trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Buy Insurance -- Bet Against Yourself
by MBlume — 2010-11-26T04:48:46.744Z

My friend and housemate, User:Kevin, makes a very pleasant living selling opioids on the internet, a living he expects to continue for some time, unless something awful happens like Obama losing the next election. The Intrade contract for Obama's loss is currently trading at 42% -- what can User:Kevin do about this?

My suggestion was that he bet heavily on Obama's loss. Say he spends $4200 buying not-Obama futures. If Obama wins, that money becomes worthless, but he gets four years selling kratom regulation-free. On the other hand, say Palin takes a surprise victory and institutes draconian regulation on various substances -- User:Kevin's $4,200 has just become $10,000, leaving a $5800 windfall to help him while he finds his next muse.

This is nothing more than what we normally call buying insurance, just extended to whatever outcomes you may want to insure against. Let's talk about some of the effects of this action.

Leaving a Line of Retreat

Let's say that User:Kevin now finds Obama's loss more or less unthinkable (I don't mean to impugn his rationality -- the article's more or less fictional from here on). Well, that's not really very good -- he needs to think about it. I suppose the proper answer is something like "If Obama will win the election, I want to believe..." -- but it may also help to think that, yes, a Republican win would suck, but it would also come with this huge financial windfall up front. That is, by flattening your outcome curve a bit, you can reduce your attachment to individual outcomes, and help yourself to make more rational judgments.

Of course, if the market gives Obama 60%, User:Kevin should probably just believe that. That's what markets are for. Which brings us to:

Helping the Market

You might think that User:Kevin's (hypothetical) actions are antisocial. That by buying not-Obama futures, he's sending a false signal to the market decreasing Obama's chances. If so, Robin Hanson might like to have a word with you. Here's why:

Let's say that Clippy is a rational speculator in this market. He doesn't care whether Obama wins or not, he just wants to maximize his monetary outcome so that he can purchase materials with which to create paperclips. Let's further say that the market is filled o

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Transhumanism thread in progress at Reddit
by Document — 2010-11-25T20:46:56.517Z

Starting with this reply to "You were born too soon":

> depending on when exactly we achieve this, this could be the best time to be born ever, because it will be the absolute earliest anybody will have achieved immortality. Someone born within 20 years of this moment could one day be the oldest human, sentient, or even living being in the Universe.

The comments are currently split between arguing and agreeing with this. So far, no mention of cryonics. One post presents a possibly interesting technical argument that our current knowledge/technology is centuries away from mind uploading/whole-brain emulation.

(Also posted to The Singularity in the Zeitgeist, but that thread seems to have been mostly forgotten.)
Eating et al.: Study on High/Low Protein | Glycemic-Index
by gimpf — 2010-11-25T16:42:12.751Z

Nutrition and related topics have been a topic a few times here and on related blogs, starting back with Shangri-La, hypoglycemia, and what we should eat.

Now, HT reddit, there seems to be some (new) evidence pro the position I think that quite some people here have: high-protein, low-glycemic-index. So, some people here can be a little bit more sure that they made the right bet earlier on -- but how have you actually arrived at those conclusions earlier? I see the evolutionary argument, but by itself alone, it is not that convincing. There must have been data, ...

So, any recommendations on further sources/high-quality collections?
Ideological bullies?
by fictiona — 2010-11-25T13:02:13.989Z

Science has long questioned theism by examining design flaws in the nature. However, it seems to me that some science followers don't like being questioned about the scientific methodology. Just like theists don't like being questioned about existence of God.

Of course, science lovers pride themselves on scientific enquiries and methods. But does such pride translate to ego and honour - something that should not be challenged?

I have met several scientists and science Ph.D. students. Some - not all - of them seem to treat fallibists as some kind of nonsense and anti-positivists as a science equivalent of Satan. Although they argue politely, this saddens me. They are not as open-minded as philosophers I know. Philosophers tend to be happy when receiving challenges about their fundamental beliefs. Theists and scientists seem to be otherwise. This is just from my experience though. It is not meant to be generalisable.

Science is not rationalism. It is an attempt to translate empirical results into knowledge with logic and statistics. So, science stands on two foundations - empiricism and rationalism. If one believes in science, they are likely to believe in both empiricism and rationalism. But because empiricism cannot be conclusive, neither can science. Why do scientific 'facts' are sometimes spoken as if they were certain? Why do some scientists fail to notice that those 'facts' are subject to falsification when new evidence is introduced?

