trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Why You Should Be Public About Your Good Deeds
by Gleb_Tsipursky — 2015-12-30T04:06:50.664Z

(This will be mainly of interest to Effective Altruists, and is cross-posted on the Giving What We Can blog, the Intentional Insights blog, and the EA Forum)

When I first started donating, I did so anonymously. My default is to be humble and avoid showing off. I didn’t want others around me to think that I have a stuffed head and hold too high an opinion of myself. I also didn’t want them to judge my giving decisions, as some may have judged them negatively. I also had cached patterns of associating sharing about my good deeds publicly with feelings that I get from commercials, of self-promotion and sleaziness.

I wish I had known back then that I could have done much more good by publicizing my donations and other goods deeds, such as signing the Giving What We Can Pledge to donate 10% of my income to effective charities, or being public about my donations to CFAR on this LW forum post.

Why did I change my mind about being public? Let me share a bit of my background to give you the appropriate context.

As long as I can remember, I have been interested in analyzing how and why individuals and groups evaluated their environment and made their decisions to reach their goals – rational thinking. This topic became the focus of my research as a professor at Ohio State in the history of science, studying the intersection of psychology, cognitive neuroscience, behavioral economics, and other fields.

While most of my colleagues focused on research, I grew more passionate about sharing my knowledge with others, focusing my efforts on high-quality, innovative teaching. I perceived my work as cognitive altruism, sharing my knowledge about rational thinking, and students expressed much appreciation for my focus on helping them make better decisions in their lives. Separately, I engaged in anonymous donations to causes such as poverty alleviation.

Yet over time, I realized that by teaching only in the classroom, I would have a very limited impact, since my students were only a small minority of the population I could potentially reach. I began to consult academic literature on how to spread my knowledge broadly. Through reading classics in the field of social influence such as Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion and Made To Stick, I learned a great many strategies to multiply the impact of my cognitive altruism work, as w...
What EAO has been doing, what it is planning to do, and why donating to EAO is a good idea
by TodesBrot — 2015-12-29T01:46:45.517Z

EA Outreach is the organization behind the EA Global conference, the EffectiveAltruism.org website, and various other projects related to the development of the Effective Altruism community. This post is going to explain a bit more what we are working on, and why we think that donating to us might currently be the best use of marginal donations in the EA Movement. This is both part of our annual fundraiser, but also a general attempt at trying to communicate better what we have been working on, and what we are going to be working on in the coming months.

What is EAO's core vision?

Ironically, our focus is not what our name might naively suggest. Though EAO had been founded with the goal of rapidly growing the EA community, we have since realized that pure growth is not the best thing to focus on. Instead our focus is much better summarized with the statement:

Understand the EA community, and help guide it towards the worlds in which it can have the most impact

This means concretely, that EAO is trying to do two things:

Do research on the composition, structure and dynamics of the EA community

Build projects that steer the EA community towards a better future (using the previously acquired knowledge)

Keep in mind that these are our highest level goals, and that in our every day work we are working on projects that are much more concrete than this.

So what is EAO actually doing every day?

On any given day, there is a selection of concrete projects that we are working on. Most of our projects generate direct value, while also helping us gather information about the structure and function of EA at large. Since I don't want to throw a giant wall of text at you, here is a nice diagram that tries to summarize the different projects we were working on in 2015. Feel free to ask more detailed question in the comments or read our full plan for 2016.

The important thing to keep in mind in all of this is that EAO has existed for less than a year, and has consisted of less than 3 people for most of that year. The above is quite impressive for a group of that small size, and I think we basically managed to keep up that level of productivity per individual as we expanded our team (to a total team size of 6 people).

That said, though I think the above projects are somewhat indicative of what EAO is doing on any given day, I think they are also slight...
has anyone actually gotten smarter, in the past few years, by studying rationality?
by sboo — 2015-12-28T18:34:33.354Z

I feel I've learned a lot about problem solving from less wrong (and HPMOR in particular). be concrete, hold off on proposing solutions, et cetera. The effect*, unfortunately, doesn't seem to be as much as I had hoped.

