trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : Monday Madison Meetup
by fiddlemath — 2012-04-06T04:40:48.798Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Monday Madison Meetup

WHEN:
09 April 2012 06:30:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
1831 monroe st., madison wi

I plan to run a couple of nascent exercises on explicit specificness, a la http://lesswrong.com/lw/bc3/sotw_be_specific/. This seems like a deeply useful skill to turn into a habit.

Further suggestions, of course, are warmly welcomed. :)

See you then!

Discussion article for the meetup : Monday Madison Meetup
Forked Russian Roulette and Anticipation of Survival
by FeepingCreature — 2012-04-06T03:57:08.683Z

This is a thought exercise I came up with on IRC to help with the iffiness of "freezing yourself for a thousand years" with regards to continuity of self.

Let's say we live in a post-singularity world as uploads and are pretty bored and always up for terrible entertainment (our god is FAI but has a scary sense of humor ..). So some crazy person creates a very peculiar black cube in our shared reality. You walk into it, a fork of you is created and you duke it out via russian roulette. The winner walks out the other side.

Before entering, should you accurately anticipate dying with 50% probability?

I argued that you should anticipate surviving with 100% probability, since the single you that walked out of the box would turn out to be correct in his prediction. Surprisingly, someone disagreed.

So I extended the scenario by another black box with two doors, but this one is just a tunnel. In this case, everybody can agree that you should anticipate a 100% probability of surviving it unscathed. But if we delete our memory of what just happened when exiting the black boxes, and the boxes themselves, then the resulting universes would be indistinguishable!

One easy way to demonstrate this is to chain ten boxes and put a thousand dollars at the end. The person that anticipates dying with 50% probability (so over all the boxes, 1/1024 chance of surviving) would stay well outside. The person that anticipates surviving just walks through and comes away $1000 richer. "But at least my anticipation was correct", in this scenario, reminds me somewhat of the cries of "but at least my reasoning was correct" on the part of two-boxers.

What I'm wondering is: is there a general rule underlying this about the follies of allowing causally-indistinguishable-in-retrospect effects to differently affect our anticipation? Can somebody formalize this?
Meetup : First Dorset UK Meetup
by danielmamay — 2012-04-05T22:28:00.382Z

Discussion article for the meetup : First Dorset UK Meetup

WHEN:
14 April 2012 03:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
8A Cornhill, Town Centre, Dorchester DT1 1BA

If you're in or around the area, come along and bring friends.

Let me know if you're interested and can't make the date, as we can probably reschedule to a time all of us can make.

Hope to see you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : First Dorset UK Meetup
File Under "Keep Your Identity Small"
by Matt_Simpson — 2012-04-05T18:36:05.380Z

We know politics makes us stupid, but now there's evidence (pdf) that politics makes us less likely to consider things from another's point of view. From the abstract:

Replicating prior research, we found that participants who were outside during winter overestimated the extent to which other people were bothered by cold (Study 1), and participants who ate salty snacks without water thought other people were overly bothered by thirst (Study 2). However, in both studies, this effect evaporated when participants believed that the other people under consideration held opposing political views from their own. Participants who judged these dissimilar others were unaffected by their own strong visceral-drive states, a finding that highlights the power of dissimilarity in social judgment. Dissimilarity may thus represent a boundary condition for embodied cognition and inhibit an empathic understanding of shared out-group pain.

As Will Wilkinson notes:

Got that? We overestimate the extent to which others feel what we're feeling, unless they're on another team.

Now this isn't necessarily a negative effect - you might argue that it's bias correcting. But implicitly viewing them as so different that it's not even worth thinking about things from their perspective is scary in itself.
Meetup : Austin, TX
by Vaniver — 2012-04-05T15:21:32.715Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Austin, TX

WHEN:
07 April 2012 01:30:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
2222B Guadalupe St Austin, Texas 78712

Welcome back! The Austin meetup continues, and I hope to try out some of the proposed Be Specific exercises. We sit on the second floor to the left, near (or often on) the stage. Hope to see you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : Austin, TX
Logic of Paradox: a (too) simple paraconsistent logic
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2012-04-05T10:10:27.343Z

The logic of paradox (LP) is the simplest, and one of the oldest, of the paraconsistent logics. Instead of assigning truths to statements A, it instead uses relationships binary relationships v(A,1) and v(A,0). "A is true" is encoded by v(A,1); "A is false" is similarly encoded by v(A,0). Each statement A is required to be true or false, but it can be both (in which case we could say that "A is undetermined"). "A is strictly true" means v(A,1) but not v(A,0); strict falsity is the converse.

