trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
What should a Bayesian do given probability of proving X vs. of disproving X?
by PhilGoetz — 2014-06-07T18:40:38.419Z

Consider some disputed proposition X. Suppose there appeared to be a limited number of ways of proving and of disproving X. No one has yet constructed a proof or disproof, but you have a feeling for how likely it is that someone will.

For instance, take Fermat's Last Theorem or the 4-color problem. For each of them, at one point in time, there was no proof, but people had some sense of the prior probability of observing the lack of a counterexample given the space searched so far. They could use that to assign a probability of there being a counterexample (and hence a disproof) [1]. Later, there was an alleged proof, and people could estimate the probability that the proof was correct based on the reputation of the prover and the approach used. At that point, people could assign values to both P(will_be_proven(X)) and P(will_be_disproven(X)).

Is it reasonable to assign P(X) = P(will_be_proven(X)) / (P(will_be_proven(X)) + P(will_be_disproven(X))) ?

If so, consider X = "free will exists". One could argue that the term "free will" is defined such that it is impossible to detect it, or to prove that it exists. But if one could prove that the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct, that would constitute a disproof of X. Then P(will_be_proven(X)) / (P(will_be_proven(X)) + P(will_be_disproven(X))) = 0.

Is it possible for this to happen when you know that X is not undecidable? If so, what do you do then?

1. The computation is not as simple as it might appear, because you need to adjust for the selection effect of mathematicians being interested only in conjectures with no counterexamples.
Archipelago and Atomic Communitarianism
by Scott Alexander — 2014-06-07T16:44:41.000Z

I.

In the old days, you had your Culture, and that was that. Your Culture told you lots of stuff about what you were and weren’t allowed to do, and by golly you listened. Your Culture told you to work the job prescribed to you by your caste and gender, to marry who your parents told you to marry or at least someone of the opposite sex, to worship at the proper temples and the proper times, and to talk about proper things as opposed to the blasphemous things said by the tribe over there.

Then we got Liberalism, which said all of that was mostly bunk. Like Wicca, its motto is “Do as you will, so long as it harms none”. Or in more political terms, “Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins” or “If you don’t like gay sex, don’t have any” or “If you don’t like this TV program, don’t watch it” or “What happens in the bedroom between consenting adults is none of your business” or “It neither breaks my arm nor picks my pocket”. Your job isn’t to enforce your conception of virtue upon everyone to build the Virtuous Society, it’s to live your own life the way you want to live it and let other people live their own lives the way they want to live them. This is the much-maligned “atomic individualism,” or maybe just liberalism boiled down to its pure essence.

But atomic individualism wasn’t as great a solution as it sounded. Maybe one of the first cracks was tobacco ads. Even though putting up a billboard saying “SMOKE MARLBORO” neither breaks anyone’s arm nor picks their pocket, it shifts social expectations in such a way that bad effects occur. It’s hard to dismiss that with “Well, it’s people’s own choice to smoke and they should live their lives the way they want” if studies show that more people will want to live their lives in a way that gives them cancer in the presence of the billboard than otherwise.

From there we go into policies like Michael Bloomberg’s ban on giant sodas. While the soda ban itself was probably as much symbolic as anything, it’s hard to argue with the impetus behind it – a culture where everyone gets exposed to the option to buy very very unhealthy food all the time is going to be less healthy than one where there are some regulations in ...
Examples of Rationality Techniques adopted by the Masses
by edanm — 2014-06-07T14:03:40.237Z

Hi Everyone,

I was discussing LessWrong and rationality with a few people the other day, and I hit upon a common snag in the conversation.

My conversation partners agreed that rationality is a good idea in general, agreed that there are things you personally can do to improve your decision-making. But their point of view was that, while this is a nice ideal to strive to for yourself, there's little progress that could be made in the general population, who will remain irrational. Since one of the missions of CFAR/LW is to raise the sanity waterline, this is of course a problem.

So here's my question, something I was unable to think of in the spur of the argument - what are good examples of rationality techniques that have already become commonly used in the general population? E.g., one could say "the scientific method", which is certainly a kind of rationality technique that's going semi-wide adoption (though nowhere near universal). Are there any other examples? If you send a random from today back in time, other than specific advances in science, will there be anything they could teach people from the old days in terms of general thinking?
Second MIRIxLosAngeles Meeting
by Scott Garrabrant — 2014-06-07T05:55:42.257Z

The second MIRIxLosAngeles meeting will be held on Saturday, June 14, at 10:00 AM. The location will be the same as last time:

USC Institute for Creative Technologies

12015 Waterfront Drive

Playa Vista, CA 90094-2536.

If you would like to join us, please let me know, so I can know to expect you and give you necessary contact information. Due to the primary interests of the organizers, and some recent results I have to share, I expect for us to focus on the questions of "How should an agent assign probabilities to logical statements?" and "How should an agent assign probabilities to statements about his own probability function?" However, I expect that other people will come and direct the conversation in other useful directions, so it is hard to predict.

