trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
In Defence of Simple Ideas That Explain Everything But Are Wrong
by johnlawrenceaspden — 2016-03-22T15:46:57.542Z

I've been thinking, and writing, about The Impossible Question of the Thyroid for some while now.
I came up with what I thought was a good stab at an answer to its majestic mystery:
http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/nef/the_thyroid_madness_core_argument_evidence/
This is a very simple and obvious explanation of an awful lot of otherwise confusing data, anecdotes, quackery, expert opinion and medical research.
People seem to hate it because it is so simple, and makes so many predictions, most of which are terrifying.
And it is obviously false! Of course medicine has tried using thyroid supplementation to fix 'tired all the time'. It doesn't work!

EDIT: Apparently I spoke too soon. GRB Skinner tried it in 2000, and it works a treat. See comments.

But there really is an awful lot unexplained about all this T4/T3 business, and why different people think it works differently. I refer you to the internet for all the unexplained things.
In just the endocrinological literature there is a long fight going on about T4/T3 ratios in thyroid supplementation, and about the question of whether or not to treat 'subclinical hypothyroidism'. Some people show symptoms with very low TSH values. Some people have extremely high TSH values and show no symptoms at all.
I've been trying various ways of explaining it all for nearly four months now. And I've found lots of magical thinking in conventional medicine, and lots of waving away of the reports of honest-sounding empiricists, real doctors, who have made no obvious errors of reasoning, most of whom are taking terrible risks with their own careers in order to, as they see it, help their patients.
I've read lots of people saying 'we tried this, and it works', and no people saying 'we tried this, and it makes no difference'. The explanation favoured by conventional medicine strongly predicts 'we tried this, and it makes no difference'. But they've never tried it!

It's really confusing. A lot of people are very confused.
I think that simple explanations are extra-worth looking at because they are simple.
Of course that doesn't mean they're right. Consequences and experiment are the only judge of that.
I do not think I am right! There is no way I can have got the whole picture. I can't explain, for instance: 'euthyroid sick syndrome'. But I don't predict that it doesn't exist either.
But you should look very carefully at the simple beautiful i...
Meetup : Ann Arbor Meetup - singing
by Bound_up — 2016-03-22T15:42:47.968Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Ann Arbor Meetup - singing

WHEN:
26 March 2016 07:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
701 East university Ave Ann arbor, Room 1506

We'll be singing together. Nothing else scheduled.

Someone (great speaking voice (we'll hear his singing this week)) at the last meetup offered to give us some brief vocal instruction. He says it'll be better if you know what song you want to sing in advance.

Come in the Church St entrance; it's a block south of Pizza House and Amer's where we've met before.

We'll be in room 1506 to the right.

Discussion article for the meetup : Ann Arbor Meetup - singing
Meetup : "What is the Intelligence Explosion?" (and more...) LW Melbourne dojo
by Chriswaterguy — 2016-03-22T13:11:50.833Z

Discussion article for the meetup : "What is the Intelligence Explosion?" (and more...) LW Melbourne dojo

WHEN:
02 April 2016 02:00:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
Bull and Bear Tavern, Melbourne

Less Wrong Melbourne's Rationality Dojos are self-improvement sessions based on the art of rationality. We welcome new members who are interested in exploring rationality. We're all "aspiring rationalists".

PLEASE NOTE THE TIME AND VENUE. (We're experimenting with different times and locations. So, it's in the first Saturday, at 2:00pm, in the Bull & Bear pub (downstairs where we sometimes have our socials).

WHAT'S HAPPENING:

This month, we have...

"The Singularity – What is the Intelligence Explosion?" – with Adam Ford.

Then two lightning talks:
* Eike on "Gamifying your to do list"
* Letian on "Go: a player's perspective on the game and Alpha Go" (Alpha Go referring to the victory of computer over human in the game of Go)

And a few other things including a goals exercise.

We finish at 5pm, and you are welcome to join us for dinner nearby.

WHEN:
Saturday 2 April, 2:00pm arrival, 2:30pm start.

WHERE:
The Bull & Bear, 347 Flinders Ln, Melbourne

DIRECTIONS:
On the South side of the lane, between Elizabeth and Queen. Down one flight of stairs.

Hope to see you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : "What is the Intelligence Explosion?" (and more...) LW Melbourne dojo
Open Thread March 21 - March 27, 2016
by Gunnar_Zarncke — 2016-03-20T19:54:49.073Z

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.
Common Misconceptions about Dual Process Theories of Human Reasoning
by Gram_Stone — 2016-03-19T21:50:12.497Z

(This is mostly a summary of Evans (2012); the fifth misconception mentioned is original research, although I have high confidence in it.)