The usual symbols →, ∨, ∧ and ¬, retain their standard meanings, and a compound statement takes all possible values it could take, seeing all the possible values its components could take. So, for instance if A is (strictly) true, then ¬A is (strictly) false. If A is undetermined, then ¬A is undetermined. If A is undetermined and B is strictly false, then A ∨ B is undetermined and A ∧ B is strictly false - though if B were strictly true, then A ∨ B would be strictly true and A ∧ B undetermined.

These properties make LP quite easy to work with, and one can determine the truths of many statements using truth tables. In fact, it can be seen that every tautology of classical logic is a tautology of LP. This derives from the fact that tautologies are true regardless of the truth values of their components; hence they remain true in LP whether we take undertermined statements to be true or false. Consequently, all of the following are true in LP:

A → (B → A)

(A ∧ ¬A) → B

((A ∨ B) ∧ ¬A) → B

A ∧ (A → B) → B

But wait a second. Isn't the second line a statement of the principle of explosion - the fact that we can derive anything from a contradiction? Indeed it is. LP can state the principle of explosion as a (true) theorem - but it can't actually use it as a rule of deduction. Similarly, the third line is a statement of the disjunctive syllogism - a true theorem, but not a valid rule of deduction. That is easy to see: let A be undetermined, and B strictly false. Then A ∨ B is true, and so is ¬A - and yet we cannot deduce that B is true from this information.

So LP can accept contradictions without blowing up, has all the tautologies of classical logic, but lacks some of the rules of inference. "Some" of the rules of in...
Skoll World Forum: Catastrophic Risk and Threats to the Global Commons
by XiXiDu — 2012-04-05T09:44:06.382Z

More: Skoll Global Threats Fund | To Safeguard Humanity from Global Threats

The panel surfaced a number of issues that contribute to our inability to date to make serious strides on global challenges, including income inequality, failure of governance and lack of leadership. It also explored some deeper issues around pysche and society – people’s inability to convert information to wisdom, the loss of sense of self, the challenges of hyperconnectivity, and questions about economic models and motivations that have long underpinned concepts of growth and wellbeing. The session was filmed, and we’ll make public that link once the file is available. In the meantime, here are some of the more memorable quotes (which may not be verbatim, but this is how I wrote them down):

“When people say something is impossible, that just means it’s hard.”

“Inequality is becoming an existential threat.”

“We’re at a crossroads. We can make progress against these big issues or we can kill ourselves.”

“We need inclusive globalization, to give everyone a stake in the future.”

‘Fatalism is our most deadly adversary.”

“What we’re lacking is not IQ, but wisdom.”

“We need to tap into the timeless to solve the urgent.”

What we mean by global threats

Global threats have the potential to kill or debilitate very large numbers of people or cause significant economic or social dislocation or paralysis throughout the world. Global threats cannot be solved by any one country; they require some sort of a collective response. Global threats are often non-linear, and are likely to become exponentially more difficult to manage if we don’t begin making serious strides in the right direction in the next 5-10 years.

More on existential risks: wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Existential_risk

Organisations

A list of organisations and charities concerned with existential risk research.

Singularity Institute

The Future of Humanity Institute

The Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology

Global Catastrophic Risk Institute

Saving Humanity from Homo Sapiens

Skoll Global Threats Fund (To Safeguard Humanity from Global Threats)

Foresight Institute

Defusing the Nuclear Threat

Leverage Research

The Lifeboat Foundation

...
Finding big donors
by NancyLebovitz — 2012-04-05T07:31:45.149Z

How large foundations look for donors

I don't know how much of this SIAI is already doing, but I thought it would be of interest to anyone who's building up an organization which needs donors. It's also interesting (at least to me-- I've spent my life in a very small business) for how much serious thought can be brought to a project.

One surprising fact: "A large not for profit did a study a few years ago which told them that most of the people who left a million dollars or more to them in their will, unasked-for, gave an average of $17 a year to them during their life."
[SEQ RERUN] The Quantum Arena
by MinibearRex — 2012-04-05T03:00:29.170Z

Today's post, The Quantum Arena was originally published on 15 April 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Instead of a system state being associated with a single point in a classical configuration space, the instantaneous real state of a quantum system is a complex amplitude distribution over a quantum configuration space. What creates the illusion of "individual particles", like an electron caught in a trap, is a plaid distribution - one that happens to factor into the product of two parts. It is the whole distribution that evolves when a quantum system evolves. Individual configurations don't have physics; amplitude distributions have physics. Quantum entanglement is the general case; quantum independence is the special case.

