trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
[LINK] Gödel, Escher, Bach read through starting on Reddit
by Karmakaiser — 2011-12-28T15:37:24.077Z

http://www.reddit.com/r/GEB/comments/nmy4p/starting_a_readthrough_january_17/

[Context: [1] waingro and I want to start a Reddit read-through of GEB.

I've done an [2] in-person MIT seminar where we read through the book twice before. I think a subreddit would be a great way to make the same experience available to anyone on the Internet!

My plan for when to start would be around January 17. Yes, that's almost a month from now, but it allows time for:

Publicizing this subreddit

Allowing people to find copies of the book if they don't own it

Most importantly, it's after the [3] MIT Mystery Hunt which will be consuming all of my recreational brainpower until then.]

The read through is organized and run by Rob Speer who taught a seminar on GEB once as a senior and once as a grad student at MIT [1](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/special-programs/sp-258-goedel-escher-bach-spring-2007/). GEB is occasionally referenced on LessWrong and is considered and influential book by Eliezer Yudkowsky, the subject of a short review by LukeProg who recently claimed that it "[...] defied summary more than all the other books I had previously said "defied summary." If you are interested in reading GEB but have not taken the time to do so, I do not need to cite the research on how mechanisms such as commitment contracts are helpful to reaching goals. Joining this group would make the goal read Gödel, Escher, Bach more reachable than it otherwise would have been.
Can you recognize a random generator?
by uzalud — 2011-12-28T13:59:40.790Z

I can't seem to get my head around a simple issue of judging probability. Perhaps someone here can point to an obvious flaw in my thinking.

Let's say we have a binary generator, a machine that outputs a required sequence of ones and zeros according to some internally encapsulated rule (deterministic or probabilistic). All binary generators look alike and you can only infer (a probability of) a rule by looking at its output.

You have two binary generators: A and B. One of these is a true random generator (fair coin tosser). The other one is a biased random generator: stateless (each digit is independently calculated from those given before), with probability of outputting zero p(0) somewhere between zero and one, but NOT 0.5 - let's say it's uniformly distributed in the range [0; .5) U (.5; 1]. At this point, chances that A is a true random generator are 50%.

Now you read the output of first ten digits generated by these machines. Machine A outputs 0000000000. Machine B outputs 0010111101. Knowing this, is the probability of machine A being a true random generator now less than 50%?

My intuition says yes.

But the probability that a true random generator will output 0000000000 should be the same as the probability that it will output 0010111101, because all sequences of equal length are equally likely. The biased random generator is also just as likely to output 0000000000 as it is 0010111101.

So there seems to be no reason to think that a machine outputting a sequence of zeros of any size is any more likely to be a biased stateless random generator than it is to be a true random generator.

I know that you can never know that the generator is truly random. But surely you can statistically discern between random and non-random generators?
[Humor] [Link] Eclipse Maid, a posthuman maid role-playing game
by Kaj_Sotala — 2011-12-28T13:18:42.536Z

What do you get when you put together Eclipse Phase, the science-fiction RPG of posthuman horror, and Maid, the light comedy anime-themed RPG? The answer, of course, is... Eclipse Maid.

In the distant future, humanity's age has passed. Runaway technological development has led to the obsolescence of the human race, and the Solar System is now ruled by vast, posthuman intelligences that explore realms of science and philosophy unimaginable to the unenhanced mind. Their most idle musings spawn computational vistas more complex than entire human civilsations as they plumb the very secrets of the cosmos.
Incomprehensibly sophisticated as they may be, however, the posthumans have difficulty dealing with what they euphemistically term the “analogue world”. To be blunt, they're really quite hopeless when it comes to physical matters. For all their cognitive puissance, they haven't yet freed themselves from certain physical needs – energy, security, computational machinery on which to run – and so they create servants to carry out their will, defend their physical forms from rivals and hostile Outsiders, and generally keep things tidy.
Thus, even in the age of humanity's eclipse, there are maids.

The Ego (mind) Origins Table contains entries such as Blank ("You're a brand-new digital sentience, created from scratch to serve your Master"), Fork ("You're a scaled-down copy of your Master's own program. You have so many identity issues"), Uplift ("The Master gave you intelligence to serve him. Were you animal, or something weird like a plant?"), and Offspring ("You're actually a larval posthuman AI, serving your "parent" or another Master as a form of vocational training").

