Harley-ml/lesswrong huggingface dataset:
# How to tell apart science from pseudo-science in a field you don't know ?

First, a short personal note to make you understand why this is important to me. To make a long story short, the son of a friend has some atypical form of autism and language troubles. And that kid matters a lot to me, so I want to become stronger in helping him, to be able to better interact with him and help him overcome his troubles.

But I don't know much about psychology. I'm a computer scientist, with a general background of maths and physics. I'm kind of a nerd, social skills aren't my strength. I did read some of the basic books advised on Less Wrong, like Cialdini, Wright or Wiseman, but those just give me a very small background on which to build.

And psychology in general, autism/language troubles in particular, are fields in which there is a lot of pseudo-science. I'm very sceptical of Freud and psychoanalysis, for example, which I consider (but maybe I am wrong?) to be more like alchemy than like chemistry. There are a lot of mysticism and sect-like gurus related to autism, too.

So I'm bit unsure on how from my position of having a general scientific and rationality background I can dive into a completely unrelated field. Research papers are probably above my current level in psychology, so I think books (textbooks or popular science) are the way to go. But how to find which books on the hundreds that were written on the topic I should buy and read? Books that are evidence-based science, not pseudo-science, I mean. What is a general method to select which books to start in a field you don't really know? I would welcome any advise from the community.

_Disclaimer: this is a personal "call for help", but since I think the answers/advices may matter outside my own personal case, I hope you don't mind._
# Dragon Ball's Hyperbolic Time Chamber

> A time dilation tool from an anime is discussed for its practical use on Earth; there seem surprisingly few uses and none that will change the world, due to the severe penalties humans would incur while using it, and basic constraints like Amdahl's law limit the scientific uses. A comparison with the position of an Artificial Intelligence such as an emulated human brain seems fair, except most of the time dilation disadvantages do not apply or can be ameliorated and hence any speedups could be quite effectively exploited. I suggest that skeptics of the idea that speedups give advantages are implicitly working off the crippled time dilation tool and not making allowance for the _dis_analogies.

Master version on [gwern.net](http://www.gwern.net/Hyperbolic%20Time%20Chamber)
# What's your "rationalist arguing" origin story?

By rationalist arguing, I mean the sort of argument where you'd rather have the right belief at the end than "win." This is quite different from the usual rationalization competition style of argument, and is pretty rare. But somehow, it happens on LessWrong a lot. It goes by other names too, but I am contractually obligated to put the word "rationalist" before as many other words as I can.

Back when I was a teenager, and I mean like 13-16, I frequented an online political forum, which shall remain unnamed. It was about as rational as one might expect, which is to say awful. And eventually, after three years visiting there, I stopped. The first mover of me moving out was that I'd figured out the moves on the rhetorical chessboard - if I make an appeal to intuition here, they can make an ad hominem there, and so on and so on. And once this arguing became transparent, it also became boring - instead I started actually asking the question "how can I figure out what's _true_?" And so I stopped arguing politics, which had been a pretty big habit of mine a week before.

Cut forward some years. I'm a LessWrong reader. And somewhere after my first few months of posting I figure out that I _really_ shouldn't be trying to "win arguments" here - after all, I stopped doing that when I was 16, right? Instead, I decide, I should practice "cooperative arguing," where the goal is to work together (dialectically, though I wouldn't have known to call it that at the time). And if you're doing it really right, you should be able to "lose" (in quotes because you're learning from it and don't give a crap) about half the time. Don't "try to lose," but "try to be able to lose." There's a reflection of HPMOR in there, but it's in a funhouse mirror.

Since then I've advanced a bit, so I can look at creating environments that help this happen, but this post was titled "origin story" and that's what I'm curious about. For me, getting familiar with rhetoric and then getting fed up with it was necessary before I could go on to actually try to be able to lose. But it seems a little specific - there seem (perhaps) to be plenty of other people who follow the same rules as me on here, and you can't _all_ have frequented political forums during your forumative years (sorry). Or can you?

Was LW key in germinating this "rationalist arguing," or did we have the seeds already within us?  Memory says the latter, but statistics says the former. Or perhaps it's just a selection effect, and old people who have figured all this out just didn't tell me. Or they did and I didn't comprehend.

Gonna need data. What's your "rationalist arguing" origin story?
# How To Actually Change Your Mind eBook (In Order)

Firstly, if this has already been created, then I apologize, but I couldn't find it and I looked.

I wanted to read the how to change your mind sequence on my eBook reader, but when I looked around the site I couldn't find any eBooks other than large ones with the blog posts in order of post date, which isn't really how the sequences are arranged. So I decided to copy and paste everything from the how to change your mind sequence into an eBook. Primarily for my personal use, but I figured that other people might be interested in it as well.

My version is in epub format, Calibre can convert to others, but if you'd like another format, let me know and I'll convert it.

I believe that I got all the basic HTML formatting down, like indention where was it in the main article and bullet points and suchlike. I didn't include hyperlinks, as most eReaders can't open them.

