Harley-ml/lesswrong huggingface dataset:
# How confident should we be?

What should a rationalist do about _confidence_? Should he lean harder towards

1.  relentlessly psyching himself up to feel like he can do anything, _or_
2.  having true beliefs about his abilities in all areas, coldly predicting his [likelihood](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_interval) of success in a given domain?

I don't want to falsely construe these as dichotomous. The real answer will probably dissolve 'confidence' into smaller parts and indicate which parts go where. So which parts of 'confidence' correctly belong in our_ models of the world_ (which must never be corrupted) or our _motivational systems_ (which we may cut apart and put together however helps us achieve our goals)? Note that this follows the distinction between epistemic and instrumental rationality.

Eliezer offers a decision criterion in [The Sin of Underconfidence](/lw/c3/the_sin_of_underconfidence/):

> _Does this way of thinking make me stronger, or weaker?  Really truly?_

It makes us stronger to know when to [lose hope already](/lw/gx/just_lose_hope_already/), and it makes us stronger to have the mental fortitude to [kick our asses into shape](/lw/ui/use_the_try_harder_luke/) so we can [do the impossible](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Challenging_the_Difficult). Lukeprog [prescribes](/lw/3w3/how_to_beat_procrastination/) boosting optimism "by watching inspirational movies, reading inspirational biographies, and listening to motivational speakers." That probably makes you stronger too.

But I don't know what to do about saying '[I can do it](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx9xO98kcBU&feature=related)' when the odds are against me. What do you do when you probably _won't_ succeed, but believing that Heaven's army is at your back would increase your chances?

My default answer has always been to maximize confidence, but I acted this way long before I discovered rationality, and I've probably generated confidence for bad reasons as often as I have for good reasons. I'd like to have an answer that prescribes the right action, all of the time. I want know when confidence steers me wrong, and know when to stop increasing my confidence. I want the real answer, not the historically-generated heuristic.

I can't help but feeling like I'm missing something basic here. What do you think?
# Advice Request: Baconmas Website

**The Gist:** I started [this blog](http://baconmas.com/) to get people excited about a science-themed holiday. I want your suggestions before I advertise it to everyone I know!

Two years ago, I came up with the idea of celebrating Sir Francis Bacon's birthday (Jan. 22) as a festive science-themed holiday called Baconmas. (The name has the additional bonus that it's easy to convince people to come to a party if there will be bacon there.) I had a good Baconmas party in 2010 and a better one in 2011, and now I want to let other people in on the fun.

[So I made a website.](http://baconmas.com/)

It's currently "in beta"; I wrote a couple of preparatory things, but haven't yet shown it to the vast majority of my friends. I want to maximize the chance that it goes a bit viral when I do, because a science-themed holiday really needs to exist. So I'd like any suggestions you have, before I go "alpha" with it. So as to not cause anchoring, I'll put down in the first comment the things I already plan to do- if you could make all your original suggestions first, then read those plans and others' comments, then add more suggestions, that should maximize the good ideas. Thanks!

(Oh, and it goes without saying that you should celebrate Baconmas if at all possible. It's been a lot of fun for me.)
# [META] Introduction thread attitudes and discussions

So, we have [three introduction threads](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Special_threads), and recently have had several contentious ones, like AspiringKnitter's [introduction as a theist](/lw/b9/welcome_to_less_wrong/5h82) or Bakkot's [introduction as a proponent of infanticide](/lw/90l/welcome_to_less_wrong_2012/5kk8). It seems to me like there's value in trying to come up with a unified policy on how to respond to introductions. Replies seem to run the emotional gamut, and different norms often conflict. Beyond that, practical concerns suggest arguments may be poorly suited to introduction threads.

Take MagnetoHydroDynamics's [introduction as not interested in cryonics](/lw/90l/welcome_to_less_wrong_2012/5k40) as an example of a smaller discussion that spawned meta-discussions about attitudes. Epistemic hygiene suggests that [challenging wrong beliefs](/lw/90l/welcome_to_less_wrong_2012/5k5s) is a positive, but I found myself dismayed to find the only reply to a newbie's first post was a factual correction, and so posted a welcoming comment with a joke. Later, wedrifid posed a test for MHD, which MHD passed. Kaj_Sotala questioned wedrifid's tone on the grounds that MHD was a newcomer, and I'm not entirely sure what to think. On the one hand, I can easily come up with a friendly rewriting on wedrifid's test, and I think friendliness to newcomers is a sound strategy. But on the other hand, while testing newcomers can turn some away, it does so in a selective way. Should newcomers be shielded from some criticism in introduction threads, or should it be the same as the rest of LW? Are there inappropriate attitudes in introduction threads?