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 Classical Configuration Spaces, 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.
Bayesianism and use of Evidence in Social Deduction Games
by DeevGrape — 2012-04-05T00:55:08.530Z

You look around the table at four friends -- people who share your hatred for the evil empire, or so you thought. At this table, where the resistance meet to plan their missions, fully two of five the operatives are spies, infiltrating the rebels to sabotage their missions. You've seen your loyalty card, so you know you're resistance... but how do you figure out which of your so-called allies are the spies?

The Resistance, like Werewolf, Mafia, Battlestar Galactica, and other social deduction games, tasks the majority of players with rooting out the spies in their midst -- while the spies win by staying hidden. Among my friends, accusations of spyhood tend to be absolute: "Did you see how long he hesitated? He must be a spy!" Whether the suspicion is based on social cues or in-game actions, players rapidly become very sure of those beliefs they discuss at the table. They seem to divide their observations into two neat boxes, based on whether the data can decisively show someone's identity. If evidence seems convincing, it becomes concrete proof, immune to discussion; and if it doesn't, then it's disregarded.

This treatment of evidence can lead to overconfidence: once when I was well-framed by the spies, my fellow resistance member refused to even imagine how I could be innocent. And why should he listen to me? He had evidence that I was a spy. On the other hand, it can just as easily lead to under-confidence: when new players see that there is no conclusive proof one way or the other, they often disregard the hints and suggestive evidence (in someone's tone of voice, or their eagerness to go on a mission), and throw their hands up at the supposed randomness of the game.

Using Bayesianism as an alternative to this dichotomy allows me to treat evidence with the appropriate scrutiny, rather than using narrative ideas to guide my play. A two-person mission succeeds; the next mission adds a player to that team, and it fails. According to story logic, the first two players are trustworthy, so the third must have sabotaged the new mission. For more experienced players, the first mission is treated as having no informational value: spies may lay low, so any of the three players could be the saboteur, and it's a 1/3 shot. According to Bayesianism, P(player 3 is a spy) is influenced by all available evidence, given proper weighting. How li...
Meetup : Vancouver Board Games Meetup
by  — 2012-04-04T23:14:20.362Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Vancouver Board Games Meetup

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

WHERE:
Drexoll Games, 2880 W 4th Ave, Vancouver, BC

Hello everybody. We are having our first monthly friendly social games meetup. The idea is to have a bigger meetup where newcomers can feel comfortable because it's not held in my sketchy dungeon of doom.

So we are going to go to Drexoll Games and play board games. Adding players to games halfway thru is no fun, so try to show up at or before 13:00. If you can't make it on time, come anyways. We estimate that the meetup will go until about 16:00, so don't worry about missing dinner.

As usual, see the mailing list for more details: vancouver-rationalists

If you haven't been coming for whatever reason, this is the time to start, or at least check us out. See you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : Vancouver Board Games Meetup
Cryonics without freezers: resurrection possibilities in a Big World
by Scott Alexander — 2012-04-04T22:48:05.585Z

And fear not lest Existence closing your
Account, should lose, or know the type no more;
The Eternal Saki from the Bowl has pour'd
Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour.
When You and I behind the Veil are past,
Oh, but the long long while the World shall last,
Which of our Coming and Departure heeds
As much as Ocean of a pebble-cast.

-- Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat

A CONSEQUENTIALIST VIEW OF IDENTITY
The typical argument for cryonics says that if we can preserve brain data, one day we may be able to recreate a functioning brain and bring the dead back to life.
The typical argument against cryonics says that even if we could do that, the recreation wouldn't be "you". It would be someone who thinks and acts exactly like you.
The typical response to the typical argument against cryonics says that identity isn't in specific atoms, so it's probably in algorithms, and the recreation would have the same mental algorithms as you and so be you. The gap in consciousness of however many centuries is no more significant than the gap in consciousness between going to bed at night and waking up in the morning, or the gap between going into a coma and coming out of one.
We can call this a "consequentialist" view of identity, because it's a lot like the consequentialist views of morality. Whether a person is "me" isn't a function of how we got to that person, but only of where that person is right now: that is, how similar that person's thoughts and actions are to my own. It doesn't matter if we got to him by having me go to sleep and wake up as him, or got to him by having aliens disassemble my brain and then simulate it on a cellular automaton. If he thinks like me, he's me.
A corollary of the consequentialist view of identity says that if someone wants to create fifty perfect copies of me, all fifty will "be me" in whatever sense that means something.
GRADATIONS OF IDENTITY
An argument against cryonics I have never heard, but which must exist somewhere, says that even the best human technology is imperfect, and likely a few atoms here and there - or even a few entire neurons - will end up out of place. Therefore, the recreation will not be you, but someone very very similar to you.
And the response to this argument is "Who cares?" If by "me" you mean Yvain as of 10:20 PM 4th April 2012, then even Yvain as of 10:30 is going to have some serious differences at th...
Meetup : Salt Lake City Meetup (Location Changed!)
by hamnox — 2012-04-04T21:03:10.977Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Salt Lake City Meetup (Location Changed!)

