trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : Rationality Reading Group (updated)
by SeekingEternity — 2015-06-25T01:48:50.367Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Rationality Reading Group (updated)

WHEN:
29 June 2015 06:30:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
Paul G. Allen Center (185 Stevens Way, Seattle, WA) Room 503

Reading group for Yudkowsky's "Rationality: AI to Zombies", which is basically an organized and updated version of the Sequences from LW (see http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences).

The group meets to discuss the topics in the book, how to apply and benefit from them, and related topics in areas like cognitive biases, applied rationality, and effective altruism. You can get a copy of the book here: https://intelligence.org/rationality-ai-zombies/

The reading list for this week is six topics from the "How to actually change your mind" section. These are the same as from last week's meetup, as that didn't really happen. They are (actually 51-56, LW's auto-formatting is screwing it up):

The Fallacy of Gray

Absolute Authority

How to Convince Me That 2 + 2 = 3

Infinite Certainty

0 And 1 Are Not Probabilities

Your Rationality Is My Business

We previously covered the "Map and territory" sequence a few months ago, but please don't feel a need to have read everything up to this point to participate in the group.

Event is also on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/855101044575658/

We're meeting on the 5th floor. If you show up and the door into the room is close, just knock. If the doors to the building are locked, try the other ones and don't believe the little red lights; try anyway. If the doors are, in fact, locked, we'll try to have somebody to let people in.

There's usually snacks at the meetup, though feel free to bring
something. We usually get dinner afterward, around 9PM or so.

Discussion article for the meetup : Rationality Reading Group (updated)
The Brain as a Universal Learning Machine
by jacob_cannell — 2015-06-24T21:45:33.189Z

This article presents an emerging architectural hypothesis of the brain as a biological implementation of a Universal Learning Machine. I present a rough but complete architectural view of how the brain works under the universal learning hypothesis. I also contrast this new viewpoint - which comes from computational neuroscience and machine learning - with the older evolved modularity hypothesis popular in evolutionary psychology and the heuristics and biases literature. These two conceptions of the brain lead to very different predictions for the likely route to AGI, the value of neuroscience, the expected differences between AGI and humans, and thus any consequent safety issues and dependent strategies.

(The image above is from a recent mysterious post to r/machinelearning, probably from a Google project that generates art based on a visualization tool used to inspect the patterns learned by convolutional neural networks. I am especially fond of the wierd figures riding the cart in the lower left. )

Intro: Two viewpoints on the Mind

Universal Learning Machines

Historical Interlude

Dynamic Rewiring

Brain Architecture (the whole brain in one picture and a few pages of text)

The Basal Ganglia

Implications for AGI

Conclusion

Intro: Two Viewpoints on the Mind

Few discoveries are more irritating than those that expose the pedigree of ideas.

-- Lord Acton (probably)

Less Wrong is a site devoted to refining the art of human rationality, where rationality is based on an idealized conceptualization of how minds should or could work. Less Wrong and its founding sequences draws heavily on the heuristics and biases literature in cognitive psychology and related work in evolutionary psychology. More specifically the sequences build upon a specific cluster in the space of cognitive theories, which can be identified in particular with the highly influential "evolved modularity" perspective of Cosmides and Tooby.

From Wikipedia:

Evolutionary psychologists propose that the mind is made up of genetically influenced and domain-specific[3] mental algorithms or computational modules, designed to solve specific evolutionary problems of the past.[4]

From "Evolutionary Psychology and the Emotions":[5]

An evolutionary perspective leads one to view the mind as a crowded zoo of evolved, domain-specific

...
Cryonics: peace of mind vs. immortality
by oge — 2015-06-24T07:10:29.494Z

I wrote a blog post arguing that people sign up for cryo more for peace of mind than for immortality. This suggests that cryo organizations should market towards the former desire than the latter (you can think of it as marketing to near mode rather than far mode, in Hansonian terms).

