trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
[META] 'Rational' vs 'Optimized'
by TheOtherDave — 2012-01-04T18:58:49.233Z

A new arrival, Kouran, recently challenged our conventional use of the label "rational" to describe various systems. The full thread is here, and it doesn't summarize neatly, but he observes that we often use "rational" in the context of non-intellectual, non-cognitive, etc. systems, and that this is an unconventional use of the word.
Unsurprisingly, this led to Standard Conversation Number 12 about how we don't really use "rational" to mean what the rest of the world means by it, and about instrumental rationality, and etc. and etc. In the course of that discussion I made the observation a couple of times (here and here) that we could probably substitute some form of "optimal" for "rational" wherever it appears without losing any information.

Of course, status quo bias being what it is, I promptly added that we wouldn't actually want to do that, because, y'know, it would be work and involve changing stuff.
But the more I think about it, the more it seems like I ought to endorse that lexical shift. We do spend a not-inconsiderable amount of time and attention on alleviating undesirable side-effects of the word 'rational,' such as the Spock effect, and our occasional annoying tendency to talk about the 'rational' choice of shoe-polish when we really mean the optimal choice, and our occasional tendency to tie ourselves in knots around "rationalists should win". (That optimized systems do better than non-optimized systems is pretty much the definition of "optimized," after all. If we say that rational systems generally do better than irrational systems, we're saying that rational systems are generally optimal, which is a non-empty statement. But if we define "rational" to mean the thing that wins, which we sometimes do, it seems simpler to talk about optimized systems in the first place.)

There's precedent for this... a while ago I started getting out of the habit of talking about "artificial intelligences" when I really wanted to talk about superhuman optimizing systems instead, and I continue to endorse that change. So, I'm going to stop using "rational" when I actually mean optimal. I encourage others to do so as well. (Or, conversely, to tell me why I shouldn't.)
This should go without saying, but in case it doesn't: I'm not proposing recoding anything or rewriting anything or doing any work here beyond changing my use of language as it's convenient for me to do...
[Link] Duolingo
by bradm — 2012-01-04T14:39:52.079Z

Yesterday I heard about an interesting new project called Duolingo. For some background, see this TEDx Talk by one of the creators, Luis von Ahn. It is a crowdsourcing approach to language translation, where the users learn a foreign language while translating. I've signed up but I haven't received an invitation yet to start. Once I start using it, I will provide updates on its effectiveness.
HPMoR.com
by lukeprog — 2012-01-04T11:15:04.756Z

Josh's mirror of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality has been redesigned by Lightwave (who also did IntelligenceExplosion.com, Friendly-AI.com, and lukeprog.com), and it is now located at a simpler URL: HPMoR.com. Thanks also to Louie who put together this "facelift" project.
Visualizing effect sizes
by EvelynM — 2012-01-04T05:18:58.159Z

http://healthyinfluence.com/wordpress/steves-primer-of-practical-persuasion-3-0/intro/windowpane/

"The point of this demonstration is to show that you can think with numbers in a practical and efficient way without having a statistician in the room. Anyone can handle the windowpane approach with numbers. Just have a clear definition of Changed? (Yes or No) and a clear definition of the Group (Treatment or Control). Then just count and look for percentage differences. A 10% difference is small, 30% is moderate, and 50% is large. And, realize that while “small” may be hard to detect, it can definitely make big practical effect.

Now whether you conceptualize Effect Sizes as windowpanes or jars with marbles, you now understand what the idea, Difference, means. You can count or see No, Small, Medium, or Large Differences and interpret those complex statistical arguments you encounter all the time. Realize again, that this approach is not Statistics for Dummies, Idiots, or Fools, but is a standard and mathematically correct way to present quantitative information."

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/pspi_8_2_article.pdf

tldr; Natural frequencies (ratios of counts of subjects) rather than Conditional probabilities, are easier for people to comprehend.
Meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup
by EvelynM — 2012-01-04T04:53:11.481Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup

WHEN:
11 January 2012 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
144 North College Avenue Fort Collins, CO 80524

We're planning a field trip to a local 3D printer shop.

