trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup Philadelphia: March 30, Ben Landau-Taylor on Goal Factoring
by NancyLebovitz — 2014-03-28T04:45:23.774Z

The meetup will be at Nam Phuong (llth and Broad) at 5:00 PM, March 30th. This is a TIME CHANGE from the usual.

This is an extra meetup because Ben Landau-Taylor is in town. He'll be leading an exercise in Goal Factoring, which is a planning technique developed by his colleagues at Leverage Research and taught at CFAR's workshops.

From CFAR:

Do you ever find yourself saying, “Unfortunately, I have to… X?” Goal factoring teaches you to systematically break down everything obvious and non-obvious you’re accomplishing, and ask about ways you could achieve those factors separately and more effectively – a new perspective on everything from reading habits to email etiquette to outings with friends.
What colleges look for in extracurricular activities
by JonahS — 2014-03-27T22:22:00.887Z

[Edit: The post below gives the impression that our conversations with admissions officers are our only reasons for believing the claims. We've also consulted with other sources such as How to Be a High School Superstar: A Revolutionary Plan to Get into College by Standing Out (Without Burning Out) which corroborate the admissions officers' remarks]

We spoke with admissions officers at Harvard, Yale, University of Chicago, Columbia, Stanford, MIT, Duke, University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth, Williams, Johns Hopkins, Swarthmore, Brown, Northwestern and Caltech, about how they evaluate student participation in extracurricular activities, for 15 colleges total. Some things that we found based on college's statements are below.

Kawoomba suggests that colleges' statements on the first point below can't be taken at face value. What do you think?

Colleges generally don't prefer some extracurricular activities over others: Seven of the colleges indicated that the nature of the extracurriculars doesn't matter, as long as the student shows passion. Two of the colleges indicated that they have a preference for students who are involved in at least some activities with other people. Beyond this, no colleges indicated a preference for some extracurricular activities over others. In general, the colleges indicated that they define "extracurricular activities" very broadly, as anything outside of coursework, which could include work, sports, participation in online communities, etc.

Colleges generally prefer depth of involvement over breadth: Six of the colleges indicated that they have no preference for whether students engage in lots of activities or a few activities, as long as they show serious involvement in their activities. Seven of the colleges said that depth matters more than breadth. None expressed a preference for many activities.

Commitment can be important: Six of the colleges indicated that continuity of involvement and commitment matters. None said that these things don't matter.

Achievement level can make a difference, but appears to be less important: Five of the colleges indicated that achievement level doesn't matter as much as depth of involvement. Two of the colleges indicated that higher achievement helps.

Cross-posted from the Cognito Mentoring blog

See also High school extracurricular activities

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Does religion help cure insanity?
by Ritalin — 2014-03-27T17:57:38.901Z

I get papers cited at me, (the first is about "religion and spirituality", the rest about specific meditation disciplines) about but I can't tell whether they're well-done or not. I believe LessWrong is the ideal place to ask about this because there's a healthy combination of interest for self-improvement techniques and solid skepticism against quackery. I thought it would be a solid enough topic to merit its own thread rather than a discussion in Open Thread.
Meetup : Boston - Schelling Day
by Vika — 2014-03-27T17:08:50.148Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Boston - Schelling Day

WHEN:
16 April 2014 07:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
Citadel House, 98 Elm St Apt 1, Somerville, MA

Schelling Day is a rationalist holiday (designed by Ben Landau-Taylor) that is about sharing important and personal things in our lives, and getting to know each other better. The holiday involves a fun ritual for talking about feelings, and a potluck dinner.

Here is Ben's LW post describing Schelling Day
http://lesswrong.com/lw/h2t/schelling_day_a_rationalist_holiday/

There is some debate on the most Schelling time to gather and discuss feelings, but the birthday of Thomas Schelling (April 14) seemed like a good choice. Last year's debut of Schelling Day was a great success, and we look forward to holding it again!

