trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : West LA Meetup - The Resistance (Game)
by  — 2012-04-10T07:41:23.029Z

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup - The Resistance (Game)

WHEN:
11 April 2012 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
10850 West Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90064

When: 7:00pm - 9:00pm Wednesday, April 11th.

Where: The Westside Tavern in the upstairs Wine Bar (all ages welcome), located inside the Westside Pavillion on the second floor, right by the movie theaters.

Parking is free for 3 hours.

Activity: We will play a classic game of deception and deduction, The Resistance. There will be unmoderated discussion before game play, and afterwards we can talk about the use of games and other methods for training our heuristics.

Don't worry if you don't have time to read anything, or even if you've never read any Less Wrong! Bring a friend! The atmosphere is casual, and good, intelligent conversation with friendly people is guaranteed.

I will bring a whiteboard with Bayes' Theorem written on it.

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup - The Resistance (Game)
Let's create a market for cryonics
by  — 2012-04-10T06:36:45.086Z

My uncle works in insurance. I recently mentioned that I'm planning to sign up for cryonics.

"That's amazing," he said. "Convincing a young person to buy life insurance? That has to be the greatest scam ever."

I took the comment lightly, not caring to argue about it. But it got me thinking - couldn't cryonics be a great opportunity for insurance companies to make a bunch of money?

Consider:

Were there a much stronger demand for cryonics, cryonics organizations would flourish through competition, outside investment, and internal reinvestment. Costs would likely fall, and this would be good for cryonicists in general.

If cryonics organizations flourish, this increases the probability of cryonics working. I can think of a bunch of ways in which this could happen; perhaps, for example, it would encourage the creation of safety nets whereby the failure of individual companies doesn't result in anyone getting thawed. It would increase R&D on both perfusion and revivification, encourage entrepreneurs to explore new related business models, etcetera.

Increasing the demand for cryonics increases the demand for life insurance policies; thus insurance companies have a strong incentive to increase the demand for cryonics. Many large insurance companies would like nothing more than to usher in a generation of young people that want to buy life insurance.1

The demand for cryonics could be increased by an insightful marketing campaign by an excellent marketing agency with an enormous budget... like those used by big insurance companies.2 A quick Googling says that ad spending by insurance companies exceeded $4.15 billion in 2009.

Almost a year ago, Strange7 suggested that cryonics organizations could run this kind of marketing campaign. I think he's wrong - there's no way CI or Alcor have the money. But the biggest insurance companies do have the money, and I'd be shocked if these companies or their agencies aren't already dumping all kinds of money into market research.

What would doing this require?

That an open-minded person in the insurance industry who is in the position to direct this kind of funding exists. I don't have a sense of how likely this is.

That we can locate/get an audience with the person from step 1. I think research and networking could get this done, especially if the higher-status among us are interested.

That we can find

...
Robots ate my job [links]
by torekp — 2012-04-10T01:57:39.019Z

Mechanical Engineering magazine (paywalled until next month) and Financial Times, among others, recently reviewed the book Race Against the Machine by economists Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee. The FT reviewer writes:

Pattern recognition, the authors think, will quickly allow machines to branch out further. Computers will soon drive more safely than humans, a fact Google has demonstrated by allowing one to take out a Toyota Prius for a 1,000-mile spin. Truck and taxi drivers should be worried – but then so should medical professionals, lawyers and accountants; all of their jobs are at risk too. The outcome is a nightmarish but worryingly convincing vision of a future in which an ever-decreasing circle of professions is immune from robotic encirclement.

And ME magazine quotes McAfee in an interview:

Once computers get better than people, you don't have to hire people to do that job any more. That doesn't mean that people can't find work. There will always be an amount of work to do, but they won't like the wages they are offered.

Both reviewers also hint that McAfee and Brynjolfsson offer a partial explanation of the "jobless recovery", but either the book's argument is weak or the reviewers do a poor job summarizing it. Such a purported explanation might be the main attraction for most readers, but I'm more interested in the longer-term picture. Be it the "nightmarish vision" of the future mentioned in FT, or the simpler point about wages offered by McAfee, this might be a good hook to get the general public thinking about the long-term consequences of AI.