Discussion article for the meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup
[link] Anger as antidote to Confirmation Bias 
by Curiouskid — 2012-01-04T01:20:36.415Z

Abstract:

The current research explores the effect of anger on hypothesis confirmation — the propensity to seek information that confirms rather than disconfirms one’s opinion. We argue that the moving against action tendency associated with anger leads angry individuals to seek out disconfirming evidence, attenuating the confirmation bias. We test this hypothesis in two studies of experimentally-primed anger and sadness on the selective exposure to hypothesis confirming and disconfirming information. In Study 1, participants in the angry condition were more likely to choose disconfirming information than those in the sad or neutral condition when given the opportunity to read about a controversial social issue. Study 2 measured participants’ opinions and information selection about the 2008 Presidential Election and the desire to ‘move against’ a person or object. Participants in the angry condition reported a greater tendency to oppose a person or object, and this tendency led them to select more disconfirming information.
Meetup : Atlanta, GA
by hankx7787 — 2012-01-04T00:31:38.377Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Atlanta Meetup

WHEN: 07 January 2012 06:30:00PM (-0500)

WHERE: 2094 North Decatur Road, Decatur, GA 30033-5367

The next meetup is Saturday, January 7th at 6:30pm at Chocolate Coffee in Decatur:

http://www.mychocolatecoffee.com/
2094 North Decatur Road, Decatur, GA 30033-5367
(404) 982-0790

Here is the official agenda:

http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Mysterious_Answers_to_Mysterious_Questions
1.6 Focus Your Uncertainty
1.7 The Virtue of Narrowness
1.8 Your Strength As A Rationalist
1.9 Absence of Evidence is Evidence of Absence
1.10 Conservation of Expected Evidence

Discussion article for the meetup : Atlanta Meetup
Utilitarians probably wasting time on recreation
by nebulous — 2012-01-03T22:54:45.081Z

[Post edited to use life expectancy data from estimated time of birth rather than from 2012 and avoid extra significant digits.]

[Edited again to make the title more to the point and less abrasive, change the math since I found that Uganda is not one of their top four countries aided, include an accurate figure for the average age of an AMF beneficiary, link to sources on life expectancy and mosquito net distribution data, and improve some wording.]

This post argues that working a job and donating the resultant money to the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) is more beneficial than recreation from a utilitarian standpoint.
AMF, GiveWell's current top rated charity, distributes mosquito nets to people at high risk of contracting and dying from malaria. To find the amount of life saved by donating a dollar to AMF, I use the following formula: (average life expectancy in aided country - average age of beneficiary) / dollars AMF needs to save one life.
According to an email from AMF representative Rob Mather, the average age of an AMF beneficiary is 25-30. I'll pick the age 28 to be conservative on the amount of life saved per donation. I made a weighted average by nets distributed of the life expectancies of the top three countries that AMF has worked in (Zambia, Malawi, and Tanzania) to estimate the average life expectancy in a typical AMF-aided country.

Zambia has 332,660 nets distributed, Malawi has 355,400 nets distributed, and Tanzania has 131,293 nets distributed, for a total of 819,353. Zambia has ~41 percent of nets distributed among the top three, while Malawi has ~43 percent and Tanzania has ~16 percent. Zambia's life expectancy for the average 28-year-old beneficiary is 51.56 years, Malawi's is 51.08 years, and Tanzania's is 45.75 years. The average life expectancy for an AMF beneficiary in the top three aided countries multiplies and adds up to ~50.42 years. (Source on life expectancy. Source on net distribution.)

This means that the time saved per life saved is ~22 years. According to GiveWell, AMF needs just under two thousand dollars to save a life. 22 divided by two thousand is ~0.011 years saved per dollar, or ~4.0 days saved per dollar. Suppose that you gave up some recreation time and instead worked some part-time job such as filling out online surveys for five dollars an hour. If each dollar was donated to AMF, that would save ~20 days per hou...
Meetup : Austin, TX
by Vaniver — 2012-01-03T21:16:33.626Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Austin, TX

WHEN:
07 January 2012 01:30:00PM (-0600)

WHERE:
2222B Guadalupe St Austin, Texas 78705

Welcome back! The Austin meetup returns to Caffe Medici after a brief winter hiatus. We sit on the second floor to the left, near (or often on) the stage. Hope to see you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : Austin, TX
[META] Trackbacks
by Curiouskid — 2012-01-03T19:46:46.587Z

When I was going through the sequences, I often found that reading about a fallacy in passing, like when it was hyperlinked in the middle of a sentence, was more really helped me get the idea.
I know that on the wiki, there is a feature were you can see all the trackbacks to a page.

Is there a way to do this for non-wiki pages? This could be useful even for non-LW pages.
Describe your personal Mount Stupid
by Shmi — 2012-01-03T18:37:38.021Z

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, not sure what the official name for this particular cognitive bias is (feel free to enlighten me). Probably most of us can recognize that feeling of enlightenment after learning a bit of something new and exciting, and not realizing yet how far it is from the mastery of the subject. I suspect that learning the LW brand of rationality is one of those. (Incidentally, if the words "LW brand of rationality" irked you, because you think that there is only one true rationality, consider how close you might be to that particular summit of Mt. Stupid.) See also the last bullet point in the linked comic strip.