The practical concern is that pages only display 500 comments at once, which is why we have three threads now. But on **the first day** of 2012, our 2012 thread already has **over half** the comments it'll be able to display simultaneously. (The post has been up for a week, not a day, but _still_.) At time of writing, 150 of the 270 comments are children of Bakkot's comment, arguing about infanticide. It seems obvious to me that we ought to seriously discourage promoting discussion on ideas in introduction threads, and instead point people to open threads / a primer on writing discussion posts.
# Describe your personal Mount Stupid

A little knowledge is a [dangerous thing](http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2475#comic "SMBC comic"), not sure what the official name for this particular cognitive bias is (feel free to enlighten me). Probably most of us can recognize that feeling of enlightenment after learning a bit of something new and exciting, and not realizing yet how far it is from the mastery of the subject. I suspect that learning the LW brand of rationality is one of those. (Incidentally, if the words "LW brand of rationality" irked you, because you think that there is only one true rationality, consider how close you might be to that particular summit of Mt. Stupid.) See also the last bullet point in the linked comic strip.

As an exercise in rationality, I suggest people post personal accounts of successfully traversing Mt.Stupid, or maybe getting stuck there forever, never to be heard from again. Did you find any of the techniques described in the sequences useful to overcome this bias, beyond the obvious of continuing to learn more about the topic in question? Did you manage to avoid turning Mt.Stupid into the Loggerhead range?

My example: I thought I was great at programming fresh out of college, and ready to dispense my newly found wisdom. Boy, oh boy, was I ever wrong. And then it happened again when I learned some more of the subject on the job...
# HPMoR.com

[Josh's](http://www.elsewhere.org/journal/about/) mirror of _Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality_ has been redesigned by [Lightwave](/user/Lightwave/) (who also did [IntelligenceExplosion.com](http://intelligenceexplosion.com/), [Friendly-AI.com](http://friendly-ai.com/), and [lukeprog.com](http://lukeprog.com/)), and it is now located at a simpler URL: [HPMoR.com](http://hpmor.com/). Thanks also to [Louie](/user/Louie) who put together this "facelift" project.
# [META] 'Rational' vs 'Optimized'

A new arrival, [Kouran](/user/Kouran), recently challenged our conventional use of the label "rational" to describe various systems. The full thread is [here](/lw/90l/welcome_to_less_wrong_2012/5j57), and it doesn't summarize neatly, but he observes that we often use "rational" in the context of non-intellectual, non-cognitive, etc. systems, and that this is an unconventional use of the word.  
  
Unsurprisingly, this led to Standard Conversation Number 12 about how we don't really use "rational" to mean what the rest of the world means by it, and about instrumental rationality, and etc. and etc. In the course of that discussion I made the observation a couple of times ([here](/lw/90l/welcome_to_less_wrong_2012/5lry) and [here](/lw/90l/welcome_to_less_wrong_2012/5lrx)) that we could probably substitute some form of "optimal" for "rational" wherever it appears without losing any information.

Of course, status quo bias being what it is, I promptly added that we wouldn't actually want to do that, because, y'know, it would be work and involve changing stuff.  
  
But the more I think about it, the more it seems like I _ought_ to endorse that lexical shift. We do spend a not-inconsiderable amount of time and attention on alleviating undesirable side-effects of the word 'rational,' such as the Spock effect, and our occasional annoying tendency to talk about the 'rational' choice of shoe-polish when we really mean the optimal choice, and our occasional tendency to tie ourselves in knots around "rationalists should _win_". (That optimized systems do better than non-optimized systems is pretty much the _definition_ of "optimized," after all. If we say that rational systems generally do better than irrational systems, we're saying that rational systems are generally optimal, which is a non-empty statement. But if we define "rational" to mean the thing that wins, which we sometimes do, it seems simpler to talk about optimized systems in the first place.)

There's precedent for this... a while ago I started getting out of the habit of talking about "artificial intelligences" when I really wanted to talk about superhuman optimizing systems instead, and I continue to endorse that change. So, I'm going to stop using "rational" when I actually mean optimal. I encourage others to do so as well. (Or, conversely, to tell me why I shouldn't.)  
  
This should go without saying, but in case it doesn't: I'm not proposing recoding anything or rewriting anything or doing any work here beyond changing my use of language as it's convenient for me to do so.
# [LINK] Antidepressants: Bad Drugs... Or Bad Patients?

[Illuminating post](http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.com/2012/01/antidepressants-bad-drugs-or-bad.html) on _Neuroskeptic_:

Some Quotes:

> Why is it that modern trials of antidepressant drugs _increasingly show no benefit of the drugs over placebo_?.....

> They suggest that maybe it's the patients fault: Participation that is induced by cash payments may lead subjects to exaggerate their symptoms \[i.e. in order to get included into the trial\]... Another contributing factor to high placebo response rates may be the extent to which the volunteers in antidepressant trials are really generalizable to patients in clinical practice.

> Since the initial antidepressant trials in the 1960s, participants have gone from being patients who were recruited primarily from inpatient psychiatric populations to outpatient volunteers who are often recruited by advertisements. At times, these symptomatic volunteers have participated in other trials. When we contact potential participants to schedule screening, they often ask to be reminded which trial we are screening for or mistake our research trial for a different protocol in which they recently participated.

> A few years ago I was running a study recruiting people who'd recovered from psychiatric illness. The main source of volunteers was online adverts..... We recruited about 20 people. No fewer than 3 turned out to have enrolled in other studies and lied about it. After I realized this I Googled the offender's names and two of them turned up in the court pages of the local newspaper pleading guilty to various petty crimes.

