trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Open thread, Jan. 09 - Jan. 15, 2017
by MrMind — 2017-01-09T08:33:29.170Z

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.

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Want like want want
by KatjaGrace — 2017-01-09T08:23:29.000Z

“I want a donut”

“Ok, I’ll buy one for you”

“Oh, I don’t mean that on consideration I endorse purchasing one—I’m just expressing my urge to to eat a donut.”

There are two meanings of ‘want’ in common usage. A feeling of desire, and an endorsed intention. ‘I want a baby tiger!’ is not analogous to ‘I want to work more on my taxes tonight’.

These ‘want’s are basically the input of a decision process and the output. I feel desire for a baby tiger and utter ‘I want it!’, and my brain considers that desire plus some other stuff about baby tigers and my life, and decides that on reflection I do not intend to acquire one. On the other hand, I feel no positive attraction toward my taxes at all, yet my aversion to prison and lawyers and generally being disagreeable in any way, once fed through my decision process leave me ‘wanting’ to work on them.

It is hard to be confused about the baby tiger and tax cases, but other times I think this leads to genuine confusion. The donut case above was a genuine confusion, but one of no importance. I think it leads to more important genuine confusions when one talks to oneself, and lacks two distinct concepts.

Luckily I waited ages before writing this blog post, and so came across David Wong of Cracked talking about something similar, as the #1 Way you are sabotaging your own life (without knowing it), which I’ll just quote here in full (the section, not the whole post, though I don’t agree with all of):

#1. Lying to Yourself About What You Actually Want

Hlib Shabashnyi/iStock/Getty Images

Off the top of your head, say something you’ve always wanted to do. Then, follow it up with why you’ve never done it.

So, maybe you said something like, “I’ve always wanted to start a little business selling cupcakes! But I wouldn’t even know how to get started!”

Aaaaand … 90 percent of you just lied.

I know you did, because if you actually wanted to do the thing, then the second part — the obstacle — wouldn’t exist. For example, if that person up there actually wanted to start their cupcake business, they wouldn’t be confused about how to get started. They’d be a freaking walking encyclopedia of information about how to get started, because they’d have spent every single day reading up on it and calling other cupcake-shop owners for advice. They don’t

...
If I must eat meat, I eat pork
by Gordon Seidoh Worley — 2017-01-09T06:51:34.167Z
Link: https://medium.com/@gworley3/if-i-must-eat-meat-i-eat-pork-a-vegetarian-perspective-1950d6b76310

I became a vegetarian on Memorial Day 2014, or as I now call it, Meatmorial Day. I woke up to a text from a friend about how she was frustrated that more self-identified rationalists and effective altruists aren’t at least vegetarian if not vegan. I said it was a case of differing values between well-meaning people, but she was having none of it.

Her: why won’t u eat rabbits?

Me: because i had them as pets. i know them too well. they’re like people to me.

Her: i will get you a pet chicken

Me: …

Me: omg i’m a vegetarian now :-/

Here’s what happened in my mind. I imagined a world in which I had a pet chicken. Over time I’d grow to know it and think of it as worthy of moral consideration. Once that happened, I’d no longer be able to eat chickens. I could apply the same process to all animals, and so by induction I would be unwilling to eat any animal. And since I already live in a world where I had pet rabbits, chinchillas, and cats to ground this induction process, my preferences immediately updated to include this extrapolation, making me a vegetarian.

She was surprised this worked, but it seems I was really a vegetarian all along, I just didn’t know it. I hadn’t sat down and worked the logic to realize the consequences of my beliefs. I probably even avoided doing it for fear that I would become a vegetarian. It worked because I was already a vegetarian in my heart, but needed a little help to become one in my head.

I was reminded of this the other night when I was having dinner with friends and roommates and the conversation turned to what sources of meat the vegetarians at the table, myself included, were willing eat when necessary (for some fuzzy definition of “necessary”). Most were willing to bend on eating either fish or shellfish, but I took the unusual stance of being willing to eat only pork.

