trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Come to your terms
by So8res — 2015-10-26T02:00:00.000Z
Link: https://mindingourway.com/come-to-your-terms/

Once, a friend of mine decided to make a drastic career change by teaching themselves a bunch of new skills from scratch, (with occasional assistance from me). They ran into occasional difficulties along the way, one of them being that they could not consider the possibility of failure without feeling fear.

The possibility of failing — of investing months in the effort, with nothing to show for it, and then having nowhere left to turn — weighed heavily on them. It wore them down, it caused great stress, it induced panic attacks. Sometimes, they were incapacitated to the point that they could hardly think.

This wasn't completely unreasonable: they had no safety net and no margin for error, and they had good reasons to fear for their personal safety in the event of failure. The problem was not that their fears were irrational. The problem was that they couldn't think them.

I encouraged them to try facing their fears, and they did, but they found that coming to terms with the worst was impossible. They buckled, rather than buckling down. So consider that a content note: the exercise I describe in this post may not be possible or helpful for you.

But it has been very helpful for me, and I continue to think that if my friend had been able to truly come to terms with the worst case scenario they had in mind, to imagine it in detail and accept it as a possibility, then they would have had a much easier time managing that stress.

So here's my advice: Think the unthinkable. Consider that which is painful to consider. Figure out what, exactly, is at stake. Weigh the consequences. Come to terms with them.

I'm not suggesting that you convince yourself the worst case actually wouldn't be that bad. I'm not suggesting that you tell yourself a story about how you could handle the worst. I'm saying, come to terms with what could happen. Imagine the worst case, in detail; learn to weigh it on your scales; accept that if you fail things could go very poorly; and then maybe those bad outcomes will loosen their grip on you.

If you ever notice yourself following the same pattern as my friend — if you ever notice an outcome so terrible that you can't even consider it without panicking, then I suggest that you pause, take a deep breath, and consider that outcome.

Visualize it in full detail. Don't need to excuse it. Don't tell yourself it wouldn't be your fault. Don't tell yourself it woul...
The Triumph of Humanity Chart
by Dias — 2015-10-26T01:41:06.913Z

Cross-posted from my blog here.

One of the greatest successes of mankind over the last few centuries has been the enormous amount of wealth that has been created. Once upon a time virtually everyone lived in grinding poverty; now, thanks to the forces of science, capitalism and total factor productivity, we produce enough to support a much larger population at a much higher standard of living.

EAs being a highly intellectual lot, our preferred form of ritual celebration is charts. The ordained chart for celebrating this triumph of our people is the Declining Share of People Living in Extreme Poverty Chart.

(Source)

However, as a heretic, I think this chart is a mistake. What is so great about reducing the share? We could achieve that by killing all the poor people, but that would not be a good thing! Life is good, and poverty is not death; it is simply better for it to be rich.

As such, I think this is a much better chart. Here we show the world population. Those in extreme poverty are in purple – not red, for their existence is not bad. Those who the wheels of progress have lifted into wealth unbeknownst to our ancestors, on the other hand, are depicted in blue, rising triumphantly.

Long may their rise continue.
Meetup : San Francisco Meetup: TED talks
by maia — 2015-10-25T17:41:39.919Z

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: TED talks

WHEN:
26 October 2015 06:15:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
1597 Howard St. San Francisco, CA

We'll be meeting to watch and discuss some TED talks. I'll have a list of interesting ones preapred - but if you have one you've always wanted to talk to other rationalists about, now is your chance to make them watch it.

See the post on the bayarealesswrong mailing list for a number to call if you need help getting in.

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: TED talks
Sidekick Matchmaking - How to tackle the problem?
by diegocaleiro — 2015-10-23T19:35:54.656Z

Some of us enjoy being sidekicks.

Some of us would like to meet sidekicks in potential, see how the interaction goes, and have sidekicks.