As an exercise in rationality, I suggest people post personal accounts of successfully traversing Mt.Stupid, or maybe getting stuck there forever, never to be heard from again. Did you find any of the techniques described in the sequences useful to overcome this bias, beyond the obvious of continuing to learn more about the topic in question? Did you manage to avoid turning Mt.Stupid into the Loggerhead range?

My example: I thought I was great at programming fresh out of college, and ready to dispense my newly found wisdom. Boy, oh boy, was I ever wrong. And then it happened again when I learned some more of the subject on the job...
Meetup : First Sydney 2012 meetup.
by Oklord — 2012-01-03T13:04:06.747Z

Discussion article for the meetup : First Sydney 2012 meetup.

WHEN:
18 January 2012 06:00:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
22 The Promenade,, Sydney NSW 2000 (James Squire Brewhouse)

[All advice for improving location/time would be appreciated, especially location, which has not worked out amazingly well before] Hello Less Wrongers of Sydney! Assuming the local interest has not died down, seems only right that we should try and set up another meet-up.

Given my (fairly well supported, I imagine) belief that peer pressure is one of the best methods to change behavior, I figure that the lowest hanging fruit we could discuss is trying to control Akrasia. I'm prepared to bring a structured plan and research (if there is interest) in order to achieve the following:

Review standing literature on causation.

Discuss current Akrasia control methods used by attendants, less wrong, life hacker, reddit extc. (all of which, of course, are noted for their effect AGAINST Akrasia control. Sudden thought - is there procrastination negative search engine?)

Try and assign tasks to willing participants, in order to test methods and combinations thereof. I've a mind that if this goes well we could contribute as a group to the less wrong community some good old fashioned data. Plus, it's always good to measure interest in a more regular meet-up!

Discussion article for the meetup : First Sydney 2012 meetup.
Simple theory of IMDB bias
by taw — 2012-01-03T10:20:25.440Z

IMDB top 250 list is dominated by old movies, which conflicts with my perception (shared by majority of people as far as I can tell) that new movies are far better than old movies (comparing either top with top or average with average).

I have a simple theory why IMDB is wrong:

For new movies, very wide population have seen it, many not fans of the genre. They vote on IMDB soon after watching.

For old movies, only narrow population of fans have seen it recently. The only people who vote on IMDB are those who've seen it recently (atypical fans), or have particularly good memories of it (atypical fans again). People who watched an old movie ages ago but don't remember much about it are very unlikely to vote on IMDB.

Therefore it's much more difficult for a new movie to get a good IMDB score than it is for an old movie.

Therefore a new movie with identical IMDB store is likely much better than an old movie with identical score.

The "correct" procedure would of course be gathering random sample of people, showing them random movies, and asking for ratings just after the movie. For practical reasons this cannot really be done, so the next best thing we can do is ignoring old movies with unreasonably high IMDB scores.
[SEQ RERUN] Newcomb's Problem and Regret of Rationality
by MinibearRex — 2012-01-03T06:08:04.431Z

Today's post, Newcomb's Problem and Regret of Rationality was originally published on 31 January 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Newcomb's problem is a very famous decision theory problem in which the rational move appears to be consistently punished. This is the wrong attitude to take. Rationalists should win. If your particular ritual of cognition consistently fails to yield good results, change the ritual.

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 Something to Protect, 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.
An inducible group-"meditation" for use in rationality dojos
by  — 2012-01-02T10:32:22.178Z

Note: The following outline of my research proposal is unfinished. I posted it in the discussion section to spur conversation and get constructive criticism (successfully, I might add). If you have any suggestions, then please make them. I will be monitoring the discussion and improving the proposal until I feel it is ready to be posted as a main article.

Introduction

I think I may have found a novel use for an old technique, which may or may not have implications for rational decision making. I am open to constructive criticism or even deconstructive criticism if you make a sound argument. Ultimately, I would like the experiment to be put to the test. If you have the supplies and know-how to carry it out, then feel free to try it and report your findings.
The Goal:

Catalyze the brainstorming process in a way that increases both the number and quality of ideas made.

Methods:

Find a problem that needs solving. Unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics is a good, but ambitious, example. Some more likely problems that could be solved are: "How might I solve my relationship problems," or "how can I advertise my company's product to its target demographic", or "what are some ideas to make quick money."

Find 2-3 rationalists who understand the problem well. They don't need to be expert rationalists; the most important part is that they know the difference between rationalization and rationality. In the QM example above, and in most scientific applications of the method, all players should have access to the experimental data.

Assign two of the three rationalists to the "brainstormers" group (name subject to change), whose primary concern is to make logical connections between the data to form hypotheses.