To understand this, let’s start with what kind of meat I won’t eat. I tend to think of meat in 4 or 5 categories: seafood, poultry, beef, pork, and other, the last of which some people divide between domesticated sources and wild sources. Even in my meat-eating days, I was hesitant to eat seafood. To be fair, I had a certain distaste for seafood having not grown up eating it much beyond fish sticks, but I never sought to develop a taste for seafood because of the b...
How to talk rationally about cults
by Viliam — 2017-01-08T20:12:51.340Z

In 1978, several hundred people in Jonestown drank poison and died, because their leader told them to. Not everyone who died there was a volunteer; some members of the group objected, and they were killed first by the more dedicated members, who killed themselves later. Also, many children were killed by their parents. Still, hundreds of people died voluntarily, including the leader of the group, Jim Jones.

This is an extreme case. There are much more groups that create a comparable level of devotion in their members, but use it to extract money and services from the members. Groups where new members change their personalities, becoming almost "clones" of their leaders; then they break contacts with their families and former friends, usually after trying to recruit them for the group, or at least trying to extract from them as many resources as possible for the group. The new personality typically has black-and-white thinking, responds to questions by thought-terminating clichés, and doesn't care much about things unrelated to the group. Sometimes the membership in the group is long-term, but commonly the members are worn-out and leave the group after a few years, replaced by the fresh members they helped to recruit, so despite the individuals change, the group remains.

Talking about cults is difficult. It is not simple to provide a definition -- in different contexts finding new friends and growing apart with the old ones, spending money on hobbies or causes, and gradual changes in personality could be a part of normal life. Even if this all happens much faster and more extremely, is it just a question of degree (and how much exactly is too much?), or is there something else?

Of course, a group accused of being a "cult" will object against the label and point out the differences between them and some archetypal cult they are being compared with; or insist that there are no cults, only people intolerant of different lifestyles. They will emphasise that their members are in the group voluntarily, so no one else has a right to decide what would be better for them. And for every strange norm or behavior, there is always a good explanation (or a denial).

On the other hand, people will use the label to call any group they dislike a "cult". Some of them will use it as a synonym for "a religion other than my own" or "people who have a weird hobby". And of course...
X risk update, Gliese 710 will pass thru Oort in 1.35 my
by morganism — 2017-01-08T19:58:31.727Z

I was tracking these runaway stars for a SF story i had in mind, but this is the closest one i have heard of yet, and the ArXiv paper describes one that also passed thru 2.5 mya.

Gliese 710 will pass the Sun even closer

Close approach parameters recalculated based on the first Gaia data release

http://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/abs/2016/11/aa29835-16/aa29835-16.html

Close encounters of the stellar kind

https://arxiv.org/abs/1412.3648

tl:dr article

http://www.businessinsider.com/star-hurting-towards-solar-system-2016-12\

"Gliese 710 is about half the size of our sun, and it is set to reach Earth in 1.35 million years, according to a paper published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics in November.

And when it arrives, the star could end up a mere 77 light-days away from Earth — one light-day being the equivalent of how far light travels in one day, which is about 26 billion kilometers, the researchers worked out.

As far as we know, Gliese 710 isn't set to collide directly with Earth, but it wil be passing through the Oort Cloud, a shell of trillions of icy objects at the furthest reaches of our solar system. "

Seems like a great opportunity to send out some interstellar probes. The star will be trailing lots of ISM, free gas that would help bring a ramjet up to speed, and track till you could curve towards another destination. Likewise, a solar sail probe launched out in front of it by laser could "hitchhike" , and get some deep space ISM , and EM measurements.

Can we think of some other opportunities that this might present ? If we are past the filter by then, then we will already prob have samples of the Oort objects, but looks like they will be delivering then...
Towards learning incomplete models using inner prediction markets
by Vanessa Kosoy — 2017-01-08T13:37:53.000Z

This post is a short informal summary of a new idea I'm starting to work on, which combines my thinking abouts "incomplete models" with Scott's logical inductors.

Motivation

Before, I speculated that generalizing Bayesian inference to include incomplete models will allow solving the grain of truth problem in a way more satisfactory than what was achieved so far. More generally, this would allow getting performance guarantees for agents in environments that are as complex or more complex than the agent.