Last time I tried posting about sidekick matchmaking here, it turned out to be very valuable for me, but not for many people (I think only two pairs of sidekick were created as a result). Now, once again I'd like to find someone who enjoys that role to help me out with many projects.

I'm looking for suggestions on how to get people together to do that. For the time being, if someone needs a sidekick or wants to be one, post about it in the comment section. I'd love to see a permanent solution for this information spreading problem.

My experience with Sidekicks

I'm not sure what Anna and Nick thought of their sidekicks, but my experience was undeniably positive. Having a sidekick was motivating, saved me great time, and, most importantly, felt like I got a surge of muscle strength specifically in the types of tasks I'm particularly inept at.

By contrast, my experience with people hired to help was mixed (virtual assistants) or negative (personal assistant).

Use the comment section to either offer or request sidekicks, explaining a little more about you and what you'd like this partnership to mean
Meetup : First meetup of Rationality Zürich
by Marko — 2015-10-23T17:36:09.154Z

Discussion article for the meetup : First meetup of Rationality Zürich

WHEN:
01 November 2015 03:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Sphères, Hardturmstrasse 66, 8005 Zürich

Purposes of this meetup:
- Get the community together and talking to each other
- Find out what people are interested in
- Discuss what we want out of meetups / the community

Discussion article for the meetup : First meetup of Rationality Zürich
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2015-10-23T15:21:15.789Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on October 16th. The following week's summary is here.

New meetups (or meetups with a hiatus of more than a year) are happening in:

Lund: 19 October 2015 06:00PM
Suzhou Meet-up: 28 October 2015 07:35PM

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

Hamburg 2015 Q4: 16 October 2015 07:00PM

The remaining meetups take place in cities with regular scheduling, but involve a change in time or location, special meeting content, or simply a helpful reminder about the meetup:

Sydney Rationality Dojo - November: 01 November 2015 04:00PM
Tel Aviv: Hardware Verification and FAI: 28 October 2015 12:59AM
Tel Aviv: Black Holes after Jacob Bekenstein: 24 November 2015 08:00AM
Vienna: 17 October 2015 03:00PM
Vienna: 21 November 2015 04:00PM
[Vienna] Five Worlds Collide - Vienna: 04 December 2015 08:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buffalo, Cambridge UK, Canberra, Columbus, Denver, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Moscow, Mountain View, New Hampshire, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, Seattle, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers and a Slack channel for daily discussion and online meetups on Sunday night US time.

If you'd like to talk with other LW-ers face to face, and there is no meetup in your area, consider starting your own meetup; it's easy (more resources here). Check one out, stretch your rationality skills, build community, and have fun!

In addition to the handy sidebar of upcoming meetups, a meetup overview is posted on the front page every Friday. These are an attempt to collect information on all the meetups happening in upcoming weeks. The best way to get your meetup featured is still to use the Add New Meetup feature, but you'll also have the benefit of having your meetup mentioned in a weekly overview. These overview posts are moved to the discussion section when the new post goes up.

Please note that for your meetup to appear in the weekly meetups feature, you need to post your meetup before the Friday before your meetup!

If you check Less Wrong irregularly, consider subscribing to one or more city-specific mailing list in order to be notified when an irregular meetup is happening: Atlanta, Chicago, Cincinna...
Superintelligence and wireheading
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2015-10-23T14:54:56.000Z

A putative new idea for AI control; index here.

tl;dr: Even utility-based agents may wirehead if sub-pieces of the algorithm develop greatly improved capabilities, rather than the agent as a whole.

Please let me know if I'm treading on already familiar ground.

I had a vague impression of how wireheading might happen. That it might be a risk for a reinforcement learning agent, keen to take control of its reward channel. But that it wouldn't be a risk for a utility-based agent, whose utility was described over real (or probable) states of the world. But it seems it might be more complicated than that.

When we talk about a "superintelligent AI", we're rather vague on what superintelligence means. We generally imagine that it translates into a specific set of capabilities, but how does that work internally inside the AI? Specifically, where is the superintelligence "located"?

