trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Philosophers and seeking answers
by Scott Alexander — 2011-02-04T22:51:19.706Z

This thread has produced some interesting commentary around whether philosophers actually want to answer their own questions, or whether they enjoy sounding profound by debating big questions but don't want to lose that opportunity for profundity by finding single correct answers to them.

I don't quite disagree with the latter theory: the main reason I quit academic philosophy was exasperation that people were still debating questions where the right answer seemed obvious to me (like theism vs. atheism, or whether there was a universally compelling morality/aesthetics of pure reason), and worry that my philosophical career would involve continuing to debate these issues ad nauseum rather than helping to solve them and move on to the next problem.

But when I explained this to a particularly sarcastic friend, he summarized it as "So you think philosophy is useless because not everyone agrees with you?"

The problem isn't that philosophers never come up with solutions. The problem is that they come up with too many different solutions.

Science has solved many scientific problems, and anyone wondering what the solution is can look it up in a book or on Wikipedia. Philosophers have also solved many philosophical problems, but it is full of so many distractions and false solutions that anyone wondering which proposed solution is correct will have to become nearly as good a philosopher as the person who solved it in the first place. It's much easier for science to settle its disputes via experiment than for philosophy to settle its disputes via debate.

I am wary of criticizing the discipline of philosophy simply on the grounds that not everyone in it agrees with me. But I also don't want to let it off and say it's okay that they've managed to go so long without coming to any answers, when it seems to me that settling at least some of the easier problems is not that difficult.

How do we tell the difference between a discipline that doesn't really seek answers and a discipline which honestly seeks answers but just can't agree within itself? And how can philosophy do something about its level of internal disagreement without having to apply the "kick out everyone who disagrees with Less Wrong" solution?
On Charities and Linear Utility
by Anatoly_Vorobey — 2011-02-04T14:13:29.123Z

Steven Landsburg argued, in an oft-quoted article, that the rational way to donate to charity is to give everything to the charity you consider most effective, rather than diversify; and that this is always true when your contribution is much smaller than the charities' endowments. Besides an informal argument, he provided a mathematical addendum for people who aren't intimidated by partial derivatives. This post will bank on your familiarity with both.

I submit that the math is sloppy and the words don't match the math. This isn't to say that the entire thing must be rejected; on the contrary, an improved set of assumptions will fix the math and make the argument whole. Yet it is useful to understand the assumptions better, whether you want to adopt or reject them.

And so, consider the math. We assume that our desire is to maximize some utility function U(X, Y, Z), where X, Y and Z are total endowments of three different charities. It's reasonable to assume U is smooth enough so we can take derivatives and apply basic calculus with impunity. We consider our own contributions Δx, Δy and Δz, and form a linear approximation to the updated value U(X+Δx, Y+Δy, Z+Δz). If this approximation is close enough to the true value, the rest of the argument goes through: given that the sum Δx+Δy+Δz is fixed, it's best to put everything into the charity with the largest partial derivative at (X,Y,Z).

The approximation, Landsburg says, is good "assuming that your contributions are small relative to the initial endowments". Here's the thing: why? Suppose Δx/X, Δy/Y and Δz/Z are indeed very small - what then? Why does it follow that the linear approximation works? There's no explanation, and if you think this is because it's immediately obvious - well, it isn't. It may sound plausible, but the math isn't there. We need to go deeper.

We don't need to go all that deep, actually. The tool which allows us to estimate our error is Taylor's theorem for several variables. If you stare into that for a bit, taking n=1, you'll see that the leftovers from U(X+Δx, Y+Δy, Z+Δz), after we take out U(X,Y,Z) and the linear terms with the partial derivatives, are a bunch of terms that are basically second derivatives and mixed derivatives of U times quadratic...
Instrumental Variables
by bentarm — 2011-02-04T12:22:57.520Z

Marginal Revolution linked recently to this paper which claims that overuse of Instrumental Variables (IVs) in econometric studies has led to them being less useful. So far as I can tell, the argument given in the paper is exactly backwards... what am I missing?