Small increases in intelligence are extremely general and even recursive, so it feels worth the effort. But, I found alternatives much more effective (though still modest) then studying/discussing/applying the sequences. like meditation or smart drugs.

I'm interested in other lesswrongers experiences in cognitive enhancement.

* by "smarter" I mean "better at problem solving", where examples of "problems" are writing a program, finding the right thing to say to resolve interpersonal conflict, memorizing some random fact quickly and then recalling it quickly/vividly. let me know if you want further clarification.
"The Difference Between Medicine and Poison is Dosage" Shirts and Bags
by Gleb_Tsipursky — 2015-12-27T22:11:59.937Z

Happy to share that, after multiple rounds of feedback, here is the set of rationality-themed T-shirts and bags with the slogan that got most support from the community, "The Difference Between Medicine and Poison is Dosage."

These t-shirts and bags are an effort to update based on the feedback received on the original set of rationality shirts and optimizing suggestions. This includes use of graphic images in the words, use of more professional designers, etc. We went back to the drawing board, and tried to design a new shirt that used a slogan that was quite popular. We ran the design by the Less Wrong FB group a couple of times (1, 2) and this is the final product.

As you can see, there are two styles available, one with "Dosage" empty and with the image of the dropper, and one with "Dosage" filled in and without the dropper. Various colors, sizes, and materials are available for each shirt/bag.

The first style is available for purchase on CafePress here.
The second style is available for purchase on CafePress here.
Look forward to hearing about your experience and thoughts about these t-shirts and bags, and the impact they make in carrying good rationality-themed memes into the world! We will be making more shirts and running them by the community as we did with these. All revenue will go into promoting rational thinking strategies to a broad audience.
Levels of global catastrophes: from mild to extinction
by turchin — 2015-12-27T17:26:13.459Z

Levels of global catastrophes: from mild to extinction

It is important to make a bridge between existential risks and other possible risks. If we say that existential risks are infinitely more important than other risks, we put them out of scope of policymakers (as they can’t work with infinities). We could reach them if we show x-risks as extreme cases of smaller risks. It could be done for most risks (with AI and accelerator's catastrophes are notable exceptions).

Smaller catastrophes play complex role in estimating probability of x-risks. A chain of smaller catastrophes may result in extinction, but one small catastrophe could postpone bigger risks (but it is not good solution). The following table presents different levels of global catastrophes depending of their size. Numbers are mostly arbitrary and are more like placeholders for future updates.

http://immortality-roadmap.com/degradlev.pdf
Open Thread, Dec. 28 - Jan. 3, 2016
by  — 2015-12-27T14:21:00.389Z

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.
Sports
by Adam Zerner — 2015-12-26T19:54:39.204Z

This is intended to be a pretty broad discussion of sports. I have some thoughts, but feel free to start your own threads.

tl;dr - My impression is that people here aren't very interested in sports. My impression1 is that most people have something to gain by both competitive and recreational sports. With competitive sports you have to be careful not to overdo it. With recreational sports, the circumstances have to be right for it to be enjoyable. I also think that sports get a bad rep for being simple and dull. In actuality, there's a lot of complexity.

1 - Why does this have to sound bad?! I have two statements I want to make. And for each of them, I want to qualify it by saying that it as an impression that I have. What is a better way to say this?

Me

I love sports. Particularly basketball. I was extremely extremely dedicated to it back in middle/high school. Actually, it was pretty much all I cared about (not an exaggeration). This may or not be crazy... but I wanted to be the best player who's ever lived. That was what I genuinely aspired and was working towards (~7th-11th grade).

My thinking: the pros practice, what, 5-6 hours a day? I don't care about anything other than basketball. I'm willing to practice 14 hours a day! I just need time to eat and sleep, but other than that, I value basketball above all else (friends, school...). Plus, I will work so much smarter than they do! The norm is to mindlessly do push ups and eat McDonalds. I will read the scientific literature and figure out what the most effective ways to improve are. I'm short and not too athletic, so I knew I was starting at a disadvantage, but I saw a mismatch between what the norm is and what my rate of improvement could be. I thought I could do it.

