trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Heading Toward: No-Nonsense Metaethics
by lukeprog — 2011-04-24T00:42:00.360Z

Part of the sequence: No-Nonsense Metaethics

A few months ago, I predicted that we could solve metaethics in 15 years. To most people, that was outrageously optimistic. But I've updated since then. I think much of metaethics can be solved now (depending on where you draw the boundary around the term 'metaethics'.) My upcoming sequence 'No-Nonsense Metaethics' will solve the part that can be solved, and make headway on the parts of metaethics that aren't yet solved. Solving the easier problems of metaethics will give us a clear and stable platform from which to solve the hard questions of morality.

Metaethics has been my target for a while now, but first I had to explain the neuroscience of pleasure and desire, and how to use intuitions for philosophy.

Luckily, Eliezer laid most of the groundwork when he explained couldness, terminal and instrumental values, the complexity of human desire and happiness, how to dissolve philosophical problems, how to taboo words and replace them with their substance, how to avoid definitional disputes, how to carve reality at its joints with our words, how an algorithm feels from the inside, the mind projection fallacy, how probability is in the mind, reductionism, determinism, free will, evolutionary psychology, how to grasp slippery things, and what you would do without morality.

Of course, Eliezer wrote his own metaethics sequence. Eliezer and I seem to have similar views on morality, but I'll be approaching the subject from a different angle, I'll be phrasing my solution differently, and I'll be covering a different spread of topics.

Why do I think much of metaethics can be solved now? We have enormous resources not available just a few years ago. The neuroscience of pleasure and desire didn't exist two decades ago. (Well, we thought dopamine was 'the pleasure chemical', but we were wrong.) Detailed models of reductionistic meta-ethics weren't developed until the 1980s and 90s (by Peter Railton and Frank Jackson). Reductionism has been around for a while, but there are few philosophers who relentlessly play Rationalist's Taboo. Eliezer didn't write How an Algorithm Feels from the Inside until 2008.

Our methods will be familiar ones, already used to dissolve problems ranging from free will to disease. We will play Taboo with our terms, reducing philosophic...
Functioning Synapse Created Using Carbon Nanotubes [link]
by Dreaded_Anomaly — 2011-04-23T23:10:33.258Z

Functioning Synapse Created Using Carbon Nanotubes: Devices Might Be Used in Brain Prostheses or Synthetic Brains (article @ ScienceDaily)

Engineering researchers the University of Southern California have made a significant breakthrough in the use of nanotechnologies for the construction of a synthetic brain. They have built a carbon nanotube synapse circuit whose behavior in tests reproduces the function of a neuron, the building block of the brain.

A very promising development for both human and artificial intelligence research.
[SEQ RERUN] The Modesty Argument
by Unnamed — 2011-04-23T22:48:04.458Z

Today's post, The Modesty Argument, was originally published on December 10, 2006. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Factor in what other people think, but not symmetrically, if they are not epistemic peers.

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 Proper Use of Humility, 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.
Spiritedness and docility
by Gray — 2011-04-23T04:12:20.162Z

Just a brief inquiry, I've been thinking about myself, and what many people here talk about akrasia and "not getting crap done", and one of the vectors that this can be thought of is in terms of what I would call spiritedness versus docility. At least this is how I would describe it, maybe you guys know of a better approach.

I would call these different ends of a continuum, like hot and cold: the more spirited you are, the less docile; and the more docile you are, the less spirited. I suspect that many of those who come here are often on the docile end of the spectrum, and this has everything to do with the sort of society we live in. A spirited/highly energetic person just doesn't work that well in our kind of society where standing in one place, waiting our turn, reading directions, and so on, are standard staples of life.

Now being docile sounds bad, but the alternative is a lot of frustration--being irritable, impatient, easily angered and annoyed by those around you; at least, this is the way I see it. But I was thinking in terms of what I would call "rational spiritedness", because this is the condition under which I think best. That is, rather than passively waiting for the answers, but actively seeking them. There was a post a little while ago about what was called "learned blankness", and I think this is very close to what I call docility. For the spirited person, inquiry is naturally active, physical, and empirical.

I did an experiment the other day when I was in the park walking, and as I was walking I forced myself to constantly probe the environment around me, trying to discover as much I could. I'm talking about very basic things, the way a naturalist would, like what is the structure of the leaves on the grass (grass grows in bundles). I noticed, and then recalled, that this park was hit by a tornado last year, and I could see which trees are newly planted, and which are still there from the tornado. I even noticed the pattern in the trees, the way the old trees had fewer branches on one side, which indicated in which direction the wind blew in from. There were still some old stakes in the ground which were pointed in the same angle. But the idea wasn't to "learn about any particular thing" but to "learn about whatever I could around me".