Is that a good idea? Should sleeping general publics be left to lie? There seems to be significant reluctance among many LessWrongers to stir the public, but have we ever hashed out the reasons for and against? Please describe any non-obvious reasons on either side.
In Defense of Ayn Rand
by ryjm — 2012-04-10T01:53:08.001Z

In Defense of Ayn Rand

WARNING: Do not read the footnotes if have not read Atlas Shrugged, they contain primarily quotes from the book. They don't reveal much in terms of plot (except for #6) so read them if you feel daring.

Preface: This is NOT a defense of objectivism nor is it a defense of the cultish nature of followers of objectivism. This is a defense of Ayn Rand the woman and a response to her portrayal in the essay The Guardians of Ayn Rand. I realize that the essay was making a point about cults and not primarily a criticism of Ayn Rand, but since she was the focal point of the ideas and the piece is a part of the Sequences, I felt it necessary to write this. There are enough people who criticize Ayn Rand, and the literature of her critics is vast - but to spit on her contributions with little reference to any factual details and with a huge emphasis on her personal life just did not seem to fit with the spirit of this website. If Rand really was as poor of a thinker as she is being portrayed, some evidence would be very much appreciated. It was originally a comment, but it became way too long. I am NOT an expert on objectivism whatsoever. Please correct me on any inaccuracies.

Note: I am using the word rationality as Rand uses it.

"And yet Ayn Rand acknowledged no superior, in the past, or in the future yet to come. Rand, who began in admiring reason and individuality, ended by ostracizing anyone who dared contradict her. Shermer: "[Barbara] Branden recalled an evening when a friend of Rand's remarked that he enjoyed the music of Richard Strauss. 'When he left at the end of the evening, Ayn said, in a reaction becoming increasingly typical, 'Now I understand why he and I can never be real soulmates. The distance in our sense of life is too great.' Often she did not wait until a friend had left to make such remarks.""

Rand's choice of companions was governed by her life philosophy, which with respect to relationships was akin to a business deal, selfishly trading her willingness to interact with an individual for that person's virtue1. If she did not find another's virtue a sufficient payment for her companionship, she would not interact with them.

The part about Rand's professed superiority just seems like a blatant falsehood. All of her writings are based (it says so on the back of the books) on the existence of heroes in humanity. How can

...
[SEQ RERUN] Zombies: The Movie
by MinibearRex — 2012-04-10T01:45:46.323Z

Today's post, Zombies: The Movie was originally published on 20 April 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

A satirical suggestion for a zombie movie, but not about the lurching and drooling kind. The philosophical kind.

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 Identity Isn't In Specific Atoms, 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.
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality predictions
by gwern — 2012-04-09T21:49:03.639Z

The recent spate of updates has reminded me that while each chapter is enjoyable, the approaching end of MoR, as awesome as it no doubt will be, also means the end of our ability to learn from predicting the truth of the MoR-verse and its future.

With that in mind, I have compiled a page of predictions on sundry topics, much like my other page on predictions for Neon Genesis Evangelion; I encourage people to suggest plausible predictions that I've omitted, register their probabilities on PredictionBook.com, and come up with their own predictions. Then we can all look back when MoR finishes and reflect on what we (or Eliezer) did poorly or well.

The page is currently up to >182 predictions.
Influence of scientific research
by alex_zag_al — 2012-04-09T07:06:02.108Z

I'm an undergraduate studying molecular biology, and I am thinking of going into science. In Timothy Gower's "The Importance of Mathematics", he says that many mathematicians just do whatever interests them, regardless of social benefit. I'd rather do something with some interest or technological benefit to people outside of a small group with a very specific education.

Does anybody have any thoughts or links on judging the impact of the work on a research topic?

Clearly, the pursuit of a research topic must be producing truth to be helpful, and I've read Vladimir_M's heuristics regarding this.

Here's something I've tried. My current lab work is on the structure of membrane proteins in bacteria, so this is something I did to see where all this work on protein structure goes. I took a paper that I had found to be a very useful reference for my own work, about a protein that forms a pore in the bacterial membrane with a flexible loop, experimenting with the influence of this loop on the protein's structure. I used the Web of Science database to find a list of about two thousand papers that cited papers that cited this loop paper. I looked through this two-steps-away list for the ones that were not about molecules. Without too much effort, I found a few. The farthest from molecules that I found was a paper on a bacterium that sometimes causes meningitis, discussing about a particular stage in its colonization of the human body. A few of the two-steps-away articles were about antibiotics discovery; though molecular, this is a topic that has a great deal of impact outside of the world of research on biomolecules.

