trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
[Link] 20 2020 Pennies (a webcomic chapter about many worlds and decision theory... sort of)
by ArisKatsaris — 2011-09-11T15:35:50.394Z

The comic in question (Penny & Aggie; by T Campbell) is as a whole a simple teenage comedy/drama. But the particular storyline I'd like to discuss here takes a much more SF turn than usual, and it's (marginally; if we stretch the concepts a bit) related to issues relevant to LessWrong; decision theory, CEV, perhaps even simulations and/or many-worlds.

The needed context is that in the page immediately previous, one of the comic's two protagonists (Penny) is asked by her biker boyfriend Rich to follow him on the road, effectively dropping out of highschool.

The chapter itself is about 20 different future Pennies from the year 2020 (20 that represent trillions), convene to decide which choice to take.

Thoughts and SPOILERS for the story to follow after the space, so you may want to read it before proceeding.

The first thing one may notice is that this is a *weird* story that doesn't follow any of the most standard tropes -- it's not truly many worlds or parallel-universe because some realities fade when Penny's eventual decision drops them out of probability space; it's not a "What-if-I'd taken-a-different-path-in-life" because it's not meant to discuss a past decision in the life of the character but a current one; it's not time-travel. It's all very conceptual and abstract.

The mode of existence for these alternate future Pennies is left vague and mysterious. They don't have a completely imaginary existence in the mind of Penny, because after the decision is taken some of them persist and discuss it with other people that share said mode. They don't have a completely physical existence, because some of them can fade. And most bizarre of all, most of them voted against their very existence. (7 out of 10 Pennies that followed Rich, voted not to have followed him -- 4 of the Pennies that didn't follow him voted or seemed to want to vote in favor. That makes 11 of 20 Pennies that voted against their existence).
Perhaps the best way one can handle this whole bizarreness would be as a visualization of the FAI-failure mode in which the AI's models of people are also people. So that the AI can only anticipate what people would want to do or would regret doing, if he has their simulations actively decide to do it, and then regret it. But for the purposes of the convention, the AI disabled
...
Rationalist sites worth archiving?
by gwern — 2011-09-11T15:24:39.969Z

One of my long-standing interests is in writing content that will age gracefully, but as a child of the Internet, I am addicted to linking and linkrot is profoundly threatening to me, so another interest of mine is in archiving URLs; my current methodology is a combination of archiving my browsing in public archives like Internet Archive and locally, and proactively archiving entire sites. Anyway, sites I have previously archived in part or in total include:

LessWrong (I may've caused some downtime here, sorry about that)

OvercomingBias

SL4

Chronopause.com

Yudkowsky.net (in progress)

Singinst.org

PredictionBook.com (for obvious reasons)

LongBets.org & LongNow.org

Intrade.com

Commonsenseatheism.com

finney.org

nickbostrom.com

unenumerated.blogspot.com & http://szabo.best.vwh.net/

weidai.com

mattmahoney.net

aibeliefs.blogspot.com

Having recently added WikiWix to my archival bot, I was thinking of re-running various sites, and I'd like to know - what other LW-related websites are there that people would like to be able to access somewhere in 30 or 40 years?

(This is an important long-term issue, and I don't want to miss any important sites, so I am posting this as an Article rather than the usual Discussion. I already regret not archiving Robert Bradbury's full personal website - having only his Matrioshka Brains article - and do not wish to repeat the mistake.)
'The Battle for Compassion': ethics in a world of accelerating change
by lukeprog — 2011-09-11T12:54:00.113Z

The Battle for Compassion: Ethics in an Apathetic Universe is a new book by first-time author Jonathan Leighton. He argues for 'negative utilitarianism plus', which means negative utilitarianism that nevertheless values existence. Chapter 13, 'Where We're Headed', discusses the Singularity at some length and mentions Yudkowsky several times. (Click 'Look Inside' on Amazon and search for 'Singularity' or 'Yudkowsky'.)

The book is written for a popular audience and does not reflect my views.
Meetup : Helsinki Meetup
by Kellopyy — 2011-09-11T11:35:41.099Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Helsinki Meetup

WHEN:
15 September 2011 06:00:15PM (+0300)

WHERE:
Yliopistonkatu 5, 00100 Helsinki, Finland

Helsinki LW-Meetup at Cafe Picnic.

Discussion article for the meetup : Helsinki Meetup
Embodied cognition summary
by lukeprog — 2011-09-11T09:20:18.250Z

Embodied cognition is an important trend in cognitive science that consists of three general themes:

Conceptualization: the concepts an organism can acquire are determined, limited, or constrained by the properties of the organism’s body.