The selection of Morphs (physical bodies) includes ones such as Chibimorph, Giant Flying Space Whale, Spideroid ("This Morph resembles an armoured crab or spider the size of a small car. They're designed for combat and reconnaissance, but a hardware glitch causes Egos sleeved into them to become curious and philosophical"), Braincase ("A brain in a jar; you communicate using a built-in video screen with a picture of your face on it. While sleeved into this Morph, your intellect is vastly expanded, but you're easily tipped over"), Nekomorph, and Spectator ("A hovering metallic sphere with numerous camera-eyes mounted on prehensile robotic stalks. It's equipped with eye lasers f...
Which biases would you like to keep?
by cousin_it — 2011-12-28T12:59:35.505Z

It probably wouldn't be an unalloyed good for me to overcome ALL the biases. I overestimate my future emotional reactions to winning or losing, and I'd like to keep that bias because it helps me win and not lose. I remember only good things about the past, and I'd like to keep that bias because it makes me smile. I underestimate my relative competence at things I'm genuinely good at, and I'd like to keep that bias because it encourages me to improve. Which biases would you prefer to keep even though you know you have them?
Religious dogma as group identity
by uzalud — 2011-12-28T10:12:25.545Z

I was reading the "Professing and Cheering" article and it reminded me about some of my own ideas about the role of religious dogma as group identity badges. Here's the gist of it:

Religious and other dogmas need not make sense. Indeed, they may work better if they are not logical. Logical and useful ideas pop-up independently and spread easily, and widely accepted ideas are not very good badges. You need a unique idea to identify your group. It helps to have a somewhat costly idea as a dogma, because they are hard to fake and hard to deny. People would need to invest in these bad ideas, so they would be less likely to leave the group and confront the sunk cost. Also, it's harder to deny allegiance to the group afterwards, because no one in their right minds would accept an idea that bad for any other reason.

If you have a naive interpretation of the dogma, which regards it as an objective statement about the world, you will tend to question it. When you’re contesting the dogma, people won’t judge your argument on its merits: they will look at it as an in-group power struggle. Either you want to install your own dogma, which makes you a pretender, or you’re accepted a competing dogma, which makes you a traitor. Even if they accept that you just don’t want to yield to the authority behind the dogma, that makes you a rebel. Dogmas are just off-limits to criticism.

Public display of dismissive attitude to your questioning is also important. Taking it into consideration is in itself a form of treason, as it is interpreted as entertaining the option of joining you against the authority. So it’s best to dismiss the heresy quickly and loudly, without thinking about it.

Do you know of some other texts which shed some light on this idea?
Eutopia is Scary - for the author
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2011-12-28T09:42:41.794Z

As Eliezer makes the point that real utopias will be scary - certainly more scary that my latest attempt. Mainly they will be scary because they'll be different, and humans don't like different, and it's vital that the authors realise this if they want to create a realistic scenario. It's necessary to craft a world where we would be out of place.

But it's important to remember that utopias will not be scary for the people living there - the aspects that we find scary at the beginning of the 21st century are not what the locals will be afraid of (put your hand up if you are currently terrified that the majority of women can vote in modern democracies). Scary is in the observer, not the territory.

This is a special challenge when writing a fictional utopia. Dystopias and flawed utopias are much easier to write than utopias; when you can drop an anvil on your protagonist whenever you feel like it, then the tension and interest are much easier to sustain. And the scary parts of utopia are a cheap and easy way of dropping anvils: the reader thrills to this frightening and interesting concept, start objecting/agreeing/thinking about and with it. But it's all ok, you think, it's not dystopia, it's just a scary utopia; you can get your thrills without going astray.

But all that detracts from your real mission, which is to write a utopia that is genuinely good for the people in it, and would be genuinely interesting to read about even if it weren't scary. I found this particularly hard, and I'd recommend that those who write utopias do a first draft or summary without any scary bits in it - if this doesn't feel interesting on its own, then you've failed.

Then when you do add the scary bits, make sure they don't suck all the energy out of your story, and make sure you emphasise that the protagonists find these aspects commonplace rather than frightening. There is a length issue - if your story is long, you can afford to put more scary bits in, and even make the reader start seeing them just as the locals do, without the main point being swallowed up. If your story's short, however, I'd cut down on the scary radically: if "rape is legal" and you only have a few pages, then that's what most people are going to remember about your story. The scariness is a flavouring, not the main dish.
Best of Rationality Quotes, 2011 Edition
by DanielVarga — 2011-12-28T05:32:39.839Z

I created a 2011 update to last year's Best of Rationality Quotes collection. (Here is the original.)

