trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Wanting to Succeed on Every Metric Presented
by Logan Riggs — 2021-04-12T20:43:01.240Z

There’s a tendency to want to score high on every metric you come across. When I first read Kegan’s

5 stages of adult development

, I wanted to be a stage 5 meta-rationalist! Reading the meditation book “The Mind Illuminated” (TMI), I wanted to be stage 10 (and enlightened and stage 8 jhana and…)! I remember seeing

this dancer

moonwalk sideways and wanting to be that good too!

This tendency is harmful.

But isn’t it good to want to be good at things? Depends on the "things" and your personal goals. What I’m pointing out is a tendency to become emotionally invested in metrics and standards, without careful thought on what you actually value. If you don’t seriously investigate your own personal preferences and taste, you may spend years of your life invested in something you don’t actually care about. By adding this habit of reflection, you could become much happier than you are right now.

[Note: I believe most people are bad at figuring out what they actually value and prefer. For example, I thought skilled pianists are cool and high status, but when I actually became decent enough to wow your average Joe, being cool in those moments wasn’t as cool as I thought it would be. As they say, “

Wanting is better than having

”.]

There’s a difference between wanting to score 100’s/all A+’s and scoring well enough to get a job. There’s a difference between reading multiple textbooks cover-to-cover and reading the 40% or so that seem relevant to your tasks. There are tradeoffs; you can’t optimize for everything. When you perceive a metric that makes you really want to score highly on, nail down the tradeoffs in fine-grained details. What about this do you actually care about? What’s the minimum you could score on this metric and still get what you want? What do you actually want? Speaking out loud or writing this out is good for getting an outside view and notice confusion.

Noticing this pattern is half the battle. To make it concrete, here are examples from my life:

Running - I ran cross country and track for 3 years, but then I realized I don’t enjoy running long distance. Later I found out that sprinting is fun! If I was better at knowing my values, I could’ve just played ultimate frisbee with friends instead.

Dancing - I used to imagine dancing at weddings and such and looking really cool! I remember being really self-conscious and slightly miserable when I ...
Using Flashcards for Deliberate Practice
by DirectedEvolution — 2021-04-12T19:07:24.063Z

Note: As in many of my recent posts, these ideas are new to me, and I'm just starting to test them out. This is part of a larger project of overhauling and refining my approach to scholarship. I'm excited to hear feedback and criticism. I anticipate this project will take years, and I don't know where it's heading next. Thank you for indulging me...

Interleaving Deliberate Practice

One criticism of using automated flashcard systems, like Anki, for conceptual topics, like math or physics, is that they don't offer you an easy way to practice solving problems. In theory, you might be able to use some flashcard platforms to automatically generate new problems to solve. However, this seems like a complicated, time-consuming, and ongoing challenge.

An alternative idea is to create flashcards that tell you what exercises to solve from a textbook. Such a flashcard might read:

"Solve 5 problems from Chapter 1.1 pg. 10-13 of Zill's First Course in Differential Equations textbook."

Assume that the spacing of flashcard reviews starts at about 4 days apart, and increases by about 2.5x each time. If so, you'd see that flashcard about 4 times in the first two months, 6 times in the first year, and 9 times over 15 years.

Imagine you wanted to spread your practice out over 15 years at increasing intervals, for a total of 9 reviews. Also, imagine there were 60 problems in Chapter 1.1. In that case, you'd want to assign yourself 60 ÷ 9 ≅ 7 problems every time that flashcard came up.

Since you'd most likely not want to do all the easy problems first and leave the challenge problems for 15 years later, you might want to refine this by requiring that you work on every 9th problem. Hence, on your first review, you'd do problems 1, 10, 19, 28, 37, 46, and 55 from Chapter 1.1. On the second review, you'd do problems 2, 11, 20, 29, 38, 47, and 56.

As you go, you'd need to keep a record of which problems you'd solved. You could do this in several ways:

Keep track in the flashcard itself, by editing it with the next set of "to-do" problems so that you'll know just what to do when it flashes up.
Mark off the problems in a physical book, or use a highlight annotation in an e-book.
Keep a physical document, such as a notebook, where you work the exercises for a specific subject so that you can look up what you did last time you worked on Chapter 1.1.
Keep a separate document, like a text file, that n

...
How long would you wait to get Moderna/Pfizer vs J&J?
by Sameerishere — 2021-04-12T18:23:49.135Z

My assessment:

People who can easily continue to guard against significant COVID risks for several weeks without much downside other than quality of life should wait several weeks for Pfizer or Moderna.
(People who have to expose themselves to a non-trivial amount of COVID risk no matter what should take the J&J vaccine if they'd have to wait several more weeks for Pfizer / Moderna. I haven't run the numbers on this, but at some point I'd expect the additional risk exposure from being unvaccinated for several weeks to outweigh the difference in efficacy.)