The table of contents is arranged exactly like the subsequences are in the sequence.

I've tested it in Calibre and on my Sony PRS 505 (which is quite old at this point), but everything seemed to work everywhere I tested it.

If you find any errors, or have any suggestions, please let me know.

*   [epub (9/3/2012)](http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?yza7p8jv7bfp8o6 "epub (9/3/2012)")
*   [mobi (9/3/2012)](http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?lsab5mf5xzud55f "mobi (9/3/2012)")
*   [pdf (9/3/2012)](http://www.mediafire.com/view/?8u324jj311mzs5b)
# LessWrong Wiki as Anki deck

I've ported the [Less Wrong Wiki](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/LessWrong_Wiki) into an Anki deck. I hope this will be useful for new members as an alternative way to get acquainted with many interesting LessWrong concepts (Newcomb's problem? Superexponential conceptspace?).

A disclaimer: this an automatized scrape and therefore it might not always look great. In particular lot's of cards don't really conform the "simple and specific" rules for spaced repetition cards (see e.g. http://www.supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm) - the deck it is thus not meant for memorizing the definitions, but rather for reading/browsing/recognizing the concepts. Nonetheless, I hope this still will be useful for some of us (certainly for me). 

I did a semi-automatic sanitization of the cards, but if you find some bogus ones (or any other problem) please let me know and I'll fix it.

The scraped Wiki version is from 01/09/2012 and there are currently 628 cards. There are "forward" format cards (name front, description back) and also "reverse" cards (in cloze format where it was possible, i.e. where the concept name comes up in the description text).

The deck is here:

https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0B6GcntZeZpBHVjRkVUE2Uko2Vk0/edit

The link also contains a .txt version of the cards (tab separated) which might be used to import to other repetition software than Anki.

The deck can be supplemented e.g. by the "List of Cognitive Biases and Fallacies" and "42 Logical Fallacies" decks as well as other decks mentioned on the [spaced repetition wiki page](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Spaced_repetition).
# Link: Toward Non-Stupid, Non-Blank-Slatey Polyandry

http://theviewfromhell.blogspot.com/2012/09/toward-non-stupid-non-blank-slatey.html

The author gives a shout out to Less Wrong as a community with a perpetually skewed gender ratio, which is precisely the conditions under which polyandry appears to thrive.

Discuss. :)
# Jews and Nazis: a version of dust specks vs torture

This is based on a discussion in #lesswrong a few months back, and I am not sure how to resolve it.

Setup: suppose the world is populated by two groups of people, one just wants to be left alone (labeled Jews), the other group hates the first one with passion and want them dead (labeled Nazis). The second group is otherwise just as "good" as the first one (loves their relatives, their country and is known to be in general quite rational). They just can't help but hate the other guys (this condition is to forestall the objections like "Nazis ought to change their terminal values"). Maybe the shape of Jewish noses just creeps the hell out of them, or something. Let's just assume, for the sake of argument, that there is no changing that hatred.

Is it rational to exterminate the Jews to improve the Nazi's quality of life? Well, this seems like a silly question. Of course not! Now, what if there are many more Nazis than Jews? Is there a number large enough where exterminating Jews would be a net positive utility for the world? Umm... Not sure... I'd like to think that probably not, human life is sacred! What if some day their society invents immortality, then every death is like an extremely large (infinite?) negative utility!

Fine then, not exterminating. Just send them all to concentration camps, where they will suffer in misery and probably have a shorter lifespan than they would otherwise. This is not an ideal solutions from the Nazi point of view, but it makes them feel a little bit better. And now the utilities are unquestionably comparable, so if there are billions of Nazis and only a handful of Jews, the overall suffering decreases when the Jews are sent to the camps.

This logic is completely analogous to that in the dust specks vs torture discussions, only my "little XML labels", to quote Eliezer, make it more emotionally charged. Thus, if you are a utilitarian anti-specker, you ought to decide that, barring changing Nazi's terminal value of hating Jews, the rational behavior is to herd the Jews into concentration camps, or possibly even exterminate them, provided there are enough Nazi's in the world who benefit from it.

This is quite a repugnant conclusion, and I don't see a way of fixing it the way the original one is fixed (to paraphrase Eliezer, "only lives worth celebrating are worth creating").

**EDIT: Thanks to [CronoDAS](/r/discussion/lw/ef5/jews_and_nazis_a_version_of_dust_specks_vs_torture/7dcc) for pointing out that this is known as the 1000 Sadists problem. Once I had this term, I found that [lukeprog](http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=2982) has mentioned it on his old blog. **
# Friendship is Optimal: A My Little Pony fanfic about an optimization process

\[EDIT, Nov 14th: And it's posted. [New discussion about release](/r/discussion/lw/fi8/launched_friendship_is_optimal/). Link to _[Friendship is Optimal](http://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/Friendship-is-Optimal)_.\]

\[EDIT, Nov 13th: I've submitted to FIMFiction, and will update with a link to its permanent home if it passes moderation. I have also removed the docs link and will make the document private once it goes live.\]

* * *

Over the last year, I’ve spent a lot of my free time writing a semi-rationalist My Little Pony fanfic. Whenever I’ve mentioned this side project, I’ve received requests to alpha the story.

