trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Stories for exponential growth
by VipulNaik — 2014-04-16T15:15:46.369Z

Disclaimer: This is a collection of some simple stories for exponential growth. I've tried to list the main ones, but I might well have missed some, and I welcome feedback.

The topic of whether and why growth trends are exponential has been discussed on LessWrong before. For instance, see the previous LessWrong posts Why are certain trends so precisely exponential? and Mathematical simplicity bias and exponential functions. The purpose of this post is to explore some general theoretical reasons for expecting exponential growth, and the assumptions that these models rely on. I'll look at economic growth, population dynamics, and technological growth.

TL;DR

Exponential growth (or decay) arises from a situation where the change in level (or growth rate) is proportional to the level. This can be modeled by either a continuous or a discrete differential equation.

Feedback based on proportionality is usually part of the story, but could occur directly for the measured variable or in a hidden variable that affects the measured variable.

In a simplified balanced economic growth model, growth is exponential because the addition to capital stock in a given year is proportional to output in that year, depreciation rate is constant, and output next year is proportional to capital stock this year.

In a simple population dynamics model, growth is exponential under the assumption that the average number of kids per person stays constant.

An alternative story of exponential growth is that performance is determined by multiplying many quantities, and we can work to make proportional improvements in the quantities one after the other. This can explain roughly exponential growth but not close-to-precise exponential growth.

Stories of intra-industry or inter-industry coordination can explain a more regular exponential growth pattern than one might otherwise expect.

#1: Exponential arises from change in level (or growth rate) being proportional to the level

Brief mathematical introduction for people who have a basic knowledge of calculus. Suppose we're trying to understand how a quantity x (this could be national GDP of a country, or the price of 1 GB of NAND flash, or any other indicator) changes as a function of time t. Exponential growth means that we can write:

x = Cat

where C > 0, a > 1 (exponential decay would mean a < 1). More conventionally, it is written in the fo...
Different time horizons for forecasting
by VipulNaik — 2014-04-16T03:30:26.853Z

Disclaimer: This post contains some very preliminary thoughts on a topic that I believe would be of interest to some people here. There are probably better expositions on the subject that I haven't been able to find. If you know of such expositions, I'd appreciate being pointed to them.

There are qualitative differences between the types of forecasting that is feasible, or most suitable, for different time horizons. In this post, I discuss some of the possibilities for such time horizons and the forecasts that can be made for those.

The present (today)

Predicting the present doesn't involve prediction so much as it involves measurement. But that doesn't mean it's a slam dunk: one still needs to make a lot of measurements to come up with precise and accurate quantities. One cannot simply count the entire population of a region in one stroke. Doing so requires planning and a detailed infrastructure. And in many cases, it's not possible to measure perfectly, so we measure in part and then use theory (such as sampling theory) to extrapolate from there.

The very near future (tomorrow)

The very near future differs from the present in that it cannot be measured directly, but measuring it is often no more complicated than measuring the present. In a discrete model, it's the next step beyond the present. An example of a tomorrow prediction is: "what restaurants will be open in the city of Chicago tomorrow?" For any restaurant to be open tomorrow, it is most likely either already operating today, or has applied to open tomorrow. In either case, a good stock-taking of the situation today would give a clear idea of what's in store for tomorrow. Another example is when people make projections about employment or GDP based on asking people about their estimated workforce sizes or production levels in the near future.

Predictions about the near future involve a combination of the following:

assuming persistence from the present

asking people for their intentions and estimates

identifying and adjusting for any major sources of difference between today and tomorrow. In the restaurant case, an example of a major source of difference would be if "tomorrow" happened to be a major festival where restaurants customarily closed.

Who forecasts the very near future? As it turns out, a lot of people. I gave examples of economic indicator estimates based on surveys of representative samp...
Group Rationality Diary, April 16-30
by therufs — 2014-04-16T03:04:00.537Z

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for April 16-30.

It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:

Established a useful new habit

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

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

Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior

Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something

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

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

Tried doing any of the above and failed

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

Thanks to cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating.

Previous diary: April 1-15

Next diary: May 1-15

Rationality diaries archive
Using the logarithmic timeline to understand the future
by VipulNaik — 2014-04-16T02:00:52.368Z

Disclaimer: I think what I've said is sufficiently obvious and basic that I really doubt that it's original, but I can't easily find any other source that lays out the points I made here. If you are aware of such a source, please let me know in the comments here and I'll credit it. I'd also be happy to be pointed to any relevant literature. It's also possible that I'm overlooking some obvious rejoinders that render my claims wrong or irrelevant; if so, I appreciate criticism on that front.