Right, I may have done some silly stuffs like grounded theory, which isn't compatible with the scientific methods. But I acknowledge that I can be flawed, and my methods are certainly flawed. Some - not all - natural scientists, on the other hand, seem to have so much faith in scientific methods, which I believe is somewhat flawed as well. As a social scientist, I am sometimes intellectually group-raped by scientists as though I offend them by questioning the scientific methods. * sighs *

If you are a scientist or a science follower, may I ask, what do you think about social scientists? Sometimes I feel like scientists look down on social scientists, and I don't feel comfortable working with them.
Good news about the Big Bang
by xamdam — 2010-11-25T12:44:45.663Z

(Disclaimer: very poor knowledge of physics here, just interpreting the article)

http://www.physorg.com/print209708826.html

- looks like there are many of them, as non-creationists would expect

The really good news is

> In the past, Penrose has investigated cyclic cosmology models because he has noticed another shortcoming of the much more widely accepted inflationary theory: it cannot explain why there was such low entropy at the beginning of the universe. The low entropy state (or high degree of order) was essential for making complex matter possible.

Which I interpret to mean information passes through the Big Crunch/Big Bang cycle. No heat death, information passes through - good news for transhumanists?
Rational Project Management
by Mass_Driver — 2010-11-25T09:32:04.283Z

There's a lot of discussion on the site about akrasia (failure of willpower), but most of it focuses on the individual. Obviously, though, organizations also can be said to suffer from akrasia. Even when there is clear agreement among the leaders or members of a business, charity, political party, etc. about what the organization should try to accomplish, it's often the case that the daily tasks performed by the people who work there bear only the loosest of resemblance to the tasks that would be picked by an ideal decision-maker.

There are lots of different issues here -- what should be done, when it should be done, who should do it, how much of a budget in money, office space, website space, etc. a project should receive, when and how to evaluate the success of a project...

I've come across several good books on how to cope with office politics, how to build a financially successful company, and how to motivate people to perform at a high level, but none on how to manage an organization so that it can fulfill its mission most efficiently.

Does anyone know of a standard (or cutting-edge) text (or program!) in this area? Books, articles, videos, and other media are all welcome, even if they're behind a paywall. Sometime in the next 20 years, I hope to revolutionize the efficiency of America's legal system by developing project management software, automatic litigation tools, machine-readable law libraries, consulting, and/or teaching. Basically I think there is no good reason why the current system, which involves otherwise smart people solving the same problems over and over again for different clients for decades on end, should not give way to an entrepreneurial system where problems get solved once or twice and then the solutions get propagated across the society. Since this is an impossible problem, I will have plenty of wheels to invent, and see no need to reinvent any wheels that already exist. So...know any wheels? Even if it seems obvious to you, I might have missed it.

Thank you oodles & kaboodles in advance,

Mass_Driver
Science and rationalism - a brief epistemological exploration
by fictiona — 2010-11-25T06:57:23.015Z

Is rationalism scientific? Yes. Is science rationalistic? Depends.

Within scientific disciplines, I believe that computer science is more rationalistic than others due to its deductibility (can be proved mathematically).

How about other fields?

Physics? Chemistry? Biology? They rely mostly on empirical results to support their arguments and theories. They can observe. They can experiment. Some of them claim they can prove... but to what extent can they be so confident? Can we really bridge empiricism to rationalism?

Verificationism. Sure, scientific theory should be able to be supported by empirical evidence. But lack of contradicting evidence doesn't necessarily mean that the theory is true. It just means that the theory isn't yet made false, even if a hypothesis can be empirically tested and the study has been replicated again and again. Falsifiability is like a time bomb. You don't know the conditions in which a said theory doesn't apply. There may be unknown unknowns, like Newton didn't know his theory didn't apply in the outer space.

Moreover, some fields can not be experimented, and in some cases, observed. Examples: astronomy, natural history. This is more of a speculation - yet does not receive as much scepticism as social science. Big Bang theory, how dinosaurs were extincted, etc.. cannot be replicated or confirmed given current technology. Scientists in those areas are playing on "what ifs"... trying to explain possible causes without really knowing how cause-effect relationships may have been different in prehistorical times. I don't find them very different from, say, political analysts trying to explain why Kennedy was assassinated.

I myself am a fallibist. But I won't go as far as supporting the Münchhausen Trilemma. To science: I have reasonable doubts, but I believe that reasonable (blind) faith is necessary for practicality/pragmatism.

Relativism. A proposition is only true relative to a particular perspective. Like the story of blind men and the elephant. How can scientists be sure that they see the whole 'truth', if 'truth' is definable at all? Maybe the elephant is too large? Maybe blind men cook the results in order to get their opinions published? Maybe blind men lack a good common measurement (e.g. eyes of the same quality) to give the elephant a 'fair' assessment?