I present, as an open beta: Friendship is Optimal. Please do not spread that link outside of LessWrong; Google Docs is not its permanent home. I intend to put it up on fanfiction.net and submit it to Equestria Daily after incorporating any feedback. The story is complete, and I believe I've caught the majority of typographical and grammatical problems. (Though if you find some, comments are open on the doc itself.) Given the subject matter, I’m asking for the LessWrong community’s help in spotting any major logical flaws or other storytelling problems.

Cover jacket text:

_Hanna, the CEO of Hofvarpnir Studios, just won the contract to write the official_ My Little Pony _MMO. She had better hurry; a US military contractor is developing weapons based on her artificial intelligence technology, which just_ may _destroy the world. Hana has built an A.I. Princess Celestia and given her one basic drive: to satisfy values through friendship and ponies. What will Princess Celestia do when she’s let loose upon the world, following the drives Hanna has given her?_

Special thanks to my roommate (who did extensive editing and was invaluable in noticing attempts by me to anthropomorphize an AI), and to Vaniver, who along with my roommate, convinced me to delete what was just a flat out _bad_ chapter.
# Meetup report: How harmful is cannabis, and will you change your habits?

[A week ago](/lw/eab/meetup_berkeley_meetup_cannabis_decisionmaking/) the meetup group in Berkeley discussed a new article in PNAS titled ["Persistent cannabis users show neuropsychological decline from childhood to midlife"](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/08/22/1206820109). Several people who didn't attend said they were interested in how that conversation went.

Before discussing the specifics of the article, we went around the room and stated how many IQ points we'd be willing to spend for some level of cannabis use. The median answer given was 4 points for moderate usage. Then someone pointed out that since we responded out loud, there may have been an anchoring effect here.

My understanding of the group's understanding of the scientific result is that smoking so much marijuana that you're diagnosable as cannabis-dependent (whatever that means) before the age of 18 will give you an IQ hit of 9-11 points, maybe more, over 20 years, compared to nonusers.

People who were diagnosable as dependent on cannabis but not before 18 got an IQ hit of 4 or 5 points, on average. We don't know if this is because cannabis is bad for adults, or if it's bad for people just over 18.

People who have used cannabis but were not diagnosed as dependent got an IQ hit of 1 or 2 points on average. The article gives us little information on what the risks of various moderate levels of cannabis use are.

We didn't discuss any methodological errors in the study, but the general attitude of the group was that the scientific result is worth taking seriously.

After the discussion, people who use cannabis opportunistically or not at all — especially the younger attendees — said that after learning about the study they now have another reason not to use cannabis. One person who uses cannabis less than once per week said they wouldn't change their usage habits.
# Interested in learning Linux? Need hosting? Free shells!

Sign up form: [Click Here](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFRIb2VZMEJXSEIzQzAxV3V2UnhQM2c6MQ#gid=0)  

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I own a personal server running Debian Squeeze which has a 1Gb/s symmetric connection and 15TB per month bandwidth.

I am offering free shell accounts to lesswrongers, with one contingency:

You'll be placed in a usergroup, 'lw', as opposed to various other usergroups for various other communities I belong to, which will be in other usergroups. Anything that ends up in /var/log is fair game. I intend to make lots of graphs and post them on all the communities I belong to. There won't be any personally identifying data in anything that ends up publicly.

Your shell account will start out with a disk quota of 5g, and if you need more you can ask me. I'm totally cool with you seeding your torrents. I do not intend to terminate accounts at any point for inactivity or otherwise; you can reasonably expect to have access for at least a year, probably longer.

Fill out the form at the top of the page, query me on freenode's irc (JohnWittle), send me an email: johnwittle@gmail.com, or reply to this thread with your own contact information.

If you'd like to ask questions about the server, or what good such a service might be for you, point your IRC client at johnwittle.com and /join #shells (you should also do this if you sign up), or find me on freenode, or comment below.

<del>Also, while the results of my analysis are likely to go in Discussion, I was wondering if this offering of free service itself might go in discussion. I asked in IRC and was told that advertisements are seriously frowned upon and that I would lose all my karma.</del> I was told that this is not too similar to advertising, and that it would fly.

Edit: As far as illicit activities go... I am precommitting here to fully cooperating with any law enforcement entities who approach me with regards to the server. By using the server, you are agreeing to abstain from any activities which will get me in trouble **even if** I cooperate fully with law enforcement.
# Counterfactual Reprogramming Decision Theory

Surprisingly, Ben Goertzel's ([2010](http://goertzel.org/CounterfactualReprogrammingDecisionTheory.pdf)) Counterfactual Reprogramming Decision Theory (CRDT) has not been discussed even once on Less Wrong, so I present this discussion post as an opportunity to do so.