The logarithmic timeline is a timeline where time is presented on a logarithmic scale. Note that this differs from the idea of plotting logarithms of quantities with respect to time (a common practice when understanding exponential growth). In those plots, the vertical axis (the dependent variable plotted as a function of time) is plotted logarithmically. With the logarithmic timeline, the time axis itself is plotted logarithmically. If we're plotting quantities as a function of time, then using a logarithmic timeline has an effect that's in many ways the opposite of the effect of using a logarithmic scale for the quantity being plotted.

Wikipedia has a page on the logarithmic timeline (see also this detailed logarithmic timeline of the universe and this timeline of the far future), but I haven't seen the topic discussed much in the context of forecasting precision and accuracy, so I thought I'd do a post on it (I'll list some relevant literature I found at the end of the post).

TL;DR

Here's an overview of the sections of the post:

What the logarithmic timeline means for understanding forecasts, and how it differs from the linear timeline.

Crudely, the logarithmic timeline is useful because uncertainties accumulate over time, with the amount of uncertainty accumulated being roughly proportional to how far out we are in the future.

Mathematically, The logarithmic timeline is suitable for processes whose time evolution is functionally described in terms of the product of time with a parameter whose precise value we are uncertain about.

The logarithmic timeline can also be important for the asymptotic analysis of more general functional forms, if the dominant term behaves in the manner described in #3.

I don't know if the logarithmic timeline is correctly calibrated for comparing the value of particular levels of forecasting precision and accuracy.

The logarithmic timeline is re

...
The Cowpox of Doubt
by Scott Alexander — 2014-04-16T01:04:58.000Z

I remember hearing someone I know try to explain rationality to his friends.

He started with “It’s important to have correct beliefs. You might think this is obvious, but think about creationists and homeopaths and people who think the moon landing was a hoax.” And then further on in this vein.

And I thought: “NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!”

I will make a confession. Every time someone talks about the stupidity of creationists, moon-hoaxers, and homeopaths, I cringe.

It’s not that moon-hoaxers, homeopaths et al aren’t dumb. They are. It’s not even that these people don’t do real harm. They do.

(although probably less than people think; people rarely stop conventional treatment in favor of homeopathy, and both a popular website and a review article have a really hard time finding more than a handful of people genuinely harmed by it. Moon hoaxes seem even less dangerous, unless of course you are standing near Buzz Aldrin when you talk about them.)

What annoys me about the people who harp on moon-hoaxing and homeopathy – without any interest in the rest of medicine or space history – is that it seems like an attempt to Other irrationality.

(yes, I did just use “other” as a verb. Maybe I’ve been hanging around Continental types too much lately.)

It’s saying “Look, over here! It’s irrational people, believing things that we can instantly dismiss as dumb. Things we feel no temptation, not one bit, to believe. It must be that they are defective and we are rational.”

But to me, the rationality movement is about Self-ing irrationality.

(yes, I did just use “self” as a verb. I don’t even have the excuse of it being part of a philosophical tradition)

It is about realizing that you, yes you, might be wrong about the things that you’re most certain of, and nothing can save you except maybe extreme epistemic paranoia.

Talking about moon-hoaxers and homeopaths too much, at least the way we do it, is counterproductive to this goal. Throw examples of obviously stupid false beliefs at someone, and they start thinking all false beliefs are obvious. Give too many examples of false beliefs that aren’t tempting to them, and they start believing they’re immune to temptation.

And it raises sloppiness to a virtue.

Take homeopathy. I can’t even count the num...
The effect of effectiveness information on charitable giving
by Unnamed — 2014-04-15T16:43:24.702Z

A new working paper by economists Dean Karlan and Daniel Wood, The Effect of Effectiveness: Donor Response to Aid Effectiveness in a Direct Mail Fundraising Experiment.

The Abstract:

We test how donors respond to new information about a charity’s effectiveness. Freedom from Hunger implemented a test of its direct marketing solicitations, varying letters by whether they include a discussion of their program’s impact as measured by scientific research. The base script, used for both treatment and control, included a standard qualitative story about an individual beneficiary. Adding scientific impact information has no effect on whether someone donates, or how much, in the full sample. However, we find that amongst recent prior donors (those we posit more likely to open the mail and thus notice the treatment), large prior donors increase the likelihood of giving in response to information on aid effectiveness, whereas small prior donors decrease their giving. We motivate the analysis and experiment with a theoretical model that highlights two predictions. First, larger gift amounts, holding education and income constant, is a proxy for altruism giving (as it is associated with giving more to fewer charities) versus warm glow giving (giving less to more charities). Second, those motivated by altruism will respond positively to appeals based on evidence, whereas those motivated by warm glow may respond negatively to appeals based on evidence as it turns off the emotional trigger for giving, or highlights uncertainty in aid effectiveness.

