trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Why Academic Papers Are A Terrible Discussion Forum
by alyssavance — 2012-06-20T18:15:57.377Z

Over the past few months, the Singularity Institute has published many papers on topics related to Friendly AI. It's wonderful that these ideas are getting written up, and it's virtually always better to do something suboptimal than to do nothing. However, I will make the case below that academic papers are a terrible way to discuss Friendly AI, and other ideas in that region of thought space. We need something better.

I won't try to argue that papers aren't worth publishing. There are many reasons to publish papers - prestige in certain communities and promises to grant agencies, for instance - and I haven't looked at them all in detail. However, I think there is a conclusive case that as a discussion forum - a way for ideas to be read by other people, evaluated, spread, criticized, and built on - academic papers fail. Why?

1. The time lag is huge; it's measured in months, or even years.

Ideas structured like the Less Wrong Sequences, with large inferential distances between beginning and ending, have huge webs of interdependencies: to read A you have to read B, which means you need to read C, which requires D and E, and on and on and on. Ideas build on each other. Einstein built on Maxwell, who built on Faraday, who built on Newton, who built on Kepler, who built on Galileo and Copernicus.

For this to happen, ideas need to get out there - whether orally or in writing - so others can build on them. The publication cycle for ideas is like the release cycle for software. It determines how quickly you can get feedback, fix mistakes, and then use whatever you've already built to help make the next thing. Most academic papers take months to write up, and then once written up, take more months to publish. Compare that to Less Wrong articles or blog posts, where you can write an essay, get comments within a few hours, and then write up a reply or follow-up the next day.

Of course, some of that extra time lag is that big formal documents are sometimes needed for discussion, and big formal documents take a while. But academic papers aren't just limited by writing and reviewing time - they still fundamentally operate on the schedule of the seventeenth-century Transactions of the Royal Society. When Holden published his critique of the Singularity Institute on Less Wrong, a big formal document, Eliezer could reply with another big formal document in about three week...
Less Wrong used to like Bitcoin before it was cool. Time for a revisit?
by betterthanwell — 2012-06-20T13:40:24.642Z

Less Wrong used to like Bitcoin before it was cool. Monthly threads popped up around the same time a pricing bubble brought mainstream attention last year. When the bubble popped, and price continued to deflate, discussion on this site stopped entirely. Was there a change of sign in the social status of the topic, is the topic fully explored, or has there simply happened nothing of interest over the last year?

If you are not familiar with Bitcoin, here is one intro I happen to like.

Kaj Sotala lists a number of previous threads on the topic:

There seems to be quite a bit of a Bitcoin interest around here, with several articles about it already: [1 2 3 4 5 6 7]

Less Wrong seems like a good place to discuss recent developments, if one does not want to suffer the inanity of the officially unofficial forum. If you are not longer interested in Bitcoin, perhaps send your remaining balance to the Singularity Institute?
Personality analysis in terms of parameters
by Blackened — 2012-06-20T11:51:40.861Z

(copied and edited from my post in the Facebook LW group)

I suspect that it would be obvious to most rationalists that the way people judge other people is flawed. Typically for a heuristic approach, it's correct to a degree, but with many faults. And it's wasting a big amount of information and a potential for a more planned approach where you can ask questions that assess certain qualities and exchange information about people's personalities by giving their "parameters".

I needn't think of it in this way, it was natural for me to take this approach as soon as I learnt my first measurable parameter and its implications (it was IQ). Then I explored more of them and researched them some more.

So far, I know about IQ, rationality (Keith Stanovich's), Big Five personality traits, executive functions, intuition for social situations and a few more things. However, I can't seem to find any literature that helps describe them (how do I detect them in people and what are their implications?) and their implications (how *exactly* is someone with a higher IQ different from someone with a lower IQ?). Also, I can't find literature on other traits.

Any literature on any of that would be greatly appreciated. I wonder if there is a book that deals with the whole issue. Also, I need literature about IQ and Big Five, but anything else would still be useful.

Is that sort of thing popular on LessWrong?
[Link] Why don't people like markets?
by GLaDOS — 2012-06-20T10:15:18.817Z

An interesting piece with speculation on possible reasons for why people seem to be biased against markets. To summarize:

Market processes are not visible. For instance, when a government taxes its citizens and offers a subsidy to some producers, what is seen is the money taken and the money received. What is unseen is the amount of production that would occur in the absence of such transfers.

Markets are intrinsically probabilistic and therefore marked with uncertainty, like other living organisms, we are loss-averse and try to minimise uncertainty

Humans may be motivated to place their trust in processes that are (or at least seem to be) driven by agents rather than impersonal factors.