But the impressive thing is that this ...
Leaving a line of retreat for theists
by  — 2011-04-23T01:04:16.102Z

Eliezer recommends that we leave a line of retreat when discussing controversial topics, since this prevents scary propositions from clouding our judgment. However, I've noticed recently that there are some topics that are just too scary for people to think about, the existence of God being a primary example. Simply put, people don't want to admit that the universe is beyond the reach of a caring God, no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary. People especially don't want to hear that they will one day cease to exist, never to be reincarnated or continued in an afterlife. I've found this to be a major stumbling block when having discussions with theists or agnostics--though the people I've talked to are willing to accept that nonbelievers can lead very moral lives, the thought that "it's just us" is the stopsign that prevents the discussion from moving further. Naturally I've explained that it's important to only believe things that are true, but for some people this meme just can't overcome the scariness of a naturalistic universe.

Have any LessWrongians managed to overcome this obstacle? If so, how? We can generalize this problem somewhat: are there effective techniques for getting people to clearly evaluate the probability of scary or depressing propositions? Explanations with the smallest amount of inferential distance are preferred--while something like cryonics does answer most of the theistic objections raised above, it's a huge distance away from most people's belief systems. (That said, it's quite possible that the answer to my question might be "No, there are no effective techniques that have short inferential distances," and in the spirit of this post I'm willing to accept that.) I'd also be interested in hearing anecdotes about similar situations if anyone has any.
Is Kiryas Joel an Unhappy Place?
by gwern — 2011-04-23T00:08:48.125Z

I was browsing my RSS feed, as one does, and came across a New York Times article, "A Village With the Numbers, Not the Image, of the Poorest Place", about the Satmar Hasidic Jews of Kiryas Joel (NY).

Their interest lies in their extraordinarily high birthrate & population growth, and their poverty - which are connected. From the article:

"...officially, at least, none of the nation’s 3,700 villages, towns or cities with more than 10,000 people has a higher proportion of its population living in poverty than Kiryas Joel, N.Y., a community of mostly garden apartments and town houses 50 miles northwest of New York City in suburban Orange County.

About 70 percent of the village’s 21,000 residents live in households whose income falls below the federal poverty threshold, according to the Census Bureau. Median family income ($17,929) and per capita income ($4,494) rank lower than any other comparable place in the country. Nearly half of the village’s households reported less than $15,000 in annual income. About half of the residents receive food stamps, and one-third receive Medicaid benefits and rely on federal vouchers to help pay their housing costs.

Kiryas Joel’s unlikely ranking results largely from religious and cultural factors. Ultra-Orthodox Satmar Hasidic Jews predominate in the village; many of them moved there from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, beginning in the 1970s to accommodate a population that was growing geometrically. Women marry young, remain in the village to raise their families and, according to religious strictures, do not use birth control. As a result, the median age (under 12) is the lowest in the country and the household size (nearly six) is the highest. Mothers rarely work outside the home while their children are young. Most residents, raised as Yiddish speakers, do not speak much English. And most men devote themselves to Torah and Talmud studies rather than academic training — only 39 percent of the residents are high school graduates, and less than 5 percent have a bachelor’s degree. Several hundred adults study full time at religious institutions.

...Because the community typically votes as a bloc, it wields disproportionate political influence, which enables it to meet those challenges creatively. A luxurious 60-bed postnatal maternal care center was built with $10 million in state and federal g

...
The benefits of madness: A positive account of arationality
by Skatche — 2011-04-22T19:43:07.029Z

This post originated in a comment I posted about a strange and unpleasant experience I had when pushing myself too hard mentally. People seemed interested in hearing about it, so I sat down to write. In the process, however, it became something rather different (and a great deal longer) than what I originally intended. The incident referred to in the above comment was a case of manic focus gone wrong; but the truth is, often in my life it's gone incredibly right. I've gotten myself into some pretty strange headspaces, but through discipline and quick thinking I have often been able to turn them to my advantage and put them to good use.

Part 1, then, lays out a sort of cognitive history, focusing on the more extreme states I've been in. Part 2 continues the narrative; this is where I began to learn to ride them out and make them work for me. Part 3 is the incident in question: where I overstepped myself and suffered the consequences.

