trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Positive vs. Normative Rationality
by NatashaRostova — 2016-12-16T06:50:36.270Z

[Epistemic Status: Highly speculative/experimental. Playing around with ideas on rationality. Extremely interested in input, criticism, or other perspectives]

I.)

Throughout the 20th century the University of Chicago school of thought seems to have generated the most positive rational analysis, which branched out across the social sciences among economist types. These guys took a positive view as a given. Their research interests were in studying how these agents would form equilibrium, or lead to suboptimal outcomes in politics or markets, rather than commenting on what an individual ought to do.

While their analysis was based on positive rationality, these guys clearly had preferences for how the world should run that made its way into their analysis. And these preferences rest gently upon the view that humans are capable of identifying, solving, and building themselves a more perfect world. Philosopher of Science, Karl Popper, thought it was a disturbing fact that even the most abstract fields seemed to be 'motivated and unconsciously inspired by political hopes and by Utopian dreams.'

I remember during my grad degree talking to my British Political Game Theory professor during his office hours. I wanted to know how he built his models. They were theoretical and abstract models, but creating them required inspiration from reading books, or the news, or staring out your window at the sky. Wouldn't that make them empirical then? I know people get annoyed at logical positivists saying “Sure, sure, those chemical bond equations work today but can you prove they will work tomorrow?” Unfortunately, I don't think political game theory has this same predictive grasp on reality to dismiss those concerns are boring.

It was a few years later when I was studying Neural Nets, that I began thinking back towards game theory. If all humans were glorified computers, then game theory modelling meant using our brains to capture information from reality and mapping out the structure of a game and the preferences of an agent. Our brains were the estimator in this model, which meant all game theory meant to model reality was estimated. It was just estimated using our neural network. It seems trivial when I write it out, but the current methods for evaluating these types of models still seem to be based on a non-predictive intuition.

When I...
Circles of discussion
by Paul Crowley — 2016-12-16T04:35:28.086Z

On Wednesday I had lunch with Raph Levien, and came away with a picture of how a website that fostered the highest quality discussion might work.

Principles:

It’s possible that the right thing is a quick fix to Less Wrong as it is; this is about exploring what could be done if we started anew.

If we decided to start anew, what the software should do is only one part of what would need to be decided; that’s the part I address here.

As Anna Salamon set out, the goal is to create a commons of knowledge, such that a great many people have read the same stuff. A system that tailored what you saw to your own preferences would have its own strengths but would work entirely against this goal.

I therefore think the right goal is to build a website whose content reflects the preferences of one person, or a small set of people. In what follows I refer to those people as the “root set”.

A commons needs a clear line between the content that’s in and the content that’s out. Much of the best discussion is on closed mailing lists; it will be easier to get the participation of time-limited contributors if there’s a clear line of what discussion we want them to have read, and it’s short.

However this alone excludes a lot of people who might have good stuff to add; it would be good to find a way to get the best of both worlds between a closed list and an open forum.

I want to structure discussion as a set of concentric circles.

Discussion in the innermost circle forms part of the commons of knowledge all can be assumed to be familiar with; surrounding it are circles of discussion where the bar is progressively lower. With a slider, readers choose which circle they want to read.

Content from rings further out may be pulled inwards by the votes of trusted people.

Content never moves outwards except in the case of spam/abuse.

Users can create top-level content in further-out rings and allow the votes of other users to move it closer to the centre. Users are encouraged to post whatever they want in the outermost rings, to treat it as one would an open thread or similar; the best content will be voted inwards.

Trust in users flows through endorsements starting from the root set.

More specifics on what that vision might look like:

The site gives all content (posts, top-level comments, and responses) a star rating from 0 to 5 wh

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Meetup : Baltimore Area / UMBC Weekly Meetup
by iarwain1 — 2016-12-16T00:55:00.474Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Baltimore Area / UMBC Weekly Meetup

WHEN:
18 December 2016 08:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
Performing Arts and Humanities Bldg Room 456, 1000 Hilltop Cir, Baltimore, MD 21250

Meeting is on 4th floor of the Performing Arts and Humanities Building. Permit parking designations do not apply on weekends, so park pretty much wherever you want.

Discussion article for the meetup : Baltimore Area / UMBC Weekly Meetup
Meetup : Washington, D.C.: Game Theory
by RobinZ — 2016-12-15T15:35:49.110Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Game Theory

WHEN:
18 December 2016 03:30:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture

We will be meeting in the courtyard to discuss game theory. One of the regulars has volunteered to give an introduction to the mathematics of it for any who are interested.