In the experimental condition (for one of the two waves of mailings), the donors received a mailing with this information about the charity's effectiveness:

In order to know that our programs work for people like Rita, we look for more than anecdotal evidence. That is why we have coordinated with independent researchers [at Yale University] to conduct scientifically rigorous impact studies of our programs. In Peru they found that women who were offered our Credit with Education program had 16% higher profits in their businesses than those who were not, and they increased profits in bad months by 27%! This is particularly important because it means our program helped women generate more stable incomes throughout the year.

These independent researchers used a randomized evaluation, the methodology routinely used in me

...
Meetup : Boston - Two Parables on Language and Philosophy
by Vika — 2014-04-15T12:10:14.008Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Boston - Two Parables on Language and Philosophy

WHEN:
20 April 2014 03:30:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
MIT, 25 Ames St, Cambridge, MA

Sam Rosen will continue his talk from March 23 with Parable 2 on Language and Philosophy, starting at 4pm.

Cambridge/Boston-area Less Wrong meetups start at 3:30pm, and have an alternating location:

1st Sunday meetups are at Citadel in Porter Sq, at 98 Elm St, apt 1, Somerville.

3rd Sunday meetups are in MIT's building 66 at 25 Ames St, room 156. Room number subject to change based on availability; signs will be posted with the actual room number.

(We also have last Wednesday meetups at Citadel at 7pm.)

Our default schedule is as follows:

—Phase 1: Arrival, greetings, unstructured conversation.

—Phase 2: The headline event. This starts promptly at 4pm, and lasts 30-60 minutes.

—Phase 3: Further discussion. We'll explore the ideas raised in phase 2, often in smaller groups.

—Phase 4: Dinner.

Discussion article for the meetup : Boston - Two Parables on Language and Philosophy
My Heartbleed learning experience and alternative to poor quality Heartbleed instructions.
by aisarka — 2014-04-15T08:15:10.744Z

Due to the difficulty of finding high-quality Heartbleed instructions, I have discovered that perfectly good, intelligent rationalists either didn't do all that was needed and ended up with a false sense of security or did things that increased their risk without realizing it and needed to take some additional steps. Part of the problem is that organizations who write for end users do not specialize in computer security and vice versa, so many of the Heartbleed instructions for end users had issues. The issues range from conflicting and confusing information to outright ridiculous hype. As an IT person and a rationalist, I knew better than to jump to the proposing solutions phase before researching [1]. Recognizing the need for well thought out Heartbleed instructions, I spent 10-15 hours sorting through the chaos to create more comprehensive Heartbleed instructions. I'm not a security expert, but as an IT person who has read about computer security out of a desire for professional improvement and also due to curiosity and is familiar with various research issues, cognitive biases, logical fallacies, etc, I am not clueless either. In light of this being a major event that some sources are calling one of the worst security problems ever to happen on the Internet [2], that has been proven to be more than a theoretical risk (Four people hacked the keys to the castle out of Cloudflare's challenge in just one day.) [3], that has been badly exploited (900 Canadian social insurance numbers were leaked today. [4]), and some evidence exists that it may have been used for spying for a long time (EFF found evidence of someone spying on IRC conversations. [5]), I think it's important to share my compilation of Heartbleed instructions just so that a better list of instructions is out there. More importantly, this disaster is a very rare rationality learning opportunity: reflecting on our behavior and comparing it with what we realize we should have done after becoming more informed may help us see patches of irrationality that could harm us during future disasters. For that reason, I did some rationality checks on my own behavior by asking myself a set of questions. I have of course included the questions.

Heartbleed Research Challenges this Post Addresses:

- There are apparent contradictions between sour...
Meetup : Moscow meet up
by Yuu — 2014-04-15T05:12:19.109Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow meet up

WHEN:
20 April 2014 04:00:00AM (+0400)

WHERE:
Russia, Moscow, ulitsa L'va Tolstogo 16

We will have:

Unicorns: false but useful beliefs, report.

Boundaries of rationality, discussion.

Cognitive behavioural therapy as a framework for daily rationality, report.

How to avoid multitasking and main issues of semantics, report.

We gather in the Yandex office, you need the first revolving door under the archway. Here is additional guide how to get there: link.
You can fill this one minute form (in Russian), to share your contact information.

We start at 16:00 and sometimes finish at night. Please pay attention that we only gather near the entrance and then come inside.

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow meet up
Unfriendly Natural Intelligence
by Gunnar_Zarncke — 2014-04-15T05:05:36.159Z

Related to: UFAI, Paperclip maximizer, Reason as memetic immune disorder

A discussion with Stefan (cheers, didn't get your email, please message me) during the European Community Weekend Berlin fleshed out an idea I had toyed around with for some time:

If a UFAI can wreak havoc by driving simple goals to extremes then so should driving human desires to extremes cause problems. And we should already see this.