Some of you, however, may want to skip ahead to part 4 (unless you find my autobiographical writings interesting as a case study). There, I've written a proposal for a series of posts about how to effectively use the full spectrum of somatic and cognitive states to one's advantage. I have vacillated for a long time about this, for reasons that will be discussed below, but I decided that if I was already laying this much on the line, I might as well take it a step further. Read if you will; and if you're interested, please say so.

Part 1: My cognitive background

Let's start with full disclosure: there is madness in my family. My father was an alcoholic; it was clear to all of us that he also had some other psychological issues, but I never fully learned the details. My sister has been variously diagnosed with depression, bipolar, borderline personality disorder, etc, and has a breakdown about three or four times a year. My brother is also bipolar. He's had two manic episodes so far; he became psychotic during the first one, and both times he's been hospitalized. And then there's me: the sane, dependable one.

That's what I thought, anyway, until my brother had his first episode and I started to look back on my own history. I'd always regarded myself as rather unusual, certainly, but basically stable. But seeing full-blown psychosis for the fi...
The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett
by johnclark — 2011-04-22T15:26:05.968Z

I've just finished this book and its one of the most enjoyable things I've read in a long time. Being a staple of science fiction and the only interpretation of quantum mechanics to enter the popular imagination it's a little surprising that "The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett" by Peter Byrne is the first biography of the originator of that amazing idea. Everett certainly had an interesting life, he was a libertarian and a libertine, became a cold warrior who with his top secret clearance was comfortable with the idea of megadeath, became wealthy by started one of the first successful software companies until alcoholism drove him and his company into the ground. Everett died of heart failure in 1982 at the age of 51, he was legally drunk at the time. He requested that his body be cremated and his ashes thrown into the garbage. And so he was.

Byrne had an advantage other potential biographers did not, the cooperation of his son Mark, a successful rock musician and composer whose music has been featured in such big budget movies as American Beauty, Hellboy, Yes Man, all three of the Shrek movies and many others. Mark gave Byrne full access to his garage which was full of his father's papers that nobody had looked at in decades.

Everett was an atheist all his life, after his death Paul Davies, who got 1,000,000 pounds for winning the Templeton religion prize, said that if true Many Worlds destroyed the anthropic argument for the existence of God. Everett would have been delighted. Nevertheless Everett ended up going to Catholic University of America near Washington DC. Although Byrne doesn't tell us exactly what was in it, Everett as a freshman devised a logical proof against the existence of God. Apparently it was good enough that one of his pious professors became very upset and depressed with "ontological horror" when he read it. Everett liked the professor and felt so guilty he decided not to use it on a person of faith again. This story is very atypical of the man, most of the time Everett seems to care little for the feelings of others and although quite brilliant wasn't exactly lovable.

Everett wasn't the only one dissatisfied with the Copenhagen Interpretation which insisted the measuring device had to be outside the wave function, but he was unlike other dissidents such as Bohm or Cramer in that Everett saw no need to add new terms to Schrodinger's Equation ...
Sandberg, A. and Bostrom, N. (2011): Machine Intelligence Survey
by XiXiDu — 2011-04-22T13:37:39.166Z

As some readers may recall, we had a conference this January about intelligence, and in particular the future of machine intelligence. We did a quick survey among participants about their estimates of when and how human-level machine intelligence would be developed. Now we can announce the results: Sandberg, A. and Bostrom, N. (2011): Machine Intelligence Survey, Technical Report #2011-1, Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University.

[...]

The median estimate of when there will be 50% chance of human level machine intelligence was 2050.

People estimated 10% chance of AI in 2028, and 90% chance in 2150.

[...]

All in all, a small study of a self selected group, so it doesn't prove anything in particular. But it fits in with earlier studies like Ben Goertzel, Seth Baum, Ted Goertzel, How Long Till Human-Level AI? and Bruce Klein, When will AI surpass human-level intelligence? - people who tend to answer this kind of surveys seem to have a fairly similar mental model.

Link: Machine Intelligence Survey (PDF)
Possible personal implications of the Israeli Hunger-Probation study
by zaph — 2011-04-22T12:19:36.751Z

I'll let Psychohistorian provide the set-up, in case the reference is unfamiliar. Anyway, my wife's expecting, and that means many, many tests, ultrasounds, etc. that she ends up going through. She had an ultrasound done yesterday that was a follow-up form one two weeks ago. There was a particular measurement that was "top normal" (the doctor's words) that they needed to keep an eye on*. The first ultrasound was done at her OBGYN, the next at the hospital she'll be delivering at.

