trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
A solvable Newcomb-like problem - part 1 of 3
by Douglas_Reay — 2012-12-03T09:26:46.005Z

This is the first part of a three post sequence on a problem that is similar to Newcomb's problem but is posed in terms of probabilities and limited knowledge.

Part 1 - stating the problem
Part 2 - some mathematics
Part 3 - towards a solution

Omega is an AI, living in a society of AIs, who wishes to enhance his reputation in that society for being successfully able to predict human actions. Given some exchange rate between money and reputation, you could think of that as a bet between him and another AI, let's call it Alpha. And since there is also a human involved, for the sake of clarity, to avoid using "you" all the time, I'm going to sometimes refer to the human using the name "Fred".

Omega tells Fred:

I'd like you to pick between two options, and I'm going to try to predict which option you're going to pick.
Option "one box" is to open only box A, and take any money inside it
Option "two box" is to open both box A and box B, and take any money inside them

but, before you pick your option, declare it, then open the box or boxes, there are three things you need to know.

Firstly, you need to know the terms of my bet with Alpha.

If Fred picks option "one box" then:
If box A contains $1,000,000 and box B contains $1,000 then Alpha pays Omega $1,000,000,000
If box A contains $0 and box B contains $1,000 then Omega pays Alpha $10,000,000,000
If anything else, then both Alpha and Omega pay Fred $1,000,000,000,000

If Fred picks option "two box" then:
If box A contains $1,000,000 and box B contains $1,000 then Omega pays Alpha $10,000,000,000
If box A contains $0 and box B contains $1,000 then Alpha pays Omega $1,000,000,000
If anything else, then both Alpha and Omega pay Fred $1,000,000,000,000

Secondly, you should know that I've already placed all the money in the boxes that I'm going to, and I can't change the contents of the boxes between now and when you do the opening, because Alpha is monitoring everything. I've already made my prediction, using a model I've constructed of your likely reactions based upon your past actio...
LessWrong podcasts
by Louie — 2012-12-03T08:44:38.125Z

Today we're announcing a partnership with Castify to bring you Less Wrong content in audio form. Castify gets blog content read by professional readers and delivers it to their subscribers as a podcast so that you can listen to Less Wrong on the go. The founders of Castify are big fans of Less Wrong so they're rolling out their beta with some of our content.

Note: The embedded player (above) isn't live as of this posting, but should be deployed soon.

To see how many people will use this, we're having the entire Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions core sequence read and recorded. We thought listening to it would be a great way for new readers to get caught up and for others to check out the quality of Castify's work. We will be adding more Less Wrong content based on community feedback, so let us know which content you'd like to see more of in the comments.

For instance: Which other sequences would you like to listen to? Would there be interest in an ongoing podcast channel for the promoted posts?
[SEQ RERUN] I Heart CYC
by MinibearRex — 2012-12-03T03:32:46.809Z

Today's post, I Heart CYC was originally published on December 1, 2008. A summary:

Douglas Lenat has a theory which Hanson finds plausible. Lenat argues that architechture of AI is overrated, and that there is only so much you can do before you start trying to generate content for an AI.

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 Disappointment in the Future, 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.
Meetup : Vancouver!
by  — 2012-12-03T02:33:26.936Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Vancouver!

WHEN:
09 December 2012 01:00:00PM (-0800)

WHERE:
2150 macdonald st

Hello Vancouver Lesswrongers,

You should come out to our next meetup. It's tons of fun to hang out with other rationalists!

Come see us on our mailing list, or just come by and see us.

One of our members just got back from CFAR's Rationality for Entrepreneurs thing, so he'll have lots of cool things that you haven't heard about. Otherwise it will be just casually hanging out, sharing ideas, and so on. We often end up having really interesting impromptu presentations, enlightening discussions, and lots of friendship.

See you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : Vancouver!
Rationality Quotes December 2012
by Thomas — 2012-12-03T02:33:14.356Z

Once again, here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)

Do not quote yourself

Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB

No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
[Link] Contesting the “Nature” Of Conformity: What Milgram and Zimbardo's Studies Really Show
by  — 2012-12-02T23:45:58.124Z

Here is a paper in PLOS Biology re-considering the lessons of some classic psychology experiments invoked here often (via).