Maybe it's not blind...
What Science got Wrong and Why 
by JoshuaZ — 2010-11-25T02:12:59.245Z

An article at The Edge has scientific experts in various fields give their favorite examples of theories that were wrong in their fields. Most relevantly to Less Wrong, many of those scientists discuss what their disciplines did that was wrong which resulted in the misconceptions. For example, Irene Pepperberg not surprisingly discusses the failure for scientists to appreciate avian intelligence. She emphasizes that this failure resulted from a combination of different factors, including the lack of appreciation that high level cognition could occur without the mammalian cortex, and that many early studies used pigeons which just aren't that bright.
$100 for the best article on efficient charity -- deadline Wednesday 1st December
by Roko — 2010-11-24T22:31:57.215Z

Reposted from a few days ago, noting that jsalvatier (kudos to him for putting up the prize money, very community spirited) has promised $100 to the winner, and I have decided to set a deadline of Wednesday 1st December for submissions, as my friend has called me and asked me where the article I promised him is. This guy wants his god-damn rationality already, people!

My friend is currently in a potentially lucrative management consultancy career, but is considering getting a job in eco-tourism because he "wants to make the world a better place" and we got into a debate about Efficient Charity, Roles vs. Goals, and Optimizing versus Acquiring Warm Fuzzies.

I thought that there would be a good article here that I could send him to, but there isn't. So I've decided to ask people to write such an article. What I am looking for is an article that is less than 1800 words long, and explains the following ideas:

Charity should be about actually trying to do as much expected good as possible for a given amount of resource (time, $), in a quantified sense. I.e. "5000 lives saved in expectation", not "we made a big difference".

The norms and framing of our society regarding charity currently get it wrong, i.e. people send lots of $ to charities that do a lot less good than other charities. The "inefficiency" here is very large, i.e. Givewell estimates by a factor of 1000 at least. Our norm of ranking charities by % spent on overheads is very very silly.

It is usually better to work a highly-paid job and donate because if you work for a charity you replace the person who would have been hired had you not applied

Our instincts will tend to tempt us to optimize for signalling, this is to be resisted unless (or to the extent that) it is what you actually want to do. Our instincts will also tend to want to optimize for "Warm Fuzzies". These should be purchased separately from actual good outcomes.

Our human intuition about how to allocate resources is extremely bad. Moreover, since charity is typically for the so-called benefit of someone else, you, the donor, usually don't get to see the result. Lacking this feedback from experience, one tends to make all kinds of gigantic mistakes.

but without using any unexplained

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Startups
by Alexandros — 2010-11-24T21:13:45.409Z

There seems to be a non-negligible deal of overlap between this community and Hacker News, both in terms of material and members. For those not aware of HN, it's a news aggregator for people interested in startups, technology, and other intellectually interesting topics, with a reputation for high-quality material and discourse.

While rationality and LessWrong gets its fair share of attention over at HN, I haven't heard of much discussion about startups over here. Off-line, I've heard a claim that in terms of contribution to existential risk prevention charities, startups are suboptimal when compared to jobs in finance, but not much else other than that. I find this odd, as many of the contributors in this site seem to be prime founder material, and rationality should really be of use when working in a high-stakes ever-changing environment.

My intention with this post is simply to kickstart a discussion around startups and gauge the attitudes of fellow LessWrongers. Does anyone (else) aspire to becoming a startup founder in the next few years? Do you believe startup founding to be a viable means of contributing to groups existential risk prevention?
2005 short story loosely about P-zombies
by Airedale — 2010-11-24T18:12:15.828Z

I thought some of you might enjoy this 2005 story published in Asimov's:

Second Person, Present Tense by Daryl Gregory (plus some of the author's notes on the story)

The story involves a a drug that (for a period of time) turns someone into a P-zombie.

It's currently available for free on the Asimov's page, but it may only be there temporarily.
Probability and Politics
by CarlShulman — 2010-11-24T17:02:11.537Z

Follow-up to: Politics as Charity

Can we think well about courses of action with low probabilities of high payoffs?

Giving What We Can (GWWC), whose members pledge to donate a portion of their income to most efficiently help the global poor, says that evaluating spending on political advocacy is very hard:

Such changes could have enormous effects, but the cost-effectiveness of supporting them is very difficult to quantify as one needs to determine both the value of the effects and the degree to which your donation increases the probability of the change occurring. Each of these is very difficult to estimate and since the first is potentially very large and the second very small [1], it is very challenging to work out which scale will dominate.

This sequence attempts to actually work out a first approximation of an answer to this question, piece by piece. Last time, I discussed the evidence, especially from randomized experiments, that money spent on campaigning can elicit marginal votes quite cheaply. Today, I'll present the state-of-the-art in estimating the chance that those votes will directly swing an election outcome.

