanding the world. I'm personally more interested in concepts that don't come from the [Sequences](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences), but comments describing a concept from the Sequences and explaining why you've found it useful may help people new to the Sequences. ("Useful" should be interpreted broadly: a concept specific to a particular field might be useful more generally as a metaphor.)
# [link] Scott Aaronson on free will

Scott Aaronson has a new 85 page essay up, titled ["The Ghost in the Quantum Turing Machine"](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1306.0159.pdf). ([Abstract here](http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0159).) In Section 2.11 (Singulatarianism) he explicitly mentions Eliezer as an influence. But that's just a starting point, and he then moves in a direction that's very far from any kind of LW consensus. Among other things, he suggests that a crucial qualitative difference between a person and a digital upload is that the laws of physics prohibit making perfect copies of a person. Personally, I find the arguments completely unconvincing, but Aaronson is always thought-provoking and fun to read, and this is a good excuse to read about things like (I quote the abstract) "the No-Cloning Theorem, the measurement problem, decoherence, chaos, the arrow of time, the holographic principle, Newcomb's paradox, Boltzmann brains, algorithmic information theory, and the Common Prior Assumption". This is not just a shopping list of buzzwords, these are all important components of the author's main argument. It unfortunately still seems weak to me, but the time spent reading it is not wasted at all.
# Life hack request: I want to want to work.

I have a master's project I'm having trouble working on. It's something I've wanted to do, and I even started working on, long before I started my master's degree. If I can't even enjoy that, then I'm doomed to spend eight hours a day doing something I hate for the rest of my life. Even if I manage to improve my willpower, I doubt I'll be very productive doing something I don't want to do.

Does anyone have any idea how I can enjoy working more?
# How should Eliezer and Nick's extra $20 be split

In "[Principles of Disagreement](/lw/qw/principles_of_disagreement/ "Principles of DIsagrement")," Eliezer Yudkowsky shared the following anecdote:

> Nick Bostrom and I once took a taxi and split the fare.   When we counted the money we'd assembled to pay the driver, we found an extra twenty there.
> 
> "I'm pretty sure this twenty isn't mine," said Nick.
> 
> "I'd have been sure that it wasn't mine either," I said.
> 
> "You just take it," said Nick.
> 
> "No, _you_ just take it," I said.
> 
> We looked at each other, and we knew what we had to do.
> 
> "To the best of your ability to say at this point, what _would _have been your initial probability that the bill was yours?" I said.
> 
> "Fifteen percent," said Nick.
> 
> "I would have said twenty percent," I said.

I have left off the ending to give everyone a chance to think about this problem for themselves. How would you have split the twenty? 

In general, EY and NB disagree about who deserves the twenty. EY believes that EY deserves it with probability p, while NB believes that EY deserves it with probability q. They decide to give EY a fraction of the twenty equal to f(p,q). What should the function f be?

In our example, p=1/5 and q=17/20

Please think about this problem a little before reading on, so that we do not miss out on any original solutions that you might have come up with.

* * *

I can think of 4 ways to solve this problem. I am attributing answers to the person who first proposed that dollar amount, but my reasoning might not reflect their reasoning.

1.  f=p/(1+p-q) or $11.43 (Eliezer Yodkowsky/Nick Bostrom) -- EY believes he deserves p of the money, while NB believes he deserves 1-q. They should therefore be given money in a ratio of p:1-q.
2.  f=(p+q)/2 or $10.50 (Marcello) -- It seems reasonable to assume that there is a 50% chance that EY reasoned properly and a 50% chance that NB reasoned properly, so we should take the average of the amounts of money that EY would get under these two assumptions.
3.  f=sqrt(pq)/(sqrt(pq)+sqrt((1-p)(1-q))) or $10.87 (GreedyAlgorithm) -- We want to chose an f so that log(f/(1-f)) is the average of log(p/(1-p)) and log(q/(1-q)). 
4.  f=pq/(pq+(1-p)(1-q)) or $11.72 -- We have two observations that EY deserves the money with probability p and probability q respectively. If we assume that these are two independent pieces of evidence as to whether or not EY should get the money, then starting with equal likelihood of each person deserving the money, we should do a Bayesian update for each piece of information.

* * *

I am very curious about this question, so if you have any opinions, please comment. I have some opinions on this problem, but to avoid biasing anyone, I will save them for the comments. I am actually more interested in the following question. I believe that the two will have the same answer, but if anyone disagrees, let me know.

