trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Instrumental Rationality 1: Starting Advice
by  — 2017-10-05T04:37:21.557Z

[Instrumental Rationality Sequence 1/7. Repost from LW]

[This section goes over 4 concepts that I think are important to keep in mind before we start the other stuff. We go over caring about the obvious, looking for ways to apply advice in the real world, practicing well, and holding realistic expectations.]

In Defense of the Obvious:

[As advertised.]

A lot of the things I’m going to go over in this sequence are sometimes going to sound obvious, boring, redundant, or downright tautological. I’m here to convince you that you should try to listen to such advice anyway, even if it sounds stupidly obvious.

First off, our brains don’t always see all the connections at once. Thus, even if some given advice is apparently obvious, you still might be learning new things.

For example, say I told you, “If you want to exercise more, then you should probably exercise more. Once you do that, you’ll become the type of person who exercises more, and then you’ll likely exercise more.”

The above advice might sound pretty silly, but keep in mind that our mental categories for “exercise” and “personal identity” might be in different places. Sure, it’s tautologically true that someone who exercises becomes a person who exercises more. But if you’re not explicitly thinking in terms of how your actions change who you are, which is what the tautology is pointing at, then you’ve still learned something new.

Humans are often weirdly inconsistent with our mental buckets—things that logically seem like they “should” be lumped together by logical implication often aren’t.

By paying attention to even tautological advice like this, you’re able to form new connections in your brain and link new mental categories together, perhaps discovering new insights that you “already knew”.

Secondly, obvious advice is often used as a label for what everyone know works. If your brain is pattern-matching something as “boring advice” or “obvious”, you’ve likely heard it before many times before.

For example, you can probably guess the top 5 things on any “How to be Productive” list—make a schedule, remove distractions, take breaks, etc. etc. You can almost feel your brain roll its metaphorical eyes at such dreary, well-worn advice.

But if you’ve heard these things repeated many times before, this is also good reason to suspect that, at least for a lot of people, it actually works. Meaning that if you are

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Infant Mortality and the Argument from Life History
by ozymandias — 2017-10-04T23:10:14.032Z

Many people argue that suffering predominates in nature. A really simple form of the argument, supported by people like Brian Tomasik, is what one might call the argument from life history. In general, in most species, females produce many more offspring than can survive to adulthood; in some cases, a female may produce thousands or millions of offspring in a single reproductive season. Therefore, one can assume that most animals die before they are able to reproduce. In many cases, the offspring die before they can reasonably be considered conscious (for instance, an egg is eaten shortly after laying). However, even if half of animals die unconscious, the other half are a large source of disutility. Since death is generally quite painful, they may not have had enough positive experiences to outweigh the extraordinarily negative experience of death. It can therefore be assumed that there is more suffering than happiness in nature.

While this argument is intuitively compelling, I am not sure that it accurately reflects most people’s opinions about how happiness works, so I have decided to write up three thought experiments that might help people think about it. These thought experiments are quite preliminary; I hope to spark a discussion so that people who are concerned about wild-animal suffering can debate.

1. The Human History Thought Experiment

Although the human population has been growing for thousands of years, for most of history the growth was fairly slow, suggesting the argument from life history applies to us as well. In part, that was because many humans died in childhood: for example, in 1800 four-tenths of humans died before they were five years old, a quarter of humans before their first birthday. (Note that 1800 is fairly late, and the statistics may have been even more stark in, say, 1 CE.)

I do not mean to deny that pre-modern human life was miserable in many ways: people were hungry, diseased, and poor. And I certainly don’t mean to claim that high child mortality rates weren’t a tragedy. However, my intuition is that-- whether or not human lives were worth living before modernity-- the high child mortality rate does not single-handedly prove that human lives were not worth living. Other information must be gathered to prove that. I suspect many other people’s intuitions will agree.

To the extent the human history argument is misleading or anthr

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Avoiding Selection Bias
by the gears to ascension — 2017-10-04T19:10:17.935Z

[This post has been renamed from "Desilencing", pending changing what I call the action.]

edit 2019-06-25: this post is tone-deaf about ways people who experience the more common and dramatically stronger silencing forces of prejudice would see it. The insight here appears to me to be valid as an incremental change in an environment with low but nonzero hostility; it's not as immediately relevant when a very large change is needed. I have changed my vote on this post to a downvote.

I often find that I filter my urges to give feedback, especially negative feedback, in public.

