trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
To perform best at work, look at Time & Energy account balance
by SerenaTan19 — 2019-03-25T19:37:46.299Z

Several weeks ago, I got a chance to join a talk hosting one of the very few female regional head at Google.

Despite not having any business background, she climbed the rank from entry level employee to become a regional head, surpassing everyone else from prestigious business degrees and rich experiences.

One success driver she mentioned got my attention.
Despite lagging very much behind at the beginning, the core to her success is that she always aims for 120% result of any task in front of her.

The reason why this interests me is not because of my fresh ears.

In fact, this is not the first time I heard of this concept.
Not the first time I get inspired of giving it all to whatever is in front.
Not the first time I try…and not the first time I fail.

Did I not put in enough effort?

No…in fact, I put in so much effort to make this concept come to live, not realising that while effort is highly important, it’s critically inadequate.

As I listened to this amazing regional head talking about different aspects of her life, I came to realisation on what I have always been missing so far.

To make each task yield 120%, apart from effort, we should also look at our time and energy balance.

Contributing the best on a task means to give the amount of time and energy in the level required to make the result best.

We cannot contribute what we don’t have.

No matter how much effort we try to give adequate time required for the best, we only have 24 hours a day.

No matter how much energy we try to put into each task, we only have a limited stream in each day.

Therefore, giving our best does not start from the moment we begin working…but from the moment we plan our schedule and project pipelines.

When having "Enough Time" is Not Enough
When my boss asked if I have enough time to take on one additional project, I would look at how much time is required to finish all the tasks on my desk and then, most of the time, said "Yes" thinking I have enough time to finish it all.

However, there is a difference between having enough time to finish it all and having time to make it best.

Coming back to evaluate all the projects in my pipeline, I realize that the time I have is only enough to finish all up, but not to go above and beyond.

I have two choices:

Finishing a lot of tasks with average results
OR

Complete major task with the best impact that goes beyond expectations

There is no right answ

...
Subagents, akrasia, and coherence in humans
by Kaj_Sotala — 2019-03-25T14:24:18.095Z

In

my previous posts

, I have been building up a model of mind as a collection of subagents with different goals, and no straightforward hierarchy. This then raises the question of how that collection of subagents can exhibit

coherent

behavior: after all, many ways of aggregating the preferences of a number of agents fail to create consistent preference orderings.

We can roughly describe coherence as the property that, if you become aware that there exists a more optimal strategy for achieving your goals than the one that you are currently executing, then you will switch to that better strategy. If an agent is not coherent in this way, then

bad things are likely to happen

to them.

Now, we all know that humans sometimes express incoherent behavior. But on the whole, people still do okay: the median person in a developed country still manages to survive until their body starts giving up on them, and typically also manages to have and raise some number of initially-helpless children until they are old enough to take care of themselves.

For a subagent theory of mind, we would like to have some explanation of when exactly the subagents manage to be collectively coherent (that is, change their behavior to some better one), and what are the situations in which they fail to do so. The conclusion of this post will be:

We are capable of changing our behaviors on occasions when the mind-system as a whole puts sufficiently high probability on the new behavior being better, when the new behavior is not being blocked by a particular highly weighted subagent (such as an IFS-style protector) that puts high probability on it being bad, and when we have enough

slack

in our lives for any new behaviors to be evaluated in the first place. Akrasia is subagent disagreement about what to do.

Correcting your behavior as a default

There are many situations in which we exhibit incoherent behavior simply because we’re not aware of it. For instance, suppose that I do my daily chores in a particular order, when doing them in some other order would save more time. If you point this out to me, I’m likely to just say “oh”, and then adopt the better system.

Similarly, several of the experiments which get people to exhibit incoherent behavior rely on showing different groups of people different formulations of the same question, and then indicating that different framings...
The Amish, and Strategic Norms around Technology
by Raemon — 2019-03-24T22:16:04.974Z

I was reading Legal Systems Very Different From Ours by David Friedman. The chapter on the Amish made a couple interesting claims, which changed my conception of that culture (although I'm not very confident that the Amish would endorse these claims as fair descriptions).

