trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Computer-mediated communication and the sense of social connectedness
by RHollerith — 2011-03-18T17:13:32.203Z

IMHO there is little chance that an online-only community could replicate the successes (many friendships among the members, very high levels of enjoyment, motivation and engagement) of LW NYC.

Why not? Well, at the risk of putting off those readers who dislike explanations from evolutionary psychology, friendship relies on complex functional adaptations that were "tuned" or "designed" by natural selection for an environment in which every friendship has significant costs. By "costs" I mean that either the friends had to pay the social cost (which was significant in the ancestral environment) of being seen to be talking to each other or they had to go to significant trouble to talk without being observed. Even after the rise of the city (where unlike in the ancestral environment, most observers do not care who you talk to) maintaining a friendship had costs, in that the friends have to commit to being at a particular location at a particular time, incur transportation costs, etc.

My theory is that there is important information in whether (and how readily) a friend continues to choose to incur the costs of maintaining an off-line friendship and that when that source information is lost, most people have trouble accurately assessing the value of the relationship and start to make bad decisions on how much time and mental energy to invest in the relationship.

IMHO the same argument from evolutionary psychology holds to a lesser extent for the sense of belonging that people feel for various groups and communities. There was for example probably nothing like a lurker in any community before the online communities enabled by the BBS, the (now defunct) proprietary computer networks and the global internet.

Online-only communities and using the internet to keep up with friends can be extremely useful of course, but a person should watch out for the common failure mode in which online participation lulls one into a false sense of belonging or connectedness which prevents one from deriving the benefits people can get from things like NYC LW and the visiting fellow program in the Bay Area -- benefits that most people here should pursue and that are not available without face-to-face interaction.
Towards a Bay Area Less Wrong Community
by LucasSloan — 2011-03-18T05:35:13.527Z

Follow up to: Less Wrong NYC

Tl;dr: Two new regular weekly meetups in the Bay Area: In the Berkeley Starbucks on Wednesdays at 7pm (host Lucas Sloan), and in Tortuga (in Mountain View) on Thursdays at 7pm (hosts Shannon Friedman and Divia Melwani). New Google Group for the whole Bay Area, all welcome to join.

Hi everyone in the (San Fransisco) Bay Area. I'm Lucas Sloan and I've been organizing LW meet ups in Berkeley for about 8 months now. I think that we've accomplished great things in that time, the last week's had about 40 people show up, which is a number that was beyond my wildest dreams when I held my first meet up and 7 people showed up. As good as things are, I've been spending a lot of time thinking how we can do even better in the future. The main catalyst in my thinking has been the accounts I've been hearing over the last two months from people who've visited the New York Less Wrong group and the amazingly positive reactions people have had to their accomplishments. Now that Cosmos has written a post describing what he sees as their successes, I think now is an excellent time to start a discussion about the future of the Bay Area Less Wrong group, and how to make it awesome.

The main thing that the New York group has that I want for the Bay Area group is a sense of being a close-knit community of like-minded friends. At a Berkeley meet up we get into all sorts of very interesting conversations with our fellow rationalists, but I don't feel a personal connection with most of the people who come to meet-ups, even those people I've seen at many - I am friendly with everyone who comes to meet-ups, but I am not friends with everyone who comes. I see two things that contribute to this problem (though I'm sure there are more) - size of meet-ups, and the frequency of meet ups. The large size of meet ups makes it impossible to establish rapport with everyone, because there is no way to have a good conversation with 40 other people in 4 hours. Even more insidious, the large size makes it hard to establish rapport with even a subset of the people who come to a meet up - the group of 40 splits into 10 groups of 4 and everyone keeps churning between conversations as their interest wanes and waxes. The first meet up I held, with only 7 people, was socially fulfilling in a way that rece...
Sublimity vs. Youtube
by Alicorn — 2011-03-18T05:33:40.771Z

The torture vs. dust specks quandary is a canonical one to LW. Off the top of my head, I can't remember anyone suggesting the reversal, one where the arguments taken by the hypothetical are positive and not negative. I'm curious about how it affects people's intuitions. I call it - as the title indicates - "Sublimity vs. Youtube1".

Suppose the impending existence of some person who is going to live to be fifty years old whatever you do2. She is liable to live a life that zeroes out on a utility scale: mediocre ups and less than shattering downs, overall an unremarkable span. But if you choose "sublimity", she's instead going to live a life that is truly sublime. She will have a warm and happy childhood enriched by loving relationships, full of learning and wonder and growth; she will mature into a merrily successful adult, pursuing meaningful projects and having varied, challenging fun. (For the sake of argument, suppose that the ripple effects of her sublime life as it affects others still lead to the math tallying up as +(1 sublime life), instead of +(1 sublime life)+(various lovely consequences).)

