trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Rationality Reading Group: Part H: Against Doublethink
by Gram_Stone — 2015-08-27T01:22:44.228Z

This is part of a semi-monthly reading group on Eliezer Yudkowsky's ebook, Rationality: From AI to Zombies. For more information about the group, see the announcement post.

Welcome to the Rationality reading group. This fortnight we discuss Part H: Against Doublethink (pp. 343-361). This post summarizes each article of the sequence, linking to the original LessWrong post where available.

H. Against Doublethink

81. Singlethink - The path to rationality begins when you see a great flaw in your existing art, and discover a drive to improve, to create new skills beyond the helpful but inadequate ones you found in books. Eliezer's first step was to catch what it felt like to shove an unwanted fact to the corner of his mind. Singlethink is the skill of not doublethinking.

82. Doublethink (Choosing to be Biased) - George Orwell wrote about what he called "doublethink", where a person was able to hold two contradictory thoughts in their mind simultaneously. While some argue that self deception can make you happier, doublethink will actually lead only to problems.

83. No, Really, I've Deceived Myself - Some people who have fallen into self-deception haven't actually deceived themselves. Some of them simply believe that they have deceived themselves, but have not actually done this.

84. Belief in Self-Deception - Deceiving yourself is harder than it seems. What looks like a successively adopted false belief may actually be just a belief in false belief.

85. Moore's Paradox - People often mistake reasons for endorsing a proposition for reasons to believe that proposition.

86. Don't Believe You'll Self-Deceive - It may be wise to tell yourself that you will not be able to successfully deceive yourself, because by telling yourself this, you may make it true.

This has been a collection of notes on the assigned sequence for this fortnight. The most important part of the reading group though is discussion, which is in the comments section. Please remember that this group contains a variety of levels of expertise: if a line of discussion seems too basic or too incomprehensible, look around for one that suits you better!

The next reading will cover Part I: Seeing with Fresh Eyes (pp. 365-406). The discussion will go liv...
Efficient charity: you don't need to be an altruist to benefit from contributing to charity
by Ilverin the Stupid and Offensive — 2015-08-26T22:27:24.535Z

To put it briefly, effective altruism rests on two philosophical ideas: altruism and utilitarianism.

In my opinion, even if you're not an altruist, you might still want to use statistics to learn about charity.

Some people believe that they have an ethical obligation to cause a net 0 suffering. Others might believe they have an ethical obligation to cause only an average amount of suffering. In these causes, in order to reduce suffering to an acceptable level, efficient charity might be for you.

It's possible that in your life you will not come across enough ponds with drowning people that only you can save and you will have to pursue other means of reducing suffering. An alternate method is charity, and statistics can identify which charities and how much to donate.

In order to save money to satisfy your own preferences, you might want to donate as little as possible. You might also calculate that a different time might be best to donate (like after you die). But if you come to either of these conclusions, you're still using the idea of efficient charity.
Meetup : Regular Moscow meetup: copyright debates, culture keynote, working on beliefs, attribution error
by Slava Matyukhin — 2015-08-26T19:15:13.816Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Regular Moscow meetup: copyright debates, culture keynote, working on beliefs, attribution error

WHEN:
30 August 2015 02:00:00PM (+0300)

WHERE:
Москва, Льва Толстого, 16

We're meeting at Yandex, at the Extropolis conference hall.

Please fill this form OR join this FB event if you're planning to visit.

Here's the plan:

I'll give a short keynote on the community, communication culture and our epistemic ideals, if and only if enough new members will pre-register.

Denis will give a talk on why and how working on your beliefs is useful.

Pion will talk about the attribution error.

We'll have debates on whether scientific copyright can be good. The teams were predetermined at our last meetup, and we'll follow Karl Popper protocol, as usual.

Detailed schedule.

Information for the newcomers:

Here's the document explaining how to get to our meetups and what to expect. If you have any questions, or if you don't speak Russian and can't read the link, shoot me a PM.

Discussion article for the meetup : Regular Moscow meetup: copyright debates, culture keynote, working on beliefs, attribution error
Personal story about benefits of Rationality Dojo and shutting up and multiplying
by Gleb_Tsipursky — 2015-08-26T16:38:00.519Z

My wife and I have been going to Ohio Rationality Dojo for a few months now, started by Raelifin, who has substantial expertise in probabilistic thinking and Bayesian reasoning, and I wanted to share about how the dojo helped us make a rational decision about house shopping. We were comparing two houses. We had an intuitive favorite house (170 on the image) but decided to compare it to our second favorite (450) by actually shutting up and multiplying, based on exercises we did as part of the dojo.

