trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Group Rationality Diary, December 1-15
by therufs — 2013-12-02T21:46:04.779Z

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for December 1-15.

It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:

Established a useful new habit

Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief

Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations

Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior

Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something

Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life

Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you

Tried doing any of the above and failed

Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.

Thanks to cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating.

Immediate past diary: November 16-30
[Link] Good Judgment Project, Season Three
by Peter Wildeford — 2013-12-02T19:51:21.982Z

Previously: "Test Your Forecasting Ability, Contribute to the Science of Human Judgment" (May 2012), "Get Paid to Train Your Rationality" (August 2011)

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Think you have what it takes to make good predictions? Since 2011, the Good Judgment Project (GJP) has been making predictions on issues of international relations and foreign affairs, recently winning the IARPA (Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity) prediction contest. Predictions from the GJP have been startlingly accurate, outperforming prediction markets, and exceeding even optimistic expectations. It's run by Phillip Tetlock, the famous predictor of "foxes and hedgehogs" fame.

From the Monkey Cage article:

How does the Good Judgment Project achieve such strikingly accurate results? The Project uses modern social-science methods ranging from harnessing the wisdom of crowds to prediction markets to putting together teams of forecasters. The GJP research team attributes its success to a blend of getting the right people (i.e., the “right” individual forecasters) on the bus, offering basic tutorials on inferential traps to avoid and best practices to embrace, concentrating the most talented forecasters into super teams, and constantly fine-tuning the aggregation algorithms it uses to combine individual forecasts into a collective prediction on each forecasting question. The Project’s best forecasters are typically talented and highly motivated amateurs, rather than subject matter experts.

But the good news is that you now have a chance to get involved with GJP Season 3 if you think you're a great predictor:

If you enjoy world politics and appreciate a good challenge, consider joining the Good Judgment Project, which has openings right now for Season 3 forecasters. The Project will give you the opportunity to receive training, to get regular feedback on your forecasting accuracy, and to test your forecasting skills against those of some of the most accurate forecasters around. Interested? To find out more and to register, go to www.goodjudgmentproject.com.

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Also cross-posted on my blog.
December 2013 Media Thread
by ArisKatsaris — 2013-12-02T18:24:59.444Z

This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.

If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.

Please use the comment trees for genres. There is a meta thread for comments about future threads.

If you think there should be a thread for a particular genre of media, please post it to the Other Media thread for now, and add a poll to the Meta thread asking if it should be a thread every month.
Failing to update
by ialdabaoth — 2013-12-02T18:15:11.724Z

You understand Bayes' Theorem. You enter into a situation with an intuitive "common sense" prior. You observe the situation, and then you shut up and multiply.

And then you go to update, you compute the desired behavior to maximize utility... and some cognitive module buried in your brain says "no".

Example:

I realize I need a physical examination. I have no rational reason to fear going to the doctor. I am, in fact, acutely aware that my fear of going to the doctor is based on a fear that they will find something wrong that I can't afford to fix, but the truth is already so. So I bite the bullet, make an appointment, and then at the scheduled time I get in the car and drive to the doctor's office.

And then I just keep driving past the doctor's office, turn around and go home.

I tell myself that if I'm not going, I should call the doctor to avoid a $100 no-show fee, but I don't.

And then I get home, and I tell myself that that was dumb, and that I need to update my behavior - and that physically punishing myself for not going to the doctor is not an efficient use of my energy.

So I punch my hand through a mirror.

NOW, finally, I have an excuse to go to the doctor - so I wrap my hand in bandages and go back to bed, instead.

What do you do when your computed probabilities and utility function have NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER on your actual behavior?
A critique of effective altruism
by benkuhn — 2013-12-02T16:53:35.360Z

I recently ran across Nick Bostrom’s idea of subjecting your strongest beliefs to a hypothetical apostasy in which you try to muster the strongest arguments you can against them. As you might have figured out, I believe strongly in effective altruism—the idea of applying evidence and reason to finding the best ways to improve the world. As such, I thought it would be productive to write a hypothetical apostasy on the effective altruism movement.

(EDIT: As per the comments of Vaniver, Carl Shulman, and others, this didn't quite come out as a hypothetical apostasy. I originally wrote it with that in mind, but decided that a focus on more plausible, more moderate criticisms would be more productive.)

How to read this post

(EDIT: the following two paragraphs were written before I softened the tone of the piece. They're less relevant to the more moderate version that I actually published.)