I have two hypotheses, A and B. I assign probability p to A and probability q to B. I later find out that A and B are equivalent. I then update to assign the probability g(p,q) to both hypotheses. What should the function g be?
# Learning programming: so I've learned the basics of Python, what next?

Lots of people (particularly people associated with LessWrong) are telling me I should become a computer programmer; in response I've taught myself a little Python using [this site](http://cscircles.cemc.uwaterloo.ca/), written a couple Python scripts on my own, and just now sent in an application to [App Academy](http://www.appacademy.io/#p-home). But if I don't end up going to App Academy, what's the best way to develop some actually marketable programming skills? I've heard people recommending getting involved in open source projects on [Git Hub](https://github.com/), but when I looked at Git Hub I found it overwhelming, with no idea of how to find a suitable project to work on. Advice?
# How would not having free will feel to you?

Given the spike in free-will debates on LW recently (blame Scott Aaronson), and the usual potentially answerable meta-question "Why do we think we have free will?", I am intrigued by a sub-question, "what would it feel like to have/not have free will?". The positive version of this question is not very interesting, almost everyone feels they have free will most all the time. The negative version is more interesting and I expect the answers to be more diverse. Here are a few off the top of my head, not necessarily mutually exclusive:

Epistemic:

*   Knowing that someone out there already predicts my behavior perfectly
*   Knowing that someone out there can predict my behavior perfectly, whether or not they actually bother doing it
*   Knowing that it is potentially possible to perfectly predict my behavior, even if I know that no one is doing it
*   Knowing that I am in a simulation 
*   Knowing that I am in a simulation where repeated runs with the same inputs give identical outcomes
*   ...?

Psychological:

*   Feeling constrained by the environment to act in certain ways 
*   Feeling constrained by the environment to act in certain unsatisfactory ways
*   Voices in my head compel me to do things 
*   Voices in my head compel me to do bad things 
*   Feeling unable to complete thoughts I would like to think through, as if someone censored them
*   ...?

Physical:

*   Observing myself act in ways I never intended to act, whether beneficial to me or not
*   Observing my arms/legs/mouth move as if externally controlled, and being unable to interfere
*   ...?

For me personally some of these are close to the feeling of "no free will" than others, but I am not sure if any single one crosses the boundary.

I am sure that there are different takes on the answers and on how to categorize them. I think it would be useful to collect some perspectives and maybe have a poll or several after.
# Suggestions for Rationality Blogs in the Sidebar

I'm spending the summer working to update lesswrong, and one of the changes we're looking to implement is changing the "New on Overcoming Bias" part of the sidebar to a more general "New on Rationality Blogs".  What blogs would you like to see represented?
# Bad Concepts Repository

We recently established a successful [Useful Concepts Repository](/lw/hhl/useful_concepts_repository/ "Useful Concepts Repository").  It got me thinking about all the useless or actively harmful concepts I had carried around for in some cases most of my life before seeing them for what they were.  Then it occurred to me that I probably still have some poisonous concepts lurking in my mind, and I thought creating this thread might be one way to discover what they are.

I'll start us off with one simple example:  The [Bohr model](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohr_model "Bohr Model") of the atom as it is taught in school is a dangerous thing to keep in your head for too long.  I graduated from high school believing that it was basically a correct physical representation of atoms.  (And I went to a \*good\* high school.)  Some may say that the Bohr model serves a useful role as a [lie-to-children](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies_to_children "lie to children") to bridge understanding to the true physics, but if so, why do so many adults still think atoms look like concentric circular orbits of electrons around a nucleus?  

There's one hallmark of truly bad concepts: they actively work against correct induction.  Thinking in terms of the Bohr model actively prevents you from understanding molecular bonding and, really, everything about how an atom can serve as a functional piece of a real thing like a protein or a diamond.

Bad concepts don't have to be scientific.  Religion is held to be a pretty harmful concept around here.  There are certain political theories which might qualify, except I expect that one man's harmful political concept is another man's core value system, so as usual we should probably stay away from politics.  But I welcome input as fuzzy as common folk advice you receive that turned out to be really costly.
# James Martin's death

From the [Martin School website](http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/):

Dr James Martin 1933 - 2013

 ![Dr James Martin](http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/images/system/jm640.jpg)

It is with great sadness that the Oxford Martin School has learned of the death of our Founder, Dr James Martin.