Upcoming meetups:

Dec. 25: no meetup (Christmas)

Jan. 1: Fun & Games

Jan. 8: Effective Altruism

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Game Theory
Meetup : SF Meetup: Short Talks
by maia — 2016-12-15T05:01:41.855Z

Discussion article for the meetup : SF Meetup: Short Talks

WHEN:
19 December 2016 06:15:29PM (-0800)

WHERE:
1655 Mission St., SF

Please note: the location and contact phone for this meetup have been CHANGED since it was posted!!

We’ll be meeting to give and listen to very short talks!

We’ll do 7-minute lightning talks with 3 additional minutes allowed for questions. We’ll also limit the number of programming-related talks to no more than half of all talks, in order to promote variety. A talk doesn’t have to be formal, planned, or even something that you’d expect someone to Give A Talk About; it can be as simple as telling the group about something you find interesting or cool. In the past, we’ve had people talk about topics like: how complicated the process of organizing fresh food for airplane flights is, their experience volunteering for a local political campaign, a video game they were designing and writing, and many others.

We don't expect any sort of preparation or practice for these kinds of talks. They're very casual and the expectations are low. If your talk isn't great, it's okay because we'll just move on to another one in a few minutes. If it helps, think of it this way: you're just being given the conversational floor for a few minutes, in a slightly more organized way than usual.

For help getting into the building, please call (or text, with a likely-somewhat-slower response rate): three zero one, three five six, five four two four.

Format:

We meet and start hanging out at 6:15, but don’t officially start doing the meetup topic until 6:45-7 to accommodate stragglers. Usually there is a food order that goes out before we start the meetup topic.

About these meetups:

The mission of the SF LessWrong meetup is to provide a fun, low-key social space with some structured interaction, where new and non-new community members can mingle and have interesting conversations. Everyone is welcome.

We explicitly encourage people to split off from the main conversation or diverge from the topic if that would be more fun for them (moving side conversations into a separate part of the space if appropriate). Meetup topics are here as a tool to facilitate fun interaction, and we certainly don’t want them to inhibit it.

NOTE: This will be the last SF Meetup of 2016.

Discussion article for th

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Should you share your goals
by Elo — 2016-12-14T23:27:15.748Z

Original post: http://bearlamp.com.au/?p=507&preview=true

It's complicated. And depends on the environment in which you share your goals.

Scenario 1: you post on facebook "This month I want to lose 1kg, I am worried I can't do it - you guys should show me support". Your friends; being the best of aspiring rationalist friends; believe your instructions are thought out and planned, After all your goal is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely (SMART). In the interest of complying with your request you get 17 likes and 10 comments of "wow awesome" and "you go man" and "that's the way to do it". Even longer ones of, "good planning will help you achieve your goals", and some guy saying how he lost 2 kilos in a month, so 1kg should be easy as cake.

When you read all the posts your brain goes "wow, lost weight like that", "earn't the adoration of my friends for doing the thing", and rewards you dopamine for your social support. I feel great! So you have a party, eat what you like, relax and enjoy that feeling. One month later you managed to gain a kilo not lose one.

Scenario 2: You post on facebook, "This month I want to lose 2kg (since last month wasn't so great). So all of you better hold me to that, and help me get there". In the interest of complying with you, all your aspiring rationalist friends post things like, "Yea right", "I'll believe it when I see it". "you couldn't do 1kg last month, what makes you think you can do it now?", "I predict he will lose one kilo but then put it back on again. haha", "you're so full of it. You want to lose weight; I expect to see you running with me at 8am 3 times a week". two weeks later someone posts to your wall, "hows the weight loss going? I think you failed already", and two people comment, "I bet he did", and "actually he did come running in the morning".

When you read all the posts your brain goes; "looks like I gotta prove it to them that I can do this, and hey this could be easy if they help me exercise", no dopamine reward because I didn't get the acclaim. After two weeks you are starting to lose track of the initial momentum, the chocolate is starting to move to the front of the cupboard again. When you see the post on your wall you double down; throw out the chocolate so it's not in your temptation, and message the runner that you will be there tomorrow. After a mo...
Minimax forecasting
by Vanessa Kosoy — 2016-12-14T08:22:13.000Z

%&latex

% operators that are separated from the operand by a space

% operators that require brackets

% operators that require parentheses

% Paper specific

This post continues the research programme of attacking the grain of truth problem by departure from the Bayesian paradigm. In the previous post, I suggested using Savage's minimax regret decision rule, but here I fall back to the simple minimax decision rule. This is because the mathematics is considerably simpler, and minimax should be sufficient to get IUD play in general games and Nash equilibrium in zero-sum two-player games. I hope to build on these results to get analogous results for minimax regret in the future.