Replacement: the dynamics of an organism’s bodily interaction with the environment replaces the need for representational processing. Thus, cognition can be explained without the appeal to computational processes or representational states.

Constitution: constituents of cognition extend beyond the brain, so the body or world does not play a mere causal role in cognitive processes.

A recent review of the evidence can be found in Shapiro (2010), or - much more briefly - in a review of that book: Martiny (2011).
'Mapping Biases to the Components of Rationalistic and Naturalistic Decision Making'
by lukeprog — 2011-09-11T08:42:44.617Z

In a recent paper, Lisa Rehak and others map a few common cognitive biases to the particular decision-making processes in which they are likely to arise. Abstract:

People often create and use shortcuts or “rules of thumb” to make decisions. The majority of time, reliance on these heuristics helps us to perform efficiently and effectively. Yet, this reliance can also promote bias, or systematic error. Our review of the literature suggests that both decision-making approaches that are rational and natural are likely to be subject to a range of biases. Unfortunately, the available literature provides very little discussion of what aspects biases are likely to impact within each of these processes. In the absence of this discussion, we have attempted to combine our knowledge of the bias literature and the decision-making literature to explore what biases are likely to impact various components of each decision-making process. Includes the following biases: availability, representativeness, anchoring & adjustment, confirmation, hindsight, overconfidence, framing and affect.

Tables from their paper:
'Paley's iPod: The cognitive basis of the design argument within natural theology'
by lukeprog — 2011-09-11T04:35:18.959Z

De Cruz & de Smedt (2010) tries to explain, using cognitive science, why many people find design arguments so compelling. Abstract:

The argument from design stands as one of the most intuitively compelling arguments for the existence of a divine Creator. Yet, for many scientists and philosophers, Hume’s critique and Darwin’s theory of natural selection have definitely undermined the idea that we can draw any analogy from design in artifacts to design in nature. Here, we examine empirical studies from developmental and experimental psychology to investigate the cognitive basis of the design argument. From this it becomes clear that humans spontaneously discern purpose in nature. When constructed theologically and philosophically correctly, the design argument is not presented as conclusive evidence for God’s existence but rather as an abductive, probabilistic argument. We examine the cognitive basis of probabilistic judgments in relationship to natural theology. Placing emphasis on how people assess improbable events, we clarify the intuitive appeal of Paley’s watch analogy. We conclude that the reason why some scientists find the design argument compelling and others do not lies not in any intrinsic differences in assessing design in nature but rather in the prior probability they place on complexity being produced by chance events or by a Creator. This difference provides atheists and theists with a rational basis for disagreement
[SEQ RERUN] The Bottom Line
by MinibearRex — 2011-09-11T03:25:55.955Z

Today's post, The Bottom Line was originally published on 28 September 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

If you first write at the bottom of a sheet of paper, “And therefore, the sky is green!”, it does not matter what arguments you write above it afterward; the conclusion is already written, and it is already correct or already wrong.

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 How to Convince Me That 2 + 2 = 3, 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.
My favorite popular scientific self-help books
by lukeprog — 2011-09-10T21:53:35.984Z

I've spent several years studying scientific self-help. I'm sharing some of what I've learned in my sequence The Science of Winning at Life, but I probably won't have time to write additional posts in that series for a while. In the meantime, those who are interested in what mainstream scientists have discovered so far about effective self-help methods may want to read some of my favorite popular-level scientific self-help books:

Wiseman, 59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute

Steel, The Procrastination Equation: How to Stop Putting Things Off and Start Getting Things Done

Seligman, Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being

Halverson, Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals

Burns, Feeling Good

See also: My favorite journals.
Free Online Stanford Courses: AI and Machine Learning
by Alex_Altair — 2011-09-10T20:58:52.409Z

Stanford has decided to offer a few classes online, for free. These include Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. The classes include videos of the same lectures that the Stanford students received, quizzes, homework, and exams that are graded automatically. They start on October 10.

I'm guessing that more than a few LWers will sign up for these. How many people would like to form a study group? Should we just have a discussion thread for it, or is there a better option?
Language, Color Perception, and Mental Maps
by jsbennett86 — 2011-09-10T17:48:05.443Z

I came across this video today, and it got me thinking about the role of language in drawing mental maps. For those who don't want to bother watching it, the gist of the video is that the words we use to describe colors may, in fact, alter the way in which we perceive color. In the video, some African tribesmen are shown a circle of colored squares and asked to choose the one different from the others. In the first test, the squares are all green (in fact, almost indistinguishable shades of green), and though westerners have a hard time figuring out the odd one, the Himba get it easily. However, they cannot tell the difference between a bunch of green blocks and a very different shade of blue.

