trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Tracking emotions with kinesthetic memory
by eugman — 2011-12-14T12:49:04.390Z

I've been trying to manage my negative thoughts and I've stumbled on an interesting technique. In order to increase my mindfulness of my ruminations and my thoughts. I started making a check mark on a piece of paper when I had specific thought. I didn't feel like I had the emotional strength to battle every thought, but at least making a little checkmark was easy. Then, deciding I wanted to do this anywhere, I started instead making a quick checkmark gesture with my pointer finger.

The results have been interesting. One effect is I can now more easily sense the heartbeat of my mood. Usually, I could tell how I was feeling at any one time, but I never noticed the flow of things. But with gestural movement, I can remember how often I've been doing it. I can also see if I'm doing it every few minutes or every few seconds.

There's another result that's very interesting and offsetting. Sometimes, the movements are semiautomatic. This fits in with a modular theory of the brain, I think. So, I'll have a fleeting negative thought, reflexively make the gesture, and go "Oh, I just had a negative thought, I didn't notice that. Maybe I should do something." It feels a little strange from the inside.

So, just something that was interesting to me. I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts or interesting information.
You Are Not So Smart - Book on Bias by david mcraney
by Goobahman — 2011-12-14T06:05:40.047Z

http://youarenotsosmart.com/
Hi Everyone,
I was just wondering if anyone's read the above book, and what they thought of it? (I have not)

Not so much in terms of actual content, but in terms of popularizing Rationality and raising the sanity waterline.

How useful a tool could something like this be? Should I buy 20 copies and hand them out on Christmas?
In any case I plan to read it in the next week or two, and I'll let you know what I thought of it.
Meetup : West LA Meetup 12-14-2011
by  — 2011-12-14T01:46:50.640Z

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup 12-14-2011

WHEN:
14 December 2011 07:00:00PM (-0800)

WHERE:
10850 West Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90064

When: 7:00pm - 9:00pm Wednesday, December 14th.

Where: The Westside Tavern in the upstairs Wine Bar (all ages welcome), located inside the Westside Pavillion on the second floor, right by the movie theaters.

Parking is free for 3 hours.

Recommended Reading:

Wrong Questions

Righting a Wrong Question

Pick any two entries from 37 Ways That Words Can Be Wrong, and we will discuss the points in those posts!

Whether you're a regular reader or totally new, here for the theoretical musings or the practical things, come by and say hello! The conversation is largely unstructured and casual, and the people are awesome. If we have a large group, we may also play a game!

I will bring a whiteboard with Bayes' Theorem written on it.

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup 12-14-2011
The Likelihood Ratio and the Problem of Evil
by JQuinton — 2011-12-13T16:28:25.803Z

I'm posting this here because I want to see if my reasoning is incorrect.

Generally, when people talk about the problem of evil, the underlying problem is actually one of indifference. Given that God exists, he doesn't seem to care some (most) of the time bad things happen, and seems to sometimes reward bad people with good fortune. This makes sense, of course, if there indeed was no god, but we have thousands of years of theodicy that argues that an all powerful, all knowing god exists despite the problem of indifference.

So, I attempted to formulate the problem of indifference in terms of probability - the probability of an all powerful god creating the universe (H) verses the probability of naturalism (~H) - to see which one was more likely. E would be the state of the current universe which seems to have both "good" and "evil" in it. I had no idea how to determine the probability of P(E | H), but if the 2,500+ years of theodicy explaining the problem of indifference was in fact correct, then to be fair to theism I might grant that P(E | H) = .99. However, this seems to not be correct; I did know that P(E | H) + P(~E | H) = 1.00 so this would mean that the all powerful god of traditional theism wouldn't make sense if our universe were indeed ~E instead of E given that P(E | H) = .99.

~E would be any other ratio of good::evil that we can imagine outside of the current state of affairs, or at least that's my reasoning. This means that if the universe were all good and zero evil, or all evil and zero good, granting that P(~E | H) = .01 doesn't seem like something traditional theism would accept. If we woke up tomorrow, and there was absolutely no evil in the world, and that was how the world always was, would traditional theism have no theodicies that explained why this world was evidence for their god(s)? That doesn't seem likely. Similarly, but less so, for a world that was overwhelmingly evil with very little good.

So it seems that E and ~E can be broken up into these three scenarios. E1 being our current world, E2 being a world of all good an no evil, and E3 being a world of all evil and no good. Then we have P(E1 | H) + P(E2 | H) + P(E3 | H) = 1.00. This would also apply to naturalism, but it seems as though a world of all good/evil and no evil/good wouldn't make sense under naturalism which predicts a ...
What are you working on? December 2011
by jsalvatier — 2011-12-13T15:27:48.980Z

This is the sixth bimonthly 'What are you working On?' thread. Previous threads are here. So here's the question:

What are you working on?