What we did was compare mathematically each part of the house by comparing the value of that part of the house multiplied by the use of that part of the house, and had separate values for the two of us (A for my wife, Agnes Vishnevkin, and G for me, Gleb Tsipursky, on the image). By comparing it mathematically, 450 came out way ahead. Hard to update our beliefs, but we did it, and are now orienting toward that one as our primary choice. Rationality for the win!

Here is the image of our back-of-the-napkin calculations.
Meetup : Biases and making better decisions
by JoshuaFox — 2015-08-26T14:58:26.012Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Biases and making better decisions

WHEN:
01 September 2015 07:00:00PM (+0300)

WHERE:
98 Yigal Alon Street, Tel Aviv

We're going to have a meetup on Tuesday, Sep. 1, at Google Tel Aviv offices, Electra Tower, 98 Yigal Alon St., Tel Aviv.

Yonatan Cale will discuss 2 topics in today's lecture:
- Biases: The cognitive mistakes we have as humans. Noticing and overcoming our biases is one of the core topics of LessWrong.
- Decision making: A new method designed to let us make better decisions, easily, to advance our own goals.

We'll meet at the 29th floor of the building (not the one with Google Campus) at 19:00. If you arrive and can't find your way around, call Anatoly who's hosting us at 054-245-1060 or Joshua Fox at 0545691165.

If you have FB, please click "Join" at the FB page so we can get a sense of attendance.
https://www.facebook.com/events/109945732685336/

Discussion article for the meetup : Biases and making better decisions
Sensation & Perception
by ScottL — 2015-08-26T13:13:10.675Z

(The below notes are pretty much my attempt to summarise the content in this sample chapter from this book. I am posting this in discussion because I don’t think I will get the time/be bothered enough to improve upon this, so I am posting it now and hope someone finds it interesting or useful. If you do find it interesting check out the full chapter, which goes into more detail)

We don’t experience the world directly, but instead we experience it through a series of “filters” that we call our senses. We know that this is true because of cases of sensory loss. An example is Jonathan I., a 65-year-old New Yorker painter who following an automobile accident suffered from cerebral achromatopsia as well as the loss of the ability to remember and to imagine colours. He would look at a tomato and instead of seeing colours like red or green would instead see only black and shades of grey. The problem was not that Johnathan's eyes no longer worked it was that his brain was unable to process the neural messages for colour.

To understand why Johnathan cannot see colour, we first have to realise that incoming light travels only as far as the back of the eyes. There the information it contains is converted into neural messages in a process called transduction. We call these neural messages: "sensations". These sensations only involve neural representations of stimuli, not the actual stimuli themselves. Sensations such as “red” or “sweet” or “cold” can be said to have been made by the brain. They also only occur when the neural signal reaches the cerebral cortex. They do not occur when you first interact with the stimuli. To us, the process seems so immediate and direct that we are often fooled into thinking that the sensation of "red" is a characteristic of tomato or that the sensation of “cold” is a characteristic of ice cream. But they are not. What we sense is an electrochemical rendition of the world created by our brain and sensory receptors.

There is another separation between reality as it is and how we sense it to be as well. Organisms can only sense some types of stimulus between certain ranges. This is called the absolute threshold for different types of stimulation and it is the minimum amount of physical energy needed to produce a sensory experience. It should be noted that ...
Is semiotics bullshit?
by PhilGoetz — 2015-08-25T14:09:04.000Z

I spent an hour recently talking with a semiotics professor who was trying to explain semiotics to me. He was very patient, and so was I, and at the end of an hour I concluded that semiotics is like Indian chakra-based medicine: a set of heuristic practices that work well in a lot of situations, justified by complete bullshit.

I learned that semioticians, or at least this semiotician:

believe that what they are doing is not philosophy, but a superset of mathematics and logic

use an ontology, vocabulary, and arguments taken from medieval scholastics, including Scotus

oppose the use of operational definitions

believe in the reality of something like Platonic essences

look down on logic, rationality, reductionism, the Enlightenment, and eliminative materialism. He said that semiotics includes logic as a special, degenerate case, and that semiotics includes extra-logical, extra-computational reasoning.

seems to believe people have an extra-computational ability to make correct judgements at better-than-random probability that have no logical basis

claims materialism and reason each explain only a minority of the things they are supposed to explain

claims to have a complete, exhaustive, final theory of how thinking and reasoning works, and of the categories of reality.