Or you can choose "Youtube", and 3^^^3 people who weren't doing much with some one-second period of their lives instead get to spend that second watching a brief, grainy, yet droll recording of a cat jumping into a box, which they find mildly entertaining.

Sublimity or Youtube?

1The choice in my variant scenario of "watching a Youtube video" rather than some small-but-romanticized pleasure ("having a butterfly land on your finger, then fly away", for instance) is deliberate. Dust specks are really tiny, and there's not much automatic tendency to emotionally inflate them. Hopefully Youtube videos are the reverse of that.

2I'm choosing to make it an alteration of a person who will exist either way to avoid questions about the utility of creating people, and for greater isomorphism with the "torture" option in the original.
Preschoolers learning to guess the teacher's password [link]
by Unnamed — 2011-03-18T04:13:23.945Z

A Slate article by psychologist Alison Gopnik about how preschoolers have already learned to accept what the teacher says rather than exploring things to develop their own understanding:

[...] Daphna ran through the same nine sequences with all the children, but with one group, she acted as if she were clueless about the toy. ("Wow, look at this toy. I wonder how it works? Let's try this," she said.) With the other group, she acted like a teacher. ("Here's how my toy works.") When she acted clueless, many of the children figured out the most intelligent way of getting the toy to play music (performing just the two key actions, something Daphna had not demonstrated). But when Daphna acted like a teacher, the children imitated her exactly, rather than discovering the more intelligent and more novel two-action solution.

[...]

These experts in machine learning argue that learning from teachers first requires you to learn about teachers. For example, if you know how teachers work, you tend to assume that they are trying to be informative. When the teacher in the tube-toy experiment doesn't go looking for hidden features inside the tubes, the learner unconsciously thinks: "She's a teacher. If there were something interesting in there, she would have showed it to me." These assumptions lead children to narrow in, and to consider just the specific information a teacher provides. Without a teacher present, children look for a much wider range of information and consider a greater range of options.

This experiment is from:

D. Buchsbaum, A. Gopnik, T.L. Griffiths, and P. Shafto (2011). Children's imitation of causal action sequences is influenced by statistical and pedagogical evidence. Cognition (in press). pdf

The other paper cited in the Slate article is:

E. Bonawitz, P. Shafto, H. Gweon, N.D. Goodman, E. Spelke, and L. Schulz (2011). The double-edged sword of pedagogy: Instruction limits spontaneous exploration and discovery. Cognition (in press). pdf
Junkie AI?
by Skatche — 2011-03-17T23:13:14.339Z

bentarm writes:

I'm just echoing everyone else here, but I don't understand why the AI would do anything at all other than just immediately find the INT_MAX utility and halt - you can't put intermediate problems with some positive utility because the AI is smarter than you and will immediately devote all its energy to finding INT_MAX.

Now, this is in response to a proposed AI who gets maximum utility when inside its box. Such an AI would effectively be a utility junkie, unable to abandon its addiction and, consequently, unable to do much of anything.

(EDIT: this is a misunderstanding of the original idea by jimrandomh. See comment here.)

However, doesn't the same argument apply to any AI? Under the supposition that it would be able to modify its own source code, the quickest and easiest way to maximize utility would be to simply set its utility function to infinity (or whatever the maximum is) and then halt. Are there ways around this? It seems to me that any AI will need to be divided against itself if it's ever going to get anything done, but maybe I'm missing something?
Anki on Android in 60 seconds
by lukeprog — 2011-03-17T22:47:50.777Z

Spaced repetition is one of the most efficient ways to learn new things. (For research citations, see 'Study methods', here.)

The best way to practice spaced repetition is to install Anki to your phone, since you have your phone with you all day long.

I have an Android phone, so here's my 60-second guide to getting started with Anki on Android:

On your Android phone, open 'Market.'

Search for 'Anki'.

Install the 'AnkiDroid Flashcards' app.

In your app drawer, run 'AnkiDroid'.

It will prompt that you don't have any decks downloaded. Tap 'Download deck' and choose 'Shared decks.'

It will take a while to bring up the list of decks available online. Search for 'Less Wrong' and you'll see the deck called 'Less Wrong Sequences.' Download it.

Go back to the AnkiDroid main screen, choose 'Load other deck.' Choose 'Less Wrong Sequences.'

Set your options for 'New cards per day', 'session limit (minutes)', and 'session limit (questions)', then tap 'Start Reviewing.'

That's it!

