trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Attempt to explain Bayes without much maths, please review
by David_Gerard — 2011-08-06T09:24:30.349Z

My current favourite waste of time is the concept of Bayesian postmodernism. Just putting those two words together invokes a world of delightful wrangling, as approximately anyone who understands one won't understand or will have contempt for the other. (Though I found at least one person - a programmer who's studied philosophy - who got the idea straight away when I posted it to my blog, which is one more than I was expecting.) It is currently a page of incoherent notes and isn't necessarily actually useful for anything as yet and may never be.

Anyway, that's not my point today. My point today is that as part of this, I have to somehow explain Bayesian thinking in a nutshell to people who are highly intelligent, but have no mathematical knowledge and may actually be dyscalculic - but who can and do get the feel of things. I'm trying to get across that this is how learning works already and I just want to make them aware of it. I've run it past a couple of working artists who seemed to get the idea a bit. So I am posting this here for your technical correction.

If you think it's any good, please do run it past artists or critics of your acquaintance. (I'm glancing in AndrewHickey's direction right now.)

"The meaning of a thing is the way you should be influenced by it." - Vladimir Nesov

To explain what "Bayesian postmodernism" means, I first have to try to explain Bayesian epistemology.

Probability does not exist outside in the world - it exists in your head. Things happen or not in the world; probability measures your knowledge of them.

You know certain things, to some degree. New knowledge and experiences come in and affect your knowledge, pulling your degree of certainty of given ideas up or down.

Bayes' Theorem is the equation describing precisely how much a new piece of information (on the probability of something holding in the world) must affect your knowledge. This is a mathematical theorem, true in the sense that 2+2=4 is true; this is a mathematical question with one right answer. If you know your "prior probability," and you know what the new information is, you know your new probability (the "posterior probability").

The hard part is, of course knowing what the hell your prior actually is, to more useful specificity than "everything you think you know about everything."

(Just to make it harder, the prior is not a number, but a probability distribu

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[SEQ RERUN] Say Not "Complexity"
by MinibearRex — 2011-08-06T00:22:17.750Z

Today's post, Say Not "Complexity" was originally published on 29 August 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

The concept of complexity isn't meaningless, but too often people assume that adding complexity to a system they don't understand will improve it. If you don't know how to solve a problem, adding complexity won't help; better to say "I have no idea" than to say "complexity" and think you've reached an answer.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Positive Bias: Look Into the Dark, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
Leveling IRL
by cousin_it — 2011-08-05T21:35:06.472Z

I just got this random idea that people who want to become better at life could benefit from a common scale of "leveling". No, I don't mean vague Lesswrongey things like "changing your mind". I mean a set of concrete criteria like "you qualify for level 2 if you can do 5 pull-ups, have solved 30 Project Euler problems, and did 10 cold approaches". Obviously there would be separate ladders for different character classes, but not too many. Also obviously, my example was a bit too high for level 2. So I guess I really want to ask some meta questions here:

1) Do you think agreeing on a common leveling scale would be a good thing for a substantial subset of LW users? Would you feel good about leveling up and telling other people about it on LW?

2) Is there some good way to determine leveling criteria that are neither too high nor too low? Maybe make an intermediate scale of "experience points"?
Akrasic Reasoning
by MatthewBaker — 2011-08-05T20:22:56.910Z

This post is in a constant state of revision, similar to this post. This is mainly because I do not have a beta and this is based on many personal experiences that are unclear at times.

This subject has been touched on many times throughout LessWrong because Akrasia is the most dangerous foe of any true follower of Rationality. When you know you could be amazing but you find yourself unable to change due to the havoc that feelings can play with your thoughts you feel helpless and I want to help you surpass that. I am beginning a Journey to fight Akrasia directly in all its forms and in the past such Journey's have been abandoned without much progress. In this mini-sequence of posts I plan to not only document my fight to push past the depressing weight of Akrasia as a tool to keep me on the path, I will also provide some anti-Akrasia reports on my progress with different techniques that fellow LessWrongians can look back on and draw strength from in times of despair and laziness.

My name is Matthew Baker and I want to save the world.

I think most people share the feeling that the world should be saved and that only true sociopaths can discount the value of all sentient life. This is so important because the majority of people aren't able to defeat their innate Akrasic reasoning, ugh fields, and other factors that prevent them from functioning in a way that aligns with their beliefs. I think that if you believe in something, and you wish to be more rational towards the world then you should either push your beliefs towards the current state of reality or push reality towards your current state of beliefs.

When I was younger and sought something that I could devote effort to that would change the world for the better, I was quite disillusioned by the fact that nearly every cause relied on their innate biases to deal with the problems facing them. From political struggles to moral tribulation humanity is very good

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Teenage Rationalists and Changing Your Mind
by KPier — 2011-08-05T18:19:30.993Z

I remember the moment when I became an atheist.