James Martin was an inspiration to millions – an extraordinary intellect, with wide-ranging interests, boundless energy and an unwavering commitment to addressing the greatest challenges facing humanity. For 25 years Martin was the highest-selling author of books on computing and related technology. He wrote a record 104 books, many of which have been seminal in their field, and was renowned for his electrifying lectures about the future. He was a Pulitzer nominee for his book The Wired Society.

James Martin was a passionate advocate of the power of ideas, and provided the largest benefaction to the University of Oxford in its 900-year history in order to create the Oxford Martin School. Professor Andrew Hamilton, the Vice-Chancellor of the University, said “James Martin was a true visionary whose exceptional generosity established the Oxford Martin School, allowing researchers from across the disciplines to work together on the most pressing challenges and opportunities facing humanity. His impact will be felt for generations to come, as through the School he has enabled researchers to address the biggest questions of the 21st century.”

The School is his permanent legacy and a fitting tribute – a flourishing, vibrant community of the world’s leading minds, coming together to change the world for the better. He enjoyed the excitement and happy atmosphere of the School, and his kind and unfailingly courteous manner was greatly appreciated by all who spent time with him. The Director of the School, Professor Ian Goldin, said “The Oxford Martin School embodies Jim’s concern for humanity, his creativity, his curiosity, and his optimism. Jim provided not only the founding vision, but was intimately involved with the School and our many programmes. We have lost a towering intellect, guiding visionary and a wonderful close friend.”

25th June 2013

On a personal note, I met James Martin a couple of times, and he was always interested in pushing the boundaries of our knowledge and predictive power, and helping the human race. Without him, there would have been no FHI. We've lost a great contributor.
# Public Service Announcement Collection

P/S/A:  There are single sentences which can create life-changing amounts of difference.

*   P/S/A:  If you're not sure whether or not you've ever had an orgasm, it means you haven't had one, a condition known as [primary anorgasmia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anorgasmia) which is 90% treatable by cognitive-behavioral therapy.
*   P/S/A:  The people telling you to expect above-trend inflation when the Federal Reserve started printing money a few years back, disagreed with the market forecasts, disagreed with standard economics, turned out to be actually wrong in reality, and were wrong for [reasonably fundamental reasons](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_monetarism) so don't buy gold when they tell you to.
*   P/S/A:  There are many many more submissive/masochistic men in the world than there are dominant/sadistic women, so if you are a woman who feels a strong temptation to command men and inflict pain on them, and you want a large harem of men serving your every need, it will suffice to state this fact anywhere on the Internet and you will have fifty applications by the next morning.
*   P/S/A:  Most of the personal-finance-advice industry is parasitic and/or self-deluded, and it's generally agreed on by economic theory and experimental measurement that an index fund will deliver the best returns you can get without huge amounts of effort.
*   P/S/A:  If you are smart and underemployed, you can very quickly check to see if you are a natural computer programmer by pulling up a page of Python source code and seeing whether it looks like it makes natural sense, and if this is the case you can teach yourself to program very quickly and get a much higher-paying job even without formal credentials.
# [META] Make poll results accessible to people who have not voted

As far as I can see, the only way to see the results of a poll is to vote in it. If for whatever reason I don't want to participate in a poll whose results I am interested in, I vote randomly. Of the ~10 other LWers I know, at least 2 do the same. For the sake of accurate results, please let people see poll results without having to vote (and ideally without having to log in).

Response to obvious argument against: You can restrict people from (voting after they have seen the results).
# [LINK] Cantor's theorem, the prisoner's dilemma, and the halting problem

I wouldn't normally link to a [post from my math blog](http://qchu.wordpress.com/2013/06/30/cantors-theorem-the-prisoners-dilemma-and-the-halting-problem/) here, but it concerns a cute interpretation of Cantor's theorem that showed up when I was thinking about [program equilibria](/lw/hmw/robust_cooperation_in_the_prisoners_dilemma/) at the April MIRI workshop, so I thought it might be of interest here (e.g. if you're trying to persuade a mathematically inclined friend of yours to attend a future workshop). A short proof of the undecidability of the halting problem falls out as a bonus.
# What are you working on? July 2013

This is the supposedly-bimonthly-but-we-missed-April-and-June-2013 'What are you working On?' thread. Previous threads are [here](/r/discussion/tag/waywo). So here's the question:

_What are you working on? _

Here are some guidelines:

*   Focus on projects that you have recently made progress on, not projects that you're thinking about doing but haven't started.
*   Why this project and not others? Mention reasons why you're doing the project and/or why others should contribute to your project (if applicable).
*   Talk about your goals for the project.
*   Any kind of project is fair game: personal improvement, research project, art project, whatever.
*   Link to your work if it's linkable.
# Progress on automated mathematical theorem proving?