Contesting the “Nature” Of Conformity: What Milgram and Zimbardo's Studies Really Show

To me the crux of the paper comes from this statement in the abstract:

This suggests that individuals' willingness to follow authorities is conditional on identification with the authority in question and an associated belief that the authority is right.

Plus this detail from the Milgram experiment:

Ultimately, they tend to go along with the Experimenter if he justifies their actions in terms of the scientific benefits of the study (as he does with the prod “The experiment requires that you continue”) [39]. But if he gives them a direct order (“You have no other choice, you must go on”) participants typically refuse. Once again, received wisdom proves questionable. The Milgram studies seem to be less about people blindly conforming to orders than about getting people to believe in the importance of what they are doing [40].
What science needs
by PhilGoetz — 2012-12-02T22:31:29.335Z

Science does not need more scientists. It doesn't even need you, brilliant as you are. We already have many times more brilliant scientists than we can fund. Science could use a better understanding of the scientific method, but improving how individuals do science would not address most of the problems I've seen.

The big problems facing science are organizational problems. We don't know how to identify important areas of study, or people who can do good science, or good and important results. We don't know how to run a project in a way that makes correct results likely. Improving the quality of each person on the project is not the answer. The problem is the system. We have organizations and systems that take groups of brilliant scientists, and motivate them to produce garbage.

I haven't got it all figured out, but here are some of the most-important problems in science. I'd like to turn this into a front-page post eventually, but now I'm going to post it to discussion, and ask you to add new important problems in the comments.

Egos

A lot of LWers think they want to advance scientific understanding. But I've learned after years in the field that what most scientists want even more is prove how smart they are.

I couldn't tell you how many times I've seen a great idea killed because the project leader or someone else with veto power didn't want someone else's idea or someone else's area of expertise to appear important. I've been "let go" from two jobs because I refused when my bosses flat-out told me to stop proposing solutions for the important problems, because that was their territory.

I don't mean that you should try to stop people from acting that way. People act that way. I mean you should admit that people act that way, and structure contracts, projects, and rewards so that these petty ego-boosts aren't the biggest rewards people can hope to get.

Too many "no"-men

The more people your project has who can say "no", the worse the results will be. This is one reason why Hollywood feature films are stupid, why start-ups do good work, and why scientific projects are so often a waste of money. Good ideas are inherently unpopular. Most of the projects that I've worked on have been crippled because every good idea ran into someone with veto power who didn't want to do ...
LessWrong IQ Survey
by Blackened — 2012-12-02T21:53:58.993Z

The latest survey shows that the average LessWronger who entered his SAT or ACT is roughly in the top 0.11%. This is insanely high. For comparison, top 2% can be Mensa members. I do not know the correlation between SAT/ACT and IQ, but I know it's fairly high. Anyway, I'm very curious to see the average score on a real, culture-fair IQ test. Those are the only two tests that are free, online, correct and culture fair, from what I know.

http://www.cerebrals.org/wp/tests/jcti/

http://www.etienne.se/cfnse/

Many people would prefer not to have people knowing their scores. That's great, but please please please do post it anonymously. Especially if it's a low one, but not if it's low because you rushed the test.

JCTI might take a while, so I recommend keeping your answers on Notepad in case you want to leave it and continue later.

Edit: I have included polls, thanks to the commenters.

Post your score here: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/fqq/average_iq_on_lw/7yad/
What are you working on? December 2012
by jsalvatier — 2012-12-02T18:49:31.017Z

This is the sixth bimonthly 'What are you working On?' thread. Previous threads are here. So here's the question:

What are you working on?

Here are some guidelines:

Focus on projects that you have recently made progress on, not projects that you're thinking about doing but haven't started.

Why this project and not others? Mention reasons why you're doing the project and/or why others should contribute to your project (if applicable).

Talk about your goals for the project.

Any kind of project is fair game: personal improvement, research project, art project, whatever.