The last point reminded me of speculation from the recent LessWrong article Conspiracy Theories as Agency Fictions:

Do all theories of legitimacy also perhaps rest on the same cognitive failings that conspiracy theories do? The difference between a shadowy cabal we need to get rid of and an institution worthy of respect may be just some bad luck.

Before thinking about these points and debating them I strongly recommend you read the full article.
Meetup : Small Berkeley meetup at Zendo
by Nisan — 2012-06-20T08:49:46.065Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Small Berkeley meetup at Zendo

WHEN:
20 June 2012 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
berkeley, ca

There will be another Berkeley meetup at my home, Zendo. The theme will be "calibration games". We've done calibration games before but this time I have software that the Center for Applied Rationality is using to train Bayesian commandos in its camps. Doors open at 7pm and games start at 7:30pm.

For the location of Zendo, see the mailing list. This counts as a Small meetup.

Discussion article for the meetup : Small Berkeley meetup at Zendo
Meetup : Hyderabad Meetup
by Nagendran — 2012-06-20T06:26:20.288Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Hyderabad Meetup

WHEN:
08 July 2012 03:00:00PM (+0530)

WHERE:
Hyderabad, India

Cafe Coffee Day, NEXT TO Airtel Showroom, Madhapur Main Road, Madhapur, Hyderabad (Landmark: OPPOSITE Krishe Sapphire)

Ph: +91 9566057018

Discussion article for the meetup : Hyderabad Meetup
Hyderabad Meetup : July 8, 2012
by Nagendran — 2012-06-20T06:20:58.059Z

There has been no Lesswrong meetup in India in 2012. I suggest having a meetup in the afternoon on Sunday, July 8 at Cafe Coffee Day, NEXT TO Airtel Showroom, Madhapur Main Road, Madhapur, Hyd (Landmark: OPPOSITE Krishe Sapphire)

Me and couple of my friends commit ourselves to be there from 3pm to 6pm.
Comments showing interest will be greatly appreciated.

Ph: +91 9566067018
[SEQ RERUN] The Moral Void
by MinibearRex — 2012-06-20T04:25:18.776Z

Today's post, The Moral Void was originally published on 30 June 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

If there were some great stone tablet upon which Morality was written, and you read it, and it was something horrible, that would be a rather unpleasant scenario. What would you want that tablet to say, if you could choose it? What would be the best case scenario?

Why don't you just do that, and ignore the tablet completely?

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 What Would You Do Without Morality?, 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.
Contest for Women Who Want to Meet Our Awesome Berkeley Crew!
by ShannonFriedman — 2012-06-20T03:40:41.458Z

Are you a woman who wants a guy who's logical, reasonable, empirical, a careful thinker, reflective, doesn't believe in astrology like those crazy guys from your old high school, in a word, a rationalist?

There is a thriving rationalist community in Berkeley, but unfortunately it is terribly gender imbalanced. Being a counselor in the extended community, I’ve talked to a lot of people who are very isolated of both genders around the world, who are dying to meet other people who think like they do. My goal is to help everyone, but for now, I’m starting with cases that are fun and easy.

Thus, since there is such a high demand for rationalist women here, and there happens to be a bedroom free in my home for July and August, my housemates and I are offering a free stay in this room in downtown Berkeley for a week each to the two women who send me the most compelling questionnaires.

The sorts of things that I am likely to find compelling are:

Caring about progress for humanity in the areas of living longer, healthier, and happier

Caring about FAI

Being agenty

Having interests in the sort of geeky things that a lot of the guys like (math/sciences)

While you’re here, you can meet our many eligible bachelors (mostly in their twenties), plus we’ll introduce you around to the rest of the team - Anna, Eliezer, etc.
Click here to go to the form!

p.s. If this post ends up getting popular, I encourage agentiness in the comment section regarding the subject matter. Do you wish that you could meet someone as cool as you are in the ways that you are awesome, and do you have an offer or request that you might be able to make enticing?
Looking for an intuitive explanation of expected outcome
by Blackened — 2012-06-20T01:33:45.560Z

I'll first explain how I see expected outcome, because I'm not sure my definition is the same as the widely accepted definition.

If I have 50% chance to win 10$, I take it as there are two alternative universes, the only difference being that in one of them, I win 10$ and in the other one, I win nothing. Then I treat the 50% chance as 100% chance to be in both of them, divided by two. If winning 10$ means I'll save myself from 1 hour of work, when divided by two it would be 30 minutes of work. In virtually all cases, when it's about winning small sums of money, you can simply multiply the percentage by the money (in this case, we'll get 5$). Exceptions would be the cases analogous to the one where I'm dying of an illness, I can't afford treatment, but I have all the money I need except for the last 10$ and there isn't any other way to obtain them. So if there's 30% chance to save 10 people's lives, that's the same as saving 3 lives.