My rationale:

1. Moderna and Pfizer provide significantly better protection against non-severe infections.

J&J provides:

28 days after the injection: 66% protection against moderate to severe COVID infections (72% "in the United States", but I don't know to what extent that is robust to further spread of foreign variants in the US) and 85% against severe disease [1][2]
48 days after the injection: 100% protection against severe COVID. (I don't know what 100% protection means, exactly - a commenter pointed out that there is no such thing as 100% protection - but for the sake of argument, let's say it's close to that.) [3]

Moderna and Pfizer provided 94.1% and 95% protection against any symptomatic infections generally after the 2nd dose [1]

2. I'd expect that even non-severe infections increase your risk of long-term lingering effects (in addition to being fairly unpleasant in the meantime, but I'm less concerned about that).

I don't have great evidence for #2 yet. While mild infections have a non-trivial risk of long COVID [4], it seems like even initially asymptomatic cases account for about a 3rd of long-COVID cases [5]. I would hypothesize that the risk of long COVID is significantly less for asymptomatic cases than for symptomatic cases, but haven't researched that much yet.

Zvi said in his 2/4 COVID post, "I’d pay a substantial amount to get Pfizer or Moderna instead of J&J if I could get either one today, but given the choice between waiting and taking what’s available, I will happily accept the J&J vaccine now rather than hold out for Pfizer or Moderna."

What am I missing? Is this just a difference in the weight we place on resuming higher-risk activities sooner rather than later? Or am I overplaying the superior efficacy of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines?

Sour...
D&D.Sci April 2021: Voyages of the Gray Swan
by abstractapplic — 2021-04-12T18:23:11.674Z

You were prepared for gratitude, a commendation from the Admiral, your own department, parades in your name. You were also prepared to hear that your ‘list of helpful suggestions for ensuring supply ships survive random encounters’ was an impudent insult to the collective intellect of High Command, and receive a public execution for your trouble. What you weren’t prepared for was what happened: being allocated a modest stipend, assigned to a vessel, and told that if you’re so clever you should implement your plans personally.

You have 100gp to spend, and your options are as follows:

Intervention	Cost
Coating the underside of the ship in shark repellent would ensure that no journey would feature shark attacks; however, Vaarsuvius’ Law (“every trip between plot-relevant locations will have exactly one random encounter”) means something else would attack instead.	40gp
You’ve given up trying to understand what it is about woodwork that makes its practitioners so good at fighting Crabmonsters, but your findings are undeniable: arming the ship’s carpenters would halve the damage done by Crabmonster attacks.	20gp
Offering tribute to the Merpeople would ensure they won’t attack the ship, similar to the effect of shark repellent.	45gp
There’s enough space in the lower decks to add up to twenty more oars, so when fleeing is the best option, the entire crew can work together to escape. Each extra oar would decrease the damage done by Krakens and Demon Whales by 2%.	1gp/oar
You wouldn’t think these ships could fit more artillery, but clever ergonomics allow you to add up to three more cannons. Your studies suggest each cannon would reduce the damage suffered in Nessie and Pirate attacks by 10%.	10gp/cannon
Arming the Crow’s Nest with state-of-the-art rifles would give lookouts a 70% chance of ensuring a given Harpy attack does no damage.	35gp
Giving the deck crew novelty foam swords to wield alongside their standard-issue cutlasses would improve their effectiveness when fighting Water Elementals, reducing the damage these creatures do by 60%.	15gp

You’re completely confident in the effectiveness of your ideas, but much less confident that you know which combination would make the best use of your limited budget. To investigate this angle, you’ve procured a record of random encounters encountered by the ships travelling your assigned route; unfortunately, it’s missing some important infor...
Post-COVID Integration Rituals
by Unreal — 2021-04-12T16:54:53.557Z

I'm writing this because I am realizing we're at the cusp of the end of a very long "retreat."

At MAPLE (Monastic Academy), we go on retreat once a month, and so we exit retreat once a month.

This can be quite a shock to the system, so we deliberately set aside a day for integration purposes, where we slowly transition out of retreat into our normal work period.

For those of you who are chomping on the bit for in-person, social interaction, I would advise using intentionality about how you go about this.