Assign the odd-rationalist-out as the Confessor, whose primary concern, like in TWC, is to preserve sanity. It is the Confessor's job to catch the brainstormers when they make a logical leap or use biased reasoning. Some tactics the Confessor might use are the rationalist taboo, the reversal test, and argument from the least convenient world.

This is a scaled up version of what the brain seems to do. We need the brainstormers and the Confessor to act the part of the Apologist and the Revolutionary, respectively.

The Confessor - brainstormer dynamic is interesting in its own right, but I believe it can be improved. Now bear with me, because the option

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[SEQ RERUN] Something to Protect
by MinibearRex — 2012-01-02T04:12:11.143Z

Today's post, Something to Protect was originally published on 30 January 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Many people only start to grow as a rationalist when they find something that they care about more than they care about rationality itself. It takes something really scary to cause you to override your intuitions with math.

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 Trust in Bayes, 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.
[META] Introduction thread attitudes and discussions
by Vaniver — 2012-01-02T01:18:01.561Z

So, we have three introduction threads, and recently have had several contentious ones, like AspiringKnitter's introduction as a theist or Bakkot's introduction as a proponent of infanticide. It seems to me like there's value in trying to come up with a unified policy on how to respond to introductions. Replies seem to run the emotional gamut, and different norms often conflict. Beyond that, practical concerns suggest arguments may be poorly suited to introduction threads.

Take MagnetoHydroDynamics's introduction as not interested in cryonics as an example of a smaller discussion that spawned meta-discussions about attitudes. Epistemic hygiene suggests that challenging wrong beliefs is a positive, but I found myself dismayed to find the only reply to a newbie's first post was a factual correction, and so posted a welcoming comment with a joke. Later, wedrifid posed a test for MHD, which MHD passed. Kaj_Sotala questioned wedrifid's tone on the grounds that MHD was a newcomer, and I'm not entirely sure what to think. On the one hand, I can easily come up with a friendly rewriting on wedrifid's test, and I think friendliness to newcomers is a sound strategy. But on the other hand, while testing newcomers can turn some away, it does so in a selective way. Should newcomers be shielded from some criticism in introduction threads, or should it be the same as the rest of LW? Are there inappropriate attitudes in introduction threads?

The practical concern is that pages only display 500 comments at once, which is why we have three threads now. But on the first day of 2012, our 2012 thread already has over half the comments it'll be able to display simultaneously. (The post has been up for a week, not a day, but still.) At time of writing, 150 of the 270 comments are children of Bakkot's comment, arguing about infanticide. It seems obvious to me that we ought to seriously discourage promoting discussion on ideas in introduction threads, and instead point people to open threads / a primer on writing discussion posts.
An ethical debate that's turning very sour
by Multiheaded — 2012-01-01T19:36:50.337Z

(Okay, this has more or less run its course. Deleting the post.)

http://lesswrong.com/lw/90l/welcome_to_less_wrong_2012/5kk8

Right now I seem to be losing my last scraps of clear-headedness concerning the topic.

I'd dearly like anyone who feels they're up to it to 1) step in to provide a more rounded perspective and 2) help me the hell out in whatever way you consider useful, because such moral predicaments are known to be a point of obsession for me and haunt me for a long time (see my first post on LW).

Relevant: some of the exchange I just had with Orthonormal, with him inquiring about a possible factor to my behavior:

Orthonormal:

I'm not going to do this publicly (for several obvious reasons), but I want to ask: do you occasionally worry that you have some sociopathic impulses?

Me:

I certainly do (and I don't view that in a solely negative light at that), and I understand that I might be exhibiting some complexly motivated cognition here. But this understanding isn't swaying my opinion.

Orthonormal:

Oh, I wasn't arguing against you- I was just curious.
I noticed that you had an unusual amount of passion on this topic, and wanted to test the generalization that the most passionate proponents of prohibiting something (or keeping it prohibited) are often those who feel some temptation themselves- both because an external prohibition seems like it helps their internal self-control, and because it signals to themselves and others that they're not the sort of person who would do that thing. (Getting evidence for that theory was more significant to me than any actual info about sociopathic impulses.)

EDIT: thanks to everyone who responded.

I'll be coming back to this. In the meanwhile, to make my post less bad-useless-kind-of-meta, here's a comment by drethelin that offers a better arguments for and summary of my position than any of mine:

I broadly agree that babies aren't people, but I still think infanticide should be illegal, simply because killing begets insensitivity to killing. I know this has the sound of a slippery slope argument, but there is evidence that desire for sadism in most people is low, and increases as they commit sadistic acts, and that people feel similarly about murder.
From The Better Angels of Our Nature: "Serial killers too carry out their first murder with trepidation, distaste, and in its wake, dis

...