If you have no idea what you're talking about, then at least you can see a proof of my problem: I find it hard to explain this idea to people, and impossible for some.

I'm not even sure if the idea is correct. I once posted it on a math forum, asking for evidence, but I didn't find any. So, can someone confirm whether is true, also giving any evidence?

And my main question is, how can I explain this in a way that people can understand it as easily as possible.

(it is possible that it's not clear what I meant - I'll check this thread later for that, and if it turns out to be the case, I'll edit it and add more examples and try to clarify and simplify)
A few questions about Discussion
by Blackened — 2012-06-19T23:50:46.523Z

Since there aren't any subforums and I couldn't find a thread with information of what is relevant for Discussion, and I saw the threads here are relatively free, I've decided to ask my questions in a thread.

- Can I post questions about this section? (sorry if no)

- Can I post about psychology in general?

- Can I post about anything that might be of the interest of a rationalist? Like for example, a thread asking about how to reduce the risks for most cancers. Note that this is a huge range of possible questions.

Edit: thanks, I think I figured it out. I'm still not sure if I want to respond to all the comments, whether I should comment myself or edit the original post.
Advice- Places to live
by Michelle_Z — 2012-06-19T23:44:48.513Z

Hi!

I have been wondering (the last few days) on where would be a good place to live and work. This is not a "I-am-moving-out-in-two-months" type of idea, but a long term, far goal. Basically, when I graduate college (or even a couple years after that- I need to save up money, first!) I may want to move away from my hometown to someplace that is a bit more... *forward* thinking. I've been doing searches on google, but so far have not found what I need.

What am I looking for:

At the moment, I am considering being a biologist, specifically a molecular biologist, though that might change. For this post, I am going to assume I keep this goal. Are there any place in the US that have a market or need for biologists? Is there a science-centric, or place where science-minded people live? I know that is vague, but I'm not sure how else to put it. I just recognize that if I were to have a discussion about science or cogsci or anything similar in my current community, I would get strange looks, and lose status.

If such a place exists, a bonus would be an active LW community.

I'm not sure if I will or won't like moving, so moving multiple times is something I am not really considering at the moment, and since I do eventually (far far down the road) plan on having children, and those children would require a really *really* good education, I would want someplace that has a good education system. It's a bit of a pet peeve of mine, since my educational experience was so awful, so I am dedicated to making sure that does *not* happen to my (far far in the future) family. (Yes, I do know that a lot of educational issues stem from a whole combination of things, and I know a good school system is not a fix-all, but it would help.)

I've never moved before, so I wouldn't even know where to begin. My family doesn't even go on vacations. I've never been on a plane, nor do I know any protocol for moving between states, or moving in general. The most moving I've ever experienced was the move to college, and that is only 20 minutes from home. Thinking about it makes it seem stressful, so the more information I have, the better I can plan, and the less stressful this will eventually be for me.

Thanks for the help!
Ekman Training - Reviews and/or Testing
by Benquo — 2012-06-19T21:25:43.773Z

I'm considering taking Ekman's microexpressions training because it's cheap in both time and money. Has anyone here taken it? Did it work for you? How do you know?

The course does seem to come with tests included (both before and after), but if anyone has any ideas for some cheap tests I can do before and after to see if it really works, I'd be happy to do those as well, and report the results. Cheap tests should cost me less than three hours total and less than $100 total.

Alternately, if enough people here have done it we could pool our "before" and "after" scores to independently verify whether there's an effect.
[LINK] Steven Pinker on "The false allure of group selection"
by hairyfigment — 2012-06-19T20:14:15.842Z

This essay at Edge touches on a few possible meanings for the term "group selection." Pinker argues that as a form of memetic theory it has no explanatory power, and that group selection for genes does not fit the evidence. He focuses on humans with some mention of insects that live in hives. So the essay doesn't seem surprising, but it does seem rather Hansonian.
Meetup : West LA Meetup - Book Discussion: "Thinking, Fast and Slow"
by  — 2012-06-19T16:46:56.934Z

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup - Book Discussion: "Thinking, Fast and Slow"

WHEN:
20 June 2012 07:00:00PM (-0700)

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

When: 7:00pm - 9:00pm Wednesday, June 20th.

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.

Discussion Topic: This week we will discuss Daniel Kahneman's book titled Thinking, Fast and Slow. You don't need to have read the book, but if you have a chance, read about some heuristics and biases, or read up on prospect theory.

But don't worry if you don't have time to read any articles, 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.

We will probably also find time for a game, like The Resistance.