Let's imagine the AI divided into various submodules or subroutines (the division I use here is for illustration; the AI may be structured rather differently). It has a module I for interpreting evidence and estimating the state of the world. It has another module S for suggesting possible actions or plans (S may take input from I). It has a prediction module P which takes input from S and I and estimates the expected outcome. It has a module V which calculates its values (expected utility/expected reward/violation or not of deontological principles/etc...) based on P's predictions. Then it has a decision module D that makes the final decision (for expected maximisers, D is normally trivial, but D may be more complicated, either in practice, or simply because the agent isn't an expected maximiser).

Add some input and output capabilities, and we have a passable model of an agent. Now, let's make it superintelligent, and see what can go wrong.

We can "add superintelligence" in most of the modules. P is the most obvious: near perfect prediction can make the agent extremely effective. But S also offers possibilities: if only excellent plans are suggested, the agent will perform well. Making V smarter may allow it to avoid some major pitfalls, and a great I may make the job of S and P trivial (the effect of improvements to D depend critically on how much work D is actually doing). Of course, maybe several modules become better simultaneously (it seems likely that I and P, for instance, would share many

...
Superintelligence and wireheading
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2015-10-23T14:49:14.885Z

A putative new idea for AI control; index here.

tl;dr: Even utility-based agents may wirehead if sub-pieces of the algorithm develop greatly improved capabilities, rather than the agent as a whole.

Please let me know if I'm treading on already familiar ground.

I had a vague impression of how wireheading might happen. That it might be a risk for a reinforcement learning agent, keen to take control of its reward channel. But that it wouldn't be a risk for a utility-based agent, whose utility was described over real (or probable) states of the world. But it seems it might be more complicated than that.

When we talk about a "superintelligent AI", we're rather vague on what superintelligence means. We generally imagine that it translates into a specific set of capabilities, but how does that work internally inside the AI? Specifically, where is the superintelligence "located"?

Let's imagine the AI divided into various submodules or subroutines (the division I use here is for illustration; the AI may be structured rather differently). It has a module I for interpreting evidence and estimating the state of the world. It has another module S for suggesting possible actions or plans (S may take input from I). It has a prediction module P which takes input from S and I and estimates the expected outcome. It has a module V which calculates its values (expected utility/expected reward/violation or not of deontological principles/etc...) based on P's predictions. Then it has a decision module D that makes the final decision (for expected maximisers, D is normally trivial, but D may be more complicated, either in practice, or simply because the agent isn't an expected maximiser).

Add some input and output capabilities, and we have a passable model of an agent. Now, let's make it superintelligent, and see what can go wrong.

We can "add superintelligence" in most of the modules. P is the most obvious: near perfect prediction can make the agent extremely effective. But S also offers possibilities: if only excellent plans are suggested, the agent will perform well. Making V smarter may allow it to avoid some major pitfalls, and a great I may make the job of S and P trivial (the effect of improvements to D depend critically on how much work D is actually doing). Of course, maybe several modules become better simultaneously (it seems likely that I and P, for instance, would share...
Meetup : Less Wrong NH Meet-up
by Tuk — 2015-10-23T01:07:06.003Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong NH Meet-up

WHEN:
27 October 2015 07:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
269 Pearl St Manchester NH 03104

The sixth NH meet-up is Tuesday, 10/27, in Manchester, NH at 7 pm at a private residence. Light refreshments will be provided.

Have you read Rationality: from AI to Zombies, or any of the Sequences on Less Wrong? Maybe you're just a fan of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Come hang out with us and discuss optimization of whatever it is you want to optimize.