It seems that dual process theories of reasoning are often underspecified, so I will review some common misconceptions about these theories in order to ensure that everyone's beliefs about them are compatible. Briefly, the key distinction (and it seems, the distinction that implies the fewest assumptions) is the amount of demand that a given process places on working memory.

(And if you imagine what you actually use working memory for, then a consequence of this is that Type 2 processing always has a quality of 'cognitive decoupling' or 'counterfactual reasoning' or 'imagining of ways that things could be different', dynamically changing representations that remain static in Type 1 processing; the difference between a cached and non-cached thought, if you will. When you are transforming a Rubik's cube in working memory so that you don't have to transform it physically, this is an example of the kind of thing that I'm talking about from the outside.)

The first common confusion is that Type 1 and Type 2 refer to specific algorithms or systems within the human brain. It is a much stronger proposition, and not a widely accepted one, to assert that the two types of cognition refer to particular systems or algorithms within the human brain, as opposed to particular properties of information processing that we may identify with many different algorithms in the brain, characterized by the degree to which they place a demand on working memory.

The second and third common confusions, and perhaps the most widespread, are the assumptions that Type 1 processes and Type 2 processes can be reliably distinguished, if not defined, by their speed and/or accuracy. The easiest way to reject this is to say that the mistake of entering a quickly retrieved, unreliable input into a deliberative, reliable algorithm is not the same mistake as entering a quickly retrieved, reliable input into a deliberative, unreliable algorithm. To make a deliberative judgment based on a mere unreliable feeling is a different mistake from experiencing a reliable feeling and arriving at an incorrect conclusion through an error in deliberative judgment. It also seems easier to argue about the semantics of the 'inputs', 'outputs', and 'accuracy' of algorit...
The increasing uselessness of Promoted
by PhilGoetz — 2016-03-19T18:23:03.221Z

For some time now, "Promoted" has been reserved for articles written by MIRI staff, mostly about MIRI activities. Which, I suppose, would be reasonable, if this were MIRI's blog. But it isn't. MIRI has its own blog. It seems to me inconvenient both to readers of LessWrong, and to readers of MIRI's blog, to split MIRI's material up between the two.

People visiting lesswrong land on "Promoted", see a bunch of MIRI blogs, mostly written by people who don't read LessWrong themselves much anymore, and get a mistaken impression of what people talk about on LessWrong. Also, LessWrong looks like a dying site, since often months pass between new posts.

I suggest the default landing page be "New", not "Promoted".
Lesswrong Potential Changes
by Elo — 2016-03-19T12:24:18.137Z

I have compiled many suggestions about the future of lesswrong into a document here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hH9mBkpg2g1rJc3E3YV5Qk-b-QeT2hHZSzgbH9dvQNE/edit?usp=sharing

It's long and best formatted there.

In case you hate leaving this website here's the summary:

Summary

There are 3 main areas that are going to change.

Technical/Direct Site Changes

new home page

new forum style with subdivisions

new sub for “friends of lesswrong” (rationality in the diaspora)

New tagging system

New karma system

Better RSS

Social and cultural changes

Positive culture; a good place to be.

Welcoming process

Pillars of good behaviours (the ones we want to encourage)

Demonstrate by example

3 levels of social strategies (new, advanced and longtimers)

Content (emphasis on producing more rationality material)

For up-and-coming people to write more

for the community to improve their contributions to create a stronger collection of rationality.

For known existing writers

To encourage them to keep contributing

To encourage them to work together with each other to contribute

Less Wrong Potential Changes

Summary

Why change LW?

How will we know we have done well (the feel of things)

How will we know we have done well (KPI - technical)

Technical/Direct Site Changes

Homepage

Subs

Tagging

Karma system

Moderation

Users

RSS magic

Not breaking things

Funding support

Logistical changes

Other

Done (or Don’t do it):

Social/cultural

General initiatives

Welcoming initiatives

Initiatives for moderates

Initiatives for long-time users

Rationality Content

Target: a good 3 times a week for a year.

Approach formerly prominent writers

Explicitly invite

Place to talk with other rationalists

Pillars of purpose
(with certain sub-reddits for different ideas)

Encourage a declaration of intent to post

Specific posts

Other notes

Why change LW?

Lesswrong has gone through great times of growth and seen a lot of people share a lot of positive and brilliant ideas. It was hailed as a launchpad for MIRI, in that purpose it was a success. At this point it’s not needed as a launchpad any longer. While in the process of becoming a launchpad it became a nice garden to hang out in on the internet. A place of reasonably intelligent people to discuss reasonable ideas and challenge each other to upd...
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2016-03-18T15:37:49.467Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on March 18th. The following week's summary is here.