For the uninitiated, an IV is a variable which is correlated with the thing we want to study but is unequivocally not caused by it. Let's say we want to study the effect of x on y, then an instrumental variable z is useful if its only effect on y is through its effect on z. To use the language of Pearl's causal graphs, this is equivalent to saying that every path in the causal graph from z to y passes through x.

For example, suppose we want to measure the effect of a change in the price of apple on the demand for apples. It may seem difficult to do this directly, as an increase in demand is likely to lead to an increase in supply, and so price is affected by demand. A potential instrumental variable is the weather. If the the weather is favourable for growing apples then more apples will end up being grown, and this is presumably independent of demand - the increase in apples will have a predictable increase in the supply (and therefore the price) and we can measure the effect on demand.

Now, the authors of this paper claim that:

A Tragedy of the Commons has led to overuse of instrumental variables anda depletion of the actual stock of valid instruments for all econometricians. Each time an instrumental variable is shown to work in one study, that result automatically generates a latent variable problem in every other study that has used or will use the same instrumental variables, or another correlated with it, in a similar context. We see no solution to this. Useful instrumental variables are, we fear, going the way of Atlantic Cod.

As I said, I think this is exactly backwards. It is not the fact that new papers are produced which use these instrumental variables in a new context which introduces the latency problem: it reveals a latency problem which already existed. The previous studies were already invalid. The new studies just reveal the fact.

E.g. Imagine that people buy more apples when it was sunny because... I don't know, apples are a replacement for fish oil which they need in non-sunny years to replace their vitamin D. Well in that case the weather conditions *weren't* a good IV for demand ...
Scott Adams: 'Mockability Test'
by pete22 — 2011-02-04T00:44:21.486Z

I'm not sure what the protocol is for linking to or quoting another site on LW, but I thought this would fit here for two reasons: first, because I'm curious what people here think about his 'mockability' test, which seems to be half in jest but (I think) has a serious point at its core -- and second, because I think there might be people here who want to take him up on his challenge.

(Obviously I am not Scott Adams, and I have no connection to him nor any reason to promote his blog.)

http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/mockability_test/

'It's nearly impossible to humorously mock something that is reasonable. Take, for example, the idea that hard work is often necessary for success. There's nothing funny about that topic because it's unambiguously true. Humor only comes easily when the topic itself has a bit of dishonesty baked into it. That's why humor about politics, business, and relationships is so easy. There's a whole lot of lying in those environments.

I have a theory that some sort of mockability test would work like a lie detector in situations where confirmation bias is obscuring an underlying truth. In other words, if you believed that hard work often leads to success, and yet I could easily make jokes about it, that would be a contradiction, or a failure of the mockability test. And it would tell you that confirmation bias was clouding your perceptions. To put it in simpler terms, if a humorist can easily mock a given proposition, then the proposition is probably false, even if your own confirmation bias tells you otherwise.
I'd like to test this theory. I'm wrestling with my own confirmation bias on the topic of whether we could, in some practical sense, balance the U.S. budget without raising my taxes. I certainly want that to be a solution. But everything I see confirms my belief that it's literally impossible to do without causing more problems than it solves. And by that I mean more problems to everyone, not just the poor.
Obviously the math of budget cutting works. If you cut federal spending by 50%, just as an example, and keep collecting taxes, you balance the budget. And the philosophy of small government is legitimate. No one wants a government that grows larger without end. But I wonder if there is any way to cut government spending enough so that, along with economic growth, we can balance the budget without raising my taxes. I sure hope so.
So

...
Angles of Attack
by  — 2011-02-03T18:53:23.127Z

For humans problems can seem intractable for a long time and then suddenly become easy. Forming a coherent chemistry was taking a very long time until Lavoisier thought to look at the mass of reactants and products. And then we had a periodic table 100 years after that. Compare this to little progress from having bounced around in alchemy for 2000 years or so.