Link to your work if it's linkable.
Atheists who believe that God exists
by ChristianKl — 2012-12-02T18:21:17.187Z

The 2012 LessWrong Censur had a question about belief in God. It also had a question about how people self label their religious beliefs. Interestingly 6.69% of the nonspiratual atheists believe that it's more likely that a God exists than that no God exists. On the other side of the spectrum 17% of the committed theists believe that the chance that God exists is only 2%. Those 2% are the median for nonspirtual atheists who belief in God.

Not a single person who took the LessWrong census believes that the chance that God exists is less than 1%. Given that this community has quite a lot of contrians and quite a lot of skeptics I would have guessed that there are people who believe that the chance that a God exists is less.

The orginal question on the survey was:

P(God)What is the probability that there is a god, defined as a supernatural (see above) intelligent entity who created the universe?

The numbers make also a nice plot:

There's also the question:

P(Religion)What is the probability that any of humankind's revealed religions is more or less correct?

Given those results what do you think if someone tells you that they are atheist or a theist?
[Link] Ideology, Motivated Reasoning, and Cognitive Reflection: An Experimental Study
by  — 2012-12-02T14:43:34.595Z

Related to: Knowing About Biases Can Hurt People

HT: Marginal Revolution

Paper.

Social psychologists have identified various plausible sources of ideological polarization over climate change, gun violence, national security, and like societal risks. This paper reports a study of three of them: the predominance of heuristic-driven information processing by members of the public; ideologically motivated cognition; and personality-trait correlates of political conservativism. The results of the study suggest reason to doubt two common surmises about how these dynamics interact. First, the study presents both observational and experimental data inconsistent with the hypothesis that political conservatism is distinctively associated with closed-mindedness: conservatives did no better or worse than liberals on an objective measure of cognitive reflection; and more importantly, both demonstrated the same unconscious tendency to fit assessments of empirical evidence to their ideological predispositions. Second, the study suggests that this form of bias is not a consequence of overreliance on heuristic or intuitive forms of reasoning; on the contrary, subjects who scored highest in cognitive reflection were the most likely to display ideologically motivated cognition. These findings corroborated the hypotheses of a third theory, which identifies motivated cognition as a form of information processing that rationally promotes individuals’ interests in forming and maintaining beliefs that signify their loyalty to important affinity groups. The paper discusses the normative significance of these findings, including the need to develop science communication strategies that shield policy-relevant facts from the influences that turn them into divisive symbols of identity.
[Link] The Worst-Run Big City in the U.S.
by  — 2012-12-02T12:50:59.751Z

The Worst-Run Big City in the U.S.

A six page article that reads as a very interesting autopsy of what institutional dysfunction in the intersection of government and non-profits looks like. I recommend reading the whole thing.

Minus the alleged harassment, city government is filled with Yomi Agunbiades — and they're hardly ever disciplined, let alone fired. When asked, former Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin couldn't remember the last time a higher-up in city government was removed for incompetence. "There must have been somebody," he said at last, vainly searching for a name.

Accordingly, millions of taxpayer dollars are wasted on good ideas that fail for stupid reasons, and stupid ideas that fail for good reasons, and hardly anyone is taken to task.

The intrusion of politics into government pushes the city to enter long-term labor contracts it obviously can't afford, and no one is held accountable. A belief that good intentions matter more than results leads to inordinate amounts of government responsibility being shunted to nonprofits whose only documented achievement is to lobby the city for money. Meanwhile, piles of reports on how to remedy these problems go unread. There's no outrage, and nobody is disciplined, so things don't get fixed.

You don't say?

In 2007, the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) held a seminar for the nonprofits vying for a piece of $78 million in funding. Grant seekers were told that in the next funding cycle, they would be required — for the first time — to provide quantifiable proof their programs were accomplishing something.

The room exploded with outrage. This wasn't fair. "What if we can bring in a family we've helped?" one nonprofit asked. Another offered: "We can tell you stories about the good work we do!" Not every organization is capable of demonstrating results, a nonprofit CEO complained. He suggested the city's funding process should actually penalize nonprofits able to measure results, so as to put everyone on an even footing. Heads nodded: This was a popular idea.

Reading this I had to bite my hand in frustration.