Best of Rationality Quotes 2011 (360kB page, 352 quotes)

and Best of Rationality Quotes 2009-2011 (700kB page, 706 quotes)

The page was built by a short script (source code here) from all the LW Rationality Quotes threads so far. (We had such a thread each month since April 2009.) The script collects all comments with karma score 10 or more, and sorts them by score. Replies are not collected, only top-level comments.

A year ago commenters asked for various statistics and top-lists based on the data. This year I re-ran the scripts I wrote to answer those requests. (Source code for these is also at the above link, see the README.) I added the results as comments to this post:

Top quote contributors by total karma score collected

Top quote contributors by karma score collected in 2011

Top quote contributors by statistical significance level (See this comment for a description of this metric.)

Top original authors by number of quotes

Top original authors by total karma score collected
[SEQ RERUN] Allais Malaise
by MinibearRex — 2011-12-28T04:25:56.380Z

Today's post, Allais Malaise was originally published on 21 January 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Offered choices between gambles, people make decision-theoretically inconsistent decisions.

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 Zut Allais!, 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.
Singularity Institute $100,000 end-of-year fundraiser only 20% filled so far
by Louie — 2011-12-27T21:24:30.416Z

** cross-posted from http://singinst.org/2011winterfundraiser/ **

Contains detailed info about accomplishments and plans at SI. Thanks for supporting our work! -Louie

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE MORE RELEVANT THAN EVER

Recent books like Machine Ethics from Cambridge University Press and Robot Ethics from MIT Press, along with the U.S. military-funded research that resulted in Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots show that the world is waking up to the challenges of building safe and ethical AI. But these projects focus on limited AI applications and fail to address the most important concern: how to ensure that smarter-than-human AI benefits humanity. The Singularity Institute has been working on that problem longer than anybody, a full decade before the Singularity landed on the cover of TIME magazine.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN 2011

2011 was our biggest year yet. Since the year began, we have:

Held our annual Singularity Summit in New York City, with more than 900 in attendance. Speakers included inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, economist Tyler Cowen, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Skeptic publisher Michael Shermer, Mathematica and WolframAlpha creator Stephen Wolfram, neuroscientist Christof Koch, MIT physicist Max Tegmark, and famed Jeopardy! contestant Ken Jennings.

Held a smaller Singularity Summit in Salt Lake City.

Held a one-week Rationality Minicamp and a ten-week Rationality Boot Camp.

Created the Research Associates program, which currently has 7 researchers coordinating with Singularity Institute.

Published our Singularity FAQ, IntelligenceExplosion.com, and Friendly-AI.com.

Wrote three chapters for Springer's upcoming volume The Singularity Hypothesis, along with four other research papers.

Began work on a new, clearer website design with lots of new content, which should go live Q1 2012.

Began outlining open problems in Singularity research to help outside collaborators better understand our research priorities.

FUTURE PLANS YOU CAN HELP SUPPORT

In the coming year, we plan to do the following:

Hold our annual Singularity Summit, in San Francisco this year.

Improve organizational transparency by creating a simpler, easier-to-use website that includes Singularity Institute planning and policy documents.

Publish a document of open research problems in Singularity Research, to clarify the research space and encourage other researc

...
How to Draw Conclusions Like Sherlock Holmes
by abcd_z — 2011-12-27T13:29:03.419Z

Eliezer Yudkowsky once wrote that

[...] when you look at what Sherlock Holmes does - you can't go out and do it at home. Sherlock Holmes is not really operating by any sort of reproducible method. He is operating by magically finding the right clues and carrying out magically correct complicated chains of deduction. Maybe it's just me, but it seems to me that reading Sherlock Holmes does not inspire you to go and do likewise. Holmes is a mutant superhero. And even if you did try to imitate him, it would never work in real life.

A few days ago I was at an acquaintance's house after watching the Sherlock miniseries on Netflix. My mind whirling with the abilities displayed by the titular character and I wandered around the house while others were making small talk. I stopped by a large oil painting on one wall that was decent but had obvious problems with perspective. Additionally, it was missing a signature in the lower-right corner.

ANALYSIS:

Sub-par paintings don't generally get put on the market.

If the hostess thought it was worth putting on the wall, it was most likely because she had an emotional attachment to the piece.

Painters place their signatures in the corner of the painting to identify themselves as the creator. If the painter didn't bother leaving their mark, it was because they were confident that they didn't need to.

The conclusion I drew from this was that the painter was either the hostess herself or somebody very close to her. As it turns out, it was the hostess.

Now, this anecdote hardly proves anything. Still, I think it's a fun little thing and the ability to show off like that, even a small percentage of the time, is too good to pass up. So I present my analysis of How to Become a Regular Sherlock Holmes.