So identifying and understanding angles of attacks is important for tackling the thorny problems that face us today.

Consider this article in collaborative draft

So why do we need angles of attacks? Getting an angle of attack can be seen as reducing the search space. Imagine in the pre-chemistry era, we want to make a substance that you can make a sword out of without all the bother of smelting metal. You have seen that things can be created by placing different things together, how do you select the things to make your new sword material? You know of a multitude of different materials: thousands of different types plant matter (100s of plants and the different parts of each), similar amounts of animal matter,various stones, water and more. You know of different processes such as heating, bashing and freezing. This adds up to a huge search space, you can't afford to brute force it. You need an atomic theory of chemistry to understand what gives items strength and brittleness and even given that we still haven't found much easier to make materials than metal for the purpose of swords. But we know that mixing rhino horn, bones from a strong man and bull's liver and freezing it over the night of a full moon will not make sword material.

We currently lack angles of attack for intelligence and meta-ethics. Even worse, we don't have ways to tell when we do have an angle of attack, without implementing a full AI. The principle of conservation of mass reduced the search space for atomic chemistry and could be tested immediately.

To give an example from lesswrong. Eliezer takes the principle that it doesn't matter how an agent computes its actions [citation needed], I think that energy considerations might be important. His supposition would give us an angle of attack, but how would we know whether it is a good one or not? Evolutionarily it would seem important, but a decision theory where you have to consider the energetic costs of making a decision is a lot more complex. You have to specify a machine and the...
[Link] Space Stasis: What the strange persistence of rockets can teach us about innovation
by Kaj_Sotala — 2011-02-03T18:36:59.115Z

http://www.slate.com/id/2283469/pagenum/all/

It's a long article, but the most relevant stuff is at the end, about how we're pretty much locked into the existing rocket technologies:

That is not, however, the most important way that rockets generate lock-in. In order to understand this, it's necessary to know a few things about (1) the physical environment of rocket launches, (2) the economics of the industry, and (3) the way it is regulated, or, to be more precise, the way it interacts with government.

1. The designer of a rocket payload, such as a communications satellite, has much more to worry about than merely limiting the payload to a given size, shape, and weight. The payload must be designed to survive the launch and the transition through various atmospheric regimes into outer space. As we all know from watching astronauts on movies and TV, there will be acceleration forces, relatively modest at the beginning, but building to much higher values as fuel is burned and the rocket becomes lighter relative to its thrust. At some moments, during stage separation, the acceleration may even reverse direction for a few moments as one set of engines stops supplying thrust and atmospheric resistance slows the vehicle down. Rockets produce intense vibration over a wide range of frequencies; at the upper end of that range we would identify this as noise (noise loud enough to cause physical destruction of delicate objects), at the lower range, violent shaking. Explosive bolts send violent shocks through the vehicle's structure. During the passage through the ionosphere, the air itself becomes conductive and can short out electrical gear. Enclosed spaces must be vented so that pressure doesn't build up in them as the vehicle passes into vacuum. Once the satellite has reached orbit, sharp and intense variations in temperature as it passes in and out of the earth's shadow can cause problems if not anticipated in the engineering design. Some of these hazards are common to all things that go into space, but many are unique to rockets.

2. If satellites and launches were cheap, a more easygoing attitude toward their design and construction might prevail. But in general they are, pound for pound, among the most expensive objects ever made even before millions of dollars are spent launching them into orbit. Relatively mass-produced satellites, s

...
On The Effectiveness of Ferriss
by diegocaleiro — 2011-02-03T09:52:14.079Z

Tim Ferriss has been systematically quoted on Less Wrong.

How to make money to donate utilons and show you care is a persistent topic on Less Wrong.

No one here seems to either have tried, or accessed the feasibility of Tim Ferrissing life (for instance accessing by checking for people who tried without the obvious survivor bias displayed in Ferriss`s own website)

A probability 30% of earning $12.000 per month working for 10 hours per week after a build-up time of 4 months working 10 hours a day to get it started (having fun while figuring out how does capitalism work anyway) seems like a fair bet.