> In my view, the authors miss out on the real problem with recruiting depressed people through adverts:  depressed people don't tend to respond to adverts, because depressed people don't do anything. That's why they call it depression.

> So while you wouldn't go looking for aquaphobic people in a swimming pool, I'm not sure we should be looking for depressed people through adverts.

Could similar mechanisms hold true for other drugs?
# Quixey is hiring a writer

![](http://www.quixeychallenge.com/static/images/quixeylogowithtagline.png)

We've posted about jobs at [Quixey](http://www.quixey.com) before:

[Quixey - startup applying LW-style rationality - hiring engineers](/lw/7u8/quixey_startup_applying_lwstyle_rationality/)

Since then we've hired LessWrong user [cata](/user/cata). And it occurred to us that the LessWrong community is not only full of software engineers, it's also full of unusually strong writers.

Job Description
---------------

Help write and edit content to professional standards. For example:

*   Copy for [quixey.com](http://www.quixey.com)
*   Posts on the [Quixey Blog](http://blog.quixey.com)
*   Documents and slides for pitches to potential partners
*   White papers
*   Employee handbook
*   Internal style guide
*   Video scripts
*   Twitter messages

**Requirements:**

*   You have really great writing skills
*   You love marketing and telling a clear story

Quixey is a great place to work with top notch people, and a great opportunity to advance your career as part of a fast-growing startup. For more info about Quixey, see [this post](/lw/7u8/quixey_startup_applying_lwstyle_rationality/).

This is a full-time position in our Palo Alto, California office with competitive compensation and benefits.

To apply, email some Bayesian evidence that you're a good match to [jobs@quixey.com](mailto:jobs@quixey.com), such as your LessWrong user profile. (It's hard to imagine evidence that wouldn't be screened off by a writing sample.)

**Added:** We're also interested to test a contract writer. Please email us if you want to do that, too.
# Giving: is money better than options?

When I started my new job at a startup about a year ago, I started getting about a third \[1\] of my pay in stock options. Being risk neutral in donating, I [decided](http://www.jefftk.com/news/2010-12-07.html) to spend my salary on me and donate any proceeds from my stock options. This let me increase the fraction of my pay I was giving away without decreasing what I keep. Mathematically and economically, considering just what I can give, I think this was the right decision.

The problem is, much of my potential impact is from convincing others to give, and if I have to talk about stock options, expected value, and money that I intend to give away it's confusing and distracting. Things were much simpler when we could just [say](http://boldergiving.org/stories.php?story=Julia_Wise_97) "we lived on about $22,000 and gave about $45,000". Should I switch back to giving money?

It would not be an easy switch. Options represent a small chance of a lot of money, and they're not very valuable to me personally. (Each additional dollar is worth less than the last). If I were to start giving a third of my compensation away as cash, that would be about 2/3 of my paycheque \[2\]. Which would be pretty hard. Maybe I should donate some combination of cash and options?  Making this more complicated, I had negotiated more options in exchange for a $10K lower salary, figuring that for money I was giving away this was the right thing to do.  Suggestions?

  
\[1\] You might say "how can you say 'about a third' when you have no idea whether your stock options will even be worth something ever?" What I did was estimate how likely I thought Cogo Labs was to be worth $X in about ten brackets ($0, $10M, $50M, ...), and then calculate an expected value as $0\*P\_1 + $10M\*P\_2 + $50M*P_3... Then I multiplied by the fraction of the company whose options would vest to me each quarter, and got something about half my quarterly salary. So: one third of compensation.

\[2\] It's 1/2 my salary (the last third is options) but 2/3 of takehome pay because 1/6 of my pay goes to taxes and other paycheque deductions.

(I also put this up as a [blog post](http://www.jefftk.com/news/2012-01-05.html))
# [POLL] Wisdom of the Crowd experiment

Many of you will be familiar with the "[Wisdom of the Crowd](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd)" \- a phenomenon where the average result of a large poll of people's estimates tends to be very accurate, even when most people make poor estimates. I've written a short poll to test a small variant of this setup which I would like to test. 

[Please fill out this short poll.](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHhVX3c1ZU1BZ2pEZENvVXdvY3BvdWc6MQ)

Specifically, I want to see how the weighted average of the results performs when the question is posed as "is the value in question closer to A or B?" This change is inspired by your usual two-party election where people choose between two extreme values, when many voters have opinions in the middle of the two.

Thank you for helping!

I'm a little worried about anchoring in this survey. Suggestions for how to improve it would be appreciated.
# Less wrong has a fitocracy group (invites)

Fitocracy is a fitness gamification social site for logging and tracking workouts.  It has an RPG like system with quests and leveling up.  It makes it very easy to make public commitments to a workout plan and provide each other with motivation and advice.

I shouldn't really have to go over why you need to be working out if you plan on living until the singularity :)

[http://ftcy.co/vMOYfA](http://ftcy.co/vMOYfA)
# [Link] A Bayes' Theorem Visualization

A while ago when Bret Victor's amazing article [Up and Down the Ladder of Abstraction](/lw/828/link_awesome_interactive_visualization_article/) was being discussed, someone mentioned that they'd like to see one made for Bayes' Theorem. I've just completed version 1.0 of my "Bayes' Theorem Ladder of Abstraction", and it can be found here: [http://www.coarsegra.in/?p=111](http://www.coarsegra.in/?p=111)

(It uses the Canvas html5 element, so won't work with older versions of IE).