Perhaps we've been selling cryonics wrong. I'm signed up and feel like the reason I should have for signing up is that cryonics buys me a small, but non-zero chance at living forever. However, for years this should didn't actually result in me signing up. Recently, though, after being made aware of this dissonance between my words and actions, I finally signed up. I'm now very glad that I did. But it's not because I now have a shot at everlasting life.

http://specterdefied.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-cryo-membership-buys-peace-of-mind.html

For those signed up already, does peace-of-mind resonate as a benefit of your membership?

If you are not a cryonics member, what would make you decide that it is a good idea?
Meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Keep your identity small
by rocurley — 2015-06-24T01:59:04.656Z

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Keep your identity small

WHEN:
29 June 2015 06:15:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
1061 Market St #4, San Francisco, CA 94103

We'll be discussing Paul Ghram's essay Keep Your Identity Small.

Reading these beforehand is optional but encouraged!

As usual, call 301-458-0764 to be let in, and feel free to show up late.

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Keep your identity small
​My recent thoughts on consciousness
by AlexLundborg — 2015-06-24T00:37:58.695Z

I have lately come to seriously consider the view that the everyday notion of consciousness doesn’t refer to anything that exists out there in the world but is rather a confused (but useful) projection made by purely physical minds onto their depiction of themselves in the world. The main influences on my thinking are Dan Dennett, (I assume most of you are familiar with him) and to a lesser extent Yudkowsky (1) and Tomasik (2). To use Dennett’s line of thought: we say that honey is sweet, that metal is solid or that a falling tree makes a sound, but the character tag of sweetness and sounds is not in the world but in the brains internal model of it. Sweetness in not an inherent property of the glucose molecule, instead, we are wired by evolution to perceive it as sweet to reward us for calorie intake in our ancestral environment, and there is neither any need for non-physical sweetness-juice in the brain – no, it's coded (3). We can talk about sweetness and sound as if being out there in the world but in reality it is a useful fiction of sorts that we are "projecting" out into the world. The default model of our surroundings and ourselves we use in our daily lives (the manifest image, or ’umwelt’) is puzzling to reconcile with the scientific perspective of gluons and quarks. We can use this insight to look critically on how we perceive a very familiar part of the world: ourselves. It might be that we are projecting useful fictions onto our model of ourselves as well. Our normal perception of consciousness is perhaps like the sweetness of honey, something we think exist in the world, when it is in fact a judgement about the world made (unconsciously) by the mind.

What we are pointing at with the judgement “I am conscious” is perhaps the competence that we have to access states about the world, form expectations about those states and judge their value to us, coded in by evolution. That is, under this view, equivalent with saying that suger is made of glucose molecules, not sweetness-magic. In everyday language we can talk about suger as sweet and consciousness as “something-to-be-like-ness“ or “having qualia”, which is useful and probably necessary for us to function, but that is a somewhat misleading projection made by our ​​world-accessing and assessing consciousness that ...
Is Greed Stupid?
by Adam Zerner — 2015-06-23T20:38:34.027Z

I just finished reading a fantastic Wait But Why post: How Tesla Will Change The World. One of the things that was noted is that the people in the Auto and Oil industries are trying to delay the introduction of Electric Vehicles (EVs) so they could make more money.

The post also explains how important it is that we become less reliant on oil.

Because we're going to run out relatively soon.

Because it's causing global warming.

So, from the perspective of these moneybag guys, here is how I see the cost-benefit of delaying the introduction of EVs:

Make some more money, which gives them and their families a marginally more comfortable life.

Not get a sense of purpose out of your career.

Probably feel some sort of guilt about what you do.

Avoid the short-term discomfort of changing jobs/careers.

This probably makes my opinions pretty clear:

Because of diminishing marginal utility, I doubt that the extra money is making them much happier. I'm sure they're pretty well off to begin with. It could be the case that they're so used to their lifestyle that they really do need the extra money to be happy, but I doubt it.

Autonomy, mastery and purpose are three of the most important things to get out of your career. There seems to be a huge opportunity cost to not working somewhere that provides you with a sense of purpose.