Strategic Norms Around Technology

The Amish relationship to technology is not "stick to technology from the 1800s", but rather "carefully think about how technology will affect your culture, and only include technology that does what you want."

So, electric heaters are fine. Central heating in a building is not. This is because if there's a space-heater in the living room, this encourages the family to congregate together. Whereas if everyone has heating in their room, they're more likely to spend time apart from each other.

Some communities allow tractors, but only if they don't have rubber tires. This makes them good for tilling fields but bad for driving around.

Cars and telephones are particularly important not to allow, because easy transportation and communication creates a slippery slope to full-connection to the outside world. And a lot of the Amish lifestyle depends on cutting themselves off from the various pressures and incentives present in the rest of the world.

Some Amish communities allow people to borrow telephones or cars from non-Amish neighbors. I might have considered this hypocritical. But in the context of "strategic norms of technology", it need not be. The important bit is to add friction to transportation and communication.

Competitive Dictatorship

Officially, most Amish congregations operate via something-like-consensus (I'm not sure I understood this). But Friedman's claim is that in practice, most people tend to go with what the local bishop says. This makes a bishop something like a dictator.

But, there are lots of Amish communities, and if you don't like the direction a bishop is pushing people in, or how they are resolving disputes, you can leave. There is a spectrum of communities ranging in how strict they are about about various rules, and they make decisions mostly independently.

So there is not only strategic norms around technology, but a fairly interesting, semi-systematic exploration of those norms.

Other Applications

I wouldn't want to be Amish-in-particular, but the setup here is very intere...
Did the recent blackmail discussion change your beliefs?
by Dagon — 2019-03-24T16:06:52.811Z

Various rationalist blogs and Less Wrong have recently posted on and discussed blackmail, and specifically legality and acceptability of such. I found the discussion unsatisfying, and I'm trying to understand why that is, and whether I'm alone in that.

As it was happening, it didn't feel like a particularly political topic - nobody seemed personally invested in the outcome. But it did seem like everyone (including myself, sometimes) was presenting examples or (over)generalizing to support their beliefs, and very few were seeking counterexamples or cruxes or lines of demarcation between different intuitions.

So - was this politics in disguise? Was some other bias interfering with the discussion? Was it useful and I just missed it? Did any sort of consensus emerge?
The Politics of Age (the Young vs. the Old)
by Martin Sustrik — 2019-03-24T06:40:04.359Z

Few days ago I've read an article in the local newspaper about Switzerland considering to lower the voting age to 16.

The reason I found it interesting was that it was not one of the old tired political discussions supported by the same old tired arguments that you typically encounter. In fact, it's a question that I have never thought of before.

Apparently, the discussion was triggered by the recent school strike for climate that went quite big in Switzerland. I've attended the demonstration in Zurich and it was not only big, it was really a kids' event. You could spot a grown-up here and there but they were pretty rare. (Btw, I think this movement is worth watching. Here, for the first time, I see a coordination on truly global level. It spans beyong western countries, with events being hosted in Asia, Pacific Islands, South America or Africa.)

Anyway, the main argument for lowering the voting age is to counter-balance the greying of the electorate.

Once again, this stems from what the climate stikers say: "The politicians who decide on these issues will be dead by the time the shit hits the fan. It will be us who'll have to deal with it. We should have a say in the matter."

But the question is broader: As the demographics change, with the birth rates dropping at crazy speed (China's population will start shrinking not that far in the future; Sub-saharan fartility rates had plummeted from 6.8 in 1970's to 4.85 in 2015), the age pyramid is going to look less like a pyramid and more like a column or even a funnel. In such a case the old will hold a much larger amount of political power than they do today.