There's a few bugs in it, and it leaves out many things that I'd like to (eventually) include, but I'm reasonably satisfied with it as a first attempt. Any feedback for what works and what doesn't work, or what you think should be added, would be greatly appreciated.
# Dead Child Currency

From Yvain's 'proposal' to [measure money in dead children](http://www.raikoth.net/deadchild.html):

> According to Population Services International, a respected charity research group, it costs [between $650 and $1000](http://www.givewell.net/PSI) \[1\] to save one child's life through charity. You've probably heard lower numbers like twenty cents somewhere. The lower numbers are wrong. Yes, maybe an anti-measles vaccine for a kid in Africa only costs twenty cents, and measles can be fatal. But there's a lot of overhead, and you have to immunize a lot of people before you get the one kid otherwise destined to die of measles. I find the $650-$1000 figure much more believable. Let's round it off to $800.
> 
> So one dead child = eight hundred dollars. If you spend eight hundred dollars on a laptop, that's one African kid who died because you didn't give it to charity. Distasteful but true. Now that we know that, we can get down to the details of designing the currency itself. It should be a big gold coin, with a picture of a smiling Burmese child on the front, and a tombstone on the back. The abbreviation can be DC.

This makes sense to me, to a limited extent. You can spend money for your own benefit or to help others elsewhere, and there really are people who wouldn't have to die if you would forgo some luxuries. Making this tradeoff more explicit ("we're looking for an apartment costing no more than six dead children annually") might lead some people to greater generosity. It's a way of [abstracting compassion](http://www.jefftk.com/news/2010-12-05.html).

Two things worry me, though. The first is that there's a big focus on spending here \[2\], but increasing earnings deserves more focus: getting a raise or a new job that added $10K to my salary would let me keep more children from dying than would [reducing](http://www.jefftk.com/news/2010-07-06.html) my spending on myself to zero. \[3\] The second is that thinking of all your purchases in terms of dead children is likely to make you miserable. Not just that, but miserable to little gain: you still probably spend almost as much money on yourself, you just feel more guilty about it. Much better, I think, is to pick a rule for [how much to give](http://www.jefftk.com/news/2011-08-09.html) and then apply it to money [as it comes in](http://www.jefftk.com/news/2010-07-19.html). That way each purchase has no effect on the number of deaths you're averting.

(Note: I also posted this on [my blog](http://www.jefftk.com/news/2012-01-09.html))

  
\[1\] The current number is probably [closer to $2K](http://givewell.org/international/top-charities/AMF).

\[2\] Maybe this is because it sounds weird to talk about salary in terms of dead children? ("I wonder what job earns me the most dead children?") Perhaps for earning the unit should be the "[undead child](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UndeadChild)"?

\[3\] In 2011 Julia and I lived on $18K for the two of us, not including taxes or health insurance.
# On Leverage Research's plan for an optimal world

[The plan](http://www.leverageresearch.org/tiki-index.php?page=Our+Current+Plan) currently revolves around using Connection Theory, a new psychological theory, to design "beneficial contagious ideologies", the spread of which will lead to the existence of "an enormous number of actively and stably benevolent people", who will then "coordinate their activities", seek power, and then use their power to eliminate scarcity, disease, harmful governments, global catastrophic threats, etc.

That is not how the world works. Most positions of power are already occupied by people who have common sense, good will, and a sense of responsibility - or they have those traits, to the extent that human frailty manages to preserve them, amidst the unpredictability of life. The idea that a magic new theory of psychology will unlock human potential and create a new political majority of model citizens is a secular messianism with nothing to back it up.

I suggest that the people behind Leverage Research need to decide whether they are in the business of solving problems, or in the business of solving meta-problems. The real problems of the world are hard problems, they overwhelm even highly capable people who devote their lives to making a difference. Handwaving about meta topics like psychology and methodology can't be expected to offer more than marginal assistance in any specific concrete domain.
# On accepting an argument if you have limited computational power.

It would seem rational to accept any argument that is not fallacious; but this leads to consideration of problems such as [Pascal's mugging](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Pascal%27s_mugging) and other exploits.

I've had a realization of a subconscious triviality: for me to accept an argument as true, it is not enough that I find no error in it. The argument must also be so structured that I would expect to have found an error if it was invalid (or I myself must make such structured version first). That's how mathematical proofs work - they are so structured that finding an error requires little computational power (only knowledge of rules and reliability); in the extreme case an entirely unintelligent machine can check a proof.

In light of this I propose that those who want to make a persuasive argument should try to structure the argument so it'd be easy to find flaws in it. This also goes for the thought experiments and hypothetical situations. Those seem rather often to be constructed with entirely opposite goal in mind - to obstruct the verification process or to try to prevent the reader from trying to find flaws.

Something else tangentially related to the arguments. The faulty models are the prime cause of decision errors; yet the faulty models are the staple of thought experiment; nobody raises an eyebrow as all models are ultimately imperfect.

