trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
New HPMOR Article(s)
by NancyLebovitz — 2013-07-04T10:57:08.631Z

I was setting up the article for chapter 91 with the intent of doing one article for each new chapter because I don't like like dealing with long threads, but it occurred to me to ask whether people have a preference for one, two, or three threads.

Someone else would have to consolidate multiple threads and it might not be possible to split a combined thread, so I'm checking first.
Meetup : Melbourne Practical Rationality - July 5th
by BraydenM — 2013-07-04T10:13:03.808Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne Practical Rationality - July 5th

WHEN:
05 July 2013 06:30:00PM (+1000)

WHERE:
491 King St West Melbourne

Matt will be away for the July meetup, so I am taking charge of this month's Practical Rationality event at the newish venue (TrikeApps: Level 2, 491 King St West Melbourne) from 6:30pm to late.
The first structured activity for the evening will be a discussion of rationality outreach in Melbourne. The three topics up for investigation are:
-Planning to run Less Wrong events that appeal to newcomers who have not read the sequences
-Discussing what would be required to bring a CFAR workshop to Melbourne within the next 12 months
-Starting a Melbourne Effective Altruist community
You can join a discussion about whichever of these you are most interested in. We will start with whichever one interests the first people to show up, and split when the group size increases.

By the end of the discussion I hope for us to have obtained a clearer picture of the benefits of outreach, what events should look like, and how we can target high value potential members.

Please consider which of the topics above you are interested in working on, and bring at least one idea along on the night.

The second activity later in the evening will be Rationality Therapy, where you bring problems or doubts you are having to discuss in small groups, with the aim of generating solutions to specific issues in your life.

We will be experimenting with a new incentive: making a takeaway order at 7:30pm for anyone who wants dinner. This will hopefully make it easier for you to come along early without having to worry about finding food beforehand.

If you need to reach me, for example if you want to come earlier, you can contact me on 0407943917.

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne Practical Rationality - July 5th
Meetup : Washington DC fun and games meetup
by rocurley — 2013-07-04T04:35:51.582Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC fun and games meetup

WHEN:
07 July 2013 03:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC 20001, USA (courtyard)

We'll be meeting to have hang out and play games.

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC fun and games meetup
Progress on automated mathematical theorem proving?
by JonahS — 2013-07-03T18:40:11.888Z

In a recent comment thread I expressed skepticism as to whether there's been meaningful progress on general artificial intelligence.

I hedged because of my lack of subject matter knowledge, but thinking it over, I realized that I do have relevant subject matter knowledge, coming from my background in pure math.

In a blog post from April 2013, Fields Medalist Timothy Gowers wrote:

Over the last three years, I have been collaborating with Mohan Ganesalingam, a computer scientist, linguist and mathematician (and amazingly good at all three) on a project to write programs that can solve mathematical problems. We have recently produced our first program. It is rather rudimentary: the only problems it can solve are ones that mathematicians would describe as very routine and not requiring any ideas, and even within that class of problems there are considerable restrictions on what it can do; we plan to write more sophisticated programs in the future.

I don't know of any computer programs that have been able to prove theorems outside of the class "very routine and not requiring any ideas," without human assistance (and without being heavily specialized to an individual theorem). I think that if such projects existed, Gowers would be aware of them and would likely have commented on them within his post.

It's easy to give an algorithm that generates a proof of a mathematical theorem that's provable: choose a formal language with definitions and axioms, and for successive values of n, enumerate all sequences of mathematical deductions of length n, halting if the final line of a sequence is the statement of the the desired theorem. But the running time of this algorithm is exponential in the length of the proof, and the algorithm is infeasible to implement except for theorems with very short proofs.

It appears that the situation is not "there are computer programs that are able to prove mathematical theorems, just not as yet as efficiently as humans," but rather "computer programs are unable to prove any nontrivial theorems."