To continue that thought, I'm sure they feel some sort of guilt for what they're doing. Or maybe not. But if they are, that seems like a relatively large cost.

I understand that there's probably a decent amount of social pressure on them to conform. I'm sure that they surround themselves with people who are pro-oil and anti-electric. I'm sure that their companies put pressure on them to perform. I'm sure that they have families and all of that and starting something new might be difficult. But these don't seem to be large enough costs to make their choices worthwhile. A big reason why I get this impression is because they are so short term.

I've been talking specifically about those in the auto and oil industries, but the same logic seems to apply to other greedy people (ex. in finance). I get the impression that greed is stupid. That it doesn't make you happy, and that it isn't instrumentally rational. But I'd like to get the opinions of others.
A map: Typology of human extinction risks
by turchin — 2015-06-23T17:23:53.319Z

In 2008 I was working on a Russian language book “Structure of the Global Catastrophe”, and I brought it to one our friends for review. He was geologist Aranovich, an old friend of my late mother's husband.

We started to discuss Stevenson's probe — a hypothetical vehicle which could reach the earth's core by melting its way through the mantle, taking scientific instruments with it. It would take the form of a large drop of molten iron – at least 60 000 tons – theoretically feasible, but practically impossible.

Milan Cirkovic wrote an article arguing against this proposal, in which he fairly concluded that such a probe would leave a molten channel of debris behind it, and high pressure inside the earth's core could push this material upwards. A catastrophic degassing of the earth's core could ensue that would act like giant volcanic eruption, completely changing atmospheric composition and killing all life on Earth.

Our friend told me that in his institute they had created an upgraded version of such a probe, which would be simpler, cheaper and which could drill down deeply at a speed of 1000 km per month. This probe would be a special nuclear reactor, which uses its energy to melt through the mantle. (Something similar was suggested in the movie “China syndrome” about a possible accident at a nuclear power station – so I don’t think that publishing this information would endanger humanity.) The details of the reactor-probe were kept secret, but there was no money available for practical realisation of the project. I suggested that it would be wise not to create such a probe. If it were created it could become the cheapest and most effective doomsday weapon, useful for worldwide blackmail in the reasoning style of Herman Khan.

But in this story the most surprising thing for me was not a new way to kill mankind, but the ease with which I discovered its details. If your nearest friends from a circle not connected with x-risks research know of a new way of destroying humanity (while not fully recognising it as such), how many more such ways are known to scientists from other areas of expertise!

I like to create full exhaustive lists, and I could not stop myself from creating a list of human extinction risks. Soon I reached around 100 items, although not all of th...
The great quote of rationality a la Socrates (or Plato, or Aristotle)
by Bound_up — 2015-06-23T15:55:17.076Z

Help a brother out?

There's a great quote by one of The Big 3 Greek Philosophers (EDIT: Reference to Cicero removed) which I can paraphrase by memory as:

"I consider it rather better for myself to be proven wrong than to prove someone else wrong, just as I'm better off being cured of a disease than curing someone of one."

I can't find the quote, or from which of the Three it is.

Anybody know? Or know where to look? I've already tried varying google search techniques and perused the Wikiquotes article on each of them.
Meetup : LessWrong Australia online hangout
by Calien — 2015-06-23T11:33:35.854Z

Discussion article for the meetup : LessWrong Australia online hangout

WHEN:
28 June 2015 07:30:00PM (+1000)

WHERE:
Canberra

See you at the online hangout. From wherever you are.

Link to be posted about 10 minutes before hand because they expire otherwise.

We use google hangouts so make sure you can get into one of those before the meetup or else there is a whole bunch of fluffing around installing things.

bring any fickle puzzles or questions to the floor. or neat group-projects.