Actually we do.

We know that just following our instincts on eating (sugar, fat) is unhealthy. We know that stimulating our pleasure centers more or less directly (drugs) is dangerous. We know that playing certain games can lead to comparable addiction. And the recognition of this has led to a large number of more or less fine-tuned anti-memes e.g. dieting, early drug prevention, helplines. These memes steering us away from such behaviors were selected for because they provided aggregate benefits to the (members of) social (sub) systems they are present in.

Many of these memes have become so self-evident we don't recognize them as such. Some are essential parts of highly complex social systems. What is the general pattern? Did we catch all the critical cases? Are the existing memes well-suited for the task?How are they related. Many are probably deeply woven into our culture and traditions.

Did we miss any anti-memes?

This last question really is at the core of this post. I think we lack some necessary memes keeping new exploitations of our desires in check. Some new ones result from our society a) having developed the capacity to exploit them and b) the scientific knowledge to know how to do this.

To structure our desires and their exploitation I started with a list which I'd now like to present and ask for discussion and addition to. This list basically takes our complexity of value and looks what happens if one factor is singled out and optimized for too much (where what too much means remains to be discussed).

The list:

Extreme Status

Extreme Consumption

Extreme Food Consumption

Extreme Satisfaction of Desire for Shelter

Extreme Curiosity

Science

Games

Generic Information

Extreme Empathy

Extreme Hate

Extreme Fear

Extreme Love/Romance

Extreme Sex Drive

Extreme Awe

Extreme Pleasure from other Aspects

And before going in detail you might ask yourself how each of...
Earnings of economics majors: general considerations
by JonahS — 2014-04-14T22:23:57.910Z

Some liberal arts majors make more money than others, but by far the ones who make the most are economics majors. The 2013-2014 Payscale Salary Report reports the following figures. The second column is median starting salary and the third is median mid-career salary, in thousands of dollars

Economics
50
96

Political Science
41
77

Philosophy
39
78

History
39
71

English Literature
40
71

Psychology
36
60

Sociology
37
55

This trend is robust, and I'll give more supporting data as an appendix at the end of the post.

The fact that economics majors make so much more is often taken to mean that majoring in economics raises future earnings. Is this true? In this post I'll discuss some general considerations relevant to determining this, and discuss the sort of data that one might try use to resolve the question. In future posts, I'll offer some such data, with analysis and discussion.

I'd welcome any other ideas for testing the hypotheses, as well as pushback on the conceptual framework, and/or alternative hypotheses.

As Bryan Caplan spells out in Economic Models of Education: A Typology for Future Reference, in general, a correlation between education and income can come from any of three things

Human capital acquisition: Education develops students' employable skills.

Ability bias: Obtaining an educational credential reflects greater or lesser pre-existing ability (that exists independently of what's learned in school), which is later reflected in earnings.

Signaling: An educational credential signals pre-existing ability (which as before, can be independent of what's learned in school) which makes employers more likely to hire one.

"Ability" here is best defined in a nonstandard way, as "traits conducive to making money." An example of such a trait is intelligence, but there are other traits that are conducive to making money, such as the desire to succeed in lucrative careers, that don't fit the standard definition of "ability." Similarly, aside from acquiring human capital, one can also acquire other traits conducive to making money, such as the desire to make money. With this background in mind, consider the following hypotheses:

Human capital acquisition — economics majors learn more employable skills in school than other the majors do, and this qualifies them for higher paying jobs.

...
Meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup (Note: change of location!)
by Maelin — 2014-04-14T13:52:19.451Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup (Note: change of location!)

WHEN:
18 April 2014 06:30:00PM (+1000)

WHERE:
2 Oranna Court, Glen Waverley, Victoria, Australia

PLEASE NOTE: CHANGE OF LOCATION

April's regular Social meetup is on this month, but our usual venue is no longer available, so we're going to experiment with the location. This month we are in Glen Waverley (see below for transport arrangements).

Social meetups are casual affairs where we chat and play games. We usually arrange some form of take-away for dinner for any who want to be part of it, but feel free to bring your own dinner if you'd prefer. The official start time is 18:30 but you won't upset anything if you turn up later on.

For this month, we are in Glen Waverley. If you're coming by public transport, catch a train on the Glen Waverley line and get off at Glen Waverley, then you can call either me (Richard, 0421-231-789) or Scott (0432-862-932) and we'll do a quick run to the station. Otherwise, there's plenty of parking nearby.

Hope to see you there! :)

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup (Note: change of location!)