Here is Goertzel's abstract:

> A novel variant of decision theory is presented. The basic idea is that one should ask, at each point in time: What would I do if the reprogrammable parts of my brain were reprogrammed by a superintelligent Master Programmer with the goal of supplying me with a program that would maximize my utility averaged over possible worlds? Problems such as the Prisoner's Dilemma, the value of voting, Newcomb's Problem and the Psychopath Button are reviewed from this perspective and shown to be addressed in a satisfactory way.

His first footnote acknowledges some debt to Less Wrong and to [Wei Dai](/user/Wei_Dai/submitted/) in particular:

> Some interesting, albeit often confusing, discussion on CDT and hypothetical replacement decision theories may be found online at the Less Wrong blog... The decision algorithm presented by Dai on that blog page bears some resemblance to CRDT, but due to the rough and very informal exposition there, I'm not sure what is the precise relationship.

He also discusses Vladimir Nesov's [counterfactual mugging](/lw/3l/counterfactual_mugging/) scenario, and attempts to work toward a formalization of CRDT by making use of AIXI and some other stuff.

Thoughts?
# Random LW-parodying Statement Generator

So, I were looking at [this](/lw/d2w/cards_against_rationality/), and then suddenly [this thing](http://jsbin.com/ibebih/49) happened.

EDIT:

**[New version](http://jsbin.com/ibebih/49)!** I updated the link above to it as well. Added LOADS and LOADS of new content, although I'm not entirely sure if it's actually more fun (my guess is there's more total fun due to varity, but that it's more diluted).

I ended up working on this basically the entire day to day, and implemented practically all my ideas I have so far, except for some grammar issues that'd require disproportionately much work. So unless there are loads of suggestions or my brain comes up with lots of new ideas over the next few days, this may be the last version in a while and I may call it beta and ask for spell-check. Still alpha as of writing this thou.

Since there were some close calls already, I'll restate this explicitly: I'd be easier for everyone if there weren't any forks for at least a few more days, even ones just for spell-checking. After that/I move this to beta feel more than free to do whatever you want.

Thanks to everyone who commented! ^_^

[old Source](http://jsbin.com/ibebih/3/edit), [old version](http://jsbin.com/ibebih/3), [latest source](http://jsbin.com/ibebih/49/edit)

^Credits: [http://lesswrong.com/lw/d2w/cards\_against\_rationality/](/lw/d2w/cards_against_rationality) , [http://lesswrong.com/lw/9ki/shit\_rationalists\_say/](/lw/9ki/shit_rationalists_say) , various people commenting on this article with suggestions, random people on the bay12 forums that helped me with the engine this is a descendent from ages ago.^
# The Yudkowsky Ambition Scale

From [Hacker News](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4510702).

> 1.  We're going to build the next Facebook!
> 2.  We're going to found the next Apple!
> 3.  Our product will create sweeping political change! This will produce a major economic revolution in at least one country! (Seasteading would be change on this level if it worked; creating a new country successfully is around the same level of change as this.)
> 4.  Our product is the next nuclear weapon. You wouldn't want that in the wrong hands, would you?
> 5.  This is going to be the equivalent of the invention of electricity if it works out.
> 6.  We're going to make an IQ-enhancing drug and produce basic change in the human condition.
> 7.  We're going to build serious Drexler-class molecular nanotechnology.
> 8.  We're going to upload a human brain into a computer.
> 9.  We're going to build a recursively self-improving Artificial Intelligence.
> 10.  We think we've figured out how to hack into the computer our universe is running on.

This made me laugh, but from the look of it, I'd say there is little work to do to make it serious. Personally, I'd try to shorten it so it is punchier and more memorable.
# Under-acknowledged Value Differences

I've been reading a lot of the recent LW discussions on politics and gender, and noticed that people rarely bring up or explicitly acknowledge that different people affected by some political or gender issue have different values/preferences, and therefore solving the problem involves a strong element of bargaining and is not just a matter of straightforward optimization. Instead, we tend to talk as if there is some way to solve the problem that's best for everyone, and that rational discussion will bring us closer to finding that one best solution.

For example, when discussing gender-related problems, one solution may be generally better for men, while another solution may be generally better for women. If people are selfish, then they will each prefer the solution that's individually best for them, even if they can agree on all of the facts. (It's [unclear](/lw/8gk/where_do_selfish_values_come_from/) whether people _should_ be selfish, but it seems best to assume that most are, for practical purposes.)

Unfortunately, [in bargaining situations](/lw/f6/epistemic_vs_instrumental_rationality_case_of_the/), epistemic rationality is not necessarily instrumentally rational. In general, convincing others of a falsehood can be useful for moving the negotiated outcome closer to one's own preferences and away from others', and this may be done more easily if one honestly believes the falsehood. (One of these falsehoods may be, for example, "My preferred solution is best for everyone.") Given these (subconsciously or evolutionarily processed) incentives, it seems reasonable to think that the more solving a problem resembles bargaining, the more likely we are to be epistemicaly irrationality when thinking and talking about it.