PZ Myers points out that this phenomenon in the video may be caused by different neurological wiring between westerners and this tribe. If that is the case, it seems more likely that their language would evolve to represent our experience of color, rather than vice versa. Either way, I can't help but feel that this sort of thing makes it more difficult to tell when you are talking about maps and when you are talking about the territory.

Consider the Blue/Green question here (or Blue/Black if we're arguing to the Himba). We're not hidden in a cave, unable to look at the sky. We both look at it, at the same time, and we say it is one color and the Himba say it is another. Who is right? We can try to dissolve this question by saying that, in fact, the sky is neither blue nor black and in fact only appears to us as one or the other because of how our brains model the sensory input from our eyes. But understanding this would not help the Himba see the blue square among the green ones any easier (nor would we westerners be able to see the odd green one among the greens). If this is a question of how our brains are wired, it suggests that we may have other differences in how we perceive the world (though my lack of imagination prevents me from imagining any right now). Can we overcome such things? Is it useful to try? Or would it just lead us to frivolous debates with people who literally cannot see things the same way as we do?
If, however, our brains perceive things in certain ways because of the words we use to describe them, this suggests we can better model reality by changing our language. By speaking in terms of biases and utility functions, we tend to do that here on LW....
Dubstep and algorithmic information theory
by Will_Newsome — 2011-09-10T14:32:19.511Z

I think this visualization by YouTube entity dubzophrenia is a decent introduction to some intuitions driving algorithmic information theory, at least for people who like dubstep:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwkcY8spx_g&feature=channel_video_title

(Please watch in 720p; audio quality is also higher. Fullscreening it is also kind of necessary.)

At least I notice that this is how I tend to think about things like statistical mechanics, quantum information theory, that kinda thing, insofar as I think about them rather than just read lots of abstracts and pretend like that counts. I suspect that liking dubstep is correlated with schizotypality is correlated with having your procedural learning set up such that watching videos like this actually improves your math intuitions (depending on the type of math I think; stat mech more than linear algebra). But that's a lot of speculation. Upvote or downvote as you intuit.

As a side note, I now have a tumblr blog at least half about rationality and electronic music at willnewsome.com. I'd like it if more people promoted themselves and their blogs via one-off LW discussion posts every few months or so even if they're not directly rationality-related. I fear I'm missing out on some interesting stuff due to silly social dynamics resulting from potentially-maladaptive psychology.
Word Pronunciation
by Oscar_Cunningham — 2011-09-10T14:25:58.162Z

How does one pronounce these words?

Modus Ponens (EDIT: Pronunciation given here.)

Modus Tollens (Here)

Hofstadter (as in Douglas) (Here)

Jaynes (as in Edwin) (Here)

Parfit (as in Derek) (Here)

Deutsch (as in David) (Here)

Thiel (as in Peter) (Here)

Muehlhauser (as in Luke (as in lukeprog)) (Here)

Thanks.

(If there are any other words commonly used here that you don't know how to pronounce, mention them in the comments and I'll copy them into the post, to make a handy reference.)
Old OB repost: Share likelihood ratios, not posterior beliefs
by Will_Newsome — 2011-09-10T12:56:22.272Z

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/02/share-likelihood-ratios-not-posterior-beliefs.html

By Anna Salamon and Steve Rayhawk

Indubitably intriguing snippet:

When I think of Aumann's agreement theorem, my first reflex is to average. You think A is 80% likely; my initial impression is that it's 60% likely. After you and I talk, maybe we both should think 70%. "Average your starting beliefs", or perhaps "do a weighted average, weighted by expertise" is a common heuristic.

But sometimes, not only is the best combination not the average, it's more extreme than either original belief.
[SEQ RERUN] How to Convince Me That 2 + 2 = 3
by MinibearRex — 2011-09-10T03:13:59.109Z

Today's post, How to Convince Me That 2 + 2 = 3 was originally published on 27 September 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

The way to convince Eliezer that 2+2=3 is the same way to convince him of any proposition, give him enough evidence. If all available evidence, social, mental and physical, starts indicating that 2+2=3 then you will shortly convince Eliezer that 2+2=3 and that something is wrong with his past or recollection of the past.