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

Ann Arbor Meetup - Meditation: 18 March 2016 07:00PM
European Community Weekend: 02 September 2016 03:35PM
San Francisco Meetup: Board Games: 21 March 2016 06:15PM

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:

New Hampshire Meetup: 22 March 2016 06:00PM
London rationalish meetup - 2016-03-20: 20 March 2016 02:00PM
[Moscow] Games in Kocherga club: FallacyMania, Tower of Chaos, Training game: 23 March 2016 07:40PM
Vienna Meetup: 16 April 2016 02:00PM

Washington, D.C.: Game Theory: 20 March 2016 03:30P

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buffalo, Canberra, Columbus, Denver, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Moscow, Mountain View, New Hampshire, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, Seattle, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers and a Slack channel for daily discussion and online meetups on Sunday night US time.

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 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: Atlanta, Cambridge UK, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Marin CA, Ottawa, Pittsb...
Genetic "Nature" is cultural too
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2016-03-18T14:33:15.926Z

I'll admit it: I am confused about genetics and heritability. Not about the results of the various twin studies - Scott summarises them as "~50% of the variation is heritable and ~50% is due to non-shared environment", which seems generally correct.

But I am confused about what this means in practice, due to arguments like "contacts are very important for business success, rich people get much more contacts than poor people, yet business success is strongly correlated with genetic parent wealth" and such. Assuming that genetics strongly determines... most stuff... goes against so many things we know or think we know about how the world works. And by "we" I mean lots of different people with lots of different political views - genetic determinism means, for instance, that current variations in regulation and taxes are pretty unimportant for individual outcomes.

Now, there are many caveats about the genetic results, particularly that they measure the variance of a factor rather than its absolute importance (and hence you get results like variation in nutrition being almost invisible as an explanation for variation in height), but it's still hard to figure out what this all means.

Then we have Scott's latest post, which points out that "non-shared environment" is not the same as "nurture", since it includes, for instance, dumb luck.

However, "heritable" is not the same as as "nature", either. For instance, sexism and racial prejudices, if they are widespread, come under the "heritable" effects rather than the "environment" ones. And then it gets even more confusing.

Widespread prejudice is not "environment". Rarer prejudice is.

For instance, imagine that we lived in a very sexist society where women were not allowed to work at all. Then there would be an extremely high, almost perfect, correlation between "having a Y chromosome" and "having a job". But this would obviously be susceptible to a cultural fix.

Obviously racial effects can have the same effect. It covers anything visible. So a high heritability is compatible with genetics being a cause of competence, and/or prejudice against visible genetic characteristics being important ("Our results indicate that we either live in a meritocracy or a hive of prejudice!").

Note that as prejudices get less widespread, they move from showing up on the genetic variation, to showing up in the environmental variation si...
How It Feels to Improve My Rationality
by SquirrelInHell — 2016-03-18T09:59:18.961Z

Note: this has started as a comment reply, but I thought it got interesting (and long) enough to deserve its own post.

Important note: this post is likely to spark some extreme reactions, because of how human brains are built. I'm including warnings, so please read this post carefully and in order written or don't read it at all.

I'm going to attempt to describe my subjective experience of progress in rationality.

Important edit: I learned from the responses to this post that there's a group of people which whom this resonates pretty well, and there's also a substantial group with whom it does not at all resonate, to the degree they don't know if what I'm saying even makes sense and is correlated to rationality in any meaningful way. If you find yourself in the second group, please notice that trying to verify if I'm doing "real rationality" or not is not a way to resolve your doubts. There is no reason why you would need to feel the same. It's OK to have different experiences. How you experience things is not a test of your rationality. It's also not a test of my rationality. All in all, because of publishing this and reading the comments, I've found out some interesting stuff about how some clusters of people tend to think about this :)

Also, I need to mention that I am not an advanced rationalist, and my rationality background is mostly reading Eliezer's sequences and self-experimentation.

I'm still going to give this a shot, because I think it's going to be a useful reference for a certain level in rationality progress.

I even expect myself to find all that I write here silly and stupid some time later.

But that's the whole point, isn't it?

What I can say about how rationality feels to me now, is going to be pretty irrelevant pretty soon.

I also expect a significant part of readers to be outraged by it, one way or the other.

If you think this is has no value, maybe try to imagine a rationality-beginner version of you that would find a description such as this useful. If only as a reference that says, yes, there is a difference. No, rationality does not feel like a lot of abstract knowledge that you remember from a book. Yes, it does change you deeply, probably deeper than you suspect.

In case you want to downvote this, please do me a favour and write a private message to me, suggesting how I could change this so that it stops offending you.

