trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Werewolf, Cambridge UK Less Wrong Meetup April 1st 2012
by Clarity1992 — 2012-04-02T11:46:22.896Z

There is already a post related to this meetup but it concerns a discussion which took place after I had left so I will write about the games of Werewolf. Please post your thoughts too and correct any inaccuracies.

Thoughts:

Most people said that this was very good fun and I suspect those that didn't still really enjoyed it.

Each game lasted about 20 minutes.

I was late and observed the first game. I remember Ai was given a werewolf card but she didn't realise so the game was played with her as a villager.

When Douglas suggested people give reasons for lynching Thomas one that stood out was "he talks too much". This seems to go with Douglas' later observation that the game is all about information, whether that is obtained by careful choice of sheriff/lynching to maximise what is learned next round or by picking up on what people have said, how they have said it, and how much they have said. Personally I played it very much on instinct and watching for tells, letting others do the logical reasoning (!).

Jon left after game one. There was some discussion about whether he was coming back. "His body language seemed dismissive like 'nah, I'm not into this'", "Really? I didn't get that impression!", "I disagree with your analysis. Past evidence of Jon leaving suggests he will return", "I think he would have said goodbye if he wasn't coming back. Since he didn't I assume he is returning". I found it interesting how we applied rationality principles to this.

Generally the sheriff/lynching discussions would begin with sincere considerations of outcome trees then as soon as anyone said "but that's what you'd say if you were a werewolf!" or "she seemed a little quick to agree with that!" or "he's swallowing a lot while talking!" it switched to accusations and double bluffs.

There were quite a few pieces of reasoning relating to proximity to people. e.g. "I'm sure I heard movement next to me 'last night'". My immediate instinct was that this is outside of the rules and unsporting, but obviously that isn't the case with this game!

Something I found especially inspired was Alexey (as a werewolf) in game two claiming to be the seer after Thomas (the actual seer) had already told everyone that he himself was. Alexey argued that he had withheld the information to see who would try to pretend to be the seer and then he would know who one of the were

...
[SEQ RERUN] Where Philosophy Meets Science
by MinibearRex — 2012-04-02T03:50:14.620Z

Today's post, Where Philosophy Meets Science was originally published on 12 April 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

In retrospect, supposing that quantum physics had anything to do with consciousness was a big mistake. Could philosophers have told the physicists so? But we don't usually see philosophers sponsoring major advances in physics; why not?

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 Distinct Configurations, 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.
April Fools - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality Joke Chapter
by shokwave — 2012-04-02T02:47:45.987Z

This was an april fools joke.

This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s my chapter of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing the fake April Fools chapter, which is now published. I suggest refraining from reading comments here until you read chapter 82. After you've read chapter 82, I suggest all discussion of this chapter to be kept here, with links to comments in the previous thread.
Fictional Bias
by thomblake — 2012-04-02T02:10:20.559Z

As rationalists, we are trained to maintain constant vigilance against common errors in our own thinking. Still, we must be especially careful of biases that are unusually common amongst our kind.

Consider the following scenario: Frodo Baggins is buying pants. Which of these is he most likely to buy:

(a) 32/30

(b) 48/32

(c) 30/20

If you're like me, your answer is (c). Frodo, as we know, is about 4' tall, so his inseam is much more likely 20'' than 30''.

But like me, you'd be wrong. Since there aren't *actually* any hobbits, all we know is that we're talking about a person named Frodo Baggins, who is male. And the most common pants size is 32/30, so the correct answer, given our actual state of knowledge about the real world, is (a).

This is what researchers call Fictional Bias, and there is evidence that it affects virtually every domain of decision-making. The mistake is using information from fictional sources in real contexts. It is the more-pernicious cousin of generalizing from fictional evidence - instead of merely generalizing, we treat real objects and persons as though they are the specific fictional entities they resemble.

We're of course familiar with particularly egregious examples of people confusing fiction with reality. For example in the 1930's, there were multiple cases where someone was killed for having the same name as the serial killer of children from the movie M. But these could be written off as merely disturbed individuals. But as it turns out, we're affected by this bias in our daily lives.

Examples abound in the literature, though the name "fictional bias" is not always used. A 1984 study by Dr. Sidney Zweibel and Dr. Emilio Lizardo asked subjects to trust someone with an unusual name. Subjects were 70% less likely to trust when the person had the same name as a fictional villain. A 1989 study by Dr. Wayne Szalinski established that subjects were 89% more likely to agree to take an experimental drug, when it was named after a fictional drug (for example Ephemerol).