However, to accept an argument based on imperfect model one must be capable of correctly propagating the error and estimating the error in the final conclusion, as a faulty model may be so constructed as to itself differ non substantially from the reality but in such a way that the difference diverges massively along the chain of reasoning. My example of this is the Trolley Problems. The faults of original model are nothing out of ordinary; simplified assumptions of the real world, perfect information, etc. Normally you can have those faults in model and still arrive at reasonably close outcome. The end result is throwing of fat people onto tracks, cutting up of travellers for organs, and similar behaviours which we intuitively know we could live a fair lot better without. How that happens? In real world the strongly asymmetrical relations of form 'death of 1 person saves 10 people' are very rare (as an emergent property of complexity of the real world that is lacking in the imaginary worlds of trolley problems), while the decision errors are not nearly so rare, so most of people killed to save others would end up killed in vain.

I don't know how models can be structured as to facilitate propagation of model's error. But it seems to be necessary for arguments based on models to be convincing.
# Ideas for rationalist meetup topics

(From Zvi Mowshowitz, leader of the New York group, and based on his experience)

  
Category 1: Discussions - The Base  
A: Less Wrong topics. Usually recent posts. Often big hits.  
B: Rationalist group planning and organization. Meta-topics. Dealing with group issues on occasion.  
C: Spreading Rationality. Discussion of various approaches.  
D: Contraband Topics. Discussion of things that I won't include here, but you can guess.  
E: How To Do X, or how to do X well. Charity, meeting people, improving skills, relationships, etc.  
  
Category 2: Presentations - Almost Always a Winner  
F: Sequences. Andrew Rettek did these for public meetups, went over well I think.  
G: Personal Projects: Variance, Geoff Anders's Psychology.  
H: General Knowledge: CBT, Starting a Business, Basic Python.  
I: Advanced Rationality: Attempted once, successful despite poor execution. Should be explored more.  
  
Category 3: Game Nights  
J: Proven Good Games: Illuminati, Poker, Citadels, 7 Wonders, Nomic.  
K: Advanced Games: Much demand for general gaming, but not really that rationalist. Proven winners in this group: Vegas Showdown, Power Struggle, Baltimore & Ohio, Tichu, Through the Ages. I can keep going, many good choices. AVOID: Settlers of Catan (personal opinion) and Fluxx (cause you can do better, honestly).  
U: Outside Games. Ultimate Frisbee is good.  
  
Category 4: Other Celebrations  
L: Karaoke  
M: Baraccuda (bring something awesome you love)  
N: Contraband Activities (enough said)  
O: General Party In or Out / Pot Luck  
  
Category 5: Special Guests  
P: Famous Rationalists! If you get Eliezer or Robin or Vassar, you need no other topic. Probably a few others who get there on their own as well, or any generally famous guest.  
  
Category 6: Self-Improvement  
Q: Go out and do something to improve social skills.  
R: Discuss or map out goals and plans. Set goals. Can be combined with other tasks.  
S: Run experiments! For science!  
T: Study Hall. Also folds into discussion of self-improvement topics.
# AI Challenge: Ants - Post Mortem

Late last year a LessWrong team was being mooted for the Google AI challenge ([http://aichallenge.org/](http://aichallenge.org/);  [http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/8ay/ai\_challenge\_ants/](http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/8ay/ai_challenge_ants/)). Sadly, after a brief burst of activity, no "official" LessWrong entry appeared (AFAICT, and please let me know if I am mistaken). The best individual effort from this site's regulars (AFAICT) came from lavalamp, who finished around #300.

This is a pity. This was an opportunity to achieve, or at least have a go at, a bunch of worthwhile things, including development of methods of cooperation between site members, gathering positive publicity, and yes, even advancing the understanding of AI related issues. 

So - how can things be improved for the next AI challenge (which I think is about 6 months away)?
# The Noddy problem

An episode of the Noddy animated series has the following plot.

Noddy needs to go pick up Martha Monkey at the station. But it's such a nice, sunny day that he would prefer to play around outside. He gets an idea to solve this dilemma. He casts a duplication spell on himself and his car and tells the duplicate to go fetch Martha while he goes out to play. Later, Noddy is out having fun when he suddenly spots his duplicate. It turns out that the duplicate also preferred playing outside to doing the errand so he also cast a duplication spell. Then they see another duplicate, and another...  
  
I think this story makes for a nice simple illustration of one of our perennial decision theoretic issues: When making decisions you should take into account that agents identical to yourself will make the same decision in the same situation. A common real-life example of the Noddy problem is when we try to [pawn off our dietary problems to our future selves](/lw/4sh/how_i_lost_100_pounds_using_tdt/).
# [LINK] Being No One (~50 min talk on the self-model in your brain)

**Summary:** This is a ~50 minute talk (plus some introductory ado) by Thomas Metzinger on the problem of the experiencing, subjective self (why it exists, what it even means, how it arises). Not to be too cliché, but he attacks the problem by [dissolving the question](/lw/of/dissolving_the_question/), and the solution he arrives at sounds a lot like [how an algorithm feels from inside.](/lw/no/how_an_algorithm_feels_from_inside/)

Using several examples from neuroscience (particularly the many illuminating failure modes of the brain), he explains how the brain models the self and its place in the center of experiential space. He discusses the limitations of our access to our own cognitive systems, and how those limitations force us to be naive realists.