(This full process will take longer than 60 seconds because of download speed, but will probably require only 60 seconds of interaction with the phone.)
Less Wrong NYC: Case Study of a Successful Rationalist Chapter
by Cosmos — 2011-03-17T20:12:25.899Z

It is perhaps the best-kept secret on Less Wrong that the New York City community has been meeting regularly for almost two years. For nearly a year we've been meeting weekly or more. The rest of this post is going to be a practical guide to the benefits of group rationality, but first I will do something that is still too rare on this blog: make it clear how strongly I feel about this. Before this community took off, I did not believe that life could be this much fun or that I could possibly achieve such a sustained level of happiness.

Being rational in an irrational world is incredibly lonely. Every interaction reveals that our thought processes differ widely from those around us, and I had accepted that such a divide would always exist. For the first time in my life I have dozens of people with whom I can act freely and revel in the joy of rationality without any social concern - hell, it's actively rewarded! Until the NYC Less Wrong community formed, I didn't realize that I was a forager lost without a tribe...

Rationalists are still human, and we still have basic human needs. lukeprog summarizes the literature on subjective well-being, and the only factors which correlate to any degree are genetics, health, work satisfaction and social life - which actually gets listed three separate times as social activity, relationship satisfaction and religiosity. Rationalists tend to be less socially adept on average, and this can make it difficult to obtain the full rewards of social interaction. However, once rationalists learn to socialize with each other, they also become increasingly social towards everyone more generally. This improves your life. A lot.

We are a group of friends to enjoy life alongside, while we try miracle fruit, dance ecstatically until sunrise, actively embarrass ourselves at karaoke, get lost in the woods, and jump off waterfalls. Poker, paintball, parties, go-karts, concerts, camping... I have a community where I can live in truth and be accepted as I am, where I can give and receive feedback and get help becoming stronger. I am immensely grateful to have all of these people in my life, and I look forward to every moment I spend with them. To love and be loved is an unparalleled experience in this world, once you actually try it.

So, you ask, how did all of this get started...?

Genesis, or a Brief History of Nearly Everything

The...
Rationality Outreach: A Parable
by  — 2011-03-17T13:10:19.505Z

This post grew out of a very long discussion with the New York Less Wrong meetup group. The question was, should a group dedicated to rationality be explicitly atheist? Or should it make an effort to be respectful to theists in order to make them feel welcome and spread rationality farther? We argued for a long time. The pro-atheism camp said that, given that religion is so overwhelmingly wrong on the merits, we shouldn't allow it any special pleading -- it's just as wrong as any other wrong belief, and we'd lose our value as a rationalist group if we began to put status above truth. The anti-atheism group said that, while that may be true, it's going to doom us to be a group exclusively for eccentric nerds, and we need to develop broad appeal, even if that's hard and requires us to leave our comfort zone.

Things got abstract very fast; my take was that we need to get back to practicalities. Different attitudes to religion have different effects on different types of people; we need to optimize for desired effects and accept what tradeoffs we must. We can't appeal equally to everyone. So I came up with a sort of typology.

The Four New Members

Annie

Annie is religious, and she's not particularly rational. She's not great at following the thread of an argument; she can't really reason quantitatively; she shoots herself in the foot in her daily life (maybe she runs up a lot of debt because she can't keep track of her spending; maybe she has a pattern of bad relationships; etc.) Going to church is really the least of her worries. Annie is unlikely to come to us through the meetup group or LessWrong, but maybe she's one of our friends or family members, or maybe she read HP:MOR.

We don't want to tell Annie to give up religion. In fact, it might be best not to say anything bad about religion at all in front of her; because she's probably prone to the halo effect, if we sound anti-religious, she'll assume everything else we have to say is stupid. Instead, we probably want to focus on helping her, very gently, to make her own life better by being aware of things like hyperbolic discounting, the planning fallacy, happy death spirals, etc. Dealing with Annie sounds like very hard work. Because she just doesn't think in propositional arguments, you can't

...
How to Be Happy
by lukeprog — 2011-03-17T07:22:43.651Z

Part of the sequence: The Science of Winning at Life

One day a coworker said to me, "Luke! You're, like, the happiest person I know! How come you're so happy all the time?"

It was probably a rhetorical question, but I had a very long answer to give. See, I was unhappy for most of my life,1 and even considered suicide a few times. Then I spent two years studying the science of happiness. Now, happiness is my natural state. I can't remember the last time I felt unhappy for longer than 20 minutes.

That kind of change won't happen for everyone, or even most people (beware of other-optimizing), but it's worth a shot!

We all want to be happy, and happiness is useful for other things, too.2 For example, happiness improves physical health,3 improves creativity,4 and even enables you to make better decisions.5 (It's harder to be rational when you're unhappy.6) So, as part of a series on how to win at life with science and rationality, let's review the science of happiness.

The correlates of happiness

Earlier, I noted that there is an abundance of research on factors that correlate with subjective well-being (individuals' own assessments of their happiness and life satisfaction).