Now, such performance guarantees are already known for learning algorithms suited to the non-realizable settings. However, as Jessica noted here, those methods don't address long-term planning due to the scarcity of training data. On the other hand, Bayesian methods do allow long-term planning: if the environment is realizable (i.e. absolutely continuous w.r.t. the prior), on-policy merging of opinions will occur at a rate that doesn't depend on the utility function. This means that for a fixed environment and sufficiently slowly falling time discount, the agent will be able to form effective long-term plans, at least as long on-policy forecasting is sufficient. Of course, realistic settings require off-policy forecasting, which requires some exploration. If we want global optimality in policy space, we would have to explore for an entire horizon which means long-term planning fails again. However, I think that satisfactory weaker optimality guarantees can be achieved by more conservative exploration, especially when "consulting a (human) expert" is an available form of "exploration".

This advantage of Bayesian agents is only applicable in the realizable case, which is an unrealistic assumption. However, the inclusion of incomplete models would bring the advantage into the non-realizable case: the environment might be arbitrarily complex, but as long as it conforms to some simple incomplete model, this model can be learnt quickly and exploited for long-term planning.

Proposal

Previously, I suggested addressing incomplete models using non-Bayesian decision rules. Here, I propose a different approach. At each moment of time, the policy is selected using normal expected utility maximization, for some posterior probability measure. However, the posterior probability measure doesn't come from updating a prior on observations. Instead

...
Rationality Considered Harmful (In Politics)
by The_Jaded_One — 2017-01-08T10:36:37.384Z

Why you should be very careful about trying to openly seek truth in any political discussion

1. Rationality considered harmful for Scott Aaronson in the great gender debate

In 2015, complexity theorist and rationalist Scott Aaronson was foolhardy enough to step into the Gender Politics war on his blog with a comment stating that extreme feminism that he bought into made him hate himself and try to seek ways to chemically castrate himself. The feminist blogoshere got hold of this and crucified him for it, and he has written a few followup blog posts about it. Recently I saw this comment by him on his blog:

As the comment 171 affair blew up last year, one of my female colleagues in quantum computing remarked to me that the real issue had nothing to do with gender politics; it was really just about the commitment to truth regardless of the social costs—a quality that many of the people attacking me (who were overwhelmingly from outside the hard sciences) had perhaps never encountered before in their lives. That remark cheered me more than anything else at the time

2. Rationality considered harmful for Sam Harris in the islamophobia war

I recently heard a very angry, exasperated 2 hour podcast by the new atheist and political commentator Sam Harris about how badly he has been straw-manned, misrepresented and trash talked by his intellectual rivals (who he collectively refers to as the "regressive left"). Sam Harris likes to tackle hard questions such as when torture is justified, which religions are more or less harmful than others, defence of freedom of speech, etc. Several times, Harris goes to the meta-level and sees clearly what is happening:

Rather than a searching and beautiful exercise in human reason to have conversations on these topics [ethics of torture, military intervention, Islam, etc], people are making it just politically so toxic, reputationally so toxic to even raise these issues that smart people, smarter than me, are smart enough not to go near these topics

Everyone on the left at the moment seems to be a mind reader.. no matter how much you try to take their foot out of your mouth, the mere effort itself is going to be counted against you - you're someone who's in denial, or you don't even understand how racist you are, etc

3. Rationality considered harmful when talking to your left-wing friends about genetic modifi...
Meetup : Melbourne Rationality Dojo, January - Lightning Talks
by Chriswaterguy — 2017-01-08T09:59:45.154Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne Rationality Dojo, January - Lightning Talks

WHEN:
15 January 2017 04:00:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
Janet Lady Clarke Memorial Rotunda, Queen Victoria Garden, Melbourne

The next meetup for Less Wrong Melbourne will be outdoors (weather permitting). on Sunday 15 January 2017.

THIS MONTH: Lightning talks. A number of speakers (including you?) at 5 to 10 min each (including questions) on the art of rationality, or something to improve our understanding of the world.

BRING:

• An idea or question to share.

• Perhaps a snack to share. (Healthy snack choice is optional but welcome.)

At about 6:30pm some of us generally head for dinner in the CBD, and you are welcome to join us.

WHEN: 4pm to 6:30pm (and then optional dinner). The meeting proper will begin at 4:15 sharp.

WHERE:
Janet Lady Clarke Memorial Rotunda, Queen Victoria Gardens.
https://goo.gl/maps/5dni87guhcU2
We'll meet a stone's throw from the rotunda - same side of the road, just over the walking path. If you have any trouble finding the venue on the day, please text or call Chris on 0439 471 632.