Experience in artificial intelligence will not be at all necessary, but experience in mathematics probably is. If you can follow the MIRI publications, you should be fine.

This event will be in the spirit of collaboration with MIRI, and will attempt to respect their guidelines on doing research that will decrease, rather than increase, existential risk. As such, practical implementation questions related to making an approximate Bayesian reasoner fast enough to operate in the real world will not be on-topic. Rather, the focus will be on the abstract mathematical design of a system capable of having reflexively consistent goals, preforming naturalistic induction, et cetera.

Food and refreshments will be provided for this event, courtesy of MIRI.

If you are not local to Los Angeles, you may want to consider hosting your own MIRIx event. You can find more information about this here.
Meetup : Second MIRIxLosAngeles Meeting
by Scott Garrabrant — 2014-06-07T05:47:25.375Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Second MIRIxLosAngeles Meeting

WHEN:
14 June 2014 10:00:00AM (-0700)

WHERE:
USC Institute for Creative Technologies 12015 Waterfront Drive Playa Vista, CA 90094-2536.

The second MIRIxLosAngeles meeting will be held on Saturday, June 14, at 10:00 AM. The location will be the same as last time:

USC Institute for Creative Technologies

12015 Waterfront Drive

Playa Vista, CA 90094-2536.

If you would like to join us, please let me know, so I can know to expect you and give you necessary contact information. Due to the primary interests of the organizers, and some recent results I have to share, I expect for us to focus on the questions of "How should an agent assign probabilities to logical statements?" and "How should an agent assign probabilities to statements about his own probability function?" However, I expect that other people will come and direct the conversation in other useful directions, so it is hard to predict.

Experience in artificial intelligence will not be at all necessary, but experience in mathematics probably is. If you can follow the MIRI publications, you should be fine.

This event will be in the spirit of collaboration with MIRI, and will attempt to respect their guidelines on doing research that will decrease, rather than increase, existential risk. As such, practical implementation questions related to making an approximate Bayesian reasoner fast enough to operate in the real world will not be on-topic. Rather, the focus will be on the abstract mathematical design of a system capable of having reflexively consistent goals, preforming naturalistic induction, et cetera.

Food and refreshments will be provided for this event, courtesy of MIRI.

If you are not local to Los Angeles, you may want to consider hosting your own MIRIx event. You can find more information about this here.

Discussion article for the meetup : Second MIRIxLosAngeles Meeting
Meetup : Washington DC: Bring a topic and we'll talk about it
by rocurley — 2014-06-07T03:14:30.621Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC: Bring a topic and we'll talk about it

WHEN:
08 June 2014 03:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC 20001, USA

Bring / come up with something you want to discuss, and we'll talk about it. Ideally many people would do this, and we could sort of go around similarly to a talks meetup.

This is my thing.

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC: Bring a topic and we'll talk about it
Mathematics as a lossy compression algorithm gone wild
by Shmi — 2014-06-06T23:53:46.887Z

This is yet another half-baked post from my old draft collection, but feel free to Crocker away.

There is an old adage from Eugene Wigner known as the "Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics". Wikipedia:

the mathematical structure of a physical theory often points the way to further advances in that theory and even to empirical predictions.

The way I interpret is that it is possible to find an algorithm to compress a set of data points in a way that is also good at predicting other data points, not yet observed. In yet other words, a good approximation is, for some reason, sometimes also a good extrapolation. The rest of this post elaborates on this anti-Platonic point of view.

Now, this point of view is not exactly how most people see math. They imagine it as some near-magical thing that transcends science and reality and, when discovered, learned and used properly, gives one limited powers of clairvoyance. While only the select few wizard have the power to discover new spells (they are known as scientists), the rank and file can still use some of the incantations to make otherwise impossible things to happen (they are known as engineers).

This metaphysical view is colorfully expressed by Stephen Hawking:

What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

Should one interpret this as if he presumes here that math, in the form of "the equations" comes first and only then there is a physical universe for math to describe, for some values of "first" and "then", anyway? Platonism seems to reach roughly the same conclusions:

Wikipedia defines platonism as

the philosophy that affirms the existence of abstract objects, which are asserted to "exist" in a "third realm distinct both from the sensible external world and from the internal world of consciousness, and is the opposite of nominalism

In other words, math would have "existed" even if there were no humans around to discover it. In this sense, it is "real", as opposed to "imagined by humans". Wikipedia on mathematical realism:

mathematical entities exist independently of the human...
Managing one's memory effectively
by John_Maxwell — 2014-06-06T17:39:10.077Z

Note: this post leans heavily on metaphors and examples from computer programming, but I've tried to write it so it's accessible to a determined person with no programming background.