Please st...
Conjecture on Addiction to Meta-level Solutions
by Gram_Stone — 2016-03-18T04:13:06.877Z

Related: Meta Addiction

Says Eliezer in LessWrong Q&A (16/30):

In one sense, a whole chunk of LessWrong is more or less my meta-thinking skills.

When we become more rational, it's usually because we invent a new cognitive rule that:

Explains why certain beliefs and actions lead to winning in a set of previously observed situations that all share some property; and,

Leads to winning in some, if not all, heretofore unforeseen situations that also share this property.

When you learn the general rule of not-arguing-over-definitions, you obtain a general understanding of why humans on a desert island will draw lines in the sand to communicate if necessary instead of, say, mutually drawing lines that are naively intended to communicate the fact that they are dissatisfied with their respective companions' line-drawing methods. You will foresee future instances of the general failure mode as well.

You might say that one possible statement of the problem of human rationality is obtaining a complete understanding of the algorithm implicit in the physical structure of our brains that allows us to generate such new and improved rules.

Because there is some such algorithm. Your new cognitive rules are output, and the question is: "What algorithm generates them?" If you explicitly understood that algorithm, then many, if not all, other insights about human rationality would simply fall out of it as consequences.

You know, there exists a science of metacognition that has scarcely been mentioned in seven years of LessWrong.

And if it was mentioned, it was almost always in reference to the relationship between meditation and metacognition. It seems like there would be more to say than just that.

But enough about that, let's get back to the far more interesting matter of the rationalist movement's addiction to meta-level solutions.

Abstract of Spada, Zandvoort, & Wells (2006):

The present study examined metacognitions in problem drinkers and a community sample. A sample of 60 problem drinkers and 84 individuals from the general population were compared on the following measures: Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Meta-Cognitions Questionnaire 30, Quantity Frequency Scale and Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test. Mann–Whitney U-tests, logistic regression analysis and hierarchical regression analyses were performed on the data. Mann–Whi

...
Meetup : Games in Kocherga club: FallacyMania, Tower of Chaos, Training game
by Alexander230 — 2016-03-17T19:15:05.917Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Games in Kocherga club: FallacyMania, Tower of Chaos, Training game

WHEN:
23 March 2016 07:40:00PM (+0300)

WHERE:
Moscow, B.Dorogomilovskaya, 5-2

Welcome to Moscow LW community makeshift games! In that games, some rationality skills are involved, so you can practise while you playing!

FallacyMania: it is a game where you guess logical fallacies in arguments, or practise using logical fallacies yourself (depending on team in which you will be).

Details about the game are here: https://lesswrong-ru.hackpad.com/Fallacymania--neGfMe9MFjH

Tower of Chaos: funny game with guessing the rules of human placement on a Twister mat.

Details about the game are here:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzyKVqP6n3hKVXVfcTlCZEVKaEE

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzyKVqP6n3hKMmptT0FJanU2d2s

Training game: all players try to train the subject to guess and make some action without words, using only positive reinforcement. Details:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzyKVqP6n3hKdy1CZnE4X1BvVDg

Come to antikafe "Kocherga", ul.B.Dorogomilovskaya, 5-2. The map is here: http://kocherga-club.ru/#contacts . Nearest metro station is Kievskaya. If you are lost, call Sasha at +7-905-527-30-82.

Games begin at 19:40, the length is 2.5-3 hours.

Discussion article for the meetup : Games in Kocherga club: FallacyMania, Tower of Chaos, Training game
Meetup : MelbLW Social Meetup: Mar 2016
by Maelin — 2016-03-17T06:53:28.900Z

Discussion article for the meetup : MelbLW Social Meetup: Mar 2016

WHEN:
18 March 2016 06:30:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
Alchemist's Refuge, 328 Little Lonsdale St, Melbourne 3000

This month's Social Meetup is on as usual!
(Apologies for the late notice - there was a hiccup organising the venue)

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1050900978285536/

Social Meetups occur on the third Friday of each month. They are casual get-togethers where we chat about topics over a few drinks and a meal. Sometimes we play games as well.

Where? Alchemist's Refuge, downstairs at 328 Little Lonsdale St, Melbourne CBD

When? Friday 18th March, starting from 6:30pm. Start time is very loose so come when you can. We typically stay at the main venue until about 11pm.

Dinner? We usually go for a late dinner after the event, and have recently been visiting Father's Office which offers late-night a la carte menu at half price (!).

Games? The Refuge has a few board games available for borrowing, or you can bring your own. It's usually easy to organise some players!

Contact? Any questions or issues, just call Richard on 0421231789.

Hope to see you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : MelbLW Social Meetup: Mar 2016