For example, when downvoting someone, I often feel an urge to say why. But then I hesitate because I worry that they will feel insulted, and attack me for my trouble of explaining myself.

This fear is not unfounded. sometimes when I say why, people do in fact challenge it.

But if I was on a discussion board with a bunch of slightly different myselves, and I never gave the other mes feedback, I would never get any feedback from them.

So, some semi-random fraction of the time, I say the thing anyway, in a short message with little overhead for me. I'm taking some risk, because then I say things that might get me in a fight. But people get more detailed feedback, instead of simply being ghosted or downvoted away because I'm scared of the fact that it's unsafe for me to be straight with them.

So when I say I'm "de-silencing" myself - this is what I mean.

I call it "de-silencing" because I do it to break the attractors that silencing forces on me create. Some non-negligible portion of the time, those forces do specifically intend to silence people. And this technique would not work if someone was specifically out to get me.

This post is itself a de-silencing post: I'm not putting as much effort into it as I think would be necessary to ensure it gets a good reception.
Resolving human inconsistency in a simple model
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2017-10-04T15:25:51.053Z

Crossposted at the Intelligent Agents Forum.

(Apologies for the formatting, there is no Latex on LessWrong 2.0. yet)

This post will present a simple model of an inconsistent human, and ponder how to resolve their inconsistency.

Let H be our agent, in a turn-based world. Let Rl and Rs be two simple reward functions at each turn. The reward Rl is thought of as being a ‘long-term’ reward, while Rs is a short-term one.

Define Rl(t) as the agent’s Rl reward at turn t (and similarly Rs(t) for Rs). Then, at turn t, the agent H has reward:

R(t) = (Sum over τ=0 to ∞) [Rl(t+τ)(γl)^τ + Rs(t+τ)(γs)^τ],

with constants 0<γs<γl≤1.

Essentially the Rs and the Rl have different discount rates, with the reward from Rs fading much faster than than that of Rl. Therefore the agent will be motivated to get the Rs reward, but only if they can get this in the short-term. Sex, drugs, food, and many other pleasures often have these features (though they are, of course, much more complicated).

The inconsistency is that the human will continually reset their R(t) at each turn. If there were a single discount rate, that wouldn’t a problem, as that would just scale the whole reward function, and reward functions, like utility functions, give the same decisions when scaled.

But with two discount rates, this is inconsistent. The agent will try and follow Rl for long-term planning, but this will be disrupted if they encounter an Rs along the way (and then presumably berate themselves for the lack of self-discipline). This can also be seen as a variant of the “humans are composed of multiple subagents” model, with Rs corresponding to short-term greedy subagent.

So, we have a simple and not-completely-implausible model of an inconsistent human. The question is, how do we resolve it? None of the obvious approaches are ideal, but it’s worth looking at their features.

Freeze the reward

This is the most obvious approach: simply freeze the reward, so that the reward at time t′>t is simply the same as reward at time t (though, in the absence of time-travel, the rewards between t and t′ are no longer relevant).

This is the obvious approach; in practice, though, it will become equivalent with simply forgetting about Rs entirely. After a few turns, the exponential shrinkage of the factor (γl/γs) will make Rs’s typical contribution insignificant. So this approach involves destroying one of

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Resolving human inconsistency in a simple model
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2017-10-04T15:02:34.000Z

A putative new idea for AI control; index here.

This post will present a simple model of an inconsistent human, and ponder how to resolve their inconsistency.

Let H be our agent, in a turn-based world. Let Rl and Rs be two simple reward functions at each turn. The reward Rl is thought of as being a 'long-term' reward, while Rs is a short-term one.

Define Rlt as the agent's Rl reward at turn t (and similarly Rst for Rs). Then, at turn t, the agent H has reward:

Rt=∑∞τ=0(γl)τRlt+τ+(γs)τRst+τ,

with constants 0<γs<γl≤1.

Essentially the Rs and the Rl have different discount rates, with the reward from Rs fading much faster than than that of Rl. Therefore the agent will be motivated to get the Rs reward, but only if they can get this in the short-term. Sex, drugs, food, and many other pleasures often have these features (though they are, of course, much more complicated).

The inconsistency is that the human will continually reset their Rt at each turn. If there were a single discount rate, that wouldn't a problem, as that would just scale the whole reward function, and reward functions, like utility functions, give the same decisions when scaled.