While that may seem like a minor thing (everyone is young at some point and old later on) just consider how it would affect the politics of, say, pensions or health-care.

Or, for that matter, I hear that Brexit wouldn't happen is 16- and 17-year olds were allowed to vote.

More questions:

With old people being generally more conservative are we going to see slowing or even reversal of the seemingly instoppable move to the political left that was going on for decades?

With high percentage of young males being often blamed for social unrest and wars, is the changing shape of the age pyramid going to result in even more political stability? And how is giving teenagers a vote going to affect that?

I have no answers but the topic is definitely worth thinking abo

...
Why the AI Alignment Problem
Might be Unsolvable?
by Sailor Vulcan — 2019-03-24T04:10:33.964Z

Author's note 1:

The following is a chapter from the story I've been writing which contains, well, it contains what I think is probably a proof that the value alignment problem is unsolvable. I know it sounds crazy, but as far as I can tell the proof seems to be correct. There are further supporting details which I can explain if anyone asks, but I didn't want to overload you guys with too much information at once, since a lot of those additional supporting details would require articles of their own to explain.

One of my friends, who I shall not name, came up with what we think is also a proof, but it's longer and more detailed and he hasn't decided whether to post it.

I haven't had time yet to extract my own less detailed version from the narrative dialogue of my story, but I thought it was really important that I share it here as soon as possible, since if I'm right, the more time wasted on AI research, the less time we have to come up with strategies and solutions that could more effectively prevent x-risk long term.

Author's note 2:

This post was originally more strongly worded, but I edited it to tone it down a little. While those who have read Inadequate Equilibria might consider that to be "epistemic humility" and therefore darkside epistemology, I'm worried not enough people on here will have read that book. Furthermore, the human brain, particularly system 1, evolved to win political arguments in the ancestral environment. I'm not sure system 1 is biologically capable of understanding the fact that epistemic humility is bad epistemology. And the contents of this post are likely to provoke strong emotional reactions, as it postulates that a particular belief is false, a belief which rationalists at large have invested a LOT of energy, resources and reputation into. I feel more certain that the contents of this post are correct than is wise to express in a context likely to trigger strong emotions. Please keep this in mind. I'm being upfront with you about exactly what I'm doing and why.

Author's note 3:

Also, HEAVY SPOILERS for the story I've been writing,

Earthlings: People of the Dawn

. This chapter is literally the last chapter of part 5, after which the remaining parts are basically extended epilogues. You have been warned. Also, I edited the chapter in response to the comments to make things more clear.

-------

Unsolvable

There were guards standing outsid...
A Tale of Four Moralities
by Sailor Vulcan — 2019-03-24T03:46:34.026Z

Author's note: This is a children's story I wrote a while back, which teaches a very important life lesson that none of us got to learn as kids. That lesson is extremely important, so all the adults here should pay attention too. I'll explain more of the nitty gritty details of the underlying theory behind it later.

----------

Ivan was very angry.
His teddy was stolen.
Ivan decided.
He would catch the thief and steal from them.
"This will pay them back," said Ivan. "Serves them right."
Goldie was very happy.
It was her birthday.
Her papa gave her a teddy.
Goldie decided.
She would give a gift to her papa in return.
"It was nice of him to give me a teddy," said Goldie.
"This is the least I can do."
The next day, her teddy was gone.
Minnie was very sad. Someone was stealing teddies from her friends.
She looked at her teddy.
Would she be next?
Minnie decided. She would find the stolen teddies.
And she would return them.
"It's the right thing to do," said Minnie.
"This way, no one will be missing their teddies. Not anymore."
The next day, her teddy was gone.
Maxie felt guilty, but hopeful.
Earlier, his mama told him something sad.
"The other neighborhood is poor.
Kids there don't have teddies."
So Maxie decided.
He would steal teddies from his friends. He would give them to the other neighborhood.
"It's the best thing I can do," said Maxie. "My friends can afford new teddies. But the poor kids can't."
So Maxie stole teddies from his friends,
and gave them to the other neighborhood.
This made the kids there happy.
But his friends were sad, because now THEY had no teddies.
The next day,
the sad kids went with their parents to the teddy store,
to buy them new teddies.
But the store was all sold out of teddies.
"It's been hard to sell teddies in this town," said the store clerk. "Many poor people can't afford them. And many rich people already have teddies."
"Why not give teddies to the poor?
For free?" asked Maxie.
"We tried that before," said the clerk.
"It didn't work.
A long line of people came for teddies.
Many poor people can't afford cars.
When they got here, they were last in line. Then they got to the front of the line.
But by then, we were out of teddies."
"Then why give teddies to the rich?" asked ...
800 scientist call out against statistical significance 
by Yoav Ravid — 2019-03-23T12:57:01.989Z
Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00857-9