In a [recent comment thread](/lw/hmt/tiling_agents_for_selfmodifying_ai_opfai_2/99uz) I expressed skepticism as to whether there's been meaningful progress on general artificial intelligence.

I hedged because of my lack of subject matter knowledge, but thinking it over, I realized that I do have relevant subject matter knowledge, coming from my background in pure math.

In [a blog post from April 2013](http://gowers.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/a-second-experiment-concerning-mathematical-writing/), Fields Medalist [Timothy Gowers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Gowers) wrote:

> Over the last three years, I have been collaborating with Mohan Ganesalingam, a computer scientist, linguist and mathematician (and amazingly good at all three) on a project to write programs that can solve mathematical problems. We have recently produced our first program. It is rather rudimentary: the only problems it can solve are ones that mathematicians would describe as very routine and not requiring any ideas, and even within that class of problems there are considerable restrictions on what it can do; we plan to write more sophisticated programs in the future.

**I don't know of any computer programs that have been able to prove theorems outside of the class "very routine and not requiring any ideas," without human assistance (and without being heavily specialized to an individual theorem).** I think that if such projects existed, Gowers would be aware of them and would likely have commented on them within his post. 

It's easy to give an algorithm that generates a proof of a mathematical theorem that's provable: choose a formal language with definitions and axioms, and for successive values of n, enumerate all sequences of mathematical deductions of length n, halting if the final line of a sequence is the statement of the the desired theorem. But the running time of this algorithm is exponential in the length of the proof, and the algorithm is infeasible to implement except for theorems with very short proofs. 

**It appears that the situation is not "there are computer programs that are able to prove mathematical theorems, just not as yet as efficiently as humans," but rather "computer programs are unable to prove any nontrivial theorems."**

I'll highlight the [Sylow theorems](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylow_theorems) from group theory as examples of nontrivial theorems. Their statements are simple, and their proofs are not very long, but they're ingenious, and involve substantive ideas. If somebody was able to write a program that's able to find proofs of the Sylow theorems, I would consider that to be strong evidence that there's been meaningful progress on general artificial intelligence. In absence of such examples, I have a strong prior against there having been meaningful progress on general artificial intelligence.

I will update my views if I learn of the existence of such programs, or of programs that are capable of comparably impressive original research in domains outside of math.
# [Link]: Anthropic shadow, or the dark dusk of disaster

From a [paper](http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/anthropicshadow.pdf) by Milan M. Ćirković, Anders Sandberg, and Nick Bostrom:

> We describe a signiﬁcant practical consequence of taking anthropic biases into account in deriving predictions for rare stochastic catastrophic events. The risks associated with catastrophes such as asteroidal/cometary impacts, supervolcanic episodes, and explosions of supernovae/gamma-ray bursts are based on their observed frequencies. As a result, the frequencies of catastrophes that destroy or are otherwise incompatible with the existence of observers are systematically underestimated. We describe the consequences of this anthropic bias for estimation of catastrophic risks, and suggest some directions for future work.

There cannot have been a large disaster on Earth in the last millennia, or we wouldn't be around to see it. There can't have been a very large disaster on Earth in the last ten thousand years, or we wouldn't be around to see it. There can't have been a huge disaster on Earth in the last million years, or we wouldn't be around to see it. There can't have been a planet-destroying disaster on Earth... ever.

Thus the fact that we exist precludes us seeing certain types of disasters in the historical record; as we get closer and closer to the present day, the magnitude of the disasters we can see goes down. These missing disasters form the "anthropic shadow", somewhat visible in the top right of this diagram:

![](http://images.lesswrong.com/t3_hw7_0.png)

Hence even though it looks like the risk is going down (the magnitude is diminishing as we approach the present), we can't rely on this being true: it could be a purely anthropic effect.
# Home Economics

As I [inventoried my personal library](/lw/hwp/personaly_library_management/) and classified it using the [Universal Decimal System](http://www.udcc.org/udcsummary/php/index.php?lang=en), I found out about lots of fields of knowledge I was only dimly aware of or didn't even know existed^1^, and one of those that piqued my curiosity was home economics, domestic science and housekeeping (field 64). I was kinda bluffed, actually; I always thought of home economics as that thing that shows up in American high school sitcoms, that elective "for girls" where people get to cook stuff on campus. Now I find that it fully occupies one of The Tens of the UDC! I finally realized it; this is Serious Business!