Though it occurs to me that it might be more fruitful to look the other way around: to identify some social benefits or interests people have, and see what scientific research is contributing the most to them.
The Singularity Institute STILL needs remote researchers (may apply again; writing skill not required)
by lukeprog — 2012-04-09T03:47:38.468Z

Update: As of December 2012, we are still accepting applications!

A while ago, I announced that the Singularity Institute is hiring remote researchers. I've hired a few people, but I still need more remote researchers. I think I screened off too many otherwise capable people because the 'test task' I asked applicants to perform was too time-consuming.

So even if you've already applied and been rejected, please apply via the new application form. The test task this time will not be quite so time consuming.

Pay is hourly and starts at $14/hr but that will rise if the product is good. You must be available to work at least 20 hours/week to be considered.

Perks:

Work from home, with flexible hours.

Age, location, and credentials are irrelevant; only the product matters.

Get paid to research things you're probably interested in anyway.

Contribute to human knowledge in immediately actionable ways. We need this research because we are about to act on it. Your work will not fall into the journal abyss that most academic research falls into.

If you're interested, apply here.

Why post this job ad on LessWrong? We need people with some measure of genuine curiosity.

Also see Scholarship: How to Do It Efficiently.
[SEQ RERUN] Identity Isn't In Specific Atoms
by MinibearRex — 2012-04-09T03:21:11.350Z

Today's post, Identity Isn't In Specific Atoms was originally published on 19 April 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

As a consequence of quantum theory, we can see that the concept of swapping out all the atoms in you with "different" atoms is physical nonsense. It's not something that corresponds to anything that could ever be done, even in principle, because the concept is so confused. You are still you, no matter "which" atoms you are made of.

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 No Individual Particles, 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.
Alcor vs. Cryonics Institute
by prespectiveCryonaut — 2012-04-09T01:49:32.295Z

I searched but did not find any discussion comparing the merits of the two major cryonics providers in the US, so I figured it might be productive to start such a discussion myself by posing the question to the community: which provider would you choose, all things being equal: Alcor or the Cryonics Institute?
From my research, Alcor comes across as the flasher, higher-end option, while CI seems more like a Mom-and-Pop operation, having only two full-time employees. Alcor also costs substantially more, with its neurosuspension option alone running ~$80k, compared with CI's whole-body preservation cost of ~$30k. While Alcor has received far more publicity than CI, much of it has been negative. The Ted Williams fiasco is probably the most prominent example, although the accuser in that case seems anything but trustworthy. However, Alcor remains something of a shadowy organization that many within the cryonics community are suspicious of. Mike Darwin, a former Alcor president, has written at length on both organizations at http://www.chronopause.com, and on the whole, at least based on what I've read, Alcor comes across looking less competent, less trustworthy, and less open than CI.
One issue in particular is funding. Even though Alcor costs much more, it has many more expenses, and Darwin and others have questioned the long term financial stability of the organization. Ralph Merkle, an Alcor board member and elder statesman of cryonics who has made significant contributions to other fields like nanotechnology, a field he practically invented, and encryption, with Merkle's Puzzles, has essentially admitted(1) that Alcor hasn't managed its money very well:
"Some Alcor members have wondered why rich Alcor members have not donated more money to Alcor. The major reason is that rich Alcor members are rich because they know how to manage money, and they know that Alcor traditionally has managed money poorly. Why give any significant amount of money to an organization that has no fiscal discipline? It will just spend it, and put itself right back into the same financial hole it’s already in.
As a case in point, consider Alcor’s efforts over the year to create an “endowment fund” to stabilize its operating budget. These efforts have always ended with Alcor spending the money on various useful activities. These range from research projects to...
The principle of ‘altruistic arbitrage’
by RobertWiblin — 2012-04-09T01:29:17.794Z

Cross-posted from http://www.robertwiblin.com

There is a principle in finance that obvious and guaranteed ways to make a lot of money, so called ‘arbitrages’, should not exist. It has a simple rationale. If market prices made it possible to trade assets around and in the process make a guaranteed profit, people would do it, in so doing shifting some prices up and others down. They would only stop making these trades once the prices had adjusted and the opportunity to make money had disappeared. While opportunities to make ‘free money’ appear all the time, they are quickly noticed and the behaviour of traders eliminates them. The logic of selfishness and competition mean the only remaining ways to make big money should involve risk taking, luck and hard work. This is the ’no arbitrage‘ principle.