Here are some guidelines:

Focus on projects that you have recently made progress on, not projects that you're thinking about doing but haven't started.

Why this project and not others? Mention reasons why you're doing the project and/or why others should contribute to your project (if applicable).

Talk about your goals for the project.

Any kind of project is fair game: personal improvement, research project, art project, whatever.

Link to your work if it's linkable.
Examples of the Mind Projection Fallacy?
by fiddlemath — 2011-12-13T15:27:12.733Z

I suspect that achieving a clear mental picture of the sheer depth and breadth of the mind projection fallacy is a powerful mental tool. It's hard for me to state this in clearer terms, though, because I don't have a wide collection of good examples of the mind projection fallacy.

In a discussion yesterday, we all had trouble finding actual example of the mind projection fallacy. Overall, we had essentially two examples:

Taste. People frequently confuse "I like this" and "this is good." (This really subsumes the attractiveness example.)

Probability. This seems like a pretty good just-so-story for where frequentist probability comes from, as opposed to Bayesian probability.

Searching for "mind projection fallacy" on Less Wrong, I also see:

Thinking that purpose is an inherent property of something, instead of it having been placed there by someone for some reason. (here)

Mulling or arguing over definitions to solve object-level problems. (actually, most the ways words can be wrong sequence)

Imagine I'm trying to explain the mind projection fallacy to someone, and giving a handful of sharp, clear examples before explaining the general principle. What are some examples I could use? (I really want to explain it more sharply to myself, but also to members of my meetup.)
Open Problems Related to the Singularity (draft 1)
by lukeprog — 2011-12-13T10:57:33.916Z

"I've come to agree that navigating the Singularity wisely is the most important thing humanity can do. I'm a researcher and I want to help. What do I work on?"

The Singularity Institute gets this question regularly, and we haven't published a clear answer to it anywhere. This is because it's an extremely difficult and complicated question. A large expenditure of limited resources is required to make a serious attempt at answering it. Nevertheless, it's an important question, so we'd like to work toward an answer.

A few preliminaries:

Defining each problem is part of the problem. As Bellman (1961) said, "the very construction of a precise mathematical statement of a verbal problem is itself a problem of major difficulty." Many of the problems related to navigating the Singularity have not yet been stated with mathematical precision, and the need for a precise statement of the problem is part of these open problems. But there is reason for optimism. Many times, particular heroes have managed to formalize a previously fuzzy and mysterious concept: see Kolmogorov on complexity and simplicity (Kolmogorov 1965; Grunwald & Vitanyi 2003; Li & Vitányi 2008), Solomonoff on induction (Solomonoff 1964a, 1964b; Rathmanner & Hutter 2011), Von Neumann and Morgenstern on rationality (Von Neumann & Morgenstern 1947; Anand 1995), and Shannon on information (Shannon 1948; Arndt 2004).

The nature of the problem space is unclear. Which problems will biological humans need to solve, and which problems can a successful FAI solve on its own (perhaps with the help of human uploads it creates to solve the remaining open problems)? Are Friendly AI (Yudkowsky 2001) and CEV (Yudkowsky 2004) coherent ideas, given the confused nature of human "values"? Should we aim instead for a "maxipok" solution (Bostrom 2011) that maximizes the chance of an "ok" outcome, something like Oracle AI (Armstrong et al. 2011)? Which problems are we unable to state with precision because they are irreparably confused, and which problems are we unable to state due to a lack of insight?

Our research priorities are unclear. There are a limited number of capable researchers who will work on these problems. Which are the most important problems they should be working on, if they are capable of doing so? Should we focus on "control problem" theory (FAI, AI-boxing, ora

...
Q&A with Richard Carrier on risks from AI
by XiXiDu — 2011-12-13T10:00:57.425Z

[Click here to see a list of all interviews]

I am emailing experts in order to raise and estimate the academic awareness and perception of risks from AI.

Richard Carrier is a world-renowned author and speaker. As a professional historian, published philosopher, and prominent defender of the American freethought movement, Dr. Carrier has appeared across the country and on national television defending sound historical methods and the ethical worldview of secular naturalism. His books and articles have also received international attention. He holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University in ancient history, specializing in the intellectual history of Greece and Rome, particularly ancient philosophy, religion, and science, with emphasis on the origins of Christianity and the use and progress of science under the Roman empire. He is best known as the author of Sense and Goodness without God, Not the Impossible Faith, and Why I Am Not a Christian, and a major contributor to The Empty Tomb, The Christian Delusion, The End of Christianity, and Sources of the Jesus Tradition, as well as writer and editor-in-chief (now emeritus) for the Secular Web, and for his copious work in history and philosophy online and in print. He is currently working on his next books, Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus, On the Historicity of Jesus Christ, The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire, and Science Education in the Early Roman Empire. To learn more about Dr. Carrier and his work follow the links below.