Disclaimer

Politics is a mind-killer: tribal feelings readily degrade the analytical skill and impartiality of otherwise very sophisticated thinkers, and so discussion of politics (even in a descriptive empirical way, or in meta-level fashion) signals an increased probability of poor analysis. I am not a political partisan and am raising the subject primarily for its illustrative value in thinking about small probabilities of large payoffs.

Two routes from vote to policy: electing and affecting

In thinking about the effects of an additional vote on policy, we can distinguish between two ways to affect public policy: electing politicians disposed to implement certain policies, or affecting [2] the policies of existing and future officeholders who base their decisions on electoral statistics (including that marginal vote and its effects). Models of the probability of a marginal vote swaying an election are most obviously relevant to the electing approach, but the affecting route will also depend on such models, as they are used by politicians.

The surprising virtues of naive Fermi calculation

In my previous post I linked to Eric Schwitzgebel's discussion &nbs

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The Cult Of Reason
by Raw_Power — 2010-11-24T15:24:16.699Z

So... while investigating Wikipedia I found out about an actual Cult. Of Reason. Revolutionary France. From the description, it sounds pretty awesome. Here's he link. Is this denomination usable? Is it useful? Can it be resurrected? Should it be? Is it compatible with what we stand for? Discuss. Also, note that in French "Culte" does not mean "Sect", it means "the act of worshipping".
Do IQ tests measure g?
by NancyLebovitz — 2010-11-24T13:19:12.265Z

I'm indulging in the simple pleasure of drawing large conclusions from a single study.... Why exams are nothing out of context:

the story about the maths ability of Brazilian street kids living in the in the favelas of Recife. This story helped both of us realise the importance of carrying out usability tests in context. Three researchers (see: Carraher, Carraher, and Schliemann 1985) carried out research with children aged 9 to 15. These kids had dropped out of school, and were selling sun screen, and chewing gum on the streets. The researchers worked out that they could set the kids questions by purchasing goods off them. For example, 1,000 minus 300 is the same as giving the kid a 1,000 Cruzeiros note for a product that costs 300 Cruzeiros. Multiplication can be done by asking the kids how much 3 of a product would cost. In these tests the Brazilian street kids scored 98%. But when they were put into a formalised test setting, and asked instead of how much would 3 apples cost or what 3×9 is, the kids performance dropped to just 37%.

What is scary is that the researchers later tested middle class children in a private school. These kids did very well in the formal exam. But when they had to do transactions with real money in the street, using the same maths, they failed in being able to do the transactions.

Is it possible that the correlation between g and success isn't about raw intelligence, it's about being able to access one's intelligence in situations (like classrooms) which involve thresholds for easily improving one's status?
Why abortion looks more okay to us than killing babies
by cousin_it — 2010-11-24T10:08:26.453Z

Some thoughts that I don't remember anyone expressing on LW.

First let's get this out of the way: life does not "begin at birth". As far as life can be said to "begin" anywhen, it begins at conception. Moreover, the child's intellectual abilities, self-awareness or similar qualities don't undergo any abrupt change at birth. It's just an arbitrary moment in the child's development. So it would seem that allowing killing kids only before they're born is illogical. What are the odds that your threshold for "personhood" coincides so well with the moment of birth? Could it be okay to kill kids up to 2 years old, say? CronoDAS voices this opinion here.

But there's another argument in favor of considering the moment of birth "special". Eliezer linked to a study showing that the degree of parental grief over a child's death, when plotted against the child's age, follows the same curve as the child's reproductive potential plotted against age. Now, the reproductive potential of an unborn kid depends on its chance of survival, and the moment of birth is special in this respect. In the ancestral environment many kids used to die at birth. And mothers died often too, which made their kids less likely to survive. An unborn kid is a creature that hasn't yet passed this big and sharply defined hurdle, so we instinctively discount our sympathy for its reproductive potential by a large factor without knowing why.

How much this should influence our modern attitudes toward abortion, if at all, is another question entirely. As medicine becomes better, kids and mothers become more likely to survive. So if our attitudes were allowed to drift toward a new evolutionary equilibrium which took account of technology, we'd come to hate abortions again (thx Morendil). But then again, the new evolutionary equilibrium is probably a very nasty system of values that no one in their right mind would embrace now (won't spell it out, use your imagination).

Ultimately your morality is up to you and the little voices in your head. You think womens' rights trump kids' rights or the other way round, okay. But if you use factual arguments, try to make sure they are correct.

ETA: see DanArmak's and Sniffnoy's comments for simpler explanations. Taken together, they sound more convincing to me than my own idea.