I'll highlight the Sylow theorems from group theory as examples of nontrivial theorems. Their statements are simple, and their proofs are not very long, but they're ingenious, and involve substantive ideas. If somebody was able to write a program that's able to find proofs of the Sylow theorems, I would consider that to be strong evid...
Meetup : Atlanta: Intro to Meditation
by Nova_Division — 2013-07-03T18:06:48.995Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Atlanta: Intro to Meditation

WHEN: 13 July 2013 06:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE: TBA

This session will be an overview of meditation. What it is, it's benefits, types of practice, etc. Both experienced and novice Lesswrong meditation practitioners will be present to discuss their experiences and answer questions.

These posts are of interest:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/hkt/two_weeks_of_meditation_can_reduce_mind_wandering/

http://lesswrong.com/lw/5h9/meditation_insight_and_rationality_part_1_of_3/

After our discussion, we may do brief starting exercises to try out meditation in the group setting.

No experience necessary, no reading required.

As always, snacks and games and fun will be had by all!

There will be cats! Lemme know if you're allergic.

Discussion article for the meetup : Atlanta: Intro to Meditation
Group Rationality Diary, July 1-15
by therufs — 2013-07-03T01:44:05.349Z

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for July 1-15.

It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:

Established a useful new habit

Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief

Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations

Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior

Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something

Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life

Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you

Tried doing any of the above and failed

Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.

Thanks to cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating!

Next diary -- July 15-31

Immediate past diary -- June 1-30

Rationality Diaries archive
What are you working on? July 2013
by David_Gerard — 2013-07-02T16:39:03.792Z

This is the supposedly-bimonthly-but-we-missed-April-and-June-2013 '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.
Seeking paid help for SPARC logistics
by paulfchristiano — 2013-07-02T16:38:45.766Z

This August CFAR is running the Summer Program on Applied Rationality & Cognition, an academic high school summer program, and we are looking for a part-time, temporary logistics manager for the program. If you are interested in the role and live near Berkeley, CA, please fill out the short form here with additional information.

SPARC will be held at UC Berkeley from August 5 - August 17. The work is full time or more from August 3 - August 17, and about 10 hours per week between the start of the job and August 3. The participants are very talented high school math students.

If you are interested in the work CFAR is doing or in SPARC in particular, this will be a great opportunity to see the work first hand, help out, and meet many of the people involved.

Some examples of logistical tasks that you would help with:

Ensure that facilities are prepared, help arrange housing, determine the schedule and coordinate with visiting instructors, and coordinate with UC Berkeley conference services

Talk with students and parents in advance of the program, answer questions, give directions, etc.

Acquire supplies for the program, print and distribute course materials and schedules

Arrange liability insurance, medical histories, and releases.

SPARC volunteers and instructors will be available to help with some tasks, especially during the program itself, but you would be the main staff responsible for logistics. We strongly prefer applicants who have experience organizing events and ensuring that they run smoothly. Applicants should be local and able to easily get to the UC Berkeley campus. (They should also be happy to interact with 16-18 year old students and their parents.)
Rationality Quotes July 2013
by Vaniver — 2013-07-02T16:21:59.219Z

Another month has passed and here is a new rationality quotes thread. The usual rules are:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)

Do not quote yourself.

Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson.

No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Meetup : Durham/RTLW General Discussion
by curiousepic — 2013-07-02T14:51:26.529Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Durham/RTLW General Discussion

WHEN: 04 July 2013 07:30:00PM (-0400)

WHERE: Cocoa Cinnamon, 420 W Geer St., Durham NC

This will be a fairly open meetup. Anyone who would like to can present, summarize, or simply offer for discussion an article (or just a concept) that has caught your interest recently, on Less Wrong or otherwise. We will divide our two hours into as many attendees as we have and experiment with timed and/or structured discussion.

This is a great time to come back into the fold if you've been feeling left out by not having read the requisite articles (which, of course, you should never feel deterred by)!

Discussion article for the meetup : Durham/RTLW General Discussion
Boston Megameetup July 13-14
by ModusPonies — 2013-07-02T07:12:35.072Z

On the weekend of July 13-14, Harvard High-Impact Philanthropy will be hosting a rationalist megameetup. Everyone who can make the trip is strongly encouraged to come. We'll meet at the Harvard Science Center in room B-10 at noon on both days. Crash space is available; comment or send me a PM to arrange. (I am supposed to say "the megameetup is not sponsored by the Science Center or Harvard University.") If you're planning to come, please RSVP in this thread or on our facebook event page.
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 20, chapter 90
by palladias — 2013-07-02T02:13:59.962Z

This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 90. The previous thread has passed 750 comments.