I was reading Religion's Claim to Be Non-Disprovable, an uneasy feeling growing in my head, and then I reached the bottom of the article, stared at the screen for a couple of seconds, and got it.

"There is no God," I whispered. (Then I braced myself to be hit by a thunderbolt from the sky, so the belief was still paying rent, right to the very end).

No thunderbolt came. I tried again, a little louder. "There is no God."

It was...

kinda obvious, actually. I mostly felt disappointed in myself for needing someone to explain it to me, like I'd failed a test and hadn't even realized it was a test until it was too late. Friendly AI? Never would have figured that one out myself. But it shouldn't have taken Eliezer-level intelligence to point out that there's no one sensible in charge of the universe. And so - without a crisis of faith, without worry, without further drama - I changed my mind.

Over the last 6 months, I've changed my beliefs about a lot of things. I get the impression that's pretty standard, for a first read-through of the sequences. The interesting part is that it wasn't hard. After reading everything on How to Actually Change Your Mind, I'd expected letting go of beliefs I'd held my entire life to be a bit of an ordeal. It really wasn't. I didn't agree with the LessWrong consensus on every issue (I still don't), but whenever I came to agree (or to modify my position in that direction) I said so, and reevaluated the appropriate assumptions, and adjusted my model of the world, and then went on to the next article.

When I started the Sequences, I was 16. I don't think I'm generalizing from one example in terms of my ease of accepting new ideas; when I've explained these concepts to other smart teenagers, they usually also get the implications immediately and change their mind without apparent difficulty. It may be that most people rarely change their mind, but teenagers - at least the teenagers I know - change their mind a lot. I've watched my friends change their mind on life-changing decisions - colleges, careers, religion - every couple of weeks. Eliezer writes in "We Change our Mind Less Often Than We Think":

once I could guess what my answer would be - once I could assign a higher probability to deciding one way than other - then I had, in all probability, already decided.

I haven't asked my ...
[LINK] Reverse priming effect from awareness of persuasion attempt?
by Sniffnoy — 2011-08-05T18:02:07.579Z

Recently came across this blog post on Language Log summarizing this recent paper by Laran et al. Super-short version: When people are aware that a slogan is trying to persuade them, reverse-priming effects in which they avoid doing as it suggests can be seen. However, if their attention is drawn away from the fact that it is trying to persuade them, the usual priming effects are seen.
I can't see comments anymore -- what was recently changed?
by SilasBarta — 2011-08-05T16:16:50.504Z

I can't see the comments under posts anymore. This just started happening in the last day or so. (If I know a comment is there, I can still see it in the "recent comments" section.) I'm using IE8 at work (CORRECTION: IE7), where a lot of stuff is blocked for security reasons, but not in a way that kept me from seeing comments until recently.

What changes were recently made to the site that would cause this? It would be really nice to undo those.

Btw, I won't be able to see the replies to this post unless I find them under "recent comments", so ... if you want more specifics about how it looks on my end, you'll probably have to PM me.
Unknown unknowns
by Paul Crowley — 2011-08-05T12:55:37.560Z

Sorry if this seems incomplete - thought I'd fire this off as a discussion post now and hope to return to it with a more well-rounded post later.

Less Wrongers are used to thinking of uncertainty as best represented as a probability - or perhaps as a log odds ratio, stretching from minus infinity to infinity. But when I argue with people about for example cryonics, it appears most people consider that some possibilities simply don't appear on this scale at all: that we should not sign up for cryonics because no belief about its chances of working can be justified. Rejecting this category seems to me one of the key foundational ideas of this community, but as far as I know the only article specifically discussing it is "I don't know", which doesn't make a devastatingly strong case. What other writing discusses this idea?

I think there are two key arguments against this. First, you have to make a decision anyway, and the "no belief" uncertainty doesn't help with that. Second, "no belief" is treated as disconnected from the probability line; so at some point evidence causes a discontinuous jump from "no belief" to some level of confidence. This discontinuity seems very unnatural. How can evidence add up to a discontinuous jump - what happened to all the evidence before the jump?
My Expected Value Approach to Newcomb's Problem
by Peter Wildeford — 2011-08-05T07:24:50.985Z

Related to: Newcomb's Problem and Regret of Rationality and Newcomb's Problem: A Problem for Casual Decision Theories.

From the list of standard problems in rationality that have been talked to death but still don't have a strong consensus, allow me to re-present Newcomb's Problem:

A superintelligence from another galaxy, whom we shall call Omega, comes to Earth and sets about playing a strange little game. In this game, Omega selects a human being, sets down two boxes in front of them, and flies away.