In some ways I succeeded, but ultimately I didn't come close to my goal of greatness. In short, I spent too much time on high level actions such as researching training methods and not enough time on object level work; and with school and homework, I simply didn't have enough time to put in the 14 hour days I envisioned. I was a solid high school player, but was no where near good enough to play college ball.

Take Aways

Intense work. I've gone through some pretty intense physical exercise. Ex. running suicides until you collapse. And then getting up to do more until you collapse again. It takes a lot of willpower t...
How to be skeptical
by  — 2015-12-26T06:33:10.251Z

Community

The Center For Applied Rationality (CFAR) checklist is a heuristic for assessing the admissibility of one's own testimony.

What of the challenge of evaluating the testimony of others?

Slapping the label of a bias on a situation?

Arguing at the object level by provision of evidence to the contrary?

This risks Gish Gallop. For those who prefer to pick their battles, I commisioned this post of my time, a structural intervention into the information ecosystem.

We need not event the wheel, for legal theorists have researched this issue for years, while practitioners and courts have identified heuristics useful to lay people interested in this field.

Precedent

The Daubert standard provides a rule of evidence regarding the admissibility of expert witnesses' testimony during United States federal legal proceedings. Pursuant to this standard, a party may raise a Daubert motion, which is a special case of motion in limine raised before or during trial to exclude the presentation of unqualified evidence to the jury. The Daubert trilogy refers to the three United States Supreme Court cases that articulated the Daubert standard:

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daubert_standard

Further reading on the case is available here on Google Scholar

Practice

How can this be applied in practice?

What is the first principle of skepticism. It's effectively synonymous: 'question'

What question? This isn't the 5 W's of primary school, after all.

I have summarized critical questions to a reading here to get the ball rolling:

Issues to consider when contesting and evaluating expert opinion evidence

A. Relevance (on the voir dire)

I accept that you are highly qualified and have extensive experience, but how do we know that your level of performance regarding . . . [the task at hand — eg, voice comparison] is actually better than that of a lay person (or the jury)?

What independent evidence... [such as published studies of your technique and its accuracy] can you direct us to that would allow us to answer this question?

What independent evidence confirms that your technique works?

Do you participate in a blind proficiency testing program?

Given that you undertake blind proficiency exercises, are these exercises also given to lay perso

...
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2015-12-25T14:55:07.588Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on December 18th. The following week's summary is here.

New meetups (or meetups with a hiatus of more than a year) are happening in:

Baltimore Area Meetup: 03 January 2016 02:00PM

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

San Antonio Meetup: Seeking Strategic Updates: 20 December 2015 02:00PM

The remaining meetups take place in cities with regular scheduling, but involve a change in time or location, special meeting content, or simply a helpful reminder about the meetup:

[Moscow] FallacyMania game in Kocherga club: 23 December 2015 07:40PM
Moscow social meetup: Chaos is back!: 27 December 2015 02:00PM
NH Meetup: 05 January 2016 07:00PM
NYC Solstice: 19 December 2015 05:30PM
Seattle Solstice: 19 December 2015 05:00PM
Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games: 20 December 2015 03:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buffalo, Canberra, Columbus, Denver, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Moscow, Mountain View, New Hampshire, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, Seattle, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers and a Slack channel for daily discussion and online meetups on Sunday night US time.

If you'd like to talk with other LW-ers face to face, and there is no meetup in your area, consider starting your own meetup; it's easy (more resources here). Check one out, stretch your rationality skills, build community, and have fun!

In addition to the handy sidebar of upcoming meetups, a meetup overview is posted on the front page every Friday. These are an attempt to collect information on all the meetups happening in upcoming weeks. The best way to get your meetup featured is still to use the Add New Meetup feature, but you'll also have the benefit of having your meetup mentioned in a weekly overview. These overview posts are moved to the discussion section when the new post goes up.