Homepage: richardcarrier.info

Blog: freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/ (old blog: richardcarrier.blogspot.com)

Selected articles:

Bayes’ Theorem: Lust for Glory! (Blog post and video talk)

“Bayes’ Theorem for Beginners: Formal Logic and Its Relevance to Historical Method” (Paper)

The Interview:

Richard Carrier: Note that I follow and support the work of The Singularity Institute on precisely this issue, which you are writing for (if you are a correspondent for Less Wrong). And I believe all AI developers should (e.g. CALO). So my answers won't be too surprising (below). But also keep in mind what I say (not just on "singularity" claims) at:

http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2009/06/are-we-doomed.html

Q1: Assuming no global catastrophe halts progress, by what year would you assign a 10%/50%/90% chance of the development of roughly h...
[Link] A gentle video introduction to game theory 
by  — 2011-12-13T08:52:41.779Z

In this article I invite LessWrong users to learn the very basic math of something that is useful to both our community's goal of making better thinkers as well as many of the unrelated discussions that we often have here. I also present resources for further study to those interested. I made it based on the karma feedback given to this post in the monthly open thread.

Recently there has been a series of contributions made in main that serve more as introductory and logistic material than novel contributions. Because of this and because I hope It will grab more attention from newer members, I posted this in main rather than discussion section.

What is "game theory"?

Wikipedia's take:

Game theory is a mathematical method for analyzing calculated circumstances, such as in games, where a person’s success is based upon the choices of others. More formally, it is "the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers." An alternative term suggested "as a more descriptive name for the discipline" is interactive decision theory.

LessWrongWiki's more succinct alternative:

Game theory attempts to mathematically capture behaviour in strategic situations, in which an individual's success in making choices depends on the choices of others.

From both definitions it should be clear how this relates to the art of refining human rationality. Besides the general admonition that rationalist should win, for us humans being the social animals that we are, there few things in our lives that do not depend at least partially on the choices of others. Game theory is extensively used in and connected to fields as disparate as economics, psychology, political science, logic, sports and evolutionary biology.

As many have argued before, it is an important part of the map of the real world:

Again and again, I’ve undergone the humbling experience of first lamenting how badly something sucks, then only much later having the crucial insight that its not sucking wouldn’t have been a Nash equilibrium.

--Scott Aaronson

You may not know it yet, but it is impossible to read this site for a extended period of time without running into concepts that are intimately tied to this field of study. Nash equilibrium, Pareto optimal, Prisoners Dilemma, non-zero sum, zero sum, the D...
Q&A #2 with Singularity Institute Executive Director
by lukeprog — 2011-12-13T06:48:20.199Z

Just over a month ago I posted a call for questions about the Singularity Institute. The reaction to my video response was positive enough that I'd like to do another one — though I can't promise video this time. I think that the Singularity Institute has a lot of transparency "catching up" to do.

The Rules (same as before)

1) One question per comment (to allow voting to carry more information about people's preferences).

2) Try to be as clear and concise as possible. If your question can't be condensed into one paragraph, you should probably ask in a separate post. Make sure you have an actual question somewhere in there (you can bold it to make it easier to scan).

3) I will generally answer the top-voted questions, but will skip some of them. I will tend to select questions about the Singularity Institute as an organization, not about the technical details of some bit of research. You can read some of the details of the Friendly AI research program in my interview with Michael Anissimov and in Eliezer's Singularity Summit 2011 talk.

4) Please provides links to things referenced by your question.

5) This thread will be open to questions and votes for 7 days, at which time I will decide which questions to begin preparing responses to.

I might respond to certain questions within the comments thread; for example, when there is a one-word answer to the question.

You may repeat questions that I did not answer in the first round, and you may ask follow-up questions to the answers I gave in round one.
[SEQ RERUN] Rational vs Scientific Ev-Psych
by MinibearRex — 2011-12-13T01:02:03.189Z

Today's post, Rational vs. Scientific Ev-Psych was originally published on 04 January 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

In Evolutionary Biology or Psychology, a nice-sounding but untested theory is referred to as a "just-so story", after the stories written by Rudyard Kipling. But, if there is a way to test the theory, people tend to consider it more likely to be correct. This is not a rational tendency.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Stop Voting For Nincompoops, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
[LINK] Matrix-Style Learning
by magfrump — 2011-12-13T00:41:52.281Z

http://io9.com/5867113/scientists-say-theyre-paving-the-way-towards-matrix+style-learning--but-is-it-safe

Researchers learned to change people's brain structures to make them better at certain tasks. But... They weren't aware of getting better at those tasks! Creepy!

I'd love to see a more technical discussion.
Meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup Wednesday 7pm
by EvelynM — 2011-12-12T23:45:55.920Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup Wednesday 7pm

WHEN:
14 December 2011 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
144 North College Avenue, Fort Collins, CO 80524

And again with the awesomeness!