1) Pay attention to details. Look around you at your environment. A scratch on a wall, a limp in somebody's walk, a smudge on somebody's cheek. At this point it's probably hard to tell what details are important, so pay attention to everything.

2) Answer these two questions:

"What am I looking at?" and

"What could it mean (if anything)?"

3) Check your guesses.

This is an important step. It's easy to make any sort of judgments about the details and what they mean, but if you accept your own conclusions without checking the facts, you're likely to creat...
Meetup : Portland Meetup?
by obfuscate — 2011-12-27T06:05:19.646Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Portland Meetup?

WHEN:
14 January 2012 12:00:00PM (-0800)

WHERE:
1005 West Burnside, Portland, OR 97209

(Edited after looking over some other meetup posts.) This is a tentative attempt at a meetup in Portland. I think Powell's books is a decent place for a meeting place, and from there if people want to migrate to someplace to sit down and eat, etc., that works well too. It has the added advantage that if it turns out that nobody shows up, hey, I am in Powell's. It's a win anyways. I am still working out the details of all this. It's a bit subject to change.

Discussion article for the meetup : Portland Meetup?
[SEQ RERUN] Zut Allais!
by MinibearRex — 2011-12-27T05:13:38.129Z

Today's post, Zut Allais! was originally published on 20 January 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Offered choices between gambles, people make decision-theoretically inconsistent decisions.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was The Allais Paradox, 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.
What causes burnout?
by juliawise — 2011-12-27T04:51:35.384Z

When I try to figure out how to balance personal happiness with saving the world, I think a lot about burnout. If I make a major change - e.g. changing careers - what are the chances I'll burn out and become a lot less useful as a result?

I've never burned out, so I don't know where that edge is for me (plus I suspect the edge moves around depending on circumstances). I'm obviously biased on the topic: there's the temptation to tell myself "This will prevent burnout and make me more effective in the long run" every time I want to do something.

Some things people here have described as causing burnout:

Going through the motions of a religion you don't believe in

Training yourself to feel guilty whenever you relax

Pursuing altruism too exclusively (That post suggests Bostrom's parliamentary model as an antidote).

Do you have more examples? Have you burned out? Are there things that you think have kept you from burning out?
Philosophy that can be "taken seriously by computer scientists"
by lukeprog — 2011-12-27T02:39:13.616Z

I've long held CMU's philosophy department in high regard. One of their leading lights, Clark Glymour, recently published a short manifesto, which Brian Leiter summed up as saying that "the measure of value for philosophy departments is whether they are taken seriously by computer scientists."

Selected quote from Glymour's manifesto:

Were I a university administrator facing a contracting budget, I would not look to eliminate biosciences or computer engineering. I would notice that the philosophers seem smart, but their writings are tediously incestuous and of no influence except among themselves, and I would conclude that my academy could do without such a department... But not if I found that my philosophy department retrieved a million dollars a year in grants and fellowships, and contained members whose work is cited and used in multiple subjects, and whose faculty taught the traditional subject well to the university’s undergraduates.

Also see the critique here, but I'd like to have Glymour working on FAI.
If You Were Brilliant When You Were Ten...
by AspiringKnitter — 2011-12-27T02:33:39.021Z

(If I do anything wrong here, please tell me. I don't know what I'm doing and would benefit from being told what I've got wrong, if anything. I've never made a top-level post here before.)

So, it seems like most people here are really smart. And a lot of us, I'm betting, will have been identified as smart when we were children, and gotten complimented on it a lot. And it's pretty common for that to really mess you up, and then you don't end up reaching your full potential. Admittedly, maybe only people who've gotten past all that read Less Wrong. Maybe I'm the exception. But somehow I doubt that very much.

So here's the only thing I can think of to say if this is your situation: ask stupid questions.

Seriously, even if it shows that you have no clue what was just said. (Especially if it shows that. You don't want to continue not understanding.) You can optimize for being smart, you can optimize for seeming smart, but sometimes you need to pick which one to optimize for. It may make you uncomfortable to admit to not knowing something. It may make you feel like the people around you will stop thinking you're all-knowing. But if you don't know how to ask stupid questions, and you just keep pretending to understand, you'll fall behind and eventually be outed as being really, really stupid, instead of just pretty normal. Which sounds worse?

Here, let me demonstrate: so, what tags go on this post and how would I know?

So, anyone else know of any similar things to do, to get back to optimizing for being smart instead of for seeming smart?