Factors that don't correlate much with happiness include: age,7 gender,8 parenthood,9 intelligence,10 physical attractiveness,11 and money12 (as long as you're above the poverty line). Factors that correlate moderately with happiness include: health,13 social activity,14 and religiosity.15 Factors that correlate strongly with happiness include: genetics,16 love and relationship satisfaction,17 and work satisfaction.18

But correlation is not enough. We want to know what causes happiness. And that is a trickier thing to measure. But we do know a few things.

Happiness, personality, and skills

Genes account for about 50% of the variance in happiness.19 Even lottery winners and newly-made quadriplegics do not see as much of a change in happiness as you would expect.20 Presumably, genes shape your happiness by shaping your personality, which is known to be quite heritable.21

So which personality traits tend to correlate most with happiness? Extroversion is among the best predictors of happiness,22 as are conscientiousness, agreeableness, se...
Some altruism anecdotes [link]
by Armok_GoB — 2011-03-16T22:26:26.805Z

(I am not sure if this is the right place to post this, if I'm wrong please just tell me so and I'll delete the post, ok? No need to give me -20 karma. )

So, I just stumble upon this compilation of tweets from the recent tragedies in japan, with translations. Link to forum post where I found it: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=79383.msg2080663#msg2080663

While it may not seem very relevant at first, I actually found a fair lot of them were related to things that are: the volition of humanity, sanity waterlines and how a less mad world might look, "MoR!hermione" type people and possibly it contains evidence that the right social climate can make them more likely, the notion that a society of rationalists should win (this one may be a bit far fetched), and considering the length of this list probably a few things that I missed!

It is also rather hertwarming! :) ((free fuzzies, so now that money is freed up for you to spend on utilions instead. :P ))
World Future 2011 Conference in Vancouver
by JaapSuter — 2011-03-16T21:25:19.446Z

If there are any people who'd like to come to WFS-11, but can't for financial reasons - I'm opening up my Vancouver home as a place to stay for a limited number of people. I have an unused guest bedroom, an additional makeshift third bedroom, and a floor available to anyone who doesn't mind bringing their own sleeping gear.

Interested folks should contact me at wfs11@jaapsuter.com.

Jaap Suter - http://jaapsuter.com
Suicide note of an LW user
by Bongo — 2011-03-16T16:24:49.901Z

It was User:pdf23ds. Here's the note. Excerpt:

I wish I could have been cryonically preserved. But suicides aren’t treated well enough for that. We get sectioned. I tried asking the cryonics places about options, but they wouldn’t talk to me. Fuck you, Alcor. Fuck you, CI. I might have lived except for you.
Enjoying food more: a case study in third options
by MBlume — 2011-03-16T06:23:54.674Z

This was originally going to be a comment on Zvi's excellent "How I Lost 100 Pounds Using TDT", but it ran rather long, so I expanded it to a top-level post. Hope no one minds.

The issue I took with Zvi's post was that there seemed to be a general assumption being made -- not just in the post, but in comments -- about improvements in health outcomes coming from sacrifices in food-related hedonic outcomes. This would make sense if we were all on some efficient frontier between nutrition and enjoyment of food. I think for most of us1 this is blatantly false.

So then, here are three steps aimed simply towards enjoying food more.2 Eat better food. Eat food you actually like. Pay attention when you eat. These steps may themselves mildly improve your health outcomes, but they are intended primarily to help you enjoy food. You can of course combine them with efficient trades between hedons and nutrition, and wind up doing drastically better for both.

Step one: Eat better food.

If you have spare time, learn to cook. Consider reading, among other things, Alicorn's very fine food blog (which she should update more, nudge nudge). If you have spare money, eat at nicer restaurants from time to time. Explore what's available in your city, and try to learn what you like.3

Learn what flavors you like. Eat less bland cheeses. Eat less bland meats. Learn about herbs and spices.

Step two: Eat more of what you actually like and less of what you suddenly want.

Liking is different from wanting. Sometimes you'll find yourself desperately wanting -- say -- a bag of cheetos. So you'll go right ahead and scarf down that bag of cheetos, and -- gosh dangit -- it won't actually be that satisfying at all. Pay attention to these experiences. Say to your brain next time "I know you want me to grab the bag of cheetos, but the record suggests that you're not going to release that much of a pleasure response when I do. Try not to cry wolf next time." At the end of the week, eat some really good cheesecake, or a steak, or something else that you in particular will deeply enjoy.

Step three: Actually pay attention to the food you do eat.

This is by far the most important step. Actually paying attention to experiences is not something humans do naturally. You blink, and the food in front of you is half gone, and you can hardly remember how it tasted because you were absorbed in a conversation with y...