The moral? It stands to reason that we need to be careful where our intuitive inferences come from. For a group that consumes so much science fiction and fantasy, we must be especially on our guard. (Also, this post was an April Fools prank; the effect may ...
Meetup : Rome LessWrong Meetup
by  — 2012-04-01T21:40:35.508Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Rome LessWrong Meetup

WHEN:
21 April 2012 08:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Via della Gatta, 1/a, rome, italy

Myself, along with two other LessWrongians, will be visiting Rome. I previously described setting up a meetup group in Budapest. http://lesswrong.com/lw/bc2/setting_up_lw_meetups_in_unlikely_places_positive/ I will be attempting the same in Rome. Do come and bring friends if you are in the area! Suggestions for a great central cafe/equivalent to host the meetup are very welcome - I will update the exact location once it is settled.

UPDATE: Caffé Doria as the meeting place.

Discussion article for the meetup : Rome LessWrong Meetup
What is life?
by Douglas_Reay — 2012-04-01T21:12:11.269Z

(This post is part of the attempt to do a write up after every Cambridge_UK meetup, of something raised at the meetup.)

What is life?

Eliezer, in "The First World Takeover", talks about the search for objects with increasing numbers of bits of functional complexity. He framed the difference between life, and the previous non-living universe, as being the introduction of self-replicators who could search for self-replicators with an improved ability to search.

In terms of organisms that share genes among a population via sexual reproduction, we have to consider this search mechanism (evolution by natural selection) to be a property of a population rather than of a single individual.

And, indeed, when we take into account the speed limit and complexity bound for evolution, what we're looking for is a population who search faster than the natural decay rate imposed by copying fidelity, genome size and how many harmful mutations get dropped each generation by the fraction of the population that don't reproduce.

And that is relative to the environment the population happens to find themselves situated in. Radiation affects mutation rate. Harshness of the environment (including competitors) determines whether the population is viable (replacement rate at least equals the death rate) or whether they will spiral down into extinction.

So maybe, rather than asking whether an individual or system of individuals counts as a life form, perhaps a more well defined question would be to ask whether they count as a viable searcher relative to a specific environment.

Why does that distinction matter?

Are prions living? How about viruses? Crystals?

We know that a turing complete machine can be implemented in Conway's Game of Life and that, given a very specific environment, crystals can not only self-replicate, but also pass on information to their 'off-spring'. So it would make sense to say that a system of crystals might be constructed that would be 'alive' relative to a specific environment that permitted the system to evolve - to 'search' not just for a variant replicator that might be improved in some limited way (such as replicating faster), but search unlimited bits of search space, including for an improved searcher.

Whereas a virus or prion would not count, unless in a particular environment the information ...
Meetup : Graz Meetup
by  — 2012-04-01T20:08:16.568Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Graz Meetup

WHEN:
28 April 2012 11:21:03PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Graz, Steiermark, Austria

Meet up. Please upvote the comment post asking for attendance, and the subcomments for date, time, location, and any other suggestions.

Discussion article for the meetup : Graz Meetup
AI Risk & Opportunity: Questions We Want Answered
by lukeprog — 2012-04-01T19:19:21.414Z

Part of the series AI Risk and Opportunity: A Strategic Analysis.

(You can leave anonymous feedback on posts in this series here. I alone will read the comments, and may use them to improve past and forthcoming posts in this series.)

This post provides a list of questions about AI risk strategy — questions we want answered. Please suggest additional questions (a paragraph of explanation is preferred but not necessary); I may add them to the list. You can submit questions anonymously here.

Also, please identify which 3-5 of these questions you think are low-hanging fruit for productive strategic analysis on Less Wrong.

The list is in no particular order, but question numbers will remain unchanged (so that you can reliably refer to questions by their number):

What methods can we use to predict technological development? We don't yet have reliable methods for long-term technological forecasting. But not all methods have been examined yet. Perhaps technology futures have a good track record. Perhaps we could look at historical technological predictions and see if there is any pattern in the data suggesting that certain character traits and contexts lend themselves to accurate technological predictions. Perhaps there are creative solutions we haven't thought of yet.

Which kinds of differential technological development should we encourage, and how? Should we "push" on WBE, or not? Are some kinds of AI research risk-reducing, and other kinds risk-increasing? How can we achieve such effects, if they are desired?