To summarize some info from computer processor design at very high density: There are a variety of ways to manufacture the memory that's used in modern computer processors. There's a trend where the faster a kind of memory is to read from and write to, the more expensive it will be. So modern computers have a hierarchical memory structure: a very small amount of memory that's very fast to do computation with ("the registers"), a larger amount of memory that's a bit slower to do computation with, a even larger amount of memory that's even slower to do computation with, and so on. The two layers immediately below the the registers (the L1 cache and the L2 cache) are typically abstracted away from even the assembly language programmer. They store data that's been accessed recently from the level below them ("main memory"). The processor will do a lookup in the caches when accessing data; if the data is not already in the cache, that's called a "cache miss" and the data will get loaded in to the cache before it's accessed.

(Please correct me in the comments if I got any of that wrong; it's based on years-old memories of an undergrad computer science course.)

Lately I've found it useful to think of my memory in the same way. I've got working memory (7±2 items?), consisting of things that I'm thinking about in this very moment. I've got short term memory and long term memory. And if I can't find something after trying to think of it for a while, I'll look it up (frequently on Google). Cache miss for the lose.

What are some implications of thinking about memory about this way?

Register limitations and chunking

When programming, I've noticed that sometimes I'll encounter a problem that's too big to fit in my working memory (WM) all at once. In the spirit of getting stronger, I'm typically tempted to attack the problem head on, but I find that my brain just tends to flit around the details of the problem instead of actually making progress on it. So lately I've been toying with the idea of trying to break off a piece of the problem that can be easily modularized and fits fully in my working memory and then solvin...
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2014-06-06T16:10:59.720Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on May 31st. The following week's summary is here.

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

Chicago Calibration Game: 31 May 2014 03:00PM
Christchurch, NZ Meetup - Games & Discussion: 01 June 2014 04:30PM
Houston, TX: 14 June 2014 02:00PM
Moscow meet up: 08 June 2014 04:00PM
Munich: 01 June 2014 03:00PM
[Utrecht] Brainstorm and ethics discussion at the Film Café: 31 May 2014 02:00PM

The remaining meetups take place in cities with regular scheduling, but involve a change in time or location, special meeting content, or simply a helpful reminder about the meetup:

Austin, TX: 31 May 2025 01:30PM
Boston - Taking ideas seriously: 01 June 2014 03:30PM
Canberra: Decision Theory: 14 June 2014 06:00PM
Durham/RTLW Discussion Meetup: Cognitive Load Followup : 30 May 2014 07:00PM
London social meetup: 01 June 2014 02:00PM
Melbourne June Rationality Dojo: Memory: 01 June 2014 03:00PM
Sydney Social Meetup - June (Games night): 12 June 2014 06:30PM
Sydney Meetup - June: 25 June 2014 07:00PM
[Washington DC] Retelling stuff from CFAR Epistemic Rationality for EA : 01 June 2014 03:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buffalo, Cambridge UK, Canberra, Columbus, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Mountain View, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Sydney, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, Waterloo, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers.

If you'd like to talk with other LW-ers face to face, and there is no meetup in your area, consider starting your own meetup; it's easy (more resources here). Check one out, stretch your rationality skills, build community, and have fun!

In addition to the handy sidebar of upcoming meetups, a meetup overview is posted on the front page every Friday. These are an attempt to collect information on all the meetups happening in upcoming weeks. The best way to get your meetup featured is still to use the Add New Meetup feature, but you'll also have the benefit of having your meetup mentioned in a weekly overview. These overview posts are moved to the discussion section when the new post goes up.

Please note that for your meetup to appear in the weekly meetups feature, you need to post your meetup before the Fri...
Meetup : London Social Meetup (possibly) in the Sun
by Tenoke — 2014-06-06T11:37:16.899Z

Discussion article for the meetup : London Social Meetup (possibly) in the Sun

WHEN:
08 June 2014 02:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Newman's Row, London WC2A 3TL

We are having another Social Meetup on Sunday at 2 PM, outdoors [weather permitting].

The meetup will take place at Lincoln's Inn Fields (near Holborn station) and more specifically around this spot in the northwest quadrant. Alternatively, if the weather is bad, we will be at our usual location, which is just around the corner - The Shakespeare's Head.

I'll post an update here and on the mailing list on Sunday as to whether we are going to the Park or the Pub.

About London LessWrong:

We run this meetup almost every week; these days we tend to get in the region of 5-15 people in attendance. By default, meetups are just unstructured social discussion about whatever strikes our fancy: books we're reading, recent posts on LW/related blogs, logic puzzles, toilet usage statistics....

Sometimes we play The Resistance or other games. We usually finish around 7pm, give or take an hour, but people arrive and leave whenever suits them.