The schedule for Schelling Day is as follows:

7pm - arrival

7:30pm - ceremony begins

8:30pm - dinner and socializing

Discussion article for the meetup : Boston - Schelling Day
Estimate Effect Sizes
by Vaniver — 2014-03-27T16:56:35.113Z

I think the following recommendation might reduce a particular negative reaction to blog posts and claims by 10%-50%, and generally improve the precision of discussion by a slight amount.

There are many phenomena that we observe that we aren't certain how to explain, and discussing potential explanations is a good way to converge on better explanations. Many phenomena are complicated, and so simple explanations are unlikely to explain everything- but a combination of simple explanations might explain most (or even all) of the phenomena.

One common way to approach this issue is to throw out a list of possibilities that could explain the phenomenon. This can run into trouble several ways: a list that is meant to explain only a fraction of the total effect could be read as exclusive, the list might come across as mutually exclusive instead of cooperative, or the relative importance of the various proposed possibilities might not be clear. It can also be bothersome to have to list the entirety of the possible alternatives or co-factors whenever you want to focus on a particular explanation.

So consider estimating the effect size as a way to clarify and limit your claims. Numerical estimates are likely to be more communicative than verbal estimates (what does it mean to be a "minor" factor, or a "significant" factor?), but harder to generate. Leading with your estimate, rather than adding it as a caveat at the end, is likely to be more communicative. This often degrades the flow of an argument, but as the point is often to prevent people from disconnecting from the argument, flow afterwards is not going to be meaningful for those people.

Counterargument: Robin's post Against Disclaimers seems relevant. This post was inspired by the negative reaction to this article by Yvain.
[link] Cybathlon (an Olympics for bionic athletes)
by Mati_Roy — 2014-03-27T16:44:24.420Z

News: http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/26/5551180/switzerland-to-host-the-first-cybathlon-an-olympics-for-bionic

I have been dreaming about the day the Paralympics would become more popular than the Olympics because of advance technologies that would help handicapped human cyborgs to perform better than non-handicapped non-cyborg/biological humans. But now, it seems Cybathlon will take the lead in this area. I'm looking forward to watch this awesome competition!
Gunshot victims to be suspended between life and death [link]
by Dr_Manhattan — 2014-03-27T16:33:49.413Z

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129623.000-gunshot-victims-to-be-suspended-between-life-and-death.html?full=true

- First "official" program to practice suspended animation

- The article naturally goes on to ask whether longer SA (months, years) is possible

- Amazing quote: "Every day at work I declare people dead. They have no signs of life, no heartbeat, no brain activity. I sign a piece of paper knowing in my heart that they are not actually dead. I could, right then and there, suspend them. But I have to put them in a body bag. It's frustrating to know there's a solution."

- IMO this if (I hope!) successful, will go a long way to bridge the emotional gap for cryonics
A small rationalist win, and a question about promulgation
by NancyLebovitz — 2014-03-27T14:22:25.838Z

I'm on a mailing list for people who run science fiction conventions*, and an author had said that he prefers going to Dragoncon because it's a better place to promote his books.

This has some angstful possibilities because Dragoncon is much larger than the sort of conventions the people on the mailing list run, and structured somewhat differently.

I suggested doing a survey of sf authors about how they promote their books at conventions, why they've made the choices they do, and how it's been working out. Other people are working on the questionnaire, and it's planned to be out within six months or so.

The rationality part is that it occurred to me that we needed more information before we did a big discussion about what's happening with authors at amateur-run conventions, and that it was possible to get a fair amount of that information.

I'm considering posting something about how I learned those mental habits, but I'm not sure how I did, though I believe it has something to do with hanging around Less Wrong. Any recommendations for Practical Rationality 101?

*I don't run conventions, I just kibitz.
Two arguments for not thinking about ethics (too much)
by Kaj_Sotala — 2014-03-27T14:15:58.209Z

I used to spend a lot of time thinking about formal ethics, trying to figure out whether I was leaning more towards positive or negative utilitarianism, about the best courses of action in light of the ethical theories that I currently considered the most correct, and so on. From the discussions that I've seen on this site, I expect that a lot of others have been doing the same, or at least something similar.