Which open problems are safe to discuss, and which are potentially dangerous? AI risk research may itself produce risk in some cases, in the form of information hazards (Bostrom 2011). Is it safe to discuss decision theories? Acausal trade? Certain kinds of strategic questions, for example involving government intervention?

What can we do to reduce the risk of an AI arms race?

What can we do to raise the "sanity waterline," and how much will this help?

What can we do to attract more funding, support, and research to x-risk reduction and to the specific sub-problems of successful Singularity navigation?

Which interventions should we prioritize?

How should x-risk reducers and AI safety researchers interact with governments and corporations? Does Drexler's interaction with the U.S. government regarding molecular nanotechnology provide any les

...
What are you working on? April 2012
by David_Gerard — 2012-04-01T18:40:52.001Z

This is the bimonthly 'What are you working On?' thread. Previous threads are here. So here's the question:

What are you working on?

Here are some guidelines:

Focus on projects that you have recently made progress on, not projects that you're thinking about doing but haven't started.

Why this project and not others? Mention reasons why you're doing the project and/or why others should contribute to your project (if applicable).

Talk about your goals for the project.

Any kind of project is fair game: personal improvement, research project, art project, whatever.

Link to your work if it's linkable.
Characterizing the superintelligence which we are concerned about
by JoshuaFox — 2012-04-01T18:40:21.179Z

What is this “superintelligence” we are concerned about? In writing articles on FAI topics, I took the easy way out and defined the focus of attention as an AI that can far outdo humans in all areas. But this just a useful shortcut, not what we are really talking about.
In this essay, I will try to better rcharacterize the topic of interest.
Some possibilities that have been brought up include intelligences

which are human-like,

which are conscious,

which can outperform humans in some or all areas,

which can self-improve,

or which meet a semi-formal or formal definition of intelligence or of above-human intelligence.

All these are important features in possible future AIs which we should be thinking about.But what really counts is whether an AI can outwit us when its goals are pitted against ours.
1. Human-like intelligence. We are humans, we care about human welfare; and humans are the primary intelligence which cooperates and competes with us; so human intelligence is our primary model. Machines that “think like humans” are an intuitive focus on discussions of AI; Turing took this as the basis for his practical test for intelligence
Future AIs might have exactly this type of intelligence, particularly if they are emulated brains, what Robin Hanson calls “ems.”
If human-like AI is the only AI to come, then not much will have happened: We already have seven billion humans, and a few more will simply extend economic trends. If, as Hanson describes, the ems need fewer resources than humans, then we can expect extreme economic impact. If such AI has certain differences from us humans, like the ability to self-improve, then it will fall under the other categories, as described below.
J. Storrs Hall (Beyond AI: Creating the conscience of the machine, 2007) explores different types of intelligence in relation to the human model: “hypohuman”, “epihuman,” “allohuman,” “parahuman,” and “hyperhuman.” Those distinctions are important, but in this essay I am focusing specifically on the specific level of intelligence which can be expected to end the human era, rather than on the relation of such intelligence to human intelligence.
2. More narrowly than full human emulation, we can consider machines that are conscious, feel emotions, or have some other human mental...
April 2012 Media Thread
by RobertLumley — 2012-04-01T16:55:54.694Z

Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing!

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.

If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.

Please use the comment trees, which I was apparently too dumb to do.
[SEQ RERUN] Distinct Configurations
by MinibearRex — 2012-04-01T06:43:13.264Z

Today's post, Distinct Configurations was originally published on 12 April 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Since configurations are over the combined state of all the elements in a system, adding a sensor that detects whether a particle went one way or the other, becomes a new element of the system that can make configurations "distinct" instead of "identical". This confused the living daylights out of early quantum experimenters, because it meant that things behaved differently when they tried to "measure" them. But it's not only measuring instruments that do the trick - any sensitive physical element will do - and the distinctness of configurations is a physical fact, not a fact about our knowledge. There is no need to suppose that the universe cares what we think.

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 Joint Configurations, 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.
Meetup : Seattle: Decision Theory
by jsalvatier — 2012-03-31T21:07:52.231Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Seattle: Decision Theory

WHEN:
01 April 2012 04:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
5523 University Way NE #501 Seattle, WA 98115

It's past time we had another meetup. As I mentioned earlier, it's past time for another meetup and, I'd like to have a discussion about decision theory. This recent post on decision theory is good background material. I'll be going over the material in that post and talking about some of the decision theory puzzles which standard decision theories don't do very well on and thus motivate trying to find new, better theories. Guy also that he would bring some puzzles. After that, we'll have a discussion about the puzzles. Ben will be hosting this week. The address is 5523 University Way NE, #501, There is a little buzzer next to the door so if you press "501" someone can let you in.