If we do not acknowledge and keep in mind that we are in a bargaining situation, then we are less likely to detect such failures of epistemic rationality, especially in ourselves. We're also less likely to see that there's an element of Prisoner's Dilemma in participating in such debates: your effort to convince people to adopt your preferred solution is costly (in time and in your and LW's overall sanity level) but may achieve little because someone else is making an opposite argument. Both of you may be better off if neither engaged in the debate.
# Experimental psychology on word confusion

There's [plenty of experimental work](http://appliedrationality.org/recommended-reading-on-rationality/) about how humans make poor judgments and decisions, but I haven't yet found much about how humans make poor judgments and decisions _because of confusions about words_. And yet, I expect such errors are common — I, at least, encounter them frequently.

It would be nice to have some scientific studies which illustrate the ways in which confusions about words affect everyday decision making, but instead all I can do is make philosophical arguments and point people to things like Yudkowsky's [37 Ways That Words Can Be Wrong](/lw/od/37_ways_that_words_can_be_wrong/) or Chalmers' [Verbal Disputes and Philosophical Progress](http://consc.net/oxford/chap9.pdf).

Which keywords do I need to find experimental work on this topic? I tried Google scholar searches like ["fuzzy concepts" "decision making"](/"fuzzy concepts" "decision making") and [effect of connotations on choices](/effect of connotations on choices) but I didn't find much in my first hour of looking into this.
# High School Lectures

Just recently at my high school, a group of classmates and I started a science club. A major component of this is listening and giving peer lectures on topics of physics, math, computer science, etc. I picked a topic a bit off to the side: philosophy and decision making. Naturally, this includes rationality. My plan is to start with something based off the sequences, specifically "How to Actually Change Your Mind" and "A Human's Guide to Words".

I was hoping the Less Wrong community could give me some suggestions, tips, or even alternative ways to approach this. There is no end goal, we just want to learn more and think better. All our members are among the top 5% academically of their own grade. Most of us are seniors and have finished high school math, taking AP Calculus this year. We have covered basic statistics and Bayes' Theorem, but only applied it to the Disease Problem.

Any help or ideas are appreciated.

Update: Thank you for all these suggestions! They are incredibly helpful for me. I will attempt to make a recording of the lecture period if possible. I will make another discussion post sometime next weekend (the first lecture is next Friday) to report how it went.

Update 2: Report [here](/r/discussion/lw/emq/high_school_lecture_report/).
# Scientists make monkeys smarter using brain implants [link]

[Article at io9.](http://io9.com/5943379/for-the-first-time-ever-scientists-have-made-monkeys-smarter-using-brain-implants-could-you-be-next) The paper is available [here](http://iopscience.iop.org/1741-2552/9/5/056012).

The researchers showed monkeys specific images and then trained them to select those images out of a larger set after a time delay. They recorded the monkeys' brain function to determine which signals were important. The experiment tests the monkey's performance on this task in different cases, as described by io9:

> Once they were satisfied that the correct mapping had been done, they administered cocaine to the monkeys to impair their performance on the match-to-sample task (seems like a rather severe drug to administer, but there you have it). Immediately, the monkeys' performance fell by a factor of 20%.
> 
> It was at this point that the researchers engaged the neural device. Specifically, they deployed a "multi-input multi-output nonlinear" (MIMO) model to stimulate the neurons that the monkeys needed to complete the task. The inputs of this device monitored such things as blood flow, temperature, and the electrical activity of other neurons, while the outputs triggered the individual neurons required for decision making. Taken together, the i/o model was able to predict the output of the cortical neurons — and in turn deliver electrical stimulation to the right neurons at the right time.
> 
> And incredibly, it worked. The researchers successfully restored the monkeys' decision-making skills even though they were still dealing with the effects of the cocaine. Moreover, when duplicating the experiment under normal conditions, the monkeys' performance improved beyond the 75% proficiency level shown earlier. In other words, a kind of cognitive enhancement had happened.

This research is a remarkable followup to research that was done in rodents [last year](/lw/6eu/biomedical_engineers_analyzeand_duplicatethe/).
# [LINK] Motivational Versus Metabolic Effects of Carbohydrates on Self-Control

> Self-control is critical for achievement and well-being. However, people’s capacity for self-control is limited and becomes depleted through use. One prominent explanation for this depletion posits that self-control consumes energy through carbohydrate metabolization, which further suggests that ingesting carbohydrates improves self-control. Some evidence has supported this _energy model_, but because of its broad implications for efforts to improve self-control, we reevaluated the role of carbohydrates in self-control processes. In four experiments, we found that (a) exerting self-control did not increase carbohydrate metabolization, as assessed with highly precise measurements of blood glucose levels under carefully standardized conditions; (b) rinsing one’s mouth with, but not ingesting, carbohydrate solutions immediately bolstered self-control; and (c) carbohydrate rinsing did not increase blood glucose. These findings challenge metabolic explanations for the role of carbohydrates in self-control depletion; we therefore propose an alternative _motivational model_ for these and other previously observed effects of carbohydrates on self-control.

