trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Reminders without times
by KatjaGrace — 2014-07-27T23:39:17.000Z

Many times in life, a person wants to do a thing at a different time. For this to happen, the person has to remember about this, at the different time. We have very good systems this, as long as the time can be specified in terms of time. That is, if you can say ‘I want to do this in three days’ or ‘remind me at 2pm tomorrow’, then you can look at a calendar every day, or make alarms and electronic alerts and so on. We also have reasonable systems if the other time doesn’t have to be very specific, beyond ‘later’. One can make a to-do list, or just leave the bill in the middle of the floor.

As far as I know, we have no such excellent ways to remember things at a specific point if the point is known by some other feature, such as ‘the next time at which I’m talking to my mother’, ‘next time I visit Chicago’, or ‘when I’m in a conversation and it seems awkward’.

In general, it is hard to do things when some fact obtains. This is partly because you are unlikely to be constantly checking whether that fact obtains, especially if you have many facts to check for. You can’t just go around asking yourself ‘am I having an awkward conversation? Am I driving? Am I standing up? Am I with Michael?…’. You are of course aware of all of these things anyway, in some sense. If someone asked you whether you were just driving, you would be able to respond without checking. However this does not seem to be sufficient awareness for you to reliably do a thing that you intended to do when driving. Somehow you have to both be aware of the driving, and aware of the ‘if driving, then practice singing’ implication, at the same time, and make the connection.

I’ve thought a bit about how to improve various aspects of my life, and realized after a bit that most of them are hindered by this problem, which is why it got my attention. It seems like I could shower faster, remember new names better, and improve my posture more, if only I noticed when I was in the correct situations to behave in the ways that I would like.

One basic problem is that you can describe a situation in many ways, so even if you ask yourself often ‘what am I doing?’, your description may not involve ‘I’m standing up’, so you won’t remember that you should...
“And that’s okay": accepting and owning reality
by Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg)  — 2014-07-27T19:13:43.616Z

The Context

I was having a conversation with Ruby a while back–the gist of it was that I was upset because of a nightmare I’d had the night before, and mad at myself for being upset about something that hadn’t even really happened, and trying to figure out how to stop feeling terrible. He said a thing that turned out to be surprisingly helpful.

Life involves feeling bad, often with good reason, often, not. A lot of the time the best response is to say 'Yes, I'm feeling shitty today, no, I'm not going to able to focus, and that's crap, but that’s today.’

It's different from tolerance or resignation, it's more 'this is reality, this is my starting point and I've got to accept this is what it is'.

Then if you can find a way to make it go away, great, if not, most things pass soon enough, and even if didn't, you could accept that too.”

I’m not good at this. I’m frequently using System 2 to fight System 1: for example, when I’m feeling introverted and really don’t want to be at work having face-to-face conversations with patients and co-workers, I basically tell that part of my brain to suck it up and stop being a baby. I get mad at myself for wanting things that I can’t reasonably ask for, like praise from random other nurses I work with. I get mad at myself for wanting things for what I think are the wrong reasons: for example, wanting to move to San Francisco because I’m friends with lots of people there, and reluctantly accepting that I would need to leave my current job to do that, is one thing, but wanting to leave my job because it’s stressful–not okay! And then I mistrust my brain’s motivations to move to San Francisco at all–heaven forbid I should behave “like a groupie.” I ignore my desires for food that isn’t the same bean salad I’ve been eating for four days, for an extra evenings of sleep, or to cancel on plans with a friend because I just want an afternoon alone at home.

And even though I’m pretty good at overriding all of my desires, the sub-agents that represent those desires don’t go away. They just sit there, metaphorically, fuming at being ignoring and plotting revenge, which they usually achieve by making the desires ten times stronger...and then I go out and buy hot dogs at midnight, or stay in bed...
Decision Theory: Value in Time
by Lu93 — 2014-07-27T10:01:09.837Z

Summary: Is there demand for writing posts about this aspect of decision-making?

And of course, is there offer? Because I didn't see any post about it.

Topics I intended to cover include:

How much is worth 100$ in few years? Why? Why is it useful?

Risk-return relationship.

How is it useful in life outside finance?

And topic I would like, but I am not sure if i should cover:

How can we apply it to death? (in sense, should I live a happy life or struggle to live endlessly?)