Discussion article for the meetup : Seattle: Decision Theory
AI Risk & Opportunity: A Timeline of Early Ideas and Arguments
by lukeprog — 2012-03-31T14:34:02.926Z

Part of the series AI Risk and Opportunity: A Strategic Analysis.

(You can leave anonymous feedback on posts in this series here. I alone will read the comments, and may use them to improve past and forthcoming posts in this series.)

Building on the previous post on AI risk history, this post provides an incomplete timeline (up to 1993) of significant novel ideas and arguments related to AI as a potential catastrophic risk. I do not include ideas and arguments concerning only, for example, the possibility of AI (Turing 1950) or attempts to predict its arrival (Bostrom 1998).

As is usually the case, we find that when we look closely at a cluster of ideas, it turns out these ideas did not appear all at once in the minds of a Few Great Men. Instead, they grew and mutated and gave birth to new ideas gradually as they passed from mind to mind over the course of many decades.

1863: Machine intelligence as an existential risk to humanity; relinquishment of machine technology recommended. Samuel Butler in Darwin among the machines worries that as we build increasingly sophisticated and autonomous machines, they will achieve greater capability than humans and replace humans as the dominant agents on the planet:

...we are ourselves creating our own successors; we are daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their physical organisation; we are daily giving them greater power and supplying by all sorts of ingenious contrivances that self-regulating, self-acting power which will be to them what intellect has been to the human race. In the course of ages we shall find ourselves the inferior race... the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants...

Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them. Every machine of every sort should be destroyed by the well-wisher of his species. Let there be no exceptions made, no quarter shown...

(See also Butler 1872; Campbell 1932.)

1921: Robots as an existential risk. The Czech play R.U.R. by Karel Capek tells the story of robots which grow in power and intelligence and destroy the entire human race (except for a single survivor).

1947: Fragility & complexity of human values (in the context of machine goal systems); perverse instantiation. Jack Williamson's novelette With Folded Hands (1947) tells the story of a race of machines that, in order ...
[draft] Concepts are Difficult, and Unfriendliness is the Default: A Scary Idea Summary
by Kaj_Sotala — 2012-03-31T10:07:17.663Z

Here's my draft document Concepts are Difficult, and Unfriendliness is the Default. (Google Docs, commenting enabled.) Despite the name, it's still informal and would need a lot more references, but it could be written up to a proper paper if people felt that the reasoning was solid.

Here's my introduction:

In the "Muehlhauser-Goertzel Dialogue, Part 1", Ben Goertzel writes:

[Anna Salamon] gave the familiar SIAI argument that, if one picks a mind at random from “mind space”, the odds that it will be Friendly to humans are effectively zero.

I made the familiar counter-argument that this is irrelevant, because nobody is advocating building a random mind. Rather, what some of us are suggesting is to build a mind with a Friendly-looking goal system, and a cognitive architecture that’s roughly human-like in nature but with a non-human-like propensity to choose its actions rationally based on its goals, and then raise this AGI mind in a caring way and integrate it into society. Arguments against the Friendliness of random minds are irrelevant as critiques of this sort of suggestion.

[...] Over all these years, the SIAI community maintains the Scary Idea in its collective mind, and also maintains a great devotion to the idea of rationality, but yet fails to produce anything resembling a rational argument for the Scary Idea -- instead repetitiously trotting out irrelevant statements about random minds!!

Ben has a valid complaint here. Therefore, I'll attempt to formalize the arguments for the following conclusion:

Even if an AGI is explicitly built to have a Friendly-looking goal system, and a cognitive architecture that’s roughly human-like in nature but with a non-human-like propensity to choose its actions rationally based on its goals, and this AGI mind is raised in caring way in an attempt to integrate it into society, there is still a very large chance of creating a mind that is unFriendly.

First, I'll outline my argument, and then expand upon each specific piece in detail.
The premises in outline
0. There will eventually be a situation where the AGI's goals and behaviors are no longer under our control.
1. Whether or not the AGI will eventually come to understand what we wanted it to do is irrelevant, if that understanding does not guide its actions in ”the right way”.
2. Providing an AGI with the kind of understanding that'd

...