You may want to bring a notebook.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1494514787511568/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/695201067251306/

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong NH Meet-up
[Link] Less Wrong and Agency in the Huffington Post
by Gleb_Tsipursky — 2015-10-23T00:20:32.252Z

I'm guessing this is the first time that links to Less Wrong appeared in a Huffington Post article, and three links at that! Please correct me if I'm wrong on this one. I'm also guessing this is the first time that the concept of agency in the rationalist sense was discussed and promoted on the Huffington Post. Another gain for raising the sanity waterline as part of my broader project to promote rationality to the masses! If you want to help, email me at gleb@intentionalinsights.org
ClearerThinking's Fact-Checking 2.0
by Stefan_Schubert — 2015-10-22T21:16:58.544Z

Cross-posted from Huffington Post. See also The End of Bullshit at the Hands of Critical Rationalism.
Debating season is in full swing, and as per usual the presidential candidates are playing fast and loose with the truth. Fact-checking sites such as PolitiFact and FactCheck.org have had plenty of easy targets in the debates so far. For instance, in the CNN Republican debate on September 16, Fiorina made several dubious claims about the Planned Parenthood video, as did Cruz about the Iran agreement. Similarly, in the CNN Democratic debate on October 13, Sanders falsely claimed that the U.S. has "more wealth and income inequality than any other country", whereas Chafee fudged the data on his Rhode Island record. No doubt we are going to see more of that in the rest of the presidential campaign. The fact-checkers won't need to worry about finding easy targets.

Research shows that fact-checking actually does make a difference. Incredible as it may seem, the candidates would probably have been even more careless with the truth if it weren't for the fact-checkers. To some extent, fact-checkers are a deterrent to politicians inclined to stretch the truth.

At the same time, the fact that falsehoods and misrepresentations of the truth are still so common shows that this deterrence effect is not particularly strong. This raises the question how we can make it stronger. Is there a way to improve on PolitiFact's and FactCheck.org's model - Fact-Checking 2.0, if you will?

Spencer Greenberg of ClearerThinking and I have developed a tool which we hope could play that role. Greenberg has created an application to embed videos of recorded debates and then add subtitles to them. In these subtitles, I point out falsehoods and misrepresentations of the truth at the moment when the candidates make them. For instance, when Fiorina says about the Planned Parenthood video that there is "a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain", I write in the subtitles:

We think that reading that a candidate's statement is false just as it is made could have quite a striking effect. It could trigger more visceral feelings among the viewers than standard fact-checking, which is published in separate articles. To over and over again read in the subtitles that what you're being told simply isn't true should o...
[LINK] 23andme now approved by the FDA to deliver health reports
by username2 — 2015-10-22T01:33:07.153Z

http://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/a-new-23andme-experience/

Looks like they were finally able to work out something with the FDA, and are back up and running. On the one hand, I'm very excited about the return of personalized genetic testing, but on the other hand I'm disappointed that their price doubled to $199. I was going to get kits for my 4-member family for Christmas, but that won't be feasible now.

Another interesting release from 23andme that came out at the same time is their [transparency report](https://www.23andme.com/transparency-report/), which shows how many requests from law enforcement they have gotten for customer DNA access, and what percentage they have gone through with.
Rationality Reading Group: Part L: The Simple Math of Evolution
by Gram_Stone — 2015-10-21T21:50:02.379Z

This is part of a semi-monthly reading group on Eliezer Yudkowsky's ebook, Rationality: From AI to Zombies. For more information about the group, see the announcement post.

Welcome to the Rationality reading group. This fortnight we discuss Minds: An Introduction (pp. 539-545), Interlude: The Power of Intelligence (pp. 547-550), and Part L: The Simple Math of Evolution (pp. 553-613). This post summarizes each article of the sequence, linking to the original LessWrong post where available.

Minds: An Introduction

Interlude: The Power of Intelligence

L. The Simple Math of Evolution

131. An Alien God - Evolution is awesomely powerful, unbelievably stupid, incredibly slow, monomaniacally singleminded, irrevocably splintered in focus, blindly shortsighted, and itself a completely accidental process. If evolution were a god, it would not be Jehovah, but H. P. Lovecraft's Azathoth, the blind idiot god burbling chaotically at the center of everything.