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE AND WHY DO THEY MEET?

The Less Wrong Melbourne Rationality Dojos are self-improvement sessions for those committed to the art of rationality and personal growth. We welcome new members who are interested in exploring rationality. We're "aspiring rationalists" and always open to learn.

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne Rationality Dojo, January - Lightning Talks
Meetup Discussion
by luminosity — 2017-01-08T05:14:29.910Z

One of the most valuable services the Less Wrong community has to offer are the meetup groups. However, it strikes me that there isn't a lot of knowledge sharing between different meetup groups. Presumably there's a lot that the different groups could learn from each other -- things that can be done, experiments that have or haven't worked out, procedural and organisational tips. Hence this post. Please go ahead and write a summary about your local less wrong meetup below:

What meetups do you run?

What's worked?

What hasn't?

How is the group organised?
Meetup : Sydney Rationality Dojo - February 2017
by luminosity — 2017-01-08T04:47:36.498Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Rationality Dojo - February 2017

WHEN:
05 February 2017 04:00:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
10 Shepherd Street, Chippendale

Get a head start on 2017 -- join us from 4 till 6 to work out your goals, and plan ahead to achieve them. Afterwards we will head off to a group dinner.

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Rationality Dojo - February 2017
Welcome to LessWrong (10th Thread, January 2017) (Thread A)
by folkTheory — 2017-01-07T05:43:57.344Z

(Thread B for January is here, created as a duplicate by accident)

Hi, do you read the LessWrong website, but haven't commented yet (or not very much)? Are you a bit scared of the harsh community, or do you feel that questions which are new and interesting for you could be old and boring for the older members?

This is the place for the new members to become courageous and ask what they wanted to ask. Or just to say hi.

The older members are strongly encouraged to be gentle and patient (or just skip the entire discussion if they can't).

Newbies, welcome!

The long version:

If you've recently joined the Less Wrong community, please leave a comment here and introduce yourself. We'd love to know who you are, what you're doing, what you value, how you came to identify as an aspiring rationalist or how you found us. You can skip right to that if you like; the rest of this post consists of a few things you might find helpful. More can be found at the FAQ.

A few notes about the site mechanics

To post your first comment, you must have carried out the e-mail confirmation: When you signed up to create your account, an e-mail was sent to the address you provided with a link that you need to follow to confirm your e-mail address. You must do this before you can post!

Less Wrong comments are threaded for easy following of multiple conversations. To respond to any comment, click the "Reply" link at the bottom of that comment's box. Within the comment box, links and formatting are achieved via Markdown syntax (you can click the "Help" link below the text box to bring up a primer).

You may have noticed that all the posts and comments on this site have buttons to vote them up or down, and all the users have "karma" scores which come from the sum of all their comments and posts. This immediate easy feedback mechanism helps keep arguments from turning into flamewars and helps make the best posts more visible; it's part of what makes discussions on Less Wrong look different from those anywhere else on the Internet.

However, it can feel really irritating to get downvoted, especially if one doesn't know why. It happens to all of us sometimes, and it's perfectly acceptable to ask for an explanation. (Sometimes it's the unwritten LW etiquette; we have different norms than other forums.) Take note when you'

...
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2017-01-06T16:35:11.772Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on January 6th. The following week's summary is here.

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

[Amsterdam] Meetup #9 - 2017 is prime: 08 January 2017 03:11PM

The following 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:

Baltimore Area / UMBC Weekly Meetup: 08 January 2017 08:00PM
[Berlin] AI safety Berlin: 07 January 2017 04:00PM
[Moscow] Role playing game based on HPMOR in Moscow: 07 January 2017 03:00PM
Moscow: TDT, paranoid calibration, prediction party: 08 January 2017 02:00PM
[San Francisco] SF Meetup: Revealed New Year's Resolutions: 09 January 2017 06:15PM
Rationality Vienna Meetup: 28 January 2017 03:00PM
Washington, D.C.: Intro to Effective Altruism: 08 January 2017 03:30PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Baltimore, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buffalo, Canberra, Columbus, Denver, Kraków, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Moscow, Netherlands, New Hampshire, New York, Philadelphia, Prague, Research Triangle NC, San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, St. Petersburg, 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 notifi...