It was during the second ultrasound that I noticed the time; it was about 11:35 when the ultrasound tech finished up and called the doctor in. Being-the-probably-over-worried-parent to be that I am, immediately the study jumped into my head. What if the doc's blood sugar is too low? Do doctors make better decisions when they're hungry, because they're more alert, or worse ones, because they're distracted? Was it better that I came in earlier so that the technician was more alert, so that she took better pictures and measurements on the ultrasound?

Both the doctor and the tech seemed to be very alert and competent, and as the follow up involved a specific measurement, the were very careful of being thorough in checking and rechecking it. The thought about the timing of the visit, though, and meetings with experts in general, is something I've been thinking a lot about since the appointment. I would really like to see a follow-up study in the medical field. In the meantime, I'm trying to consider when the bests times are to schedule appointments.

All of this is based on what seems to me to be very concrete evidence that people's thinking is affected by their hunger, and that organizational structures don't pay much attention to outcomes related to that. Is this being premature, or overly broad? Are there other factors that could come into play? My main thinking is to stay away from lunchtime and closing time, because those are the two periods where I believe people would be most distracted.

*"Top normal" in this case could also translate to "low abnormal", which shows why numbers provide much better means than words in thinking about these things. The baby's fine as of the latest ultrasound, btw (and thanks for asking!)
[SEQ RERUN] The Proper Use of Humility
by Dorikka — 2011-04-22T11:48:48.616Z

Today's post, The Proper Use of Humility was originally published on 1 December 2006. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

There are good and bad kinds of humility. Proper humility is not being selectively underconfident about uncomfortable truths. Proper humility is not the same as social modesty, which can be an excuse for not even trying to be right. Proper scientific humility means not just acknowledging one's uncertainty with words, but taking specific actions to plan for the case that one is wrong.

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's a bias, again? 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.
anchoring for coordination
by sark — 2011-04-22T10:42:32.743Z

Reading Schelling's the Strategy of Conflict, a useful social purpose for anchoring occurred to me.

First some background.

You and your husband/wife lose each other in the mall. The two of you have not before this agreed on a place to meet in case you lose each other. Still, there is a good chance both of you would decide to meet up at some salient/prominent place, say the main information desk. This is coordination without communication and with aligned interests.

You and your partner/rival are independently given the choice of "Heads" or "Tails". Neither knows the choice of the other. If both of you choose "Heads" you'll get $1 and your opponent $3. If both of you choose "Tails", you'll get $3 and your opponent $1. Otherwise neither of you gets anything. Most pairs would coordinate on "Heads" (again because of convention/salience), with the Tails player not insisting on Tails because she has no way to coordinate (arrange for compensation, say) with the Heads player on this. This is coordination without communication and with some conflict of interest. But not total conflict, as they would rather coordinate than get no payment at all.

Schelling then goes on to consider explicit bargaining situations where there is of course actual communication between the parties deciding on a mutually acceptable outcome. But he notes that even here, "focal points" seem to exert a huge influence. Furthermore, these focal points are often quite partial towards the interests of a certain party. Yet often, the 'losing' party still accepts this less than stellar bargaining outcome. For example, a nation conceding some territory because the only prominent landmark permitting a stable division was some river partial to the interests of the other nation.

He then proceeds to show how explicit bargaining is not so different from the Heads/Tails coordination game. In a bargaining situation, both sides would rather reach agreement than none at all. And there is a range of possible points of agreement, where the 'losing' party would rather concede than forfeit any agreement. But how to decide among these points of potential agreement? A stable point of agreement for an outcome of the bargaining would be one in which neither expects the other to make further concessions. But a party decides if they would concede based on their expectations of the other party's likelihood of conceding. And

...
The Black Team - A Parable of Group Effectiveness
by JGWeissman — 2011-04-22T02:37:08.383Z

Management noticed that certain software testers were 10 to 20 percent better at finding defects than their peers. By putting these people on the same team, they reasoned, they could form a group that would be 10 or 20 percent more effective and then put the team to work testing the most critical system components.

It didn't turn out that way.

The individuals who made up the team were not exceptionally intelligent or talented, but they all enjoyed testing software and were better than average at it. When these like minded individuals were assembled, they they spent their working hours, lunches and sometimes free time collaborating on how to better find software defects.

Soon the members of team were twice and then dozens of times more effective than their peers, and they began to view their jobs not as testing software, but as breaking software. Team members took a well-deserved pride in their abilities and began to cultivate an image of villainous destroyers. As a group, they began coming to work dressed in black and took to calling themselves "The Black Team."

From The Black Team. (Hat tip to Adam "ata" Atlas and Mike Blume.)