I now think that doing this has been more harmful than it has been useful, for two reasons: there's no strong evidence to assume that this will give us very good insight to our preferred ethical theories, and more importantly, because thinking in those terms will easily lead to akrasia.

1: Little expected insight

This seems like a relatively straightforward inference from all the discussion we've had about complexity of value and the limits of introspection, so I'll be brief. I think that attempting to come up with a verbal formalization of our underlying logic and then doing what that formalization dictates is akin to "playing baseball with verbal probabilities". Any introspective access we have into our minds is very limited, and at best, we can achieve an accurate characterization of the ethics endorsed by the most verbal/linguistic parts of our minds. (At least at the moment, future progress in moral psychology or neuroscience may eventually change this.) Because our morals are also derived from parts of our brains to which we don't have such access, our theories will unavoidably be incomplete. We are also prone to excessive rationalization when it comes to thinking about morality: see Joshua Greene and others for evidence suggesting that much of our verbal reasoning is actually just post-hoc rationalizations for underlying moral intuitions.

One could try to make the argument from Dutch Books and consistency, and argue that if we don't explicitly formulate our ethics and work out possible contradictions, we may end up doing things that work cross-purposes. E.g. maybe my morality says that X is good, but I don't realize this and therefore end up doing things that go against X. This is probably true to some extent, but I think that evaluating the effectiveness of various instrumental approaches (e.g. the kind of work that GiveWell is doing) is much more valuable for people who have at least a rough idea of what they want, and that the kinds of details tha...
Distribution of knowledge and standardization in science
by Stefan_Schubert — 2014-03-27T10:48:54.245Z

Modern technology facilitates the distribution of knowledge immensely. Through Google and Wikipedia, billons have access to an enormous amount of knowledge that previously was hard to get hold of. Still, there is lots of knowledge that is not getting properly distributed, something which reduces the rate of progress. What I'm thinking of is that there is lots of scientific knowledge which would be useful for other scientists, but which fails to be distributed. For instance, when I read history it strikes me that they should have an enormous use of the advances of cognitive psychology in their explanations of various actions. (The same presumably holds for all social sciences. The one discipline that seems to have made lots of use of these findings is economics.) Likewise, statisticians, mathematicians and philosophers of science could, if given the time, point out methodological problems in many published articles. Even within disciplines, lots of useful knowledege fails to be distributed adequately. It happens quite often that someone knows that an article is quite badly flawed, but still does not distribute this knowledge, because of a lack of incentives to do that.

I think that one major problem is that scientific knowledge or information is not properly standardized. Historians can get away with explanations that are grounded in naive/folk psychology rather than scientific psychology because it does not seem like they are making use of folk psychology when they explain, e.g. why this and this king did so and so. Or at least it is not sufficiently salient that their explanations are psychological. Likewise, social scientists can get away with making normative arguments which are flawed, and known to be flawed by philosophers, because it is not immediately obvious that they are giving precisely that argument.

A lack of standardization of terminology, research techniques, and what have you, makes it harder both for humans and intelligent machines to see connections between various fields, to spot flawed arguments, etc. Can such a standardization be carried out, then? This is a perennial question, on which some take the stance that all such standardization attempts are doomed to fail whereas others are more optimistic. Against the former view, I would argue that we have already reached a quite high degree of standardization regarding lots of aspects of re...
Meetup : Urbana-Campaign: Discussion (Folk Wisdom)
by Mestroyer — 2014-03-27T01:04:39.988Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Urbana-Campaign: Discussion (Folk Wisdom)

WHEN: 30 March 2014 02:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE: 300 S Goodwin Ave Apt 102, Urbana.