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

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup - Book Discussion: "Thinking, Fast and Slow"
Suggest alternate names for the "Singularity Institute"
by lukeprog — 2012-06-19T04:42:04.892Z

Once, a smart potential supporter stumbled upon the Singularity Institute's (old) website and wanted to know if our mission was something to care about. So he sent our concise summary to an AI researcher and asked if we were serious. The AI researcher saw the word 'Singularity' and, apparently without reading our concise summary, sent back a critique of Ray Kurzweil's "accelerating change" technology curves. (Even though SI researchers tend to be Moore's Law agnostics, and our concise summary says nothing about accelerating change.)

Of course, the 'singularity' we're talking about at SI is intelligence explosion, not accelerating change, and intelligence explosion doesn't depend on accelerating change. The term "singularity" used to mean intelligence explosion (or "the arrival of machine superintelligence" or "an event horizon beyond which we can't predict the future because something smarter than humans is running the show"). But with the success of The Singularity is Near in 2005, most people know "the singularity" as "accelerating change."

How often do we miss out on connecting to smart people because they think we're arguing for Kurzweil's curves? One friend in the U.K. told me he never uses the world "singularity" to talk about AI risk because the people he knows thinks the "accelerating change" singularity is "a bit mental."

LWers are likely to have attachments to the word 'singularity,' and the term does often mean intelligence explosion in the technical literature, but neither of these is a strong reason to keep the word 'singularity' in the name of our AI Risk Reduction organization. If the 'singularity' term is keeping us away from many of the people we care most about reaching, maybe we should change it.

Here are some possible alternatives, without trying too hard:

The Center for AI Safety

The I.J. Good Institute

Beneficial Architectures Research

A.I. Impacts Research

We almost certainly won't change our name within the next year, but it doesn't hurt to start gathering names now and do some market testing. You were all very helpful in naming "Rationality Group". (BTW, the winning name, "Center for Applied Rationality," came from LWer beoShaffer.)

And, before I am vilified by people who have as much positive affect toward the name "Singularity Institute" as I do, let me note that this was not originally my id...
[Meetup] NYC Megameetup - Location and Potluck Info
by Raemon — 2012-06-19T04:06:40.905Z

This Saturday, June 23 is the Less Wrong Summer Festival Megameetup. Anyone who feels like coming to New York City is invited to attend. The official meetup description is here.

So far the forecast for Saturday is sunny, so the event will be held outdoors in Central Park. In the event of last minute rain, we'll be heading to an apartment in Brooklyn. I'll post the address if necessary, otherwise assume the meetup is proceeding normally.

We'll be meeting up at 2 PM on the East Side entrance at 97th street and 5th Avenue, and then heading to the nearby North Meadow. If you miss the initial gathering, just look for someone holding a large aluminum pole in the nearby field.

The event is a potluck picnic. It's recommended that you bring some food to share and blankets to lay on.

Hope to see you there.
[SEQ RERUN] What Would You Do Without Morality?
by MinibearRex — 2012-06-19T04:04:59.360Z

Today's post, What Would You Do Without Morality? was originally published on 29 June 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

If your own theory of morality was disproved, and you were persuaded that there was no morality, that everything was permissible and nothing was forbidden, what would you do? Would you still tip cabdrivers?

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was The Opposite Sex, 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.
OB Repost: "Plastination is Near"
by MBlume — 2012-06-18T20:54:11.305Z

These brain research techniques have now reached two key milestones:

They’ve found new ways to “fix” brain samples by filling them with plastic, ways that seem impressively reliable, resilient, and long lasting, and which work on large brain volumes (e.g., here). Such plastinationtechniques seem close to being able to save enough info in entire brains for centuries, without needing continual care. Just dumping a plastic brain in a box in a closet might work fine.

Today, for a few tens of thousands of dollars, less than the price charged for one cryonics customer, it is feasible to have independent lab(s) take random samples from whole mouse or human brains preserved via either cryonics or plastination, and do high (5nm) resolution 3D scans to map out thousands of neighboring cells, their connections, and connection strengths, to test if either of these approaches clearly preserve such key brain info.

Plastination is Near
Availability Heuristic and Getting Stranded: Stay With Your Car Or Seek Help?
by JQuinton — 2012-06-18T20:37:06.920Z

In every single news story that I can remember about someone getting stranded with a broken-down car, the person leaves their car looking for help and they end up dead. Or, if there are multiple people in the car, the one person who goes off looking for help ends up dead and the other people who stayed with the car survive.

My question: If I get stranded in my car somewhere, should I go looking for help? Or should I follow my availability heuristic and stay put? Since I'm still in the process of debiasing myself, should I do the opposite of what this particular mental shortcut suggests, or would that be a sort of bias bias (analogous to the fallacy fallacy)?