I hesitate to summarize further, because there is a lot of value in hearing the entire argument. (I will say that he gets a little cute at the end, but that doesn't detract from the excellent content.)

**Link:** [Being No One](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mthDxnFXs9k) on Youtube.

_(Normally I think LWers dislike the talk format because it's inherently time-consuming, but I'd say this one is information dense and well worth your time.)_
# [Meta] No LessWrong Blackout?

Our sister site apparently is:

> ### Overcoming Bias will resume normal service on Jan 18 8:00pm (Eastern Time).
> 
> Today Overcoming Bias joins [Wikipedia](http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/English_Wikipedia_to_go_dark) and [many other sites](http://www.sopastrike.com/) in protesting proposed legislation — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECTIP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate.
> 
> If passed, SOPA and PIPA will give the US Justice Department and courts tremendous power to shut down entire sites. These bills endanger free speech both in the United States and abroad, potentially setting a frightening precedent of Internet censorship for the world.
> 
> You can find out more about the impact of SOPA and PIPA from the [Electronic Frontier Foundation](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/01/how-pipa-and-sopa-violate-white-house-principles-supporting-free-speech).

Interesting, my model of Robin Hanson had him say something about the blackout and how it shows people are hypocrites. Though obviously he has strong opinions on intellectual property. I think it would have been a good idea to Blackout LessWrong today. It would have given us a status boost in most of the communities we frequent.
# The Singularity Institute's Arrogance Problem

I intended [Leveling Up in Rationality](/lw/9fy/leveling_up_in_rationality_a_personal_journey/) to communicate this:

> Despite worries that [extreme rationality isn't that great](/lw/9p/rationality_its_not_that_great/), I think there's reason to hope that it _can_ be great if some other causal factors are flipped the right way (e.g. mastery over akrasia). Here are some detailed examples I can share because they're from my own life...

But some people seem to have read it and heard this instead:

> I'm super-awesome. Don't you wish you were more like me? Yay rationality!

This failure (on my part) fits into a larger pattern of the Singularity Institute _seeming_ too arrogant and (perhaps) _being_ too arrogant. As one friend recently told me:

> At least among Caltech undergrads and academic mathematicians, it's taboo to toot your own horn. In these worlds, one's achievements speak for themselves, so whether one is a Fields Medalist or a failure, one gains status purely passively, and must appear not to care about being smart or accomplished. I think because you and Eliezer don't have formal technical training, you don't instinctively grasp this taboo. Thus Eliezer's claim of world-class mathematical ability, in combination with his lack of technical publications, make it hard for a mathematician to take him seriously, because his social stance doesn't pattern-match to anything good. Eliezer's arrogance as evidence of technical cluelessness, was one of the reasons I didn't donate until I met \[someone at SI in person\]. So for instance, your [boast](/lw/9fy/leveling_up_in_rationality_a_personal_journey/) that at SI discussions "everyone at the table knows and applies an insane amount of all the major sciences" would make any Caltech undergrad roll their eyes; your standard of an "insane amount" seems to be relative to the general population, not relative to actual scientists. And posting a list of powers you've acquired doesn't make anyone any more impressed than they already were, and isn't a high-status move.

So, I have a few questions:

1.  What are the most egregious examples of SI's arrogance?
2.  On which subjects and in which ways is SI too arrogant? Are there subjects and ways in which SI isn't arrogant enough?
3.  What should SI do about this?
# Zeckhauser's roulette

Imagine you're playing Russian roulette. Case 1: a six-shooter contains four bullets, and you're asked how much you'll pay to remove one of them.  Case 2: a six-shooter contains two bullets, and you're asked how much you'll pay to remove both of them. Steven Landsburg describes [an argument by Richard Zeckhauser and Richard Jeffrey](http://www.thebigquestions.com/2011/01/05/another-rationality-test/) saying you should pay the same amount in both cases, provided that you don't have heirs and all your remaining money magically disappears when you die. What do you think?
# Breaking the chain of akrasia

I'd like to share my specific motivation for writing [Can the Chain Still Hold You?](/lw/99t/can_the_chain_still_hold_you/)

I agree with [Yvain](/lw/9p/rationality_its_not_that_great/) that akrasia is probably a major reason that rationality alone doesn't create superheroes. You might be _much_ better than average at making good decisions based on an accurate model of reality, but that doesn't mean you can _follow through with them_.