But with two discount rates, this is inconsistent. The agent will try and follow Rl for long-term planning, but this will be disrupted if they encounter an Rs along the way (and then presumably berate themselves for the lack of self-discipline). This can also be seen as a variant of the "humans are composed of multiple subagents" model, with Rs corresponding to short-term greedy subagent.

So, we have a simple and not-completely-implausible model of an inconsistent human. The question is, how do we resolve it? None of the obvious approaches are ideal, but it's worth looking at their features.

Freeze the reward

This is the most obvious approach: simply freeze the reward, so that the reward at time t′>t is simply the same as reward at time t (though, in the absence of time-travel, the rewards between t and t′ are no longer relevant).

This is the obvious approach; in practice, though, it will become equivalent with simply forgetting about Rs entirely. After a few turns, the exponential shrinkage of the factor (γl/γs)τ will make Rs's typical contribution insignificant. So this approach involves destroying one of H's sources of reward almost entirely.

Balance the rewards

Another approach would be to balance the rewards,

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The Reality of Emergence 
by DragonGod — 2017-10-04T08:11:25.999Z

Reply to The Futility of Emergence

In The Futility of Emergence, Eliezer takes an overly critical position on emergence as a theory. In this (short) article, I hope to challenge that view.

Emergence is not an empty phrase. The statements "consciousness is an emergent phenomenon" and "consciousness is a phenomenon" are not the same thing; the former conveys information that the latter does not. When we say something is emergent, we have a well defined concept that we refer to.

From Wikipedia:

emergence is a phenomenon whereby larger entities arise through interactions among smaller or simpler entities such that the larger entities exhibit properties the smaller/simpler entities do not exhibit.

A is an emergent property of X, means that A arises from X in a way in which it is contingent on the interaction of the constituents of X (and not on those constituents themselves). If A is an emergent property of X, then the constituents of X do not possess A. A comes into existence as categorial novum at the inception of X. The difference between system X and its constituent components in regards to property A is a difference of kind and not of degree; X's constituents do not possess A in some tiny magnitude—they do not possess A at all.

Taken literally, that description fits every phenomenon in our universe above the level of individual quarks, which is part of the problem

This is blatantly not true; size and mass for example are properties of elementary particles.

You can make no new predictions. You do not know anything about the behavior of real-world minds that you did not know before. It feels like you believe a new fact, but you don't anticipate any different outcomes. Your curiosity feels sated, but it has not been fed. The hypothesis has no moving parts—there's no detailed internal model to manipulate. Those who proffer the hypothesis of "emergence" confess their ignorance of the internals, and take pride in it; they contrast the science of "emergence" to other sciences merely mundane.

I repectfully disagree.

When we say A is an emergent property of X, we say that X is more than a sum of its parts. Aggregation and amplification of the properties of X's constituents does not produce the properties of X. The proximate cause of A is not the constituents of X themselves—it is the interaction between those constitu

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Writing That Provokes Comments
by Raemon — 2017-10-04T02:48:58.563Z

Epistemic Effort: Thought about it for a year. Solicited feedback. Checked my last few posts' comment count to make sure I wasn't *obviously* wrong.

A thing that happens to me, and perhaps to you:

Someone writes a beautiful essay that I agree with, that sheds new light on something important.

I don't have anything really to say about it. I don't want to just say "I agree!". So instead of commenting, I give it an upvote and move on.

This feels bad for a few reasons:

I like commenting.
I like getting comments when I write things that (I hope!) are insightful, beautiful and true. It's a stronger signal that people care.
Comments correlate with something staying in the public sphere of attention. A highly upvoted post eventually fades behind newer upvoted posts. But a post with lots of comments keeps people paying attention (with new people constantly checking in to see what the hubbub is about)
I don't trust (as a reader or a writer) that people who read a post, give it an upvote, and move on, are really learning anything. I think that talking through an a new concept and figuring out how to apply is where much of the learning happens.

I've been impressed with how much quality writing has been going on on LW2.0 so far. There has been some but not as much commenting as I'd like.

I've gotten a sense of what inspires interesting, meaty discussion.

Unfortunately, most of it seems... kinda bad?

Things That Get People To Comment

1. Be Wrong - It has been said: if google fails you, the fastest way to get a question answered is to post a wrong answer on reddit. This will result in a lot of flood of people explaining things to you.