Hopefully this is clear, but as a disclaimer: this piece is written in a fairly critical tone. This was part of an attempt to get “in character”. This tone does not indicate my current mental state with regard to the effective altruism movement. I agree, to varying extents, with some of the critiques I present here, but I’m not about to give up on effective altruism or stop cooperating with the EA movement. The apostasy is purely hypothetical.

Also, because of the nature of a hypothetical apostasy, I’d guess that for effective altruist readers, the critical tone of this piece may be especially likely to trigger defensive rationalization. Please read through with this in mind. (A good way to counteract this effect might be, for instance, to imagine that you’re not an effective altruist, but your friend is, and it’s them reading through it: how should they update their beliefs?)

(End less relevant paragraphs.)

Finally, if you’ve never heard of effective altruism before, I don’t recommend making this piece your first impression of it! You’re going to get a very skewed view because I don’t bother to mention all the things that are awesome about the EA movement.

Abstract

Effective altruism is, to my knowledge, the first time that a substantially useful set of ethics and frameworks to analyze one’s effect on the world has gained a broad enough appeal to resemble a social movement. (I’d say these principles...
In Praise of Tribes that Pretend to Try: Counter-"Critique of Effective Altruism"
by diegocaleiro — 2013-12-02T07:18:27.197Z

Disclaimer: I endorse the EA movement and direct an EA/Transhumanist organization, www.IERFH.org

We finally have created the first "inside view" critique of EA.

The critique's main worry would please Hofstadter by being self-referential: Being the first, having taken too long to emerge, thus indicating that EA's (Effective Altruists) are pretending to try instead of actually trying, or else they’d have self-criticized already.

Here I will try to clash head-on with what seems to be the most important point of that critique. This will be the only point I'll address, for the sake of brevity, mnemonics and force of argument. This is a meta-contrarian apostasy, in its purpose. I'm not sure it is a view I hold, anymore than a view I think has to be out there in the open, being thought of and criticized. I am mostly indebted to this comment by Viliam_Bur, which was marinating in my mind while I read Ben Kuhn's apostasy.

Original Version Abstract

Effective altruism is, to my knowledge, the first time that a substantially useful set of ethics and frameworks to analyze one’s effect on the world has gained a broad enough appeal to resemble a social movement. (I’d say these principles are something like altruism, maximization, egalitarianism, and consequentialism; together they imply many improvements over the social default for trying to do good in the world—earning to give as opposed to doing direct charity work, working in the developing world rather than locally, using evidence and feedback to analyze effectiveness, etc.) Unfortunately, as a movement effective altruism is failing to use these principles to acquire correct nontrivial beliefs about how to improve the world.

By way of clarification, consider a distinction between two senses of the word “trying” I used above. Let’s call them “actually trying” and “pretending to try”. Pretending to try to improve the world is something like responding to social pressure to improve the world by querying your brain for a thing which improves the world, taking the first search result and rolling with it. For example, for a while I thought that I would try to improve the world by developing computerized methods of checking informally-written proofs, thus allowing more scalable teaching of higher math, democratizing education, etc. Coincidentally, computer

...
Reasons to believe
by irrational — 2013-12-02T05:44:05.185Z

I've been thinking recently that I believe in the Theory of Evolution on about the same level as in the Theory of Plate Tectonics. I have grown up being taught that both are true, and I am capable of doing research in either field, or at least reading the literature to examine them for myself. I have not done so in either case, to any reasonable extent.

I am not swayed by the fact that some people consider the former (and not so much the latter) to be controversial, primarily because those people aren't scientists. I tend to be self-congratulatory about this fact, but then I think that I am essentially not interested in examining the evidence, but I am essentially taking it on faith (which the creationists are quick to point out). I think I have good Bayesian reasons to take science on faith (rather than, say, mythology that is being offered in its stead), but do I therefore have good reasons to accept a particular well-established scientific theory on faith, or is it incumbent upon me to examine it, if I think its conclusions are important to my life?

In other words, is it epistemologically wrong to rely on an authority that has produced a number of correct statements (that I could and did verify) to be more or less correct in the future? If I think of this problem as a sort of belief network, with a parent node that has causal connections to hundreds of children, I think such a reliance is reasonable, once you establish that the authority is indeed accurate. On the other hand, appeal to authority is probably the most famous fallacy there is.

Any thoughts? If Eliezer or other people have written on this exact topic, a reference would be appreciated.
Research on climate organizations
by KatjaGrace — 2013-12-02T05:21:37.000Z

Destruction of tropical rainforest, as prevented by Cool Earth (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here is the second post summarizing some of the climate change research I did at CEA last summer (the first is here). Below are links to outlines of the reasoning behind a few of the estimates there (they are the ‘structured cases’ mentioned in the GWWC post).