[Link.](http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/09/12/0956797612439069.short)
# Meta: What tool turns rich text into clean HTML?

If you write an article in [Word](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Word), [Writer](http://www.libreoffice.org/features/writer/), [Scrivener](http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php), [Google Docs](https://docs.google.com/), or another rich text editor, and then copy+paste that rich text into an online WYSIWYG editor like the one on Less Wrong or WordPress, the HTML generated by LW or WordPress is _incredibly messy_ and does tons of weird stuff to your text.

Because of this, I've taken to composing all my posts in [Markdown](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/), which is plain text (like HTML) but easier to read, and can be [easily converted](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/dingus) to clean HTML.

Ideally, though, authors would be able to compose articles in whatever editor they want, and then paste their rich text into a **simple web tool that strips all formatting from the HTML except the formatting they want to keep**.

[HTML Purifier](http://htmlpurifier.org/), [TIDY](http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/), and [HTML Tidy](http://infohound.net/tidy/) aren't quite what we need. [Word2CleanHTML](http://word2cleanhtml.com/), [Word HTML Cleaner](http://textism.com/wordcleaner/) and [WordOff](http://wordoff.org/), along with [CKEditor](http://ckeditor.com/demo)'s and [TinyMCE](http://www.tinymce.com/tryit/full.php)'s 'Paste from Word' features, _kinda_ work, but not really: they still make mistakes pretty often when I try them.

What I was hoping to find was something like [Word2CleanHTML](http://word2cleanhtml.com/) but with three changes:

1.  Does a good job when pasting from just about _any_ rich text editor, not just Word.
2.  Allows the user to choose which formatting to keep, using a list of checkboxes for bold, italic, strikethrough, headings, text coloring, blockquotes, etc.

Does this exist, and I couldn't find it?

Or, is this relatively easy for a coder to create?
# Less Wrong Polls in Comments

You can now write Less Wrong comments that contain polls! John Simon picked up and finished some code I had written back in 2010 but never finished, and our admins Wesley Moore and Matt Fallshaw have deployed it. You can use it right now, so let's give it some testing here in this thread.

The polls work through the existing Markdown comment formatting, similar to the syntax used for links. Full documentation is in [the wiki](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Comment_formatting#Polls); the short version is that you can write comments like this:

What is your favorite color? \[poll\]{Red}{Green}{Blue}{Other}

How long has it been your favorite color, in years? \[poll:number\]

Red is a nice color \[poll:Agree....Disagree\]

Will your favorite color change? \[poll:probability\]

To see the results of the poll, you have to vote (you can leave questions blank if you want). The results include a link to the raw poll data, including the usernames of people who submitted votes with the "Vote anonymously" box unchecked. After you submit the comment, if you go back and edit your comment all those poll tags will have turned into \[pollid:123\]. You can edit the rest of the comment without resetting the poll, but you can't change the options.

It works right now, but it's also new and could be buggy. Let's give it some testing; what have you always wanted to know about Less Wrongers?
# New study on choice blindness in moral positions

Change blindness is the phenomenon whereby people fail to notice changes in scenery and whatnot if they're not directed to pay attention to it. There are countless videos online demonstrating this effect ([one of my favorites here, by Richard Wiseman](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voAntzB7EwE)).

One of the most audacious and famous experiments is known informally as ["the door study"](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWSxSQsspiQ): an experimenter asks a passerby for directions, but is interrupted by a pair of construction workers carrying an unhinged door, concealing another person whom replaces the experimenter as the door passes. Incredibly, the person giving directions rarely notices they are now talking to a completely different person. This effect was reproduced by Derren Brown on British TV ([here's an amateur re-enactment](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-HxtKgKrL8)).

Subsequently a [pair of Swedish researchers](http://www.lucs.lu.se/choice-blindness-group/) familiar with some sleight-of-hand magic conceived a new twist on this line of research, arguably even more audacious: have participants make a choice and quietly swap that choice with something else. People not only fail to notice the change, but confabulate reasons why they had preferred the counterfeit choice ([video here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRqyw-EwgTk)). They called their new paradigm "_Choice Blindness_".

Just recently the same Swedish researchers published a new study that is even more shocking. Rather than demonstrating choice blindness by having participants choose between two photographs, they demonstrated the same effect **with moral propositions**. Participants completed a survey asking them to agree or disagree with statements such as "_large scale governmental surveillance of e-mail and Internet traffic ought to be forbidden as a means to combat international crime and terrorism_". When they reviewed their copy of the survey their responses had been covertly changed, but 69% failed to notice at least one of two changes, and when asked to explain their answers **53% argued in favor of what they falsely believed was their original choice**, when they had previously indicated the opposite moral position ([study here](http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0045457?imageURI=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0045457.t001), [video here](http://vimeo.com/32511676)).
# Principals, agents, negotiation, and precommitments

I'm sure this observation has been made plenty of times before: a principal can gain negotiating power by delegating negotiations to an agent, and restricting that agent's ability to negotiate.