LessWrong has many criticisms of P-values/Statistical significance, And is often given as a coordination problem (or an inadequate equilibria).

In addition to the American Statistical Association - which, In 2016, 'released a statement in The American Statistician warning against the misuse of statistical significance and P values' - these authors now join the call too, with an article in nature signed by over 800 scientists. they write:

We are far from alone. When we invited others to read a draft of this comment and sign their names if they concurred with our message, 250 did so within the first 24 hours. A week later, we had more than 800 signatories.

What do you think will be the impact of it?
Willing to share some words that changed your beliefs/behavior?
by Duncan Sabien (Inactive) — 2019-03-23T02:08:37.437Z

I'm collecting data on powerfully persuasive speech acts; it's part of a dangling thread of curiosity after GPT-2 (a new and fairly powerful text generation algorithm). I'm skeptical of the danger of mind-warping sentences as sometimes presented in fiction, or AI scenarios, and trying to get a sense of what the territory is like.

I've made a form to collect personal examples of things-someone-said that caused you to seriously change some belief or behavior. An easy example would be if someone declared that they love you, and this caused you to suddenly devote a lot more (or a lot less!) time and attention to them as a person.

If you have five minutes, my goal for this form is 1000+ responses and your own response(s) will help with that. All replies are anonymous, and there's a place for you to restrict how the information is used/state confidentiality desires. You can also fill it out more than once if you want.

https://goo.gl/forms/39x3vJqNomAome382 is the link to the form, if you want to share with anyone else; I'm happy to have this spread around wherever.
Can Bayes theorem represent infinite confusion?
by Yoav Ravid — 2019-03-22T18:02:45.088Z

Edit: the title was misleading, i didn't ask about a rational agent, but about what comes out of certain inputs in Bayes theorem, so now it's been changed to reflect that.

Eliezer and others talked about how a Bayesian with a 100% prior cannot change their confidence level, whatever evidence they encounter. that's because it's like having infinite certainty. I am not sure if they meant it literary or not (is it really mathematically equal to infinity?), but assumed they do.

I asked myself, well, what if they get evidence that was somehow assigned 100%, wouldn't that be enough to get them to change their mind? In other words -

If P(H) = 100%

And P(E|H) = 0%

than what's P(H|E) equals to?

I thought, well, if both are infinities, what happens when you subtract infinities? the internet answered that it's indeterminate*, meaning (from what i understand), that it can be anything, and you have absolutely no way to know what exactly.

So i concluded that if i understood everything correct, then such a situation would leave the Bayesian infinitely confused. in a state that he has no idea where he is from 0% to a 100%, and no amount of evidence in any direction can ground him anywhere.

Am i right? or have i missed something entirely?

*I also found out about Riemann's rearrangement theorem which, in a way, let's you arrange some infinite series in a way that equals whatever you want. Dem, that's cool!
The Game Theory of Blackmail
by Linda Linsefors — 2019-03-22T17:44:36.545Z

This blog post is composed as following:

Review of Prisoners Dilemma
Explanation of Game of Chicken by comparing it to Prisoners Dilemma
Blackmail is a Game of Chicken
Why we should care about blackmail/Game of Chicken
What to do? Iterated Game of Chicken?