I found that missing in decision analysis, and I think it is very important thing to know, since we don't always choose between "I take A" or "I take B", but also between "I take A" or "I take B in two years", or "should i give A to gain B every year next 100 years?"

Why not simply redirect to some other source?

Well, that can be done either way, but I thought clear basics would not harm and would be useful to people who want to invest less time in it.
Meetup : Salt Lake, UT: Lightning Talks
by hamnox — 2014-07-27T02:44:35.598Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Salt Lake, UT: Lightning Talks

WHEN:
09 August 2014 04:45:00PM (-0600)

WHERE:
Steamhead Cafe, 2470 S Main St, Salt Lake City, Utah 84115

The irony of hosting a rationalist meetup by a witch's store amuses me. This actually takes place right around the tail end of a polyamory meetup, if you'd like to attend that as well.

This is an open subject night. Everyone who wants to gets 10 minutes to lead a topic, called a "Lightning talk".

My topic of interest is: What kind of everyday assumptions does each philosophy/religion encourage people to implicitly act on? What meta-heuristics are being used? Is there a significant difference between being a pastafarian and a subgenii?

This sort of thing is easiest to notice when there are comparative clashes, such as the difference in the values of individualism vs. collectivism in America vs. Japan.

Discussion article for the meetup : Salt Lake, UT: Lightning Talks
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, July 2014, chapter 102
by David_Gerard — 2014-07-26T11:26:05.277Z

New chapter!

This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 102.

There is a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)

Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.
Value ethics vs. agency ethics
by  — 2014-07-26T07:34:28.432Z

Preface

I have trouble expressing myself in such a way that my ideas come out even remotely like they sound in my head. So please apply the principle of charity and try to read how you think I thought of it.

Tit for Tat

Tit for Tat is usually presented in a game between two players where each chooses to either cooperate or defect. The real world game however differs in two important ways.

First, it's not a two player game. We make choices not only on our single instance of interaction but also on observed interactions between other players. Thus the Advanced Tit For Tat not only defects if the other player defected against itself but also if it could observe the other player defecting against any other player that employs a similar enough algorithm.

Second, there is a middle ground between cooperating and defecting, you could stay neutral. Thus you can harm your opponent, help him or do neither. The question of the best strategy in this real life prisoners dilemma is probably still unanswered. If I see my opponent defecting against some of my peers and cooperating with others, what do I choose?

Agency

The reason why there even is a game is because we can deliberate on our action and can take abstract thoughts into account that do not directly pertain to the current situation, which I think is the distinguishing factor of higher animals from lower. This ability is called agency. In order to be an agent a subject must be able to perceive the situation, have a set of possible actions, model the outcomes of these actions, value the outcomes, and then act accordingly.

We could act in such a way that infringes on these abilities in others. If we limit their ability to perceive or model the situation we call this fraud, if we limit their set of possible actions or their ability to choose between them, we call it coercion, if we infringe on their ability to value an outcome, we call it advertising.

Ethics

I propose that the purpose of our moral or ethical intuitions (I use the two words interchangeably, if there is a distinction please let me know) is to tell us whether some player defected, cooperated or stayed neutral, and to tell us who we should consider as having a close enough decision algorithm to ourselves to 'punish' third players for defecting against them. And I further propose that infringing on someones agency is what we co...
Meetup : August Rationality Dojo: Governing the Commons
by MelbourneLW — 2014-07-26T06:59:11.261Z

Discussion article for the meetup : August Rationality Dojo: Governing the Commons

WHEN:
03 August 2014 03:30:00PM (+1000)

WHERE:
Ross House Association, 247-251 Flinders Lane, Melbourne

[ATTN: The Dojos now have a new location: the Jenny Florence Room, Level 3, Ross House at 247 Flinders Lane, Melbourne. And a new start time: 3:30pm - although if you get there early we'll be gathering in the foyer.]

The Less Wrong Sunday Rationality Dojos are crafted to be serious self-improvement sessions for those committed to the Art of Rationality and personal growth. Each month a community member will run a session involving a presentation of content, discussion, and exercises.

Continuing the succession of immensely successful dojos, Adam will run a session on governing the commons - Elinor Ostrom's principles for avoiding tragedy of the commons. It's applicable to everything from sharehouse internet to the global climate system. A good thing to have in your mental toolbox.