132. The Wonder of Evolution - The wonder of the first replicator was not how amazingly well it replicated, but that a first replicator could arise, at all, by pure accident, in the primordial seas of Earth. That first replicator would undoubtedly be devoured in an instant by a sophisticated modern bacterium. Likewise, the wonder of evolution itself is not how well it works, but that a brainless, accidentally occurring optimization process can work at all. If you praise evolution for being such a wonderfully intelligent Creator, you're entirely missing the wonderful thing about it.

133. Evolutions Are Stupid (But Work Anyway) - Modern evolutionary theory gives us a definite picture of evolution's capabilities. If you praise evolution one millimeter higher than this, you are not scoring points against creationists, you are just being factually inaccurate. In particular we can calculate the probability and time for advantageous genes to rise to fixation. For example, a mutation conferring a 3% advantage would have only a 6% probability of surviving, and if it did so, would take 875 generations to rise to fixation in a population of 500,000 (on average).

134. No Evolutions for Corporations or Nanodevices - Price's Equation describes quantitatively how the change in a average trait, in each generatio...
Meetup : Washington, D.C.: Wise Sayings
by RobinZ — 2015-10-21T20:50:50.174Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Wise Sayings

WHEN:
25 October 2015 03:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
National Portrait Gallery

Crossposted from mailing list. Meeting in courtyard, gathering from 3:00 to 3:30 to start at 3:30.

We'll be meeting to share and discuss wise sayings.

Side conversations are, as always, allowed and encouraged.

Upcoming meetups:

Nov. 1: Fun & Games

Nov. 8: Book Swap

Nov. 15: Why Ad Hominem Works

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Wise Sayings
[Link] Study: no big filter, we're just too early
by polymathwannabe — 2015-10-21T13:13:31.361Z

"Earth is one of the first habitable planets to form - and we're probably too early to the party to get a chance to meet future alien civilisations."

http://www.sciencealert.com/earth-was-one-of-the-first-habitable-planets-in-the-universe-and-most-are-yet-to-be-born-study-finds
The mystery of Brahms
by PhilGoetz — 2015-10-21T05:12:47.749Z

I'm interested in how people form valuations of the opinions of others. One domain to study is art. We have a long historic record of how the elite arbiters of taste have decided what artists and what artworks were great.

This is more relevant to 21st century American thought than many of you probably think. The defaults we assume, the stories that are told on television and in our movies, the things taught in our colleges, were partly determined by assertions made by continental philosophers and psychologists of the 18th through 20th centuries, most of which they just made up. [1]

The process by which philosophers eventually get their views accepted into the Western canon looks the same to me as the process by which musicians or painters are accepted into or cast out of the Western canon. Neither has much to do with the quality of the product.

For centuries, artists have been judged not so much by the quality of their work as by its novelty, and by its ability to raise questions while resisting any definitive answers. As one art critic wrote, "Probably more people have thought Hamlet a work of art because they found it interesting, than have found it interesting because it is a work of art. It is the Mona Lisa of literature."

Ironically, that was T. S. Eliot, just a few years before writing "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and writing rave reviews of James Joyce's Ulysses.

I think novelty was the main criterion for artistic greatness by the middle of the 19th century. It was almost the only criterion, in all of the fine arts, by 1925.

But there is one artist who sticks out among the desperate attention-seeking artistes like an ordinary thumb: Brahms. Brahms accomplished something that, AFAIK, no one else had in any fine art, in all of European history going back to the Middle Ages. He made art in a style that had gone out of fashion before he was born, not ironically, not nostalgically, but because he liked it. As I understand it, Brahms was still writing symphonies in the style of Beethoven after Chopin and Liszt were dead. And his work became both popular, and accepted by the elite arbiters of taste into the canon, not for introducing any new style, but simply for being enjoyable. Or, as an unsophisticated ignoramus might say, good.

That would be analogous to a philosopher's ideas being accepted just for being correct!

Is that a fair representation...