I thought of the permanently shoddy state of my bank account, of all the money I had spent in books (no less than 215 physical books, and then there's Kindle!), fancy gadgets (were those Marshall headphones really necessary? What about that sandwich-maker?), fancy food (even though I always seem to end up "cooking" the same boring, unbalanced crap), unnecessary or excessive heating and air conditioning, and so on and so forth.

I've come to realize how much I had underestimated this field, the duty towards oneself of taking care of one's house, and the advantages of so doing. I want to catch up in terms of planning my budget and my cleaning and my cooking and my buying furniture and appliances and so on and so for. I suppose I could figure it out by myself, but why reinvent the wheel?

So I thought to myself: asking your mates at LW has had awesome results when it came to getting your library in order, why don't you ask them about Home Economics? They probably actually went to those courses in High School, or have otherwise taken an interest just to optimize their homes! I mean, their literal livelihoods and well-beings are at stake, so why wouldn't they^2^?

So, yeah, if you guys know which reference books to start with, or have any practical recommendations in terms of resources or bibliography, and the handling thereof, I'd love to hear it. Who knows, maybe a good top level post may come of it?

* * *

^1^This triggered my imagination on a completely unrelated topic: [a gamified education system in the style of an RPG skill tree](/lw/hx7/a_gamification_of_education_a_modest_proposal/).

^2^My Inner Critic obligingly suggested "Arkasia and, given the demographic, a compounded disdain for manual labor, pedestrian and materialistic concerns, and girly stuff. Why else didn't _you?_" I told it to step aside and go have a swim in the North Atlantic.
# Estimating the kolmogorov complexity of the known laws of physics?

In the post [Complexity and Intelligence](/lw/vh/complexity_and_intelligence/), Eliezer says that the [Kolmogorov Complexity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity) (length of shortest equivalent computer program) of the laws of physics is about 500 bits:

> Suppose you ran a Turing machine with unlimited tape, so that, starting from our laws of physics, it simulated our whole universe - not just the region of space we see around us, but all regions of space and all quantum branches. \[...\]
> 
> Then the "Kolmogorov complexity" of that entire universe \[...\] would be 500 bits, or whatever the size of the true laws of physics when written out as equations on a sheet of paper.

Where did this 500 come from?

I googled around for estimates on the Kolmogorov Complexity of the laws of physics, but didn't find anything. Certainly nothing as concrete as 500.

I [asked about it on the physics stack exchange](http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/65005/estimating-the-kolmogorov-complexity-of-the-standard-model), but haven't received any answers as of yet.

I considered estimating it myself, but doing that well involves significant time investment. I'd need to learn the standard model well enough to write a computer program that simulated it (however inefficiently or intractably, it's the program length that matters not it's time or memory performance).

Based on my experience programming, I'm sure it wouldn't take a million bits. Probably less than ten thousand. The demo scene does some [pretty amazing things with 4096 bits](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWcbj7ksqwE). But 500 sounds like a teeny tiny amount to mention off hand for fitting the constants, the forces, the particles, and the mathematical framework for doing things like differential equations. The fundamental constants alone are going to consume ~20-30 bits each.

Does anyone have a reference, or even a more worked-through example of an estimate?
# Responses to Catastrophic AGI Risk: A Survey

A great many Less Wrongers gave feedback on earlier drafts of "Responses to Catastrophic AGI Risk: A Survey," which has now been [released](http://intelligence.org/2013/07/08/responses-to-catastrophic-agi-risk-a-survey/). This is the preferred discussion page for the paper.

The report, co-authored by past MIRI researcher Kaj Sotala and University of Louisville’s Roman Yampolskiy, is a summary of the extant literature (250+ references) on AGI risk, and can serve either as a guide for researchers or as an introduction for the uninitiated.