As always, we will review the personal goals we committed to at the previous Dojo (I will have done X by the next Dojo). Scott Fowler recorded the commitments, if you didn't make it but would like to add your own goal to the records, send him a message (shokwave.sf@gmail.com).

The Dojo is likely to run for 2-3 hours, after which some people will get dinner together.

If you have any trouble finding the venue or getting in, call me on 0419 192 367.

If you would like to present at a future Dojo or suggest a topic, please fill it in on the Rationality Dojo Roster: http://is.gd/dojoroster

Discussion article for the meetup : August Rationality Dojo: Governing the Commons
An even more modest search engine proposal
by HalMorris — 2014-07-26T02:42:35.955Z

How much AI technique could it possibly take for google (or something better) to do a decent job with

speechby:obama attitude:positive "Saul Alinsky".

I.e. "speechby:" and "attitude:" don't exist, but could, I believe be implemented pretty accurately, to see in this case if we can find any instances of Obama praising Saul Alinsky.

An article: "Bill Ayers and Obama Both Quote Alinsky" claims such quotes exist, but their one attempt to demonstrate it is laughable -- something vaguely like a paraphrase of an Alinsky statement, but which has, in fact the reverse sense of what the supposed "original" meant. Yet I think most of the world, and not just conservatives, if they have any idea who Alinsky is, will tend not to question Obama's "debt" to Alinski -- just for the sheer number of times it's been said or implied. For the other shoe dropping, false quotes that help demonize Alinsky, see tinyurl.com/qa6fglk.

The point isn't to defend Obama. It is that I think the world would work better if the ratio of

ability to find verifiable facts pertinent to political discussion

supply of highly opinionated and slanted "news".

could be raised by, say, an order of magnitude.

So many assertions are made that are likely not true, but are incredibly difficult for the average person to disprove. In this Internet era, the personal cost to write some almost free associative screed about a political point is very low, while the personal cost of finding quite a lot of pertinent facts is awfully high.

This is not to say the "average person" will look for facts to confirm or contradict what they read, but much of what they read is written by bloggers some of whom are sincere and would become users of such resources, and I do believe the emotional rewards of finding a nugget of truth versus the current pain of often fruitless search would have an effect on people's thinking habits -- maybe small at first but growing over time.

The particular proposal merely illustrates one of many sorts of resource that are missing or hard to find. Ideas for other such resources would be welcome.
Ethics in a Feedback Loop: A Parable
by PeerGynt — 2014-07-25T16:25:40.799Z

Green Martians and Blue Martians have one thing in common: They both derive a tremendous amount of utility from tickling humans behind the ears, using their soft, feathery tentacles. In fact, the utility that they derive from this is so intense that most scientists believe at some time in the recent evolutionary past, there must have been a large selection pressure directed at ensuring that Martians were motivated to tickle humans.

There are numerous differences between Green and Blue Martians. One of those differences is that whereas the feathery tentacles of Green Martians contain stinging hairs similar to nettles, the analogous anatomic part of the Blue Martian contains a safe drug with an euphoric effect. Therefore, humans who are tickled by green martians experience a moderate stinging pain, whereas those who are tickled by blue martians experience mild to moderate pleasure.

Human ethicists have long struggled to come up with a coherent ethical theory that determines whether tickling humans is morally acceptable. Some have suggested that tickling humans behind the ear is ethically permissible if and only if you are a blue martian. However, many other thinkers are worried that this line of thinking results in an unjust world, where the ethics of an act is determined by characteristics of the Martian that they cannot be held responsible for.

However, human ethicists are not very familiar with Martian physiology, and the situation is actually even more complicated than they suspect. In fact, all Martians are born Green. They can shed their green shell and become blue Martians only after they have perfected the art of tickling humans with their feathery tentacles. All Martians aspire to one day become blue, but the amount of practicing it takes to reach perfection is highly variable - some martians reach perfection at their first attempt, whereas others keep trying their whole life without making any discernible progress. Therefore, if the ethical code says that green martians are prohibited from tickling humans, ethical Martians will be unable to reach their full potential in life, and will be stuck as Green Martians forever. Under this ethical code, only unethical Martians will be able to metamorphose.