We consider "semi-Bayesian" agents following the minimax expected utility decision rule, in oblivious environments with full monitoring (a setting that we will refer to as "forecasting"). This setting is considered in order to avoid the need to enforce exploration, as a preparation for analysis of general environments. We show that such agents satisfy a certain asymptotic optimality theorem. Intuitively, this theorem means that whenever the environment satisfies an incomplete model that is included in the prior, the agent will eventually learn this model i.e. extract at least as much utility as can be guaranteed for this model.

Appendix A contains the proofs of all results. Appendix B contains some theorems from the literature together with a corollary used in Appendix A.

##Notation

Given X a topological space, P(X) will denote the space of Borel probability measures on X. We regard it as a topological space using the weak∗ topology. Given x∈X, δx∈P(X) is defined by δx(A):=[[x∈A]]. Given μ,ν∈P(X), dtv(μ,ν) stands for the total variation distance between μ and ν. We denote PC(X) the set of non-empty convex compact subsets of P(X).

Given X a finite set, X∗ denotes the set of finite strings in alphabet X, i.e. X∗:=⨆n∈NXn. Xω denotes the set of infinite strings in alphabet X. Given x∈X∗⊔Xω, |x|∈N⊔{∞} is the length of string. Given 0≤n<|x|, xn∈X is the n-th symbol in x. Given 0≤n≤|x|, x<n is the prefix of x of length n. Given x,y∈X∗⊔Xω, the notations x⊏y, x⊑y, x⊏/y and x⋢y mean "x is a proper prefix of y", "x is a prefix of y" and their negations. λX∈X∗ is the empty string and X+:=X∗∖λX.

##Elementary properties of minimax

Fix S and E compact Polish spaces, S r

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The Partial Control Fallacy
by Darmani — 2016-12-14T02:57:24.773Z

This is a cross-post from http://pathsensitive.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-partial-control-fallacy.html

Around the time I started grad school, I applied for a few prestigious fellowships. Winning is determined by several factors. Some are just an application, while some have a follow-up interview, but the applications all get scored on a rubric that looks roughly like this:

50%: Past research

30%: Letters of recommendation

10%: Transcript

10%: Personal Essays

Naturally, I proceeded to pour massive amounts of time into the essays, letting it consume much of my free time for the month of October.

Getting that Fellowship will really help me have a successful graduate career. Writing better essays will help me get the Fellowship. Therefore, to the extent that I care about having a successful graduate career, I should be willing to work hard on those essays.

But if the real goal is a successful graduate career, then at some point shouldn’t I put those essays down and do something else, like reading a few papers or practicing public speaking?

This, I dub the Partial Control Fallacy. It’s where, if there’s some outcome you want, and you only control a couple factors that affect that outcome, you decide how much to try to improve those factors as if you were actually improving the entire outcome. It’s closely connected to the 80/20 principle: it’s when you only have control over that last 20%, but you pretend it’s the whole thing and work on it accordingly. It’s when the 80/20 principle would suggest doing nothing at all.

Here are some more examples:

Trying to get any competitive award that’s judged mostly by your past. The best college application is stellar grades and some good awards, the best resume is a great network and lots of success stories, and the best pitch to VCs is a rock-solid business.

Thinking really hard about what to say to that cute guy or girl across the room. Most of what happens is determined before you open your mouth by what they’re looking for and whether they’re attracted to you.

Worrying about small optimizations when writing code, like avoiding copying small objects. Most of good performance comes from the high-level design of the system.

I think I’ve been guilty of all three of these at one point or another. I don’t want to think about how much time

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Canons (What are they good for?)
by Benquo — 2016-12-13T21:34:04.708Z

People in the Effective Altruist and Rationalist intellectual communities have been discussing moving discourse back into the public sphere lately. I agree with this goal and want to help. There are reasons to think that we need not only public discourse, but public fora. One reason is that there's value specifically in having a public set of canonical writing that members of an intellectual community are expected to have read. Another is that writers want to be heard, and on fora where people can easily comment, it's easier to tell whether people are listening and benefiting from your writing.

This post begins with a brief review of the case for public discourse. For reasons I hope to make clear in an upcoming post, I encourage people who want to comment on that to click through to the posts I linked to by Sarah Constantin and Anna Salamon. For another perspective you can read my prior post on this topic, Be secretly wrong. The second section explores the case for a community canon, suggesting that there are three distinct desiderata that can be optimized for separately.

This is an essay exploring and introducing a few ideas, not advancing an argument.

Why public discourse?