Box A is transparent and contains a thousand dollars.
Box B is opaque, and contains either a million dollars, or nothing.

You can take both boxes, or take only box B.

And the twist is that Omega has put a million dollars in box B iff Omega has predicted that you will take only box B.

Omega has been correct on each of 100 observed occasions so far - everyone who took both boxes has found box B empty and received only a thousand dollars; everyone who took only box B has found B containing a million dollars. (We assume that box A vanishes in a puff of smoke if you take only box B; no one else can take box A afterward.)

Before you make your choice, Omega has flown off and moved on to its next game. Box B is already empty or already full.

Omega drops two boxes on the ground in front of you and flies off.

Do you take both boxes, or only box B?

This problem is famous for not only the fact that the answer is extensively controversial, but also for people who think they should one-box (take only box B) or two-box (take both box A and box B) almost always are very certain of their answer. I'm one of those people -- I'm very certain I should one-box.

Since I missed out on earlier Newcomb's discussion, I'd like to explore my approach to the problem here.

In Newcomb's Problem, there are only four possible outcomes, and they end up in this tree:

Omega predicts you will one-box:

You one box: +$1000000

You two box: +$1001000

Omega predicts you will two-box:

You one box: +$0

You two box: +$1000

We can use this knowledge to create an expected value formula for all four options (where P is the chance Omega guessed your choice correctly):

EV(One-box) = P*$1000000 + (1-P)*$0

EV(Two-box) = P*$1000 + (1-P)*$1001000

If we set the two equations equal to each other, we can solve for the value for P that would make both strategies equal...
The Expected Value Approach to Newcomb's Problem
by Peter Wildeford — 2011-08-05T07:09:36.728Z

Related to: Newcomb's Problem and Regret of Rationality and Newcomb's Problem: A Problem for Casual Decision Theories.

From the list of standard problems in rationality that have been talked to death but still don't have a strong consensus, allow me to re-present Newcomb's Problem:

A superintelligence from another galaxy, whom we shall call Omega, comes to Earth and sets about playing a strange little game. In this game, Omega selects a human being, sets down two boxes in front of them, and flies away.

Box A is transparent and contains a thousand dollars.
Box B is opaque, and contains either a million dollars, or nothing.

You can take both boxes, or take only box B.

And the twist is that Omega has put a million dollars in box B iff Omega has predicted that you will take only box B.

Omega has been correct on each of 100 observed occasions so far - everyone who took both boxes has found box B empty and received only a thousand dollars; everyone who took only box B has found B containing a million dollars. (We assume that box A vanishes in a puff of smoke if you take only box B; no one else can take box A afterward.)

Before you make your choice, Omega has flown off and moved on to its next game. Box B is already empty or already full.

Omega drops two boxes on the ground in front of you and flies off.

Do you take both boxes, or only box B?

This problem is famous for not only the fact that the answer is extensively controversial, but also for people who think they should one-box (take only box B) or two-box (take both box A and box B) almost always are very certain of their answer. I'm one of those people -- I'm very certain I should one-box.

Since I missed out on earlier Newcomb's discussion, I'd like to explore my approach to the problem here.

In Newcomb's Problem, there are only four possible outcomes, and they end up in this tree:

Omega predicts you will one-box:

You one box: +$1000000

You two box: +$1001000

Omega predicts you will two-box:

You one box: +$0

You two box: +$1000

We can use this knowledge to create an expected value formula for all four options (where P is the chance Omega guessed your choice correctly):

EV(One-box) = P*$1000000 + (1-P)*$0

EV(Two-box) = P*$1000 + (1-P)*$1001000

If we set the two equations equal to each other, we can solve for the value for P that would make both

...
[SEQ RERUN] Positive Bias: Look Into the Dark
by MinibearRex — 2011-08-05T03:04:01.255Z

Today's post, Positive Bias: Look Into the Dark was originally published on 28 August 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Positive bias is the tendency to look for evidence that confirms a hypothesis, rather than disconfirming evidence.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was The Futility of Emergence, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
Meetup : Vancouver meetup
by michaelkeenan — 2011-08-05T02:40:49.851Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Vancouver meetup

WHEN: 06 August 2011 03:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE: Waves Coffee House, 100-900 Howe St. Vancouver, BC V6Z 2M4

Last Sunday's first Vancouver rationalist meetup was great! Seven people turned up and we talked about the Singularity, Bitcoin, seasteading, polyamory, the Khan Academy, the Hanson/Caplan view that education is more about signaling than imparting knowledge, Non-Violent Communication, akrasia, nootropics, our favorite Less Wrong posts and authors, and many other things.

I think we have the beginnings of a lasting community. If you're interested, join the Vancouver Rationalists Google Group to plan meetups and for general discussion.