Here is the abstract:

> Many researchers have argued that humanity will create artificial general intelligence (AGI) within the next twenty to one hundred years. It has been suggested that AGI may pose a catastrophic risk to humanity. After summarizing the arguments for why AGI may pose such a risk, we survey the field’s proposed responses to AGI risk. We consider societal proposals, proposals for external constraints on AGI behaviors, and proposals for creating AGIs that are safe due to their internal design.
# [LINK] Analysis of why excluding hostile people is worth it

[http://blip.tv/tech-love-live/osb09-donnie-berkholz-assholes-are-killing-your-project-2464449](http://blip.tv/tech-love-live/osb09-donnie-berkholz-assholes-are-killing-your-project-2464449)

This is specifically about why it's important to get assholes out of open source projects, but it applies in general. It includes an analysis of the social cost of keeping people around who frequently make other people unhappy, and in particular a way to balance the social costs (distraction, people doing much less work or leaving, useful volunteers not joining, assholes recruiting other assholes, etc.) of assholes against the useful work some of them do.
# Prisoner's dilemma tournament results

The [prisoner's dilemma tournament](/lw/hmx/prisoners_dilemma_with_visible_source_code/) is over. There were a total of 21 entries. The winner is Margaret Sy, with a total of 39 points. 2nd and 3rd place go to rpglover64 and THE BLACK KNIGHT, with scores of 38 and 36 points respectively. There were some fairly intricate strategies in the tournament, but all three of these top scorers submitted programs that completely ignored the source code of the other player and acted randomly, with the winner having a bias towards defecting.

You can download a chart describing the outcomes [here](http://alex.mennen.org/results.xls), and the source codes for the entries can be downloaded [here](http://alex.mennen.org/PDTournament.zip).

I represented each submission with a single letter while running the tournament. Here is a directory of the entries, along with their scores: (some people gave me a term to refer to the player by, while others gave me a term to refer to the program. I went with whatever they gave me, and if they gave me both, I put the player first and then the program)

A: rpglover64 (38)  
B: Watson Ladd (27)  
c: THE BLACK KNIGHT (36)  
D: skepsci (24)  
E: Devin Bayer (30)  
F: Billy, Mimic-- (27)  
G: itaibn (34)  
H: CooperateBot (24)  
I: Sean Nolan (28)  
J: oaz (26)  
K: selbram (34)  
L: Alexei (25)  
M: LEmma (25)  
N: BloodyShrimp (34)  
O: caa (32)  
P: nshepperd (25)  
Q: Margaret Sy (39)  
R: So8res, NateBot (33)  
S: Quinn (33)  
T: HonoreDB (23)  
U: SlappedTogetherAtTheLastMinuteBot (20)
# Svante Arrhenius's Prediction of Climate Change

In [Intelligence Explosion analysis draft: introduction](/lw/8f9/intelligence_explosion_analysis_draft_introduction/), Luke Muehlhauser and Anna Salamon wrote

> Svante Arrhenius' (1896) models of climate change lacked modern climate theory and data but, by making reasonable extrapolations from what was known of physics, still managed to predict (within 2°C) how much warming would result from a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere (Crawford 1997).

As a part of the project ["Can we know what to do about AI?"](/r/discussion/lw/hxw/can_we_know_what_to_do_about_ai_an_introduction/), I've summarized my initial impressions of Arrhenius's predictions and the impact that they might have had. The object level material is all draw from Wikipedia, and I have not vetted it.

*   Arrhenius's chemistry was sound: the equation for how the Earth's temperature varies as a function of concentration of carbon dioxide is the same equation used today.
*   For the most part, Arrhenius didn't model how increased carbon concentrations would impact other factors that influence the Earth's temperature. I don't know if this is because he wasn't aware of these, because he thought that they were sufficiently small to ignore, or because he didn't try to.
*   Knut Ångström criticized Arrhenius's claim on scientific grounds, giving a different model which predicted no climate change from increased carbon concentrations. My surface impression is that Arrhenius was a much more accomplished scientist than Knut Ångström was. To the extent that this is true, I think that Ångström's view should be heavily discounted, but I haven't investigated further.
*   While Arrhenius recognized that the use of fossil fuels could increase atmospheric concentrations, he underestimated how fast carbon emissions would increase (by a huge margin) because he didn't recognize how widespread fossil fuel use would become.
*   People later thought that Arrhenius's prediction that atmospheric carbon would increase was wrong, because they thought that oceans would serve as great carbon sinks. It would be interesting to look into whether they had good reasons for thinking this at the time.
*   Arrhenius predicted that global warming would have positive humanitarian impacts on balance, global warming now appears to have negative humanitarian impacts on balance. 