2. Be Controversial - Even better, post something that some people think are wrong. Then you get a bunch of people commenting to correct you, and then other people who disagree correcting them! The arguments perpetuate themselves from there. You won't even have to do any commenting work yourself to keep it going!

[BTW, these are observations, not recommendations. This list is optimized to answer the question "what causes comments" not "how to make the world better."]

3. Write About Things People Feel Qualified to Have Opinions On - If you write a post on machine learning, and post it somewhere where nobody really understands machine learning, it doesn't matter if you'...
Placing Yourself as an Instance of a Class
by abramdemski — 2017-10-03T19:10:52.681Z

There's an intuition that I have, which I think informs my opinion on subjective probabilities, game theory, and many related matters: that part of what separates a foolish decision from a wise one is whether you treat it as an isolated instance or as one of a class of similar decisions.

A simple case: someone doing something for the first time (first date, first job interview, etc) vs someone who has done it many times and "knows how these things go". Surprise events to the greenhorn are tired stereotypes for the old hand. But, sometimes, we can short-circuit this process and react wisely to a situation without long experience and hard knocks.

For example, if a person is trying to save money but sees a doodad they'd like to buy, the fool reason as follows: "It's just this one purchase. The amount of money isn't very consequential to my overall budget. I can just save a little more in other ways and I'll meet my target." The wise person reasons as follows: "If I make this purchase now, I will similarly allow myself to make exceptions to my money-saving rule later, until the exception becomes the rule and I spend all my money. So, even though the amount of money here isn't so large, I prefer to follow a general policy of saving, which implies saving in this particular case." A very wise person may reason a bit more cleverly: "I can make impulse purchases if they pass a high bar, such that I actually only let a few dollars of unplanned spending past the bar every week on average. How rare is it that a purchase opportunity costing this much is at least this appealing?" **does a quick check and usually doesn't buy the thing, but sometimes does, when it is worth it**

One way to get this kind of wisdom is by spending money for a long time, and calibrating willingness-to-spend based on what seems to be happening with your bank account. This doesn't work very well for a lot of people, because the reinforcement happens too slowly to be habit-forming. A different way is to notice the logic of the situation, and think as though you had lived it.

Similarly, although people are heavily biased to treat vivid examples from the news (airplane crashes involving celebrity deaths) or personal anecdotes from friends and family (an uncle who fell ill when a high-voltage power line was installed near his

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Open thread, October 2 - October 8, 2017
by root — 2017-10-03T10:46:41.517Z

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

4. Unflag the two options "Notify me of new top-level comments on this article" and "Make this post available under..." before submitting.
Different Worlds
by Scott Alexander — 2017-10-03T04:10:00.321Z

I.

A few years ago I had lunch with another psychiatrist-in-training and realized we had totally different experiences with psychotherapy.

We both got the same types of cases. We were both practicing the same kinds of therapy. We were both in the same training program, studying under the same teachers. But our experiences were totally different. In particular, all her patients had dramatic emotional meltdowns, and all my patients gave calm and considered analyses of their problems, as if they were lecturing on a particularly boring episode from 19th-century Norwegian history.

I’m not bragging here. I wish I could get my patients to have dramatic emotional meltdowns. As per the textbooks, there should be a climactic moment where the patient identifies me with their father, then screams at me that I ruined their childhood, then breaks down crying and realizes that she loved her father all along, then ???, and then their depression is cured. I never got that. I tried, I even dropped some hints, like “Maybe this reminds you of your father?” or “Maybe you feel like screaming at me right now?”, but they never took the bait. So I figured the textbooks were misleading, or that this was some kind of super-advanced technique, or that this was among the approximately 100% of things that Freud just pulled out of his ass.

And then I had lunch with my friend, and she was like “It’s so stressful when all of your patients identify you with their parents and break down crying, isn’t it? Don’t you wish you could just go one day without that happening?”

And later, my supervisor was reviewing one of my therapy sessions, and I was surprised to hear him comment that I “seemed uncomfortable with dramatic expressions of emotion”. I mean, I am uncomfortable with dramatic expressions of emotion. I was just surprised he noticed it. As a therapist, I’m supposed to be quiet and encouraging and not show discomfort at anything, and I was trying to do that, and I’d thought I was succeeding. But apparently I was unconsciously projecting some kind of “I don’t like strong emotions, you’d better avoid those” field, and my patients were unconsciously complying.

I wish I could say my supervisor’s guidance fixed the problem and I learned to encourage emotional openness just as well as my co...