It might be good if people made deliberate efforts to emphasize integration, as part of their transition process. It might be worthwhile to think through how you want your "integration rituals" to go.

Consideration for Rituals

I advocate for rituals—they seem to be an unintended victim of our modern age. We have forgotten about them. They hold no space in our minds as a thing to value. In the past, we wouldn't really have to think about our rituals; they would just happen as part of traditions passed down to us. Since we are in somewhat of a "tradition-scarce" age, it takes activation energy to prioritize things like intentional rituals.

However, this pandemic has meaning to people on every level. To the individual, to the family, to the group house, to the community, to the workplace, to the globe.

And so it is obviously a meaningful event for it to end. For the enforced retreat to come to a close, however gradually or unevenly the vaccination phase may take place across groups, states, and nations.

What kinds of meanings would you want to symbolically acknowledge? What would help your body, heart, and mind through this transition? What things need to be set aside now? What things need to be seeded and fostered now? What things need to be remembered? What things need to be envisioned for the future?

Who should be involved? Who do we acknowledge? Perhaps our own selves, having gone through this process. Perhaps the people we've lost. Perhaps the new life that has emerged. Perhaps the people we've been together with through this period. Perhaps the people we now are able to connect with in person.

Who is coming back together for this integration? Who is the new "we"? Who are we now?

The Integration Period

The other consideration here is how to integrate in such a way you don't:

Burn out on too mu

...
A New Center? [Politics] [Wishful Thinking]
by abramdemski — 2021-04-12T15:19:35.430Z

Political polarization in the USA has been increasing for decades, and has become quite severe. This may have a variety of causes, but it seems highly probable that the internet has played a large role, by facilitating the toxoplasma of rage to an unprecedented degree.

Recently I have the (wishful) feeling that the parties have moved so far apart that there is "room in the center". The left is for people who are fed up with the extremes of the right. The right is for people who are fed up with the extremes of the left. But where do people go if they've become fed up with both extremes?

The question is: how would the new center work? There's not room for a new political party; plurality voting makes that too difficult, because if the new party doesn't gain more than 1/3rd of the vote, it's basically a wasted vote.

Here is my proposal for what it could look like:

Rather than operating as a traditional political party, New Center would attempt to be a formalized group of swing voters: it makes recommendations about which candidates from other parties to vote for. Given how some elections are consistently very close (most notably, the US presidential election), New Center might be able to achieve a kingmaker status even with only a relatively small portion of voters.
In order to accomplish this, New Center has to make recommendations which credibly represent centrist values (and only centrist values).
The New Center needs a strong set of criteria by which it judges politicians. These criteria must be based on a critique of the extreme left and the extreme right, to capture people's frustrations with both sides.
Registering with the movement might involve pledging your vote to their recommended candidates. In return, registering might give you a voice in the selection process.

For example, New Center candidates might be selected by New Center members rating other party's candidates on each New Center criterion. Of course this process is easily manipulated by rating your favorite candidates highly on every criterion; however, arranging the ballot this way nudges people to judge honestly. Also, strategic voting here isn't that bad provided that those who join are actually pretty centrist in the first place.

It might also be good for the initial set of criteria, or at least the rhetoric, to appeal to moderate libertarians as well, since that's a pre-existing group which cons...
On Falsifying the Simulation Hypothesis (or Embracing its Predictions)
by lorepieri — 2021-04-12T00:12:12.838Z

Disclaimer: This is my first post on this website, I tried to follow the proper etiquette, but please let me know if something is off. :)

Briefly about me: former academic (PhD in theoretical physics, quantum black holes, string theory, information paradox) turned entrepreneur (currently building a company in the AI/Robotics space).

A widespread belief surrounding the Simulation Hypothesis (SH) is that being or not being in a simulation doesn't really have any implication for our lives. Or equivalently, SH is often criticised as unscientific and unfalsifiable, since no definite universal testable predictions have (so far) been made. By universal prediction I mean a prediction that all (or at least a very large part) of the simulations must make.

In this post I would like to challenge this view by noticing that in the space of all simulations some families of simulations are more likely than others. Having at least the rough behaviour of the probability distribution over the space of simulations then allows us to extract probabilistic predictions about our reality, therefore bringing SH in the realm of falsifiable theories. Of course there will be some assumptions to stomach along the way.

The whole line of reasoning of this post can be summarised in few points:

1- We are equally likely to be in one of the many simulations.

2- The vast majority of simulations are simple.

3- Therefore, we are very likely to be in a simple simulation.

4- Therefore, we should not expect to observe X, Y, Z, ...

I will now expand on those points.