If you get lost, feel free to contact me by e-mail - Tenoke(at)Tenoke.com or by phone - 07425168803. Alternatively, if you want more information about the meetup or anything else, come by our mailing list or the facebook group.

Discussion article for the meetup : London Social Meetup (possibly) in the Sun
[meta] Policy for dealing with users suspected/guilty of mass-downvote harassment?
by Kaj_Sotala — 2014-06-06T05:46:31.666Z

Below is a message I just got from jackk. Some specifics have been redacted 1) so that we can discuss general policy rather than the details of this specific case 2) because presumption of innocence, just in case there happens to be an innocuous explanation to this.

Hi Kaj_Sotala,
I'm Jack, one of the Trike devs. I'm messaging you because you're the moderator who commented most recently. A while back the user [REDACTED 1] asked if Trike could look into retributive downvoting against his account. I've done that, and it looks like [REDACTED 2] has downvoted at least [over half of REDACTED 1's comments, amounting to hundreds of downvotes] ([REDACTED 1]'s next-largest downvoter is [REDACTED 3] at -15).
What action to take is a community problem, not a technical one, so we'd rather leave that up to the moderators. Some options:
1. Ask [REDACTED 2] for the story behind these votes
2. Use the "admin" account (which exists for sending scripted messages, &c.) to apply an upvote to each downvoted post
3. Apply a karma award to [REDACTED 1]'s account. This would fix the karma damage but not the sorting of individual comments
4. Apply a negative karma award to [REDACTED 2]'s account. This makes him pay for false downvotes twice over. This isn't possible in the current code, but it's an easy fix
5. Ban [REDACTED 2]
For future reference, it's very easy for Trike to look at who downvoted someone's account, so if you get questions about downvoting in the future I can run the same report.
If you need to verify my identity before you take action, let me know and we'll work something out.
-- Jack

So... thoughts? I have mod powers, but when I was granted them I was basically just told to use them to fight spam; there was never any discussion of any other policy, and I don't feel like I have the authority to decide on the suitable course of action without consulting the rest of the community.
Reflective Mini-Tasking against Procrastination
by Shmi — 2014-06-06T00:20:30.692Z

This is a slightly polished version of a draft I originally deemed not ready for posting, but given that people keep saying that the Discussion post quality bar is set unreasonably high, here it is.

Most of us have little aversion to doing something that we perceive as short and easy, even if it is not very interesting. If your English homework consisted of writing a one-line poem (this is actually a thing), you'd be less likely to put it off for later, even if writing poetry is one of your least favorite activities. We are certainly more likely to do something if we hate it less, shifting the balance between "should" and "want" toward want. To quote one of my three favorite Scott A's, the one with an unhealthy addiction to puns,

Just as drugs mysteriously find their own non-fungible money, enjoyable activities mysteriously find their own non-fungible time. If I had to explain it, I'd say the resource bottleneck isn't time but energy/willpower, and that these look similar because working hard saps energy/willpower and relaxing for a while restores it, so when I have less time I also have less energy/willpower. But some things don't require energy/willpower and so are essentially free.

And so there are various anti-akrasia proposals based on increasing the want/should ratio (or should it be the want-should difference?) by way of reduction of the perceived will power expenditure to accomplish a task, and/or sweeten it with a reward tacked-on, such as checking off an item on a to-do list and finishing pomodoros. These definitely work some time for some people, but the effect tends to wear off. As one of my coworkers described his attempt to switch from coffee to decaf, the body is fooled for the first few cups, but then it catches on and stops finding decaf enjoyable. (Your experience may vary.) The reason is probably related to the negative feedback, also known as punishment in the Skinner's operant conditioning model.

I think of many of these attempts to shorten/sweeten a should-task as "mini-tasking". It is also commonly known as "just putting one foot in front of the other" and "taking it day-by-day".

What I find hard is not the process of working through a completed set of mini-tasks, but actually breaking a large task down into small ones. So instead I tend to switch to a want-task (like writing this) from a should-task, like finding a bug in my code. I suspe...
Confirmation Bias Presentation
by Larks — 2014-06-05T21:07:31.918Z

On Monday I need to give a presentation to a group of 6-15 finance professionals on Confirmation Bias. I intend to use the 2-4-6 task to demonstrate it.

Do people have any advise on how to make this work well? Do people tend to fall for it? Does it help them understand afterwards?

(In ages gone by I would have made this post longer, or in the Open Thread, or not at all. But I gather LW has been seeing a drop-off in volume, so I decided I'd lower the bar I set myself)
Links!
by NancyLebovitz — 2014-06-05T13:09:27.447Z

I've seen a recent claim that adding a summary to links is enough of an inconvenience that the links may not be getting posted. I suppose people aren't checking out the media threads for links.

As an experiment, I'm posting this as a place for links. Summaries/excerpts are optional-- please don't downvote links just for not having excerpts/summaries.