Taking this all together, based on my surface impressions, I think that this case study gives evidence against attempting to predict the far future being useful:

*   To the extent that Arrhenius was right, he was largely ignored. 

*   Arrhenius could have been wrong (the countervailing theories could have been right), but this warrants further investigation. 

*   If, in the subsequent years, people had started burning fossil fuels more with a view toward giving rise to positive humanitarian impacts, they would have exacerbated the [potential negative impacts of climate change](/lw/hi1/potential_impacts_of_climate_change/).
# Less Wrong London New Arrival Integration Task Force

After considering how many of us have arrived here within recent memory, the London Less Wrong community is explicitly offering itself as a resource for those moving to the city. We all know how awkward and daunting it can be to get settled somewhere new, and we'd like to help newcomers hit the ground running. It seems that our most effective recruitment strategy at the moment is "wait for existing Less Wrong readers to move here", so it's a worthwhile offer to make.

If any LessWrongers are moving to the Greater London area, let us know. Either message me via the site or join our [Google Group](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/lesswronglondon). Tell us where/when you're moving, what your circumstances are, and what sort of things you like to do. We will try to proactively invite you to events and activities we think you'll enjoy, as well as providing you with useful local knowledge if you want it.

We will also try and make some time available for you if there's anything you need another person's help with. If assembling your Ikea bookshelf is a two-person job, we'll see if we can scrape together a couple of people for a couple of hours to help you put it together.  If you need help setting up your wireless router, we'll see if someone with the relevant skills is available to give you a hand.  We can't promise any specific type of help, but we're always happy to be asked.

Big cities can often feel quite impersonal, so if you're planning on moving here, or even just thinking about it, let us know, and we'll see what we can do to make it a little more welcoming.
# [META] Open threads (and repository threads) are underutilized.

[Recently](/lw/hyf/link_xkcd_comic_1236_seashells_and_bayes_theorem/9cf4?context=1#comments), issues with the way open threads currently work were brought up. Open threads aren't very visible and get crowded with comments quickly. This causes people to post things that belong in open threads in r/discussion, to not post in open threads more than a few days old, or to ignore/be unaware of new comments in open threads. I think we can do better.

Some possible solutions that were pointed out, or that I thought of are:

*   Put the most recent open thread at the top of the 'Recent Comments' sidebar.
*   Having open threads more often.
*   Put a link to it on the main page.
*   Make a new subreddit for open threads.
*   Create a new medium for open threads.

Note that not all of these are orthogonal.

Having them more often has the advantage of being especially easy to implement. Adding new links seems to be relatively easy to implement as well. As far as I know, making a new subreddit isn't too difficult, but making a new medium would probably be a waste of development resources.

Personally, I like the idea of having a new subreddit for open threads. It  would increase visibility, not get overcrowded, and have the right atmosphere for a casual open thread. My evidence for believing this comes from being familiar the way Reddit works. It seems like there is some resistance to creating new subreddits here, so I don't expect this to be implemented. I would like to see the reasoning for this attitude, if it indeed exists.

There are similar issues for the repository threads. For repositories, having them more often defeats the purpose of having one place for a certain type of idea, and a different subreddit doesn't seem right either. Giving them their own wiki pages might be a better medium, with new threads to encourage new ideas every once in a while. The main problem for this is the [trivial inconvenience](/lw/f1/beware_trivial_inconveniences/) of going to the wiki, and logging in. It would be nice if there was a unified log-in for this part of the site and the wiki, but I realize this may be technically difficult. I might organize a wiki page for some of the repositories myself if people think this is a good idea but no one else feels like doing it (depends on if I feel like doing it too :p ).

Thoughts?
# "Stupid" questions thread

r/Fitness does a weekly ["Moronic Monday"](http://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/xe4na/moronic_monday_your_weekly_stupid_questions_thread/), a judgment-free thread where people can ask questions that they would ordinarily feel embarrassed for not knowing the answer to. I thought this seemed like a useful thing to have here - after all, the concepts discussed on LessWrong are probably at least a little harder to grasp than those of weightlifting. Plus, I have a few stupid questions of my own, so it doesn't seem unreasonable that other people might as well.