Please note that for your meetup to appear in the weekly meetups feature, you need to post your meetup before the Friday before your meetup!

If you check Less Wrong irregularly, consider subscribing to one or more city-specific mailing list in order to be notified when an irregular meetup is happening: Atlanta, Cambridge UK, Chicago, Cincinnati, Clevela...
Quasi-optimal predictors
by Vanessa Kosoy — 2015-12-25T14:17:05.000Z

In this post I define the concept of quasi-optimal predictors which is a weaker variant on the theme of optimal predictors. I explain the properties of quasi-optimal predictors that I currently understand (which are completely parallel to the properties of optimal predictors) and give an example where there is a quasi-optimal predictor but there is no optimal predictor.

All proofs are given in the appendix and are mostly analogous to proofs of corresponding theorems for optimal predictors.

Definition 1

Given (D,μ) a distributional decision problem, a quasi-optimal predictor for (D,μ) is a family of polynomial size Boolean circuits {Pk:suppμkcirc−−→[0,1]}k∈N s.t. for any family of polynomial size Boolean circuits {Qk:suppμkcirc−−→[0,1]}k∈N we have

Eμk[(Pk(x)−χD(x))2]≤Eμk[(Qk(x)−χD(x))2]+δ(k)

where limk→∞δ(k)=0.

Theorem 1

Consider (D,μ) a distributional decision problem and P a quasi-optimal predictor for (D,μ). Suppose {pk∈[0,1]}k∈N, {qk∈[0,1]}k∈N are s.t.

∃ϵ>0∀k:μk{x∈{0,1}∗∣pk≤Pk(x)≤qk}≥ϵ

Then:

limk→∞Eμk[Pk(x)−χD(x)∣pk≤Pk(x)≤qk]=0

Theorem 2

Consider μ a word ensemble and D1, D2 disjoint languages. Suppose P1 is a quasi-optimal predictor for (D1,μ) and P2 is a quasi-optimal predictor for (D2,μ). Then, P:=η(P1+P2) is a quasi-optimal predictor for (D1∪D2,μ).

Theorem 3

Consider μ a word ensemble and D1, D2 disjoint languages. Suppose P1 is a quasi-optimal predictor for (D1,μ) and P is a quasi-optimal predictor for (D1∪D2,μ). Then, P2:=η(P−P1) is a quasi-optimal predictor for (D2,μ).

Theorem 4

Consider (D1,μ1), (D2,μ2) distributional decision problems with respective quasi-optimal predictors P1 and P2. Define {Pk:suppμkcirc−−→[0,1]}k∈N as the family of circuits computing Pk((x1,x2)):=Pk1(x1)Pk2(x2). Then, P is a quasi-optimal predictor for (D1×D2,μ1×μ2).

Theorem 5

Consider C,D⊆{0,1}∗ and μ a word ensemble. Assume PD is a quasi-optimal predictor for (D,μ) and PC∣D is a quasi-optimal predictor for (C,μ∣D). Then PDPC∣D is a quasi-optimal predictor for (C∩D,μ).

Theorem 6

Consider C,D⊆{0,1}∗ and μ a word ensemble. Assume ∃ϵ>0∀k:μk(D)≥ϵ. Assume PD is a quasi-optimal predictor for (D,μ) and PC∩D is a quasi-optimal predictor for (C∩D,μ). Define PC∣D as the circuit family computing

PkC∣D(x):=⎧⎪⎨⎪⎩1if PkD(x)=0η(PkC∩D(x)PkD(x))ro

...
On Cutting Wages
by Zvi — 2015-12-24T21:11:55.000Z

This post is a response to Bryan Caplan’s request that I share my experiences cutting wages. It was not fun.

While I was CEO of MetaMed, we were continuously short of revenue. We started the company thinking we would be able to sustain ourselves through sales, but those sales did not materialize. In order to survive long enough to give the sales force a chance, we needed to cut pay.