My prior for the above paragraph feasibility is about 15%.

Should my posterior be above the 30% threshold?

Data anyone?

Different prior anyone?

Lone bystander bias,everyone?
[Draft] Holy Bayesian Multiverse, Batman!
by b1shop — 2011-02-03T01:47:51.794Z

I couldn't find the math for the quantum suicide and immortality thought experiment, so I'm placing it here for posterity. If one actually ran the experiment, Bayes' theorem would tell us how to update our belief in the multi-world interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics. I conclude by arguing that we don't need to run the experiment.

Prereqs: Understand the purpose of Bayes Theorem, possess at least rudimentary knowledge of the competing quantum worldviews, and have a nostalgic appreciation for Adam West.

The Fiendish Setup:

Suppose that, after catching Batman snooping in the shadows of his evil lair, Joker ties the caped crusader into a quantum, negative binomial death machine that, every ten seconds, measures the spin value of a fresh proton. Fifty percent of the time, the result will trigger a Bat-killing Rube Goldberg machine. The other 50 percent of the time, the quantum death machine will play a suspenseful stock sound effect and search for a new proton.

From Batman's Point of View

Suppose that, ten seconds after Joker turns on the machine, a dramatic, suspenseful sound fills Joker's hideout.

The Bat has survived, and there are two possible explanations:

There is only one world, and he was lucky enough to find himself in a world where the machine didn't kill him.

There are many worlds, and, for obvious reasons, he could only find himself in one of the worlds where he didn't die.

What does Bayes' say about how he should update his belief in the many-worlds theorem? If we partition all QM interpretations into either the single- or many- world camp, Batman's subjective P(MW) will increase to P(MW|S) according to this formula.

Let C be the event that the Copenhagen interpretation is correct and S be the event that Batman experiences himself surviving after the first flip of the quantum coin.

Click here to see a graph of P(MW|S) graphed over Batman's original estimate of P(MW). When successive iterations is zero, it's a straight line. If Batman survives through many successive iterations, he can only claim one theory with a straight face -- many worlds.

The limit of P(MW|Sn) goes to one as n goes to infinity.

From Joker's Point of View

Unfortunately, there's no such guaranty for the experiment's observers.

If MWI is true, then, in some uncommon universes, the Joker will see Batman breathe many si...
Isn't this sitemeter logging a bit too excessive?
by DanielVarga — 2011-02-02T20:55:27.219Z

I have just realized that sitemeter has the following data published about my visit, in a searchable and browsable format:

Domain Name

broadband.hu ? (Hungary)

IP Address

80.98.73.# (UPC Magyarorszag Kft.)

ISP

UPC Magyarorszag Kft.

Location

Continent
:
Europe

Country
:
Hungary (Facts)

State/Region
:
Fejer

City
:
Etyek

Lat/Long
:
47.45, 18.75 (Map)

Language

English (U.S.)
en-us

Operating System

Macintosh MacOSX

Browser

Firefox
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101203 Firefox/3.6.13 GTB7.1

Javascript

version 1.5

Monitor

Resolution
:
1296 x 810

Color Depth
:
24 bits

Time of Visit

Feb 2 2011 12:34:19 pm

Last Page View

Feb 2 2011 12:34:40 pm

Visit Length

21 seconds

Page Views

2

Referring URL

http://lesswrong.com..._meetup_is_easy%252F

Search Engine

lesswrong.com

Search Words

hungary

Visit Entry Page

http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/

Visit Exit Page

http://lesswrong.com...a_lw_meetup_is_easy/

Out Click

Time Zone

UTC+1:00

Visitor's Time

Feb 2 2011 9:34:19 pm

Visit Number

3,497,452

I am not a privacy geek, but isn't this a bit too extensive? By the way, I am not from Etyek, Hungary, I am from Budapest, Hungary. Etyek is a very small village, so if sitemeter consistently identifies me as someone from Etyek, then it will be even easier to track my lesswrong browsing habits. It is very easy even without that.
Normal gut microbiota modulates brain development and behavior (at least in mice)
by playtherapist — 2011-02-02T15:25:40.512Z