There are two lessons here. First, many San Francisco nonprofits believe they're entitled to money without having to prove that their programs work. Second, until 2007, the city agreed. Actually, most of the city still agrees. DCYF is the only city departmen

...
[SEQ RERUN] Disappointment in the Future
by MinibearRex — 2012-12-02T04:00:24.080Z

Today's post, Disappointment in the Future was originally published on 01 December 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

A list of Ray Kurzweil's predictions for the period 1999-2009.

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 Stuck In Throat, 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.
Working out consequences of science-fictional ideas
by DataPacRat — 2012-12-01T20:47:12.723Z

I have a pet sci-fi setting I use as a handy platform to play with various ideas, such as figuring out what some of the likely consequences would be of relatively easy access to orbit, or applying 'Avatar' remote-control techniques to live people. One question that recently occurred to me is, "Can you have a crossover with another fictional setting, without breaking any known laws of physics?"

The setting includes super-Siris, conversational engines good enough to fool an average, anthropomorphising person (but not true GAIs, since the consequences of /those/ would derail every other hypothetical in the setting). Throw in some full-sensory VR, and it seems plausible for someone to not only exchange email with a conversation-bot Captain Kirk, but get shown to the captain's quarters... And, depending on what the setting is, there are various rationales to explain how the VR-naut happens to be visiting that 'universe'. With realistic robots, even 'visits' the other way could be arranged: "Have a real Spider-Man at your birthday party!"

The Rule 34 potential is obvious; but I'm trying to come up with what /other/ consequences would result from such tech. How would marriages change? The labor force? Military simulations and operations?

How would /you/ go about thinking up interesting and/or useful extrapolations, for this idea in particular or for such ideas in general?
Looking for a likely cause of a mental phenomenon
by Valentine — 2012-12-01T19:43:32.916Z

I'm currently testing a promising direction for a possible collection of units at CFAR. (For those who have attended some CFAR events or test sessions, this is a collection of refinements to the fudoshin/"panic" unit.) I've hit on what I think is a key puzzle whose answer might unlock a lot of the emerging art of rationality. I - and possibly most people here, eventually - would very much appreciate any insight you have to share.
The puzzle is how thought incubation works, ideally expressed in terms of neural systems or neuroanatomical structures. I'll first explain the phenomenon and then suggest the general reference class from which I'm hoping to get an answer.
The Phenomenon:
Mathematicians frequently report that often one of the most helpful things they can do to solve a problem they're stuck on is step away from it. Jacques Hadamard (1949) examined his own experiences and also talked to many of his colleagues to work out what the common structure of this experience was, and determined that there seems to be a fairly predictable sequence to it:
(1) Intensely focus on the problem, working through every permutation you can think of that's likely to produce an answer.
(2) Walk away from the problem and think about something else.
(3) The magic genie in your head might eventually, and often unexpectedly, yell a possible insight into your awareness.
For instance, Henri Poincaré reported struggling to work on Fuchsian functions over the course of several weeks and then being forced to walk away from the proof he had been stuck on due to a planned vacation. One day he was stepping onto a bus with his mind certainly not on mathematics, and suddenly the key insight he needed to finish the proof appeared in his mind. It was as though a part of his mind had been secretly working on the problem and then brought the finished product into his awareness. In this particular case it also came with a feeling of total confidence that verification would pan out (although Hadamard notes that the validation step after the insight is still essential because sometimes that feeling of total confidence is mistaken).
I definitely relate to this from when I was working on graduate mathematics. However, it also pattern-matches with other mental phenomena that are much more common. For instance, sometimes I think I know what a person's name is, but struggle as I might I can't quite r...
December 2012 Media Thread
by RobertLumley — 2012-12-01T18:53:13.207Z

This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. I find that exposure to LW ideas makes me less likely to enjoy some entertainment media that is otherwise quite popular, and finding media recommended by LWers is a good way to mitigate this. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.

If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.

Please use the comment trees for genres. There is a meta thread for comments about future threads.

If you think there should be a thread for a particular genre of media, please post it to the Other Media thread for now, and add a poll to the Meta thread asking if it should be a thread every month.