Discussion article for the meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup Wednesday 7pm
[LINK] Brain region changes shape with learning the layout of London
by  — 2011-12-12T17:01:42.842Z

General Intro:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16086233

Older research:

http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/Maguire/Maguire2006.pdf

Abstract of latest research

Possible implications for WBE (Is it possible to get short term function correct without having the ability to do long term structural changes?)

Also possible implications for learning lots of information, cabbies with "the Knowledge" had worse visual information recall.

I haven't gone through it all myself yet.
Less Wrong Topic Poll
by  — 2011-12-12T16:35:01.007Z

I noticed enough comments about topic recently that I wanted to run a quick poll about topics and discussion categories on Less Wrong.

Since being told others opinions might cause an anchoring bias, please take the poll here before reading further:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEVJSTBTdk92UjhTWWp6U1dYSDltclE6MQ

My personal opinion at the moment (last chance to avoid having me influence your poll results) is that I want to reduce the number of people who feel that articles posted on Less Wrong are off topic and limit topical complaints. I don't want to do this because I think the complainers are wrong, because if they don't want to see something, they are correct to indicate it. But I feel that there are ways of handling this at a higher level that might be more effective than just up or down voting based on topic alone, and I feel like it would help increase the quality of discussion here to have better topical division.

I think the biggest problem with the current system is this definition for Discussion.

"This part of the site is for the discussion of topics not yet ready or not suitable for normal top-level posts."

The fact that Discussion is "not yet ready or not suitable" indicates to me that as a category it's not cutting apart topics well. "I'm making a draft about SIA and SSA that I want to put in Main" and "Someone made a new scientific paper about the OPERA Neutrino anomaly again." and "Is Twilight Sparkle a Rationalist?" Don't seem to mesh well under the same general discussion category, even though I would probably read the community discussion on any of them.

That said, I am open to arguments to establish why the Status Quo is worthwhile as well. And maybe the poll will result in a bunch of people voting for only Main and Discussion.

Please feel free to discuss anything relating to topics or discussion categories or the poll below, and thank you for answering the poll!
two puzzles on rationality of defeat 
by fsopho — 2011-12-12T14:17:02.688Z

I present here two puzzles of rationality you LessWrongers may think is worth to deal with. Maybe the first one looks more amenable to a simple solution, while the second one has called attention of a number of contemporary epistemologists (Cargile, Feldman, Harman), and does not look that simple when it comes to a solution. So, let's go to the puzzles!

Puzzle 1

At t1 I justifiably believe theorem T is true, on the basis of a complex argument I just validly reasoned from the also justified premises P1, P2 and P3.
So, in t1 I reason from premises:

(R1) P1, P2 ,P3

To the known conclusion:

(T) T is true

At t2, Ms. Math, a well known authority on the subject matter of which my reasoning and my theorem are just a part, tells me I’m wrong. She tells me the theorem is just false, and convince me of that on the basis of a valid reasoning with at least one false premise, the falsity of that premise being unknown to us.
So, in t2 I reason from premises (Reliable Math and Testimony of Math):

(RM) Ms. Math is a reliable mathematician, and an authority on the subject matter surrounding (T),

(TM) Ms. Math tells me T is false, and show to me how is that so, on the basis of a valid reasoning from F, P1, P2 and P3,

(R2) F, P1, P2 and P3

To the justified conclusion:

(~T) T is not true

It could be said by some epistemologists that (~T) defeat my previous belief (T). Is it rational for me to do this way? Am I taking the correct direction of defeat? Wouldn’t it also be rational if (~T) were defeated by (T)? Why ~(T) defeats (T), and not vice-versa? It is just because ~(T)’s justification obtained in a later time?

Puzzle 2

At t1 I know theorem T is true, on the basis of a complex argument I just validly reasoned, with known premises P1, P2 and P3. So, in t1 I reason from known premises:

(R1) P1, P2 ,P3

To the known conclusion:

(T) T is true

Besides, I also reason from known premises:

(ME) If there is any evidence against something that is true, then it is misleading evidence (evidence for something that is false)

(T) T is true

To the conclusion (anti-misleading evidence):

(AME) If there is any evidence against (T), then it is misleading evidence

At t2 the same Ms. Math tells me the same thing. So in t2 I reason from premises (Reliable Math and Testimony of Math

...
New 'landing page' website: Friendly-AI.com
by lukeprog — 2011-12-12T09:45:05.076Z

I've created a new "landing page" on Friendly AI at Friendly-AI.com. This is similar to IntelligenceExplosion.com, Existential-Risk.org, Anthropic-Principle.com, and simulation-argument.com.

The site is less ambitious than the original plan for it was, but it serves its purpose.

Design courtesy of Lightwave.