The organizations were investigated to very different levels of detail. This is why Sandbag for instance comes out looking quite cost effective, but is not the recommendation. I basically laid out the argument they gave, but had almost no time to investigate it. Adding details to such estimates seems to reliably worsen their apparent cost-effectiveness a lot, so it is not very surprising if something looks very cost effective at first glance.

The Cool Earth case is the most detailed, though most of the details are rough guesses at much more detailed things. The cases are designed to allow easy amendment if more details or angles on the same details are forthcoming.

As a side note, I don’t think GWWC plans on more climate change research soon, but if anyone else is interested in such research, I’d be happy to hand over some useful (and neatly organized!) bits and pieces.

Cool Earth

Solar Aid

Sandbag
Meetup : Vancouver rationalists - new meetup location
by Kytael — 2013-12-01T13:17:08.479Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Vancouver rationalists - new meetup location

WHEN:
01 December 2013 03:00:00PM (-0800)

WHERE:
2505 W Broadway, vancouver, BC, Canada

Weekly meetup! discussions, philosophy puzzles, Rationality Dojo exercises.

New location this time

Discussion article for the meetup : Vancouver rationalists - new meetup location
Meetup :  London Practical Meetup - Calibration Training!
by Tenoke — 2013-12-01T12:46:18.061Z

Discussion article for the meetup : London Practical Meetup - Calibration Training!

WHEN:
08 December 2013 02:00:00AM (+0000)

WHERE:
Shakespeare's Head, Africa House, 64 Shakespeare's Head, Africa House, 64-68 Kingsway, London WC2B 6BG, UK-68 Kingsway, London WC2B 6BG, UK

LessWrong London is having another meetup this Sunday (08/12) at 2:00 PM. We are meeting at our usual venue - The Shakespeare's Head by Holborn tube station and this is our first practical in a while.

The aim of the meetup will be improvement of our probability estimates methods by means of calibration. My current plan is to compile a list of statements and questions, check their answers, gamify the procedure and ask everyone to give Percentages and/or Confidence Intervals regarding their predictions of said statements and question. E.g. 'I assign a 70% chance that the statement 'There will be more people at the Calibration Training practical than at the Social Meetup the prior week " is true'. As I mentioned, I inted to gamify things at least a little bit and there will likely be different 'rounds' of question as well as 'winners'.

Note: you are not required to prepare in any way as everything will be explained during the meetup, however it will help if you arrive on time.

Reminder: The LW London Meetups are currently a weekly event - Every Sunday at 2:00 PM!

If you want more information about the meetup or anything else come by our google group or alternatively to our facebook group.

Discussion article for the meetup : London Practical Meetup - Calibration Training!
Anonymous feedback forms revisited
by gwern — 2013-12-01T02:50:25.202Z

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

For the full writeup, see http://www.gwern.net/About#anonymous-feedback
Meetup : Secular Solstice Celebration! (And the Inauguration of the LW Leipzig Community)
by chaosmage — 2013-11-30T12:42:31.770Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Secular Solstice Celebration! (And the Inauguration of the LW Leipzig Community)

WHEN:
21 December 2013 05:05:05PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Scherlstraße 2, Leipzig, Germany

Dear everyone,

Germany needs more LW communities! And Secular Solstice celebrations are fun! So let's have a secular solstice and get together a bunch of people who really want to start something! :)

The plan is simple. We meet around sunset, casually get to know each other and chat. We prepare and perform together the Ceremonial Part, which involves some things from Raymond Arnold's ritual book (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2000477/SolsticeEve_2012.pdf), the First Secular Sermon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vIFloLATxo) and a few other artful pieces of atheist ritual performance. Then we party till sunrise and welcome the sun re-emerging after the longest night. If you fall asleep (some crash space is available), we'll wake you up for that last bit.
We're expecting 20 to 30 people (mostly not current LW users, but people who liked HPMOR and other potential new faces), but the flat we're using can easily accommodate 60, so bring friends if you want. If there are too many of us to fit into the Ritual Space, we can simply do (parts of) the Ceremonial Part twice.

The event is free (including drinks and some food) but you can bring food if you want to contribute.

Languages at the event will be a mix of German and English. The Ceremonial Part will involve at least one German-language and one English-language performance.

Any questions?