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 Occam's Razor, 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.
Weekly LW Meetups: Ottawa, West LA, Orange County, Washington DC, Melbourne, Shanghai
by FrankAdamek — 2011-09-10T02:46:49.848Z

There are upcoming irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups in:

Ottawa Weekly LW, September 5th, 7:30 PM
West LA Meetup 09-06-2011: 06 September 2011 07:00PM
Orange County Atheist Meetup Wednesday September 6: 06 September 2011 07:30PM
DC Meetup: NoVa: 07 September 2011 07:00PM
Melbourne, Ben's house: 09 September 2011 06:00PM
Shanghai Less Wrong Meetup: 12 September 2011 07:00PM

Cities with regularly scheduled meetups: New York, Berkeley, Mountain View, Cambridge, MA, Toronto, Seattle, San Francisco, Irvine, Austin, Washington, DC, London, Oxford, and West Los Angeles.

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, and have fun!

Despite the handy sidebar of upcoming meetups, we've decided to continue posting an overview of upcoming meetups on the front page every Friday. These will be an attempt to collect information on all the meetups happening in the next weeks. The best way to get your meetup featured is still to use the Add New Meetup feature, but you'll now also have the benefit of having your meetup mentioned in a weekly overview. These overview posts will be 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 Friday before your meetup!

If you check Less Wrong irregularly, consider subscribing to one or more city-specific mailing list in order to be notified when an irregular meetup is happening: London, Chicago, Southern California (Los Angeles/Orange County area), St. Louis, Ottawa, Helsinki, Melbourne, Vancouver, Madison, WI.
Rational Communication
by Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg)  — 2011-09-10T02:30:12.999Z

As I've probably mentioned elsewhere, I am currently studying nursing. My third year started off with a bang today: a six-hour workshop on communication skills to prepare us for our month-long psychiatric/mental health placement, scheduled for October.

The workshop would have been a lot more useful if we’d, for example, done role-playing scenarios instead of watching a series of PowerPoint presentations. Like most of the skills involved in nursing, and like many of the skills involved in rationality, communication skills aren't well transmitted by book learning. The specific techniques we are supposed to learn are for "therapeutic communication", as opposed to "non-therapeutic communication". However, my first impression, as someone who has always found social skills a little bit challenging, was "wow! This is something I can use "all the time!"

Good Communication Techniques

One of the major skills that we've talked about in class, and tried to practice in our hospital placements, is active listening: trying to really listen to what a person is saying and, maybe more importantly, appearing as though you're really listening. I'm sure that to some people, the non-verbal, body-language half of this is as automatic as breathing. It wasn't obvious to me. However, here is a helpful acronym from this site.

Sit squarely facing the client.

Observe an open posture.

Lean forward toward the client.

Establish eye contact.

Relax.

The verbal half of this is: don't interpret and don't interrupt. Nod and use filler words like "uh-huh" and "yeah" to show that you're still paying attention. If they seem stuck or blocked, repeat their last sentence with "and then?" or encourage them with "go on..." or "I'm listening" The goal is to accept what they are saying and listen without criticizing or judging, whether or not you agree. Pretty much everyone likes to be listened to, and prefers it if their listener is attentive. I've been practicing this with my friends and family. Not quite to the point that it's automatic, but I have a reputation as a good listener.

There are a few other techniques that I've tried to work on and that seem to improve the quality of my general communication. If a person's train of thought doesn't make sense to you, or if their explanation seems muddled and overly complicated, use clarification: try to explain what you think th...
Statistical error in half of neuroscience papers
by Paul Crowley — 2011-09-09T23:07:33.743Z

The statistical error that just keeps on coming, Ben Goldacre, Guardian, Friday 9 September 2011 20.59 BST

We all like to laugh at quacks when they misuse basic statistics. But what if academics, en masse, deploy errors that are equally foolish? This week Sander Nieuwenhuis and colleagues publish a mighty torpedo in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

They've identified one direct, stark statistical error so widespread it appears in about half of all the published papers surveyed from the academic psychology research literature.

[...]

How often? Nieuwenhuis looked at 513 papers published in five prestigious neuroscience journals over two years. In half the 157 studies where this error could have been made, it was. They broadened their search to 120 cellular and molecular articles in Nature Neuroscience, during 2009 and 2010: they found 25 studies committing this fallacy, and not one single paper analysed differences in effect sizes correctly.These errors are appearing throughout the most prestigious journals for the field of neuroscience.

Update: Erroneous analyses of interactions in neuroscience: a problem of significance (PDF)