Many people report that their thinking is clearer and better as a result of Less Wrong. But despite our [many](/lw/33s/antiakrasia_reprise/), [many](/lw/ab/akrasia_and_shangrila/) [attempts](/lw/1sm/akrasia_tactics_review) [to](/lw/7z1/antiakrasia_tool_like_stickkcom_for_data_nerds/) [hack](/lw/1tu/improving_the_akrasia_hypothesis/) [away](/lw/2qv/browser_buddies_remote_monitoring_experiment/) [at](/lw/1fe/antiakrasia_technique_structured_procrastination/) [the](/lw/6c/akrasia_hyperbolic_discounting_and_picoeconomics/) [problem](/lw/3kt/proposal_antiakrasia_alliance/) [of](/lw/8ug/building_casestudies_of_akrasia/) [akrasia](/lw/8s9/an_akrasia_case_study/) (more: [1](/lw/e9/fighting_akrasia_finding_the_source/), [2](/lw/38s/akrasia_as_a_collective_action_problem/), [3](/lw/dp/fighting_akrasia_incentivising_action/), [4](/lw/am/how_a_pathological_procrastinor_can_lose_weight/), [5](/lw/9w/silver_chairs_paternalism_and_akrasia/), [6](/lw/2ry/expectationbased_akrasia_management/), [7](/lw/1wx/crunchcourse_a_tool_for_combating_learning_akrasia/), [8](/lw/b7/actions_and_words_akrasia_and_the_fruit_of/), [9](/lw/136/an_akrasia_anecdote/), [10](/lw/3w3/how_to_beat_procrastination/)), I haven't heard of many LWers conquering akrasia.

But I still have hope that this is possible. In 2006, we _finally_ got a decent psychological [theory of procrastination](http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Steel-Konig-Integrating-Theories-of-Motivation.pdf), much [better than](http://my.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/49705/arousal-avoidant-and-decisional-procrastinators-do-they-exist.pdf) the old [decisional-avoidant-arousal theory](http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Ferrari-Psychometric-validation-of-two-procrastination-inventoriesfor-adults.pdf). On the timescale of progress in psychology, 2006 is basically _yesterday_. The first book on how to apply this new theory to daily life was published in [late 2010](http://www.amazon.com/Procrastination-Equation-Putting-Things-Getting/dp/0061703613/). There is no community of people systematically practicing these techniques and reporting their results.

So it seems to me there is a lot of low-hanging fruit to be scooped up in the field of procrastination research. If we try and test enough things, and especially if our tests our theory-guided, we may be able to learn new things and flip a few causal factors such that the chain of akrasia no longer holds us — at least, not as tightly as before.
# A Word to the Resourceful

Paul Graham has a [new article](http://www.paulgraham.com/word.html) out. Everything he's written is worth reading if you're at all interested in startups, but this article seemed explicitly connected to rationality, by identifying an area where people who are more likely to update / less likely to rationalize will do better than others.

The obvious questions: can this be tested? Noticed early on, rather than in hindsight? Changed by rationality training?
# Some potential dangers of rationality training

[Taylor & Brown (1988)](http://www.lrsi.uqam.ca/documents/PSY9520/05%20-%20l'estime%20de%20soi%202%20-%20ses%20fonctions,%20cons%E9quences,%20et%20processus%20alternatifs/TAYLOR~1.PDF) argued that several kinds of irrationality are good for you — for example that overconfidence, including the planning fallacy, protects you from depression and gives you greater motivation [because](/lw/3w3/how_to_beat_procrastination/) your expectancy of success is higher.

One can imagine other examples. Perhaps the sunk cost fallacy is useful because without it you're prone to switch projects as soon as a higher-value project comes along, leaving an ever-growing heap of abandoned projects behind you.

This may be one reason that many people's lives aren't much improved by [rationality training](/lw/5x8/teachable_rationality_skills/). Perhaps the _benefits_ of having more accurate models of the world and making better decisions are swamped by the _negative_ effects of losing out on the benefits of overconfidence and the sunk costs fallacy and other "positive illusions." Yes, I read "[Less Wrong Probably Doesn't Cause Akrasia](/lw/7s4/poll_results_lw_probably_doesnt_cause_akrasia/)," but there were too many methodological weaknesses to give that study much weight, I think. 

[Others](http://persweb.wabash.edu/facstaff/hortonr/articles%20for%20class/colvin%20and%20block%20against%20taylor.pdf) have argued against Taylor & Brown's conclusion, and at least [one recent study](http://web.utk.edu/~jmcnulty/McNulty/Papers_files/O'Mara%20et%20al._2011_JPSP_1.pdf) suggests that biases are not inherently positive or negative for mental health and motivation because the effect depends on the context in which they occur. There seems to be no expert consensus on the matter.

(Inspired by a conversation with [Louie](/user/Louie).)
# Politicians' family as signalling

In the US, if you look at political candidates in public view, they often appear with family in tow. A candidate's family plays an important role in the election campaigns. I'm from India. There, the politicians' family play little role in election campaigns (unless the family member herself is actively involved in the party and politics, which is often). But, the relative importance of family (relative to other aspects like money, education) in the cultural value system of India is significantly greater than its relative importance in the cultural value system of the US. So why the inverse relation?

I think it may have to do with signalling (inspired by Hanson, Zahavi). Maintaining a stable family is considered to be less of a status quo situation in the US, when compared to India. So in the US, maintaining a stable family is a _signal_ of your management skills at the level of family, because you had to spend effort to obtain that signal. But in India, the family does not have signalling value, because it is much more common to have a stable family. So having a stable family did not require an 'extra' effort (extra compared to society's default). 

What would this imply? How would one test such a theory?
# New x-risk organizations

Of course: [FHI](http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/), [FutureTech](http://lesswrong.com/lw/8gg/new_ai_risks_research_institute_at_oxford/), the [Singularity Institute](http://intelligence.org/), and [Leverage Research](http://www.leverageresearch.org/).