When I've read short, simple introductions to semiotics, they didn't say this. They didn't say anything I could understand that wasn't trivial. I still haven't found one meaningful claim made by semioticians, or one use for semiotics. I don't need to read a 300-page tome to understand that the 'C' on a cold-water faucet signifies cold water. The only example he gave me of its use is in constructing more-persuasive advertisements.

(Now I want to see an episode of Mad Men where they hire a semotician to sell cigarettes.)

Are there multiple "sciences" all using the name "semiotics"? Does semiotics make any falsifiable claims? Does it make any claims whose meanings can be uniquely determined and that were not claimed before semiotics?

His notion of "essence" is not the same as Plato's; tokens rather than types have essences, but they are distinct from their physical instantiation. So it's a tripartite Platonism. Semi...
Self compassion
by So8res — 2015-08-25T03:00:00.000Z
Link: https://mindingourway.com/self-compassion/

Imagine a time when you were feeling guilt-wracked. Maybe a time you hurt a friend badly. Maybe a time you tried to do get some important work done, and found you couldn't, and this kicked off a failure spiral leading to a deep depression. Maybe some other time: the important thing is to load into memory a time you felt guilt-wracked, and recall how you felt towards yourself in that case.

(When I do this, I get an internal sense of resistance, of not-wanting-to-look, of willing-the-past-to-be-different.)

Now imagine you have a child, who grows to the same age that you were then, who finds themselves in exactly the same situation. Maybe they, too, hurt somebody badly -- they didn't consciously realize how badly they were about to hurt a friend until one moment too late, and now they feel terrible. Or maybe they, too, tried to do something important, and found it hard, and started doubting themselves, and spiraled downwards into a depression that they now have trouble climbing out of.

Imagine what you might feel towards your child, in this scenario.

(When I do this, I get a sense of compassion, of protectiveness, and a desire to reassure them that this is what it looks like to learn hard lessons, for us monkeys.)

I encourage you to simulate the feelings you would feel towards your child in this situation —

— and then check whether you can also feel that way towards yourself.

When you think of your own failings, can you feel that compassion and protectiveness and impulse to reassure towards you?

Many can't. Some don't feel compassion towards others in the first place (this post is not for them — if you want help feeling compassion towards your fellow humans, then maybe try this post and see if it works for you.) Others can as easily feel compassion for themselves as others. But many people I've spoken to experience a wide gulf between compassion for others and self-compassion — which is a shame, because self-compassion is an important part of self-loyalty and the mental toolset I'm trying to convey with these posts.

To close the gap between compassion and self-compassion, I offer two tools. The first is a reminder that self-compassion is not the same thing as self-pity, and nor is it the same thing as making excuses for yourself. It is well possible to feel self-compassion even while thinking that you are not moving fast enough. It is perfectly possible to feel self-com...
Meetup : Schelling Cafe
by oge — 2015-08-25T00:43:00.642Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Schelling Cafe

WHEN:
29 August 2015 03:00:57PM (-0700)

WHERE:
Cafe La Renaissance, 3045 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley, CA 94705

For anyone in the Berkeley, SF, Oakland area, there's a weekly gathering called the Schelling Cafe that holds on Saturdays at 3pm (on hiatus the past few weeks due to SF EAGlobal and the CFAR alumni reunion).

We're a group of rationalists, CFAR alumni, EAs, and others who meet primarily to socialize. Folks frequently migrate to the rationalist house, Event Horizon (which sits right above the cafe), to get serious work done if necessary.

Name: Schelling Cafe
Time: Saturdays at 3pm
Location: Cafe La Renaissance, 3045 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley, CA 94705

Text me at 404-542-6392 if you have trouble finding us then.

Discussion article for the meetup : Schelling Cafe
Why people want to die
by PhilGoetz — 2015-08-24T20:13:37.830Z

Over and over again, someone says that living for a very long time would be a bad thing, and then some futurist tries to persuade them that their reasoning is faulty, telling them that they think that way now, but they'll change their minds when they're older.

The thing is, I don't see that happening. I live in a small town full of retirees, and those few I've asked about it are waiting for death peacefully. When I ask them about their ambitions, or things they still want to accomplish, they have none.

Suppose that people mean what they say. Why do they want to die?

The reason is obvious if you just watch them for a few years. They have nothing to live for. They have a great deal of free time, but nothing they really want to do with it. They like visiting friends and relatives, but only so often. The women knit. The men do yardwork. They both work in their gardens and watch a lot of TV. This observational sample is much larger than the few people I've asked.

You folks on LessWrong have lots of interests. You want to understand math, write stories, create start-ups, optimize your lives.

But face it. You're weird. And I mean that in a bad way, evolutionarily speaking. How many of you have kids?