For example: If I'm at a family-owned pizza joint, and I want a slice of pepperoni but all they've got is meat-lover's, I can negotiate for the latter at the price of the former. This is a good deal with well-aligned incentives, and is likely to be accepted. But at a chain restaurant, the employees are not empowered to negotiate: It's the menu prices or nothing. Since I'm aware of their lack of power, and my demand for pizza is not very elastic, I'm likely to give them the higher price.

If I squint, this looks a lot like a precommitment, on the part of the pizza store, not to negotiate prices. But if they explicitly made such a precommitment, it might turn off customers -- nobody likes to feel like they're getting a bad deal, and a statement of precommitment (e.g. a sign reading "all prices are final") is likely to make customers feel marginally negative towards the business by drawing their attention to the money they aren't saving.

By contrast, the corporate form -- such as the chain store has -- gives this kind of 'precommitment' as a side-effect of the otherwise socially-normal behavior of delegating limited responsibility to employees. Same benefit, but without the drawback, mostly because the practice is socially-accepted.

Is there any literature that covers this kind of thing further? Particularly the link between precommitment and agents with limited negotating ability.

(I am sitting in a chain pizza store as I write this. Guess what I wanted to order, and what I got instead?)
# [link] Betting on bad futures

[Garett Jones](http://economics.gmu.edu/people/gjonesb), an economist at George Mason University and guest blogger for [EconLog](http://econlog.econlib.org/), suggests a way for people to bet on apocalyptic events:

[http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/09/how\_to\_bet\_on\_b.html](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/09/how_to_bet_on_b.html)

The basic idea:

Suppose Alice and Bob disagree on whether the world will end a year from tomorrow, with Alice believing it will end. If she is right, then there will be no way to settle the bet, what with the apocalypse and all that. Thus there is no way for her to collect, and so she has no incentive to bet on the apocalypse, no matter how certain she is.

Or so it would seem! The way around the difficulty is simply for Alice to get her money today, and enjoy it for a year. If she turns out to have been right, then she will have been paid properly. If the world doesn't end, then of course she'll have to return the money, plus interest--plus a penalty for being wrong.

The actual terms should depend on the confidence Alice and Bob place in their respective positions.

Personal note: Several people at my place of work have told me that they are worried about the world ending later this year. They saw [a movie](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1190080/) about it, or something. So far, they have rejected my bet proposals.
# High School Lecture - Report

This post is a followup report to [this](/r/discussion/lw/eiy/high_school_lectures/).

On Friday's lecture, I was able to briefly cover several topics as an introduction. They centred around rationality (what it is), truth (what it is and why we should pursue it), and Newcomb's Paradox.

The turnout was as expected (6 out of a total 7 group members, with 1 having other obligations that day). Throughout the talk I would ask for some proposed definitions before giving them. It is unfortunate when I asked what "truth" is, mysterious answers such as "truth is the meaning of life", and "truth is the pursuit of truth". When asked what they meant by their answers, they either rephrased what they said with the same vagueness or were unable to give an answer. One member, however, did say that "Truth is what is real", only to have other members ask what he meant by "real". It offered a rather nice opportunity for a map-and-territory tangent before giving some version of "The Simple Truth".

I used the definitions given in 'What Do We Mean By "Rationality"?' to describe epistemic and instrumental rationality, and gave several examples as to what rationality is not (Dr. Spock, logic/reason, etc). As a practice, I introduced Newcomb's Paradox. There was ample debate with an even split between one-box and two-boxers. Due to time constraints, we weren't able to come to a conclusion (although the one-boxing side was making a stronger argument). By the end of lunch period, everyone seemed to have a good grasp that rationality is simply making the best decision to achieve one's goals, whatever they may be.

Overall, I'd say it was successful. My next turn is on October 3rd, and apart from a little review, I'm going to go over the 5-second level, and use of words. Saying what they mean is something we as a group need to work on.
# No Anthropic Evidence

**Closely related to:** [How Many LHC Failures Is Too Many?](/lw/u5/how_many_lhc_failures_is_too_many/)

Consider the following thought experiment. At the start, an "original" coin is tossed, but not shown. If it was "tails", a gun is loaded, otherwise it's not. After that, you are offered a big number of rounds of decision, where in each one you can either quit the game, or toss a coin of your own. If your coin falls "tails", the gun gets triggered, and depending on how the original coin fell (whether the gun was loaded), you either get shot or not (if the gun doesn't fire, i.e. if the original coin was "heads", you are free to go). If your coin is "heads", you are all right for the round. If you quit the game, you will get shot at the exit with probability 75% independently of what was happening during the game (and of the original coin). The question is, should you keep playing or quit if you observe, say, 1000 "heads" in a row?