Sunday afternoon was not convenient for everyone, and a Doodle poll shows Saturday as the better option. So we'll meet at 3pm on Saturday (sorry about the short notice if you're just hearing about this now).

We have a meeting room booked at the Waves Coffee House on the corner of Howe St. and Smithe.

This week's discussion topic is:

Tell your rationality success story or failure story. Describe a time when rationality helped (or hurt) you, or a time when irrationality hurt (or helped) you, and what lessons might be drawn from the experience.

Feel free to bring friends who are interested in rationality.

Discussion article for the meetup : Vancouver meetup
Consistently Inconsistent
by Kaj_Sotala — 2011-08-04T22:33:21.748Z

Robert Kurzban's Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind is a book about how our brains are composed of a variety of different, interacting systems. While that premise is hardly new, many of our intuitions are still grounded in the idea of a unified, non-compartmental self. Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite takes the modular view and systematically attacks a number of ideas based on the unified view, replacing them with a theory based on the modular view. It clarifies a number of issues previously discussed on Overcoming Bias and Less Wrong, and even debunks some outright fallacious theories that we on Less Wrong have implicitly accepted. It is quite possibly the best single book on psychology that I've read. In this posts and posts that follow, I will be summarizing some of its most important contributions.
Chapter 1: Consistently Inconsistent (available for free here) presents evidence of our brains being modular, and points out some implications of this.
As previously discussed, severing the connection between the two hemispheres of a person's brain causes some odd effects. Present the left hemisphere with a picture of a chicken claw, and the right with a picture of a wintry scene. Now show the patient an array of cards with pictures of objects on them, and ask them to point (with each hand) something related to what they saw. The hand controlled by the left hemisphere points to a chicken, the hand controlled by the right hemisphere points to a snow shovel. Fine so far.
But what happens when you ask the patient to explain why they pointed to those objects in particular? The left hemisphere is in control of the verbal apparatus. It knows that it saw a chicken claw, and it knows that it pointed at the picture of the chicken, and that the hand controlled by the other hemisphere pointed at the picture of a shovel. Asked to explain this, it comes up with the explanation that the shovel is for cleaning up after the chicken. While the right hemisphere knows about the snowy scene, it doesn't control the verbal apparatus and can't communicate directly with the left hemisphere, so this doesn't affect the reply.
Now one asks, what did ”the patient” think was going on? A crucial point of the book is that there's no such thing as the patient. ”The patient” is just two different hemispheres, to some extent disconnected. Y...
Summarizing the Sequences Proposal
by MinibearRex — 2011-08-04T21:15:09.276Z

As I mentioned here, a large number of the sequence posts have not ever been summarized, and doing so would help the sequence rerun efforts, as well as helping to organize all of EY's posts transplanted to Less Wrong from Overcoming Bias. It might even be a first step towards the proposed program to create "exercises" regarding each of the sequences.

I am very willing to take an active role in this, but I don't really want to write summaries for hundreds of posts on my own, so I am asking for help. Writing a summary should not take very much time, and it would be a very easy way for you to help out with the administration of Less Wrong. In order to write a summary, one only has to read the article, and try to write the main point of the post in a few sentences. You can find plenty of examples of summaries that are already done here, as well as a lot of posts that haven't been summarized yet.

This is a list of upcoming posts in the rerunning the sequences series that haven't been summarized yet. If you would like to claim a batch (something like 5 posts) to summarize, leave a comment to that effect below, and make another comment when you have posted the summary on the wiki (so that you can be rewarded with some karma for your contribution). When a post is claimed, I will mark that it's been claimed, and then mark it again when the summary has been posted. Once all of these posts have been claimed/summarized, I'll post a new list.

(KPier)

Say Not "Complexity"
My Wild and Reckless Youth
Failing to Learn from History
Making History Available
Stranger Than History
Explain/Worship/Ignore?

(/KPier) (Completed)

Absurdity Heuristic, Absurdity Bias
Why is the Future So Absurd?
Anchoring and Adjustment
The Crackpot Offer
Radical Honesty
We Don't Really Want Your Participation
Applause Lights
Rationality and the English Language
Human Evil and Muddled Thinking
Doublethink (Choosing to be Biased)
Why I'm Blooking
Kahneman's Planning Anecdote
Conjunction Controversy (Or, How They Nail It Down)
Burdensome Details
What is Evidence?
The Lens That Sees Its Flaws
How Much Evidence Does It Take?
Einstein's Arrogance
Occam's Razor
9/26 is Petrov Day
How to Convince Me That 2 + 2 = 3
The Bottom Line
What Evidence Filtered Evidence?
Rationalization
Recommended Rationalist Reading
A Rational Argument

PS. I just spent five minutes trying to get those little blue things to go away, and I can't get ...