Usual representation includes; Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, NZ, This one guy from South America...

https://m.facebook.com/events/1569251440008577

time 19:30 - 22:00. UTC+10 (Sunday evening)

Discussion article for the meetup : LessWrong Australia online hangout
Meetup : Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games
by RobinZ — 2015-06-23T04:14:40.970Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games

WHEN:
28 June 2015 03:00:00AM (-0400)

WHERE:
National Portrait Gallery

We'll be congregating at the courtyard of the National Portrait Gallery from 3:00 - 3:30 until closing.

We'll be meeting to play games and/or just hang out and talk. Please remember to bring games!

If you want to recruit people for a specific game, such as a longer game, post about it to the list. But remember to get an early start as they'll be kicking us out a little before 7:00pm.

Upcoming meetups:

Jul 5: American History

Jul 12: Fermi Estimates

Jul 19: Fun & Games

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games
Asymptotic Logical Uncertainty: Solomonoff Induction Inspired Approach
by Scott Garrabrant — 2015-06-22T18:39:20.000Z

This is post is part of the Asymptotic Logical Uncertainty series. This is about a failed attempt to satisfy the Benford test. I will not prove things about this approach. The only reason I am including this approach is because the fact that it does not work is surprising and insightful.

Let Geometric(12) be the function which outputs n∈N with probability 2−m.

Fix a prefix-free encoding of probabilistic Turing machines, and let ℓ(M) denote the number of bits used to encode M. Let RTM(k) be the function which outputs the Turing machine M with probability proportional to 2−kμ(M).

Fix E, a deterministic Turing Machine (for example E=L). Fix a time complexity function T(n) and another time complexity function R(n)∈o(T(n)logT(n)). Consider the following algorithm.

SIA(E,T,R)
1: n=0
2: N=1
3: M=RTM(3)
4: g=Geometric(1/2)
5: loop
6: if 4^n*R(N)*log(R(N))*N<T(N) then
7: run E for one more time step
8: if E outputs another bit then
9: n=n+1
10: repeat
11: M=RTM(3)
12: g=Geometric(1/2)
13: until M^{gR}(i)=E(i) for all i<=n
14: output M^{gR}(N)
15: N=N+1

This code is inspired by Solomonoff Induction. We cannot directly apply Solomonoff induction, because the lack of a time bound. Solomonoff induction would pick out the program E, but that will not allow us to predict E quickly. We have to restrict the run times of the programs to ensure that they can compute their Nth bit in time T(N).

When trying to predict E(N), we compute the first n values of E for some n much smaller than N. We then sample probabilistic Turing machines until we find one that quickly gets all of these first n bits correct. We use that Turing machine to compute our guess at E(N).

The purpose of the geometric random variable g is to make the time we allow the sampled Turing machines to run more flexible. The sampled Turing machines can take any amount of time in O(T(i)) but get an extra penalty for the size of the constant. The fact that we use RTM(3) instead of RTM(1) is to make the proof that it satisfies the weak Benford test work, RTM(1) would probably work too. Line 6 is only to make sure it runs in time R(N).

SIA(L,T,R) passes the weak Benford test, but probably fails the Benford test.

First, let me explain why we thought this approach would work. If you sample a Turing machine M that is ver

...
Two Zendo-inspired games
by StephenBarnes — 2015-06-22T15:47:08.416Z

LW has often discussed the inductive logic game Zendo, as a possible way of training rationality. But I couldn't find any computer implementations of Zendo online.

So I built two (fairly similar) games inspired by Zendo; they generate rules and play as sensei. The code is on GitHub, along with some more explanation. To run the games you'll need to install Python 3, and Scikit-Learn for the second game; see the readme.
All bugfixes and improvements are welcome. For instance, more rule classes or features would improve the game and be pretty easy to code. Also, if anyone has a website and wants to host this playable online (with CGI, say), that would be awesome.
Seeking geeks interested in bioinformatics
by bokov — 2015-06-22T13:44:24.045Z

I work at a small but feisty research team whose focus is biomedical informatics, i.e. mining biomedical data. Especially anonymized hospital records pooled over multiple healthcare networks. My personal interest is ultimately life-extension, and my colleagues are warming up to the idea as well. But the short-term goal that will be useful many different research areas is building infrastructure to massively accelerate hypothesis testing on and modelling of retrospective human data.