WHEN:
07 April 2012 12:00:42PM (-0600)

WHERE:
Holladay Library: 2150 Murray Holladay Rd, Holladay, UT 84117

Presentation on social influence, based off Influencer, and discussion.

Discussion article for the meetup : Salt Lake City Meetup (Location Changed!)
You only live once: a reframing of working towards posthumanity
by John_Maxwell — 2012-04-04T19:44:59.063Z

Let's say you recently purchased a new computer game. Reviewers like the game, but they say that the game itself pales in comparison to a massive, difficult-to-access secret area near the end. Bizarrely, this secret area contains over 90% of the content in the game. It's also rumored to be a lot better designed.

If you're like most gamers, you'll probably play through the game normally a few times, and go for the secret area on your second or third try. But what if the game was real life, and you died as soon as your first try ended?

Edit for clarifying points:

Posthumanity is definitely an area within the game. It's not prohibited by the laws of physics. The relevant questions are how difficult it would be to achieve and whether it would be enough fun to be worth the effort.

The reframing is meant to deal with the issue that humans tend to be bad at thinking about unprecedented events (black swans).

But the reframing is not perfect. For example, it ignores the fact that posthumanity may be achieved without your help. It also ignores the fact that by achieving posthumanity, you are helping more people than just yourself.

If no effective plan for achieving posthumanity exists, you'll have to think of one one in order to access the proverbial secret area. This isn't about any specific plan.
[LINK] Making Big Decisions about Money
by Benquo — 2012-04-04T16:02:59.870Z

Seth Godin has an article about how to translate monetary values into something intuitively commensurable with the thing you're buying:

Making Big Decisions about Money

The conclusion:

If you go to the free school, you can drive there in a brand new Mini convertible, and every summer you can spend $25,000 on a top-of-the-line internship/experience, and you can create a jazz series and pay your favorite musicians to come to campus to play for you and your fifty coolest friends, and you can have Herbie Hancock give you piano lessons and you can still have enough money left over to live without debt for a year after you graduate while you look for the perfect gig...

Suddenly, you're not comparing "this is my dream," with a number that means very little. You're comparing one version of your dream with another version.
Rationality and Decorating
by NancyLebovitz — 2012-04-04T12:24:08.595Z

From Wired:

Thomas’s sumptuous designs led people to spend as they’d never spent before, and, in the years since the Bellagio was completed, research has supported the psychological assumptions that went into its creation. Karen Finlay is a professor at the University of Guelph, in Ontario, who focusses on the behavior of gamblers. Her latest experiments have immersed subjects in the interiors of various Vegas hotels by means of a Panoscope, which projects three hundred and sixty degrees of high-deﬁnition video footage. There are slot machines and card tables in every direction. Using the Panoscope method, Finlay compared the mental eﬀects of classic casinos, with low ceilings and a mazelike layout, to those of casinos designed by Thomas. Subjects surrounded by footage of Thomas’s interiors exhibited far higher levels of what Finlay terms mental “restoration”—that is, they were much more likely to say that the space felt like a “refuge” and reduced their stress level. They also manifested a much stronger desire to gamble. In every Panoscopic matchup, gamblers in Thomas’s rooms were more likely to spend money than those in Friedmanesque designs. Although subjects weren’t forced to focus on the slot machines, the pleasant atmosphere encouraged them to give the machines a try.

One point is just that a huge number of casino owners (who are presumably highly incentivized to make money) jumped to a conclusion about what would work best, and they were wrong.

A possible angle is that people don't trust pleasure enough-- the assumption was that people couldn't be led to gamble, they had to be forced.

On the other hand, if the story in the article is correct, getting a better solution wasn't a process of thought and testing, it was a result of the right weird person trusting himself, and convincing a casino owner to trust him.

Does the article imply that it's extremely important to make your work space as pleasant as possible in all respects? Would that make it too hard to get out for socializing?

Mild aggravation: The test was set in simulated casinos, not real ones.

Gender nitpick: The article describes the female-friendly casino as having every surface covered with something expensive. It seems to me that the male-friendly decorating scheme (British club-- it didn't work because men weren't showing up at all) j...