Discussion article for the meetup : Secular Solstice Celebration! (And the Inauguration of the LW Leipzig Community)
Meetup : December Practical Rationality Meetup
by BraydenM — 2013-11-30T10:46:55.867Z

Discussion article for the meetup : December Practical Rationality Meetup

WHEN:
06 December 2013 07:15:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
491 Kings St, West Melbourne

This month we will be discussing and doing exercises to do with communication.

For full details see http://www.meetup.com/Melbourne-Less-Wrong/events/143167052/

Please RSVP at the above link.

Discussion article for the meetup : December Practical Rationality Meetup
According to Dale Carnegie, You Can't Win an Argument—and He Has a Point
by ChrisHallquist — 2013-11-30T06:23:33.609Z

Related to: Two Kinds of Irrationality and How to Avoid One of Them

When I was a teenager, I picked up my mom's copy of Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. One of the chapters that most made an impression on me was titled "You Can't Win an Argument," in which Carnegie writes:

Nine times out of ten, an argument ends with each of the contestants more firmly convinced than ever that he is absolutely right.

You can’t win an argument. You can’t because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it. Why? Well, suppose you triumph over the other man and shoot his argument full of holes and prove that he is non compos mentis. Then what? You will feel fine. But what about him? You have made him feel inferior. You have hurt his pride. He will resent your triumph. And -

"A man convinced against his will

"Is of the same opinion still."

In the next chapter, Carnegie quotes Benjamin Franklin saying how he had made it a rule never to contradict anyone. Carnegie approves: he thinks you should never argue with or contradict anyone, because you won't convince them (even if you "hurl at them all the logic of a Plato or an Immanuel Kant"), and you'll just make them mad at you.

It may seem strange to hear this advice cited on a rationalist blog, because the atheo-skeptico-rational-sphere violates this advice on a routine basis. In fact I've never tried to follow Carnegie's advice—and yet, I don't think the rationale behind it is completely stupid. Carnegie gets human psychology right, and I fondly remember reading his book as being when I first really got clued in about human irrationality.

It's important that people's resistance to being told they're wrong is quite general. It's not restricted to specific topics like religion or politics. The "You Can't Win an Argument" chapter begins with a story about a man who refused to accept that the quotation "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will" came from Hamlet rather than the Bible. Carnegie correctly identifies the reason people can be irrational about such seemingly unimportant questions: pride.

In fact, if Carnegie's book has one overarching theme, it's the incredible power of the human need to think highly of ourselves (individually, not as a species). It opens with stories of a number of gangsters who insisted against all evidence that...
[LINK] Will Eating Nuts Save Your Life?
by Vaniver — 2013-11-30T03:13:03.878Z

TLDR: Study on death avoidance, which interests a lot of people here, and commentary on what sort of informative priors we should have about health hypotheses.

From Steve Sailer, who is responding to Andrew Gelman, who got sent this study. An observational study showed that people who consumed nuts were less likely to die; Gelman points out that the study's statistics aren't obviously wrong. Sailer brings up an actual RCT of Lipitor from the 90s:

The most striking Lipitor study was one from Scandinavia that showed that among middle-aged men over a 5-year-period, the test group who took Lipitor had a 30% lower overall death rate than the control group. Unlike the nuts study, this was an actual experiment.

That seemed awfully convincing, but now it just seems too good to be true. A lot of those middle-aged deaths that didn't happen to the Lipitor takers didn't have much of anything to do with long-term blood chemistry, but were things like not driving your Saab into a fjord. How does Lipitor make you a safer driver?

I sort of presumed at the time that if they had taken out the noisy random deaths, that would have made the Lipitor Effect even more noticeable. But, of course, that's naive. The good folks at Pfizer would have made sure that calculation was tried, so I'm guessing that it came out in the opposite direction of the one I had assumed. Guys who took Lipitor everyday for five years were also good about not driving into fjords and not playing golf during lighting storms and not getting shot by the rare jealous Nordic husband or whatever. Perhaps it was easier to stay in the control group than in the test group?

Here’s how I would approach claims of massive reductions in overall deaths from consuming some food or medicine:

Rank order the causes of death by how plausible it is that they are that they are linked to the food or medicine. For example:

1. Diabetes

2. Heart attacks

3. Strokes

4. Cancer

5. Genetic diseases

6. Car accidents

7. Drug overdoses

8. Homicides

9. Lightning strikes

If this nuts-save-your-life finding is valid, then the greater effects should be found in causes of death near the top of the list (e.g., diabetes). But if it turns out that eating nuts only slightly reduces your chances of death from diabetes but makes you vastly less likely to be struck by lighting, then we’ve probably gotten a selection effect in wh

...