Damn few. The LessWrong mindset is maladaptive. It leads to leaving behind fewer offspring. A well-adapted human cares above all about sex, love, family, and friends, and isn't distracted from those things by an ADD-ish fascination with type theory. That's why they probably have more sex, love, and friends than you do.

Most people do not have open-ended interests the way LWers do. If they have a hobby, it's something repetitive like fly-fishing or needlepoint that doesn't provide an endless frontier for discovery. They marry, they have kids, the kids grow up, they have grandkids, and they're done. If you ask them what the best thing in their life was, they'll say it was having kids. If you ask if they'd do it again, they'll laugh and say absolutely not.

We could get into a long argument over the evolution of aging, and whether people would remain eager to have kids if they remained physically young. Maybe some would. Some would not, though. Many young parents are looking forward to the day their kids leave.

A lot of interests in life are passing. You fall in love with a hobby, you learn it, you do it for a few years, then you get tired of it. The thing...
Manhood of Humanity
by Viliam — 2015-08-24T18:31:22.099Z

This is my re-telling of Korzybski's Manhood of Humanity. First part here.)

3

Clear thinking is important, because human ideas have consequences. For example, if we believe that lightning is a punishment of God, we will not try to save a house struck by lightning, because doing so would be opposing God's will. If we believe that lightning is a natural phenomenon repeating periodically, we will try to extinguish the fire. And if we believe that lightning is an electric spark, we can install lightning rods on houses to prevent fire. These definitions are increasingly more correct and more useful.

For correct analysis of classes of life, we need some ideas about dimensionality. We can't compare entities of different kinds: volumes with surfaces, surfaces with lines, lines with points. The consequence in real life is that when we take a cube and make it five times larger in every dimension, the lines will be 5 times larger, the surfaces 25 times larger, and the volume 125 times larger. Ignoring units would make our architectural and engineering computations wrong.

In chemistry, we have inorganic and organic chemistry. In inorganic chemistry, we have 79 elements (written in 1921) allowing a few hundreds of reactions. In organic chemistry, Oxygen, Hydrogen and Carbon can produce practically unlimited number of compounds. Thus we should treat organic chemistry as having higher dimension than inorganic chemistry; the same basic chemical phenomena involved in all reactions, but also many unique properties, including new phenomena such as "life", "instinct" and "mind".

Speaking about "life" in e.g. crystals would be the same kind of mistake as saying that surfaces have a volume. Inorganic crystals do not have sufficient dimension to contain organic phenomena. Analogies - such as pointing out that growth is one of the characteristics of life, and that crystals do grow - are superficial and fall apart when we look at details of when and how specifically do living beings and crystals grow.

Plants can appropriate solar energy, convert it to another kind of energy, and store it up. Thus, plants are the chemistry-binding class of life.

Animals also have energy-transformation-and-storage abilities (although they use plants for food), but they also have a freedom and faculty to move about in space. Thus, animals are the space-binding class of life.

And finally, humans have both previ...
The virtual AI within its virtual world
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2015-08-24T16:42:31.086Z

A putative new idea for AI control; index here.

In a previous post, I talked about an AI operating only on a virtual world (ideas like this used to be popular, until it was realised the AI might still want to take control of the real world to affect the virtual world; however, with methods like indifference, we can guard against this much better).

I mentioned that the more of the AI's algorithm that existed in the virtual world, the better it was. But why not go the whole way? Some people at MIRI and other places are working on agents modelling themselves within the real world. Why not have the AI model itself as an agent inside the virtual world? We can quine to do this, for example.

Then all the restrictions on the AI - memory capacity, speed, available options - can be specified precisely, within the algorithm itself. It will only have the resources of the virtual world to achieve its goals, and this will be specified within it. We could define a "break" in the virtual world (ie any outside interference that the AI could cause, were it to hack us to affect its virtual world) as something that would penalise the AI's achievements, or simply as something impossible according to its model or beliefs. It would really be a case of "given these clear restrictions, find the best approach you can to achieve these goals in this specific world".

It would be idea if the AI's motives were not given in terms of achieving anything in the virtual world, but in terms of making the decisions that, subject to the given restrictions, were most likely to achieve something if the virtual world were run in its entirety. That way the AI wouldn't care if the virtual world were shut down or anything similar. It should only seek to self modify in way that makes sense within the world, and understand itself existing completely within these limitations.

Of course, this would ideally require flawless implementation of the code; we don't want bugs developing in the virtual world that point to real world effects (unless we're really confident we have properly coded the "care only about the what would happen in the virtual world, not what actually does happen).

Any thoughts on this idea?