1- We are equally likely to be in one of the many simulations.

First of all, let's assume that we are in a simulation. Since we have no information that could favour a given simulation, we should treat our presence in a given simulation as equally likely among all the simulations. This "bland indifference principle", is telling us that what matters is the multiplicity of a given reference class of simulations, that is what percentage of all the possible simulations belong to that reference class. The definition of a reference class of a civilisation simulation is tricky and subjective, but for our purposes is enough to fix a definition and the rest of the post will apply to that definition. For instance we may say that a simulation in which WWII never started is part of our reference class, since we can conc...
"Taking your environment as object" vs "Being subject to your environment"
by Ben Pace — 2021-04-11T22:47:04.978Z

I think there's a key rationalist skill of being able to take your environment as object, rather than being subject to it.

There's a kind of wisdom people get when they leave environments. Today I talked to a friend of mine who has moved out of living in a city for over a year, and on visiting a city she noticed things about it that made her feel pressured and unpleasant that she'd never noticed before.

I've also done several interviews with people who are quitting organizations or leaving communities, asking them why they're leaving, and there's a certain lightness to them and their speech about the place. They can talk about the negatives and the positives freely, and don't feel anxiety toward finding ways to balance their negatives with equal positives, like they're supposed to justify their environment as 'good'. They just speak plainly. I can hear them 'admitting' things a little with a chuckle, as though it was always true but not something they'd felt able to say until now.

Here's a slightly different example, but that's focused on a similar sort of mental move: I recently was on an intensely restrictive diet, because I thought it was very healthy and would cause me to lose weight. I'd done this diet before, but this time I had a much more unpredictable workload, which messed up my routine and I crashed several times from under-eating. I finally decided to let myself broaden the diet notably, and on the first bite of new food I had 2 realizations.

Firstly, I didn't actually believe in the previous diet for its own sake. It was actually to make me disciplined about my food.

Secondly, I hadn't let myself think that thought during my diet, I think because it would have been too much strain for me to discipline myself in this way just to discipline myself. It was much less strain to think that my diet had some magical properties for my health.

Recently, I read and participated in Eliezer's dath ilan thread, where he answered questions about his home civilization.

Eliezer has a fantastic imagination. He is able to imagine what our civilization would like, from the perspective of someone in a different civilization. He is able to just say what it looks like from this outsider's perspective, and say what are probably very obvious things from their perspective. But when you're on the inside it's far harder. You can sometimes do it with normal means within the system...
Bayes' theorem, plausible deniability, and smiley faces
by Adam Zerner — 2021-04-11T20:41:10.324Z

I believe they refer to that as a, smiley face. They're frequently used by idiots at the end of emails and text messages.

− Larry David, The Smiley Face

I have a dilemma. I live in an era of text messaging, Slack, and internet forums. Sometimes I'll be in a conversation where I and my conversational partner end up using smiley faces a lot. But, like Larry David, I find that they can get annoying.

"So? Just stop using them then." you may be thinking. If only it were that simple.

You see, once I have already established this as a normal response:

That's awesome, thanks :)))

You're the best! :)

Woo hoo :)

If I then respond with just "thanks", well, it seems like something is wrong. I've established this pattern of emphatic thank yous as a baseline, and now I'm going way below that baseline, so I must be ticked off or something.

Why would that be? There are various ways to think about it. Let's start off with denotation vs connotation. Denotation is about the literal meaning of the word. Connotation is more... "catch my drift?". The denotation of me saying "thanks" − the literal meaning of it − is, well, an expression of me being thankful. But the connotation can vary drastically depending on the context. And if we're in a context where I usually give responses such as "That's awesome, thanks :)))", the connotation of a measley "thanks" is that I'm upset.

Or maybe a better way to frame it is as text vs subtext.

Those both work. But I think a more fun way to frame it is in terms of bayesian evidence.

"What on Earth do I have to do to convince you? "

"To convince me that you harbor no ambitions of becoming a Dark Lord?" said Professor Quirrell, now looking outright amused. "I suppose you could just raise your right hand."

"What?" Harry said blankly. "But I can raise my right hand whether or not I -" Harry stopped, feeling rather stupid.

"Indeed," said Professor Quirrell. "You can just as easily do it either way. There is nothing you can do to convince me because I would know that was exactly what you were trying to do. And if we are to be even more precise, then while I suppose it is barely possible that perfectly good people exist even though I have never met one, it is nonetheless improbable that someone would be beaten for fifteen minutes and then stand up and feel a great surge of kindly forgiveness for his attackers. On the other hand it is less improbable that

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