Making the situation even more complicated, is the fact that a group of recently metamorphosed Blue Martians are vocall...
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2014-07-25T16:00:16.641Z

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

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

[Atlanta] MIRIxAtlanta: 19 July 2014: 19 July 2014 06:00PM
Frankfurt: Goal Factoring: 20 July 2014 02:00PM

Houston, TX: 19 July 2014 12:16AM

Upper Canada LW Megameetup: Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, Waterloo, London: 18 July 2014 07:00PM

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:

Brussels - August (topic TBD): 09 August 2014 01:00PM

Canberra: Intro to Anthropic Reasoning: 25 July 2014 06:00PM

Sydney Meetup - July: 23 July 2014 07:00PM

Washington DC: Short Talks: 20 July 2014 03:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buffalo, Cambridge UK, Canberra, Columbus, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Mountain View, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Sydney, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, Waterloo, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers.

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, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Marin CA, Ottawa, Pittsburgh, Portland, Southern California (Los Angeles/Orange County area), St. Louis, Tel Aviv, Vancouver.

Whether or not there's...
Meetup : Perth, Australia
by FrankAdamek — 2014-07-25T15:48:37.545Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Perth, Australia

WHEN:
27 July 2014 01:30:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
Shop 4, 329 Murray Street, Perth, Western Australia

I'm posting this for Aaron (user ab9) who doesn't yet have sufficient karma. After Aaron comments on this post, please upvote him if you feel comfortable with doing so.
Note that the time is actually GMT + 800, not GMT - 700.

If you're near Perth, Western Australia, come to our inaugural meetup!
From 1:30 PM to 3:30 PM, I'll be at the cafe Tiger Tiger. It's in the
Perth CBD, near Perth Station.

To make it easy to find me, I'll have a copy of "Harry Potter and the
Methods of Rationality" near me. You can see the cover art here:
http://zerinity.deviantart.com/art/Methods-of-Rationality-259116881 .

This will be a very casual meeting in which people can learn each
other's names and interests. I plan to ask people questions like these:

(1) How familiar are you with Less Wrong?
(2) What do you hope this group will do?
(3) Are there any topics you're particularly interested in?

This event is posted on Meetup:
http://www.meetup.com/Perth-Less-Wrong/events/195807142/ , where you can
-- if you like -- RSVP.

Hope to see you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : Perth, Australia
Claim: Scenario planning is preferable to quantitative forecasting for understanding and coping with AI progress
by VipulNaik — 2014-07-25T03:43:34.501Z

As part of my work for MIRI on forecasting, I'm considering the implications of what I've read up for the case of thinking about AI. My purpose isn't to actually come to concrete conclusions about AI progress, but more to provide insight into what approaches are more promising and what approaches are less promising for thinking about AI progress.

I've written a post on general-purpose forecasting and another post on scenario analysis. In a recent post, I considered scenario analyses for technological progress. I've also looked at many domains of forecasting and at forecasting rare events. With the knowledge I've accumulated, I've shifted in the direction of viewing scenario analysis as a more promising tool than timeline-driven quantitative forecasting for understanding AI and its implications.

I'll first summarize what I mean by scenario analysis and quantitative forecasting in the AI context. People who have some prior knowledge of the terms can probably skim through the summary quickly. Those who find the summary insufficiently informative, or want to delve deeper, are urged to read my more detailed posts linked above and the references therein.

Quantitative forecasting and scenario analysis in the AI context

The two approaches I am comparing are:

Quantitative forecasting: Here, specific predictions or forecasts are made, recorded, and later tested against what actually transpired. The forecasts are made in a form where it's easy to score whether they happened. Probabilistic forecasts are also included. These are scored using one of the standard methods to score probabilistic forecasts (such as logarithmic scoring or quadratic scoring).

Scenario analysis: A number of scenarios of how the future might unfold are generated in considerable detail. Predetermined elements, common to the scenario, are combined with critical uncertainties, that vary between the scenarios. Early indicators that help determine which scenario will transpire are identified. In many cases, the goal is to choose strategies that are robust to all scenarios. For more, read my post on scenario analysis.

Quantitative forecasts are easier to score for accuracy, and in particular offer greater scope for falsification. This has perhaps attracted rationalists more to quantitative forecasting, as a way of distinguishing themselves from what appears to be the more wishy-washy realm of unfalsifiab...