We have a job posting here (permanent, non-faculty, full-time, benefits):

https://www.uthscsajobs.com/postings/3113

If you can program, want to work in an academic research setting, and can relocate to San Antonio, TX, I invite you to apply. Thanks.

Note: The first step of the recruitment process will be a coding challenge, which will include an arithmetical or string-manipulation problem to solve in real-time using a language and developer tools of your choice.

edit: If you tried applying and were unable to access the posting, it's because the link has changed, our HR has an automated process that periodically expires the links for some reason. I have now updated the job post link.
Meetup : Tel Aviv Meetup: Assorted LW mini-talks
by JoshuaFox — 2015-06-22T12:04:16.447Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Tel Aviv Meetup: Assorted LW mini-talks

WHEN:
23 June 2015 07:00:00PM (+0300)

WHERE:
Yigal Alon Street 98, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel

We're going to have a meetup on Tuesday, June 23 at Google Tel Aviv offices, Electra Tower, 98 Yigal Alon st., Tel Aviv.
We will hear and discuss several mini-talks on assorted LessWrong-related topics. Each talk will last 10 to 20 minutes, plus some time for questions and discussion. An approximate list (some details may change):
Joshua will talk on the difference between Kurzwellians vs MIRI-ites in their attitudes to technology and likely futures.
Liran and Vadim will tell us about their visit to the LessWrong mega-meetup in Europe recently.
Vadim will talk about Maximizing Ultra-Long Impact: are there things we can do today that can matter on absurdly long time scales.
Anatoly will report on reading some papers related to John Taurek's 1977 challenge to consequentialists: "Should numbers count?".
We'll meet at the 29th floor of the building (not the one with Google Campus) at 19:00. If you arrive and can't find your way around, call Anatoly who's hosting us at 054-245-1060. Email at avorobey@gmail.com also works.

Discussion article for the meetup : Tel Aviv Meetup: Assorted LW mini-talks
Meetup : Tel Aviv Meetup: Short Talks on Assorted LW Topics
by Anatoly_Vorobey — 2015-06-22T11:46:54.976Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Tel Aviv Meetup: Short Talks on Assorted LW Topics

WHEN:
23 June 2015 07:00:00PM (+0300)

WHERE:
Google Tel Aviv

We're going to have a meetup on Tuesday, June 22 Google Tel Aviv offices, Electra Tower, 98 Yigal Alon st., Tel Aviv.

We will hear and discuss several mini-talks on assorted LessWrong-related topics. Each talk will last 10 to 20 minutes, plus some time for questions and discussion. An approximate list (some details may change):

Joshua will talk on the difference between Kurzwellians vs MIRI-ites in their attitudes to technology and likely futures.

Liran and Vadim will tell us about their visit to the LessWrong mega-meetup in Europe recently.

Vadim will talk about Maximizing Ultra-Long Impact: are there things we can do today that can matter on absurdly long time scales.

Anatoly will report on reading some papers related to John Taurek's 1977 challenge to consequentialists: "Should numbers count?".

We'll meet at the 29th floor of the building at 19:00. If you arrive and can't find your way around, call Anatoly who's hosting us at 054-245-1060. Email at avorobey@gmail.com also works.

See you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : Tel Aviv Meetup: Short Talks on Assorted LW Topics
Group rationality diary for June 22th - July 11th 2015
by  — 2015-06-22T11:29:44.376Z

This is the public group rationality diary for June 22th - July 11th, 2015. It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:

Established a useful new habit

Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief

Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations

Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior

Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something

Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life

Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you

Tried doing any of the above and failed

Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.

Archive of previous rationality diaries

Note to future posters: no one is in charge of posting these threads. If it's time for a new thread, and you want a new thread, just create it. It should run for about two weeks, finish on a Saturday, and have the 'group_rationality_diary' tag.