To do this, the business of the company had to be put on hold while we worked out what would be done. I had to take my core employees aside, one by one, and get them on board with the idea. They were all willing to pitch in, provided the others were as well; if any of them had balked, it is likely all of them would have refused. The conversations went about as well as one could hope, but even then, the amount of stress and tension involved was huge.

From that point on, the cut was a constant drain on the company’s morale, but an even bigger one on its time. The question of when full salaries would be restored came up constantly, as people had committed to expenses on the basis of those salaries. It forced finances to be an open book; every week I was pleading poverty to a different person. Every person who didn’t get a pay cut had to be continuously explained and justified, as discussions of who we would lose, who needed the money, and which contacts were not negotiable took the time and energy we needed elsewhere.

Everyone was constantly comparing their pay to everyone else’s pay, their cuts to other people’s cuts. When we agreed to salaries and an equity division, everyone put their personal incentives aside to play for the same team, but once pay was fluid, that became impossible. Even if they weren’t consciously doing it, almost everyone was signaling how valuable they were to the company, what they were worth in the market, and/or how much they needed the money or how much pay would be fair.

If we couldn’t pay full salaries, that meant we were in deep trouble (which we were, of course) so that was yet another reason to jump ship. Lots of time was spent holding the team together and preventing or postponing key people quitting.

A quality employee is worth far more than you pay them. A bad employee is often actively harmful. Figuring out who is who is expensive. Once you have both invested in finding a good match, there’s a lot of surp...
Meetup : Rationality Meetup Vienna
by AnnaLeptikon — 2015-12-24T06:16:10.029Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Rationality Meetup Vienna

WHEN:
16 January 2016 03:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Kaisermühlenstraße 24, 1220 Vienna

Location (often depicted wrong, come to U2 Stadlau)
http://web.student.tuwien.ac.at/~e0326238/rationality_meetup/directions.html

Topic:
Not defined yet

Facebookevent: https://www.facebook.com/events/1665606190390590/
(Join Rationality Vienna to see it)

Discussion article for the meetup : Rationality Meetup Vienna
Why CFAR? The view from 2015
by PeteMichaud — 2015-12-23T22:46:55.113Z

Follow-up to: 2013 and 2014.

In this post, we:

Revisit CFAR’s mission, and why that mission matters today;

Review our progress to date;

Offer a look at our financial overview;

Share our ambitions for 2016; and

Ask your help, via donations and other means.

We are in the middle of our matching fundraiser; so if you’ve been considering donating to CFAR this year, now is an unusually good time.

CFAR’s mission, and why that mission matters today

CFAR’s mission is to help people develop the abilities that let them meaningfully assist with the world’s most important problems, by improving their ability to arrive at accurate beliefs, act effectively in the real world, and sustainably care about that world.

We know this is an audacious thing to try—especially the “ability to form accurate beliefs” part—but it seems to us that such attempts work sometimes anyhow. Eliezer’s Sequences seem to offer principled improvements to some aspects of some peoples' world-modeling skill (via synthesizing much recent cognitive science, probability theory, etc.); this seems to us to be a useful point from which to build.

The fact remains that we do not yet have the talent necessary to win—to see the world’s problems clearly, plot strategies that have a shot at working, update when those strategies don’t work, and plan effectively around unknowns. To avoid any great filters that may be lurking, solve global and even astronomical challenges, and create a flourishing world for all.

Arguably, people of the caliber we’re shooting for don’t exist yet, but even if they do, it seems clear that we don’t have enough of them to have enough of a guarantee of actually succeeding.

So, audacious or not, this is a task that needs to be done, and CFAR is our attempt to do it. If we can widen the bottleneck on thinking better and doing more, we’re increasing the odds of a better future regardless of what the important problems turn out to be.

Our progress to date

By the end of 2014, CFAR had created workshops that participants liked a lot and which evidence suggests had concrete benefits for them. However, our mission remains to impact the world. The question became whether we could adapt our workshops into something that had the potential for large impact.

Our central goal for 2015 was ...