New: the [Global Catastrophic Risk Institute](http://www.gcrinstitute.org/) (Seth Baum & Tony Barrett).

I've also heard that the following people are working to set up x-risk departments/organizations:

[Huw Price](http://prce.hu/w/index.html) at Cambridge

[Newton Howard](http://web.mit.edu/nhmit/www/) at MIT

[Jeffrey Epstein](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein)
# The Singularity Institute is hiring an executive assistant near Berkeley

The Singularity Institute is hiring an executive assistant for Executive Director [Luke Muehlhauser](http://lukeprog.com/).

Right now his limiter (besides the need for _some_ sleep and recreation) is not (1) cognitive exhaustion after a certain number of hours or (2) akrasia, but instead (3) needing to spend lots of time doing things that don't _need_ to be him: e.g. hunting down the best product for X and buying it, shopping for food, finding names and email addresses for the top 30 researchers in field X, finding motorcycle classes and a motorcycle so he can stop paying so much for cabs when he doesn't have time for public transport, scheduling meetings with dozens of donors and collaborators, finding a good location for activity X, preparing an itinerary and buying plane tickets, and hundreds of other small things. (Some of these are 'life' things, some of these are SI things, but hours are hours.) Luke may also ask his executive assistant to handle certain tasks for other SI staffers.

Benefits:

*   Work directly with some of the central figures of Less Wrong, especially [Luke(prog)](/user/lukeprog)
*   Work from home most of the time, with a somewhat self-determined schedule
*   Trial period at $15/hr for 20 hrs/week; if all goes well then get hired full-time at SI's standard starting salary of $3k/month

Responsibilities:

*   Represent our organization in a professional manner at all times
*   Manage scheduling and appointments for Luke
*   Prepare and manage correspondence professionally and accurately
*   Coordinate travel arrangements for Luke
*   Online and local shopping and transport
*   Internet research
*   Whatever else Luke needs done

Job requirements:

*   Good interpersonal skills and strong team-player attitude
*   Capable of clean, professional written communication with proper spelling, punctuation, and grammar
*   Positive, friendly and helpful attitude
*   Ability to handle sensitive and/or confidential material and information
*   Must pay strong attention to detail
*   Professional demeanor, dedicated and reliable, conscientious
*   Computer & internet literate
*   Own a car
*   Live in or near Berkeley, CA

Bonus points if you...

*   ...have read the [Core Sequences](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences#Core_Sequences)
*   ...have experience as a personal or executive assistant
*   ...have even better creative non-fiction writing skills than is required for professional correspondance
*   ...are handy with Google Scholar
*   ...know a good amount of math, statistics, computer science, or cognitive science
*   ...have some skills in graphic design / presentation design

**How to apply**:

Send an email to jobs@intelligence.org with the subject line "Executive Assistant Position". Include your cover letter as plain text in the email body, and attach your résumé in PDF format.
# How would you talk a stranger off the ledge?

Last month, two people far at the periphery of my social circles have threatened suicide. Seems like a sign for me to learn some ledge-fu.

I reviewed the stuff I'd learned back in high school ("Listen." "Be supportive." "Don't argue." "Etc etc etc.") I have trouble believing that this would work outside of movieland, _especially_ on strangers. More so, in person I'm an awkward, fidgeting introvert---the impact of everything I say is thus diminished, and I sound very insincere or clinical, like I'm following a bad movie script, when I say anything like, "You are not alone in this. I’m here for you." or "How can I best support you right now?" I doubt that this would sound any better in writing.

I suppose I could split my question into two related ones: what would you say to a person threatening to commit suicide, 1. in person, and 2. in an email?

I'm looking for out-of-the-box ideas that don't rely on charisma or compassion shining through. Personally, if I ever need to talk myself out of suicidal thoughts, I apply the "bum comparison principle": if my life is so crummy that I'm willing to commit suicide, then I should be willing to just walk out on everything I value and [drift off in a random direction](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WalkingTheEarth), survive by dine-and-dashing out of cheap restaurants and wash dishes if I get caught, maybe take [odd jobs](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SideQuest) or hitchhike or gather roots and berries or blog from public libraries. I don't see this possibility in a negative light, and yet I still haven't done it. To me, it means that however bad my life may seem, I'm still too attached to it to walk out; therefore, suicide isn't on the menu.

People have different reasons to want suicide, and I understand that what works for me with my first world problems probably won't work for a person who is in too much physical pain from an incurable disease. To the best of my knowledge, the two people I mentioned earlier are both unskilled laborers who had lost their jobs, one of them so long ago that he's no longer eligible for unemployment benefits. I don't think I'll meet these particular people again, but I'd appreciate everyone's thoughts on what I could've said if my brain hadn't frozen.
# Michael Nielsen explains Judea Pearl's causality

[Michael Nielsen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Nielsen) has posted [a long essay](http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/if-correlation-doesnt-imply-causation-then-what-does/) explaining his understanding of the Pearlean causal DAG model. I don't understand more than half, but that's much more than I got out of a few other papers. Strongly recommended for anyone interested in the topic.