You are encouraged to skip ahead to the part that interests you

1. Review of Prisoners Dilemma

Prisoners Dilemma is a class of two player games which can represent for example mutual beneficial cooperation, or the tragedy of the commons. I don't think it is controversial to say that this class of games are important in almost any multi-agent scenario.

In a Prisoners Dilemma , each player gets to choose between two actions, usually called "cooperate" and "defect". Further more the payoffs haved to fulfill the following:

Holding my action constant it is better for me if you cooperate.
Holding your action constant, it is better for me if I defect.
Cooperate-cooperate is Pareto optimal (even when including mixed strategies).

Example of a payout matrix for Prisoners Dilemma:

cdc1,1−1,2d2,−10,0

In this particular example, cooperate corresponds to spending one of your own utility to give the other player two utility, and defect corresponds to doing nothing. This can represent a situation with the possibility of mutual benefit from cooperation, but where it is possible to win even more (at the other players expense) by cheating.

But we can also consider a negative game:

cdc0,0−2,1d1,−2−1,−1

Here cooperate is doing nothing, while defect corresponds to gaining one utility for yourself while costing the other player two utility. This can represent burning the commons (if the players defect) or not (if they cooperate).

2. Explanation of Game of Chicken by comparing it to Prisoners Dilemma

Just like Prisoners Dilemma, Game of Chicken is a two player game, where each player can choose between two actions. These actions are typically called "swerve" and "straight", but in this blog post I will instead call the two actions "cooperate" and "defect" as to more easily compare with Prisoners Dilemma.

Also the same as Prisoners Dilemma: In Game of Chicken, I get the best payout if I defect and you cooperate (and vice versa). The difference is that conditional on you defecting, it is better for me if i cooperate.

A two action, two player game is a Game of Chicken if:

Holding my ac

...
Retrospective on a quantitative productivity logging attempt
by Yuye — 2019-03-22T02:31:42.598Z

I have a productivity scale I've used to log productivity data for several years. It's a subjective rating system from 1 to 10, and looks something like

1. can’t do anything, even reading. Worktime 0%.

2. can force myself to read or work, but I can barely parse anything. Worktime 5%.

...

5. I don’t want to work and am easily distracted, but I’m getting stuff done. 50%

6. Some mild distractions, but I can stick to a pomodoro timer. Worktime 60%.

...

10. Insane art-level hyperfocus. Worktime 100%.

At the end of each workday I would record how well I thought I'd done by this scale.

I'd been dissatisfied with this for a while – there was no way my brain was accurately tracking what percentage of time I was working, these descriptions are not well defined, don't cleanly map to some level of productivity. I can't prevent internal mapping drift, where my standards slowly rise or fall, such that a day I mark as productivity=4 this week is actually much more productive than a day I marked at 4 several years ago.

I'm invested in having good measurements, because I've been iterating on antidepressants and ADD meds for years, and having data on which ones are working on what metrics (I also track mood, exercise, sleep, social time) would be very useful for having a better life.

So I wrote a small Python script that tracked how much time I spent working at my job. Every time I took a break or went back to work, I'd mark it. If I noticed I'd started working during breaktime or zoning out during worktime, I'd 'revert' however many minutes I thought it had been to be of the other type. I also had 'dead' time where I wasn't getting anything done for reasons unrelated to my productivity, which I used to mark meetings or lunch breaks. At the end of the session, it would spit out a summary of how much time I'd spent working vs resting. This was a much more accurate, quantitative way of measuring what I wanted, or so I thought. I used it for a month and a week before I stopped.

Here's why I quit it.

As is frequently the case, using part of a system to monitor that system changes that system enough that the output of the monitoring is less useful. On bad attention days, I would be switching back and forth between work every two minutes. The work/break context switches were costlier, and seeing how sh

...