WHAT: Starting topic: folk wisdom. How to extract actual wisdom from it? Related reading: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/24/should-you-reverse-any-advice-you-hear/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/09/all-debates-are-bravery-debates/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ka/any_sufficiently_advanced_wisdom_is/ http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199711/folk-wisdom-was-grandma-right

WHERE: 300 S Goodwin Ave Apt 102, Urbana. The door directly to my ground-floor apartment, on which you can knock and I will hear it, is at the North-West corner of the building. Do not attempt to enter through the building's main door, because that requires keycard access, and I will not be waiting there to let you in. If you have trouble getting in, call me at REDACTED.

WHEN: 2pm Sunday.

Discussion article for the meetup : Urbana-Campaign: Discussion (Folk Wisdom)
Meetup : Utrecht: More on effective altruism
by SoerenMind — 2014-03-27T00:40:37.720Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Utrecht: More on effective altruism

WHEN:
05 April 2014 05:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Oudegracht 158, 3511 AZ Utrecht, The Netherlands

Our last meetup went well and we hope to keep the momentum growing.
As of yet, we have no specific agenda items. Thus, if you have a topic in the Less Wrong / Effective Altruism / rationality scope, please add a comment below.
Since this group is still rather young and informal, we'll use the opportunity to meet each other, share opinions on EA/LW and share our desires for what we want the group to become. There will also be plenty of semi-serious discussion over relevant issues.
We will meet in a café called De Winkel van Sinkel, which is 400m walking distance from Utrecht Centraal. The meetup will be held in English. I will be in front of the café with a a sign that says "LW" on it at 17:00. If you have trouble finding us you can call me at 0684140766.
We have a meetup.com presence of Lesswrong/Effective Altruism Nederland where you can click attend if you want to join: http://www.meetup.com/Less-Wrong-Nederland/events/173124892/
Additionally we also have a facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/262932060523750/

Discussion article for the meetup : Utrecht: More on effective altruism
Outline Summary: The Procrastination Equation
by iarwain1 — 2014-03-26T23:55:19.435Z

Lukeprog has written an excellent summary of The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel. However, since everybody has a different style that they enjoy, I thought I'd post my own summary in the style that I like best: the bullet-point outline. In fact I'm hoping this post can also serve as a test of whether others find this style useful as well. So please comment on the style as well as on the content.

Disclaimers

This summary is by no means comprehensive.

I've focused on the areas that primarily interest me, which is mostly just the practical suggestions. There is a lot more to the book than this though.

I've skipped some things that appeared redundant to me, or because I didn't understand them, or because they just didn't resonate with me.

Don't trust my interpretation.

I didn't double-check that everything in this summary faithfully adheres to the book.

I have very little expertise in this area outside of reading the book and my own personal experience.

On occasion I felt that what the author said didn't make so much sense to me, so I re-wrote it based on a combination of what the author was saying and my own understanding. However, since I originally wrote this summary a while ago, I don't necessarily remember anymore where all of the places I did this were. Where I do remember that something was my own comment I've put it in [brackets].

The Procrastination Equation

Different people procrastinate for different reasons, corresponding to the different variables in the Procrastination Equation: Motivation = (Expectancy x Value) / (Impulsiveness x Delay). Procrastination results from lowering Motivation too much.

Expectancy = how likely you think you are to reach your goal

Value = the value you place on the goal

Impulsiveness = how influenced you are by short-term vs. long-term gratifications

Delay = how far into the future the goal is

Understanding why you procrastinate is a major first step towards reducing procrastination.

The book has an assessment tool you can use to help you identify why you procrastinate.

Reasons for procrastination with suggestions for improvement:

Low Expectancy (= lack of optimism): Some people procrastinate because they lack the optimism that they'll be able to achieve their goals, so why try too hard? The following are some suggestions:

Success Spirals - one difficult accomplishment leads t

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Meetup : Israel Less Wrong Meetup - Social and Board Games
by SoftFlare — 2014-03-26T21:26:41.688Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Israel Less Wrong Meetup - Social and Board Games

WHEN:
03 April 2014 07:00:00PM (+0300)

WHERE:
Google Tel Aviv

We're going to have a meetup on Thursday, April 3rd at Google Israel's offices, Electra Tower, 98 Yigal Alon st., Tel Aviv.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The time above might say 6pm or 7pm or 8pm depending on how daylight savings time is processed. The meetup is at 7pm Israel Local Time (Which is DST right now).