Should a similar principle exist for selfless as well as selfish finance? When a guaranteed opportunity to do a lot of good for the world appears, philanthropists should notice and pounce on it, and only stop shifting resources into that activity once the opportunity has been exhausted. This wouldn’t work as quickly as the elimination of arbitrage on financial markets of course. Rather it would look more like entrepreneurs searching for and exploiting opportunities to open new and profitable businesses. Still, in general competition to do good should make it challenging for an altruistic start-up or budding young philanthropist to beat existing charities at their own game.

There is a very important difference though. Most investors are looking to make money and so for them a dollar is a dollar, whatever business activity it comes from. Competition between investors makes opportunities to get those dollars hard to find. The same is not true of altruists, who have very diverse preferences about who is most deserving of help and how we should help them; a ‘util’ from one charitable activity is not the same as a ‘util’ from another. This suggests that unlike in finance, we may able to find ‘altruistic arbitrages’, that is to say ‘opportunities to do a lot of good for the world that others have left unexploited.’

The rule is simple: target groups you care about that other people mostly don’t, and take advantage of strategies other people are biased against using....
Exploring the Idea Space Efficiently
by Elithrion — 2012-04-08T04:28:46.855Z

Simon is writing a calculus textbook. Since there are a lot of textbooks on the market, he wants to make his distinctive by including a lot of original examples. To do this, he decides to first check what sorts of examples are in some of the other books, and then make sure to avoid those. Unfortunately, after skimming through several other books, he finds himself completely unable to think of original examples—his mind keeps returning to the examples he's just read instead of coming up with new ones.

What he's experiencing here is another aspect of priming or anchoring. The way it appears to happen in my brain is that it decides to anchor on the examples it's already seen and explore the idea-space from there, moving from an idea only to ideas that are closely related to it (similarly to a depth-first search)

At first, this search strategy might not seem so bad—in fact, it's ideal if there is one best solution and the closer you get to it the better. For example, if you were shooting arrows at a target, all you'd need to consider is how close to the center you can hit. Where we run into problems, however, is trying to come up with multiple solutions (such as multiple examples of the applications of calculus), or trying to come up with the best solution when there are many plausible solutions. In these cases, our brain's default search algorithm will often grab the first idea it can think of and try to refine it, even if what we really need is a completely different idea.

Of course, the brain is not so stupid that it will choose the first idea it has and refine it forever. Even in the ancestral environment, we would have run into problems where depth-first search is not very effective. Rather than spending time on refining your skills at chipping flint to make tools, for example, you may have been better served by learning to pick a better type of flint to work with before even starting. In modern times, however, these problems have grown more challenging and more numerous. I'm sure all of us have had the experience of working on some problem for a long time, refining our solution, maybe even trying to make the problem fit the solution we came up with out of frustration, only to give up, come back later, and then suddenly have a completely different and obvious solution come to mind. While part of this is probably due to some peripheral processes in ...
[link] Is Alu Life?
by ec429 — 2012-04-07T21:24:22.557Z

I recently read (in Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale) about the Alu sequence, and went on to read about transposons generally. Having as I do a rather broad definition of life, I concluded that Alu (and others like it) are lifeforms in their own right, although parasitic ones. I found the potential ethical implications somewhat staggering, especially given the need to shut up and multiply those implications by the rather large number of transposon instances in a typical multicellular organism.

I have written out my thoughts on the subject, at http://jttlov.no-ip.org/writings/alulife.htm. I don't claim to have a well-worked out position, just a series of ideas and questions I feel to be worthy of discussion.

ETA: I have started editing the article based on the discussion below. For reference with the existing discussion, I have preserved a copy of the original article as well, linked from the current version.