People have been discussing moving discourse back into the public sphere lately. Sarah Constantin has argued that public criticism-friendly discussion is important for truth-seeking and creating knowledge capital:

There seems to have been an overall drift towards social networks as opposed to blogs and forums, and in particular things like:

the drift of political commentary from personal blogs to “media” aggregators like The Atlantic, Vox, and Breitbart

the migration of fandom from LiveJournal to Tumblr

The movement of links and discussions to Facebook and Twitter as opposed to link-blogs and comment sections

[...]

But one thing I have noticed personally is that people have gotten intimidated by more formal and public kinds of online conversation. I know quite a few people who used to keep a “real blog” and have become afraid to touch it, preferring instead to chat on social media. It’s a weird kind of locus for perfectionism — nobody ever imagined that blogs were meant to be masterpieces. But I do see people fleeing towards more ephem

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Debate and Dialectic
by Gordon Seidoh Worley — 2016-12-12T19:40:48.139Z
Link: https://mapandterritory.org/debate-and-dialectic-850b3585dad4

Election season is over in the US, but folks are still talking about how divided political conversation is. We hear that people are trapped in filter bubbles that limit their exposure to varying opinions and that America is more divided than ever thanks to modern media enabling our tribalism. And although I suspect we are primarily seeing a return to normal levels of tribalism from the unusual dream time of cosmopolitanism enabled by recent mass migration to cities that ended in the 1970s, there is a deeper source of divide found in the structure of our public conversations that lies beneath the stormy seas of politics.

Specifically, most public political discussion is debate. News programs do this explicitly both when they organize formal debates between candidates and everyday when they ask experts to argue policy. Politicians and experts also do this implicitly when they give solo speeches by speaking in the context of what others have said and arguing for their positions against others. And given how politicians and experts are often criticized for going “off point” when they fail to maximize their opportunities to argue for their positions, it seems there is little room for anything other than debate in political discourse.

A similar pattern exists outside politics. Professors debate contentious academic topics. Theologians contest the fine points of religion. Lawyers argue cases to convince judges and juries. People even debate against themselves by making pro/con lists. All of these are attempts to find the truth, to understand reality as it is, and all do so through adversarial talk.

If this is what you’re used to this probably seems normal, but there is a fundamental problem with seeking truth through debate. To understand why, consider what’s happening in debate from a game theoretic perspective. Two parties, A and B, are presenting information to a third party, C, who will use the information to develop beliefs. The payout is something like this: C wins if C ends up with true beliefs; A wins if C adopts A’s beliefs, and B wins if C adopts B’s beliefs. The game is not zero-sum: if A’s beliefs are true then C and A can win; likewise B and C can both win. But if we ignore C’s payout, the game is zero-sum: A or B or both must lose and at most one can win. This informs the strategies that A and B tak...
Further discussion of CFAR’s focus on AI safety, and the good things folks wanted from “cause neutrality”
by AnnaSalamon — 2016-12-12T19:39:50.084Z

Follow-up to:

CFAR's new focus, and AI safety

CFAR's new mission statement (link post; links to our website).

In the days since we published our previous post, a number of people have come up to me and expressed concerns about our new mission. Several of these had the form “I, too, think that AI safety is incredibly important — and that is why I think CFAR should remain cause-neutral, so it can bring in more varied participants who might be made wary by an explicit focus on AI.”

I would here like to reply to these people and others, and to clarify what is and isn’t entailed by our new focus on AI safety.

First: Where are CFAR’s activities affected by the cause(s) it chooses to prioritize?

The question of which causes CFAR aims to help (via its rationality training) plugs into our day-to-day activities in at least 4 ways:

1) It affects which people we target. If AI safety is our aim, we must then backchain from “Who is likely both to impact AI safety better if they have more rationality skills, and also to be able to train rationality skills with us?” to who to target with specialized workshops.

2) It affects which rationality skills we prioritize. AI safety work benefits from the ability to reason about abstract, philosophically confusing issues (notably: AI); which presumably benefits from various rationality skills. Competitive marathon running probably also benefits from certain rationality skills; but they are probably different ones. Designing an “art of rationality” that can support work on AI safety is different from designing an “art of rationality” for some other cause. (Although see point C, below.)

3) It affects what metrics or feedback systems we make interim use of, and how we evaluate our work. If “AI safety via rationality training” is the mission, then “person X produced work A that looks existential risk-reducing on our best guess, and X says they would’ve been less able to do A without us” is the obvious proxy measure of whether we’re having impact. If we have this measure, we can use our measurements of it to steer.

4) It affects explicit curriculum at AI-related or EA-related events. E.g., it affects whether we’re allowed to run events at which participant

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Open thread, Dec. 12 - Dec. 18, 2016
by MrMind — 2016-12-12T07:56:23.929Z

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

4. Unflag the two options "Notify me of new top level comments on this article" and "Make this post available under..." before submitting.