This time we're going to have a social meetup! We'll be socializing and playing games.

Specifically, we look forward to playing any cool board or card game anyone will bring.

We'll start the meetup at 19:00, and we'll go on as much as we like to. Feel free to come a little bit later, as there is no agenda. (We've decided to start slightly earlier this time to give us more time and accommodate people with different schedules).

We'll meet at the 29th floor of the building (Note: Not the 26th where Google Campus is). If you arrive and cant find your way around, call Anatoly who is graciously hosting us at 054-245-1060.

Things that might happen: - You'll trade cool ideas with cool people from the Israel LW community. - You'll discover kindred spirits who agree with you about one/two boxing. - You'll kick someone's ass (and teach them how you did it) at some awesome boardgame. - You'll discover how to build a friendly AGI running on cold fusion (well probably not)

Things that will happen for sure: - You'll get to hang out with awesome people and have fun!

There is also talk of food and beers, and if you'd like to bring some too - that would be great. (But you don't have to).

If you have any question feel free to email me at hochbergg@gmail.com or call me at 054-533-0678 or call Anatoly at 054-245-1060.
See you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : Israel Less Wrong Meetup - Social and Board Games
The Problem of "Win-More"
by katydee — 2014-03-26T18:32:09.672Z

In Magic: the Gathering and other popular card games, advanced players have developed the notion of a "win-more" card. A "win-more" card is one that works very well, but only if you're already winning. In other words, it never helps turn a loss into a win, but it is very good at turning a win into a blowout. This type of card seems strong at first, but since these games usually do not use margin of victory scoring in tournaments, they end up being a trap-- instead of using cards that convert wins into blowouts, you want to use cards that convert losses into wins.

This concept is useful and important and you should never tell a new player about it, because it tends to make them worse at the game. Without a more experienced player's understanding of core concepts, it's easy to make mistakes and label cards that are actually good as being win-more.

This is an especially dangerous mistake to make because it's relatively uncommon for an outright bad card to seem like a win-more card; win-more cards are almost always cards that look really good at first. That means that if you end up being too wary of win-more cards, you're going to end up misclassifying good cards as bad, and that's an extremely dangerous mistake to make. Misclassifying bad cards as good is relatively easy to deal with, because you'll use them and see that they aren't good; misclassifying good cards as bad is much more dangerous, because you won't play them and therefore won't get the evidence you need to update your position.

I call this the "win-more problem." Concepts that suffer from the win-more problem are those that-- while certainly useful to an advanced user-- are misleading or net harmful to a less skillful person. Further, they are wrong or harmful in ways that are difficult to detect, because they screen off feedback loops that would otherwise allow someone to realize the mistake.
Meetup : Las Vegas/Henderson, NV
by thespymachine — 2014-03-26T16:31:51.787Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Las Vegas/Henderson, NV

WHEN: 30 May 2014 06:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE: 605 Mall Ring Cir. Henderson, NV 89014

Come say hi and meet fellow Reason enthusiasts! I'm not an active member of LW, but would like to get a feel for other Rationally-inspired individuals in the Henderson area. Right now I have the location set at the Panera next to the Galleria mall. But if I see interest we can change location.
May 30th, 2014 - 6:00 pm PST @ Panera Bread

Discussion article for the meetup : Las Vegas/Henderson, NV
Meetup : Washington DC: Robin Hanson visits to talk about giving
by maia — 2014-03-25T17:47:07.818Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC: Robin Hanson visits to talk about giving

WHEN:
30 March 2014 03:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
National Portrait Gallery

Robin Hanson will be visiting to discuss the issues involved with giving now vs. giving later (for example, saving up as much money as you can and donating your estate to an effective charity when you die).

As usual, the conversation may drift to whatever folks are most interested in.

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC: Robin Hanson visits to talk about giving