Intuitively, it seems as if 1000 "heads" is "anthropic evidence" for the original coin being "tails", that the long sequence of "heads" can only be explained by the fact that "tails" would have killed you. If you know that the original coin was "tails", then to keep playing is to face the certainty of eventually tossing "tails" and getting shot, which is worse than quitting, with only 75% chance of death. Thus, it seems preferable to quit.

On the other hand, each "heads" you observe doesn't distinguish the hypothetical where the original coin was "heads" from one where it was "tails". The first round can be modeled by a 4-element finite probability space consisting of options {HH, HT, TH, TT}, where HH and HT correspond to the original coin being "heads" and HH and TH to the coin-for-the-round being "heads". Observing "heads" is the event {HH, TH} that has the same 50% posterior probabilities for "heads" and "tails" of the original coin. Thus, each round that ends in "heads" doesn't change the knowledge about the original coin, even if there were 1000 rounds of this type. And since you only get shot if the original coin was "tails", you only get to 50% probability of dying as the game continues, which is better than the 75% from quitting the game.

(See also the comments by [simon2](/lw/u5/how_many_lhc_failures_is_too_many/neg) and [Benja Fallenstein](/lw/u5/how_many_lhc_failures_is_too_many/net) on the LHC post, and [this thought experiment](/lw/u5/how_many_lhc_failures_is_too_many/tjg) by Benja Fallenstein.)

The result of this exercise could be generalized by saying that counterfactual possibility of dying doesn't in itself influence the conclusions that can be drawn from observations that happened within the hypotheticals where one didn't die. Only if the possibility of dying influences the probability of observations that did take place, would it be possible to detect that possibility. For example, if in the above exercise, a loaded gun would cause the coin to become biased in a known way, only then would it be possible to detect the state of the gun (1000 "heads" would imply either that the gun is likely loaded, or that it's likely not).
# Finally Ending My Cryo-Crastination

I've finally decided to take the plunge and make the arrangements for my eventual cryonic preservation. To help myself make sure that I actually follow through with everything necessary, I'm publicly pre-committing myself here to accomplish that.

As initial evidence that I'm actually serious about doing this, I've sent an email to [The Cryonics Institute](http://www.cryonics.org/) today, whose contents were as follows:

  
  
  
  
I have decided to finally stop procrastinating and make the necessary arrangements for my eventual cryonic preservation, and I have chosen CI to make those arrangements with.  
  
I have looked through your membership pages and online sample forms, and I believe that I can work through my end of the paperwork without any real trouble, although I would still appreciate any advice you have to offer. For example, I live in Canada, about an hour's drive from Toronto, which might affect which forms are necessary.  
  
Before I send my initial payment, I would at least like to confirm the basic details, and let you know who the money is coming from. It appears that, to start things off, I can Paypal you USD $110, for the yearly membership fee plus the first quarter's dues; after which I would mail you a physical, signed copy of the yearly membership application. After that, there will be a variety of documents to sign and have witnessed; and the insurance plan to arrange for. Is that a reasonable summary?  
  
For the life insurance, I am thinking of a 20-year term policy with RBC (Royal Bank of Canada). Have you had any dealings with them previously, to know whether or not there will be any problems in setting the Cryonics Institute as the beneficiary? Do you have any recommendations about how large a benefit in excess of the basic USD $35,000 amount the policy should pay out, such as to cover currency-exchange fluctuations or the 'local help' rider?  
  
Is there anything else you would recommend be discussed before I make that initial payment and set the ball in motion?
# Why humans are sometimes less rational than animals

[New paper](http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Stanovich-Why-Humans-are-Sometimes-Less-Rational-Than-Animals.pdf) from Keith Stanovich (one of my favorite cognitive scientists): 

> Several formal analyses in decision theory have shown that if people’s preferences follow certain logical patterns (the so-called axioms of rational choice) then they are behaving as if they are maximising utility. However, numerous studies in the decision-making literature have indicated that humans often violate the axioms of rational choice. Additionally, studies of nonhuman animals indicate that they are largely rational in an axiomatic sense. It is important to understand why the finding that humans are less rational than other animals is not paradoxical. This paper discusses three reasons why the principles of rational choice are actually easier to follow when the cognitive architecture of the organism is simpler: contextual complexity, symbolic complexity, and the strong evaluator struggle.

Enjoy.
# Petrov Day Image

[9/26 is Petrov Day](/lw/jq/926_is_petrov_day/)

While mentioning this in Facebook statuses, Tweets, and face-to-face conversation is good, things often stick better when there's a picture associated with them. Image macros are popular, and more fun to share. So here's one for Petrov Day I threw together.

http://i.imgur.com/3GNms.jpg

![](http://i.imgur.com/3GNms.jpg)