Interesting findings. If this holds true for humans, it seems possible that our use of antibacterial products, etc.may be contributing to the increase in ADHD.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/01/26/1010529108
Is Atheism a failure to distinguish Near and Far?
by Alexandros — 2011-02-02T04:52:39.226Z

The terms Near and Far are to be taken in the context of Robin Hanson's Near/Far articles.

I was reading a fairly convincing article linked from a comment here about how theistic beliefs are so scantly supported, when not outright contradictory, that it's a doubtful whether anyone truly holds them at all. Of course there is a whole battery of explanations around the self-deception, signalling and belief-in-belief cluster, but the question that got in my head was about the kinds of people that can or cannot profess to hold these beliefs.

A common thread in many a 'deconversion' story is that some inconsistency in a person's worldview comes to their attention, and they can't let go until they have undone the whole fabric of their belief system. But given that most people are happy living productive lives while simultaneously nominally carrying around massively conflicted worldviews, what is it that makes certain individuals not capable of this fairly common human feat?

So the hypothesis that I'm considering is that the people who came to atheism this way, are those who demand detailed consistency of their Far ideals. Alternatively, they could be those for who what is normally considered Far is actually Near, in other words those with an unusually high Buxton Index. Combining the two, perhaps for people with a high Buxton Index, Far simply evaporates, as it comes under the scope of things that are relevant to a person's planning. (Edsger W. Djikstra, when introducing the Buxton Index, says that "true christians" have a Buxton Index of infinity. I think that couldn't be more wrong. Perhaps it is the case for singularitarians though.)

The obvious reason to be suspicious of this idea is that it's very flattering for those that fall in this category, which includes myself. Rather than dithering about it, I'd rather expose it to the community and see if it seems to have legs in the eyes of others.
Future of Humanity Institute hiring postdocs from philosophy, math, CS
by CarlShulman — 2011-02-02T00:39:04.509Z

The application deadline for the two Research Fellowships with the new Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology, has been extended to 21 February.

The posts are:

1. Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, with emphasis on philosophy
2. Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, with emphasis on computer science, cognitive science, or mathematics

Further details at: www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/get_involved/future_tech_vacancies/futuretech.
Sleeping Beauty
by DanielLC — 2011-02-01T22:13:32.013Z

Someone comes up to you and tells you he flipped ten coins for ten people. They were fair coins, but only three came up heads. What is the probability yours was heads?

There are three people of ten who got heads. There is a 30% chance that you're one of those three, right?

Now take the sleeping beauty paradox. A coin is flipped. If it lands on heads, the subject is woken twice. If it lands on tails, the subject is woken once. For simplicity, assume it happens exactly once, and there are one trillion person-days. You wake up groggy in the morning, and take a second to remember who you are.

If the coin landed on tails, that would mean that there is a one in a trillion chance that you will remember that you're the subject. If it was heads, it would be two in a trillion. As such, if you do remember being the subject, the probability that it's heads is P(H|U)=P(U|H)*P(H)/[P(U|H)+P(U|T)] = (2/trillion)*(1/2)/[(2/trillion+1/trillion)] =2/3, where H is coin lands on heads, T is coin lands on tails, and U is you are the subject.

Technically, it would be slightly less than 2/3, since there will be one more person-day if the coin lands on heads.
Rationality Quotes: February 2011
by gwern — 2011-02-01T17:46:39.406Z

Take off every 'quote'! You know what you doing. For great insight. Move 'quote'.

And if you don't:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)

Do not quote yourself.

Do not quote comments/posts from LW. (If you want to exclude OB too create your own quotes thread! OB is entertaining and insightful and all but it is no rationality blog!)

No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.