There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)

The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17,18,19.

Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.
July 2013 Media Thread
by ArisKatsaris — 2013-07-01T23:12:09.197Z

This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.

If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.

Please use the comment trees for genres. There is a meta thread for comments about future threads.

If you think there should be a thread for a particular genre of media, please post it to the Other Media thread for now, and add a poll to the Meta thread asking if it should be a thread every month.
Meetup : West LA - Randomness: Why We Want It, How We Get It
by Scott Garrabrant — 2013-07-01T20:08:40.764Z

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA - Randomness: Why We Want It, How We Get It

WHEN:
03 July 2013 07:00:00PM (-0700)

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

When: 7:00pm Wednesday, July 3rd.

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. The entrance sign says "Lounge".

Parking is free for 3 hours.

Discussion: I will present many uses for random or pseudo-random numbers, both for algorithms and for humans. There will be applications to: Game Theory, Complexity Theory, Cryptography, and Fair Division. Then I will open the discussion to how we as humans can generate pseudo-random numbers. I encourage everyone to think about how they would attempt to generate an unpredictable string of random numbers, and share their results. (Imagine you are playing Rock-Paper-Scissors with an Omega-like AI which is very good at learning from patterns and predicting human behavior. How would you stop it from beating you.) Finally, there will probably be some philosophical discussion on the difference between randomness and pseudo-randomness, and whether or not randomness is achievable or even well defined.

No prior knowledge of or exposure to Less Wrong is necessary; this will be generally accessible and useful to everyone who values thinking for themselves. There will be open general conversation until 7:30, and that's always a lot of good, fun, intelligent discussion!

There will be a probably whiteboard with Bayes' Theorem written on it.

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA - Randomness: Why We Want It, How We Get It
[Link] Bets, Portfolios, and Belief Revelation
by Jayson_Virissimo — 2013-07-01T16:17:28.542Z

In a post today at EconLog, Bryan defends the "a bet is a tax on bullshit" maxim contra "portfolios reveal beliefs, bets reveal personality traits and public posturing" (preferred by Noah Smith and Tyler Cowen).

1. If portfolios really "reveal beliefs," Tyler and Noah should be able to look at a random person's portfolio and tell us everything he believes. Yet neither Tyler, Noah, nor anyone else can do this. They can't even deduce someone's financial beliefs from his portfolio, much less his beliefs about economic policy or the Fermi paradox. Portfolios say something about beliefs, but every portfolio is consistent with a very wide range of views.

2. Most people's portfolios exhibit extreme inertia. Even prominent Nobel prize-winning economists admit they follow simple rules of thumb when they invest. So unless people's beliefs are carved in stone, how could portfolios possibly reveal much about their beliefs? Tyler is a case in point: He changes his mind a hundred times a day, but he follows a simple financial strategy that hasn't varied in years.

The full post can be found here.
Dealing with Administrative Stress
by Stabilizer — 2013-07-01T04:40:08.242Z

By Administrative Stress, I refer to the stress caused in dealing with filling forms, applications, talking to bureaucracies, and so on. This has caused me a lot of stress in the past and I've lost several opportunities because of my aversion in dealing with this. Over time I've become better at it. I still have a long way to go, but I've made progress. So here is a short list of strategies I use to overcome this stress/fear and I'm sharing in the hope that some people might find it useful. Feel free add your tips and strategies in the comments:

1. If you can afford to pay someone else to do the work for you and someone else can indeed do it, then do so.

2. Breathe. It's OK. Focus on your breathing. You can get over this. Keep telling yourself that you're stronger then some puny application forms. Take it one step at a time.

3. Don't catastophize. Much of the fear comes from imagining situations where you missed one little detail and therefore lost a huge opportunity or lost a lot of money or got into trouble and so on. This is textbook catastrophizing. Tell yourself that millions of people do this kind of work everyday and that you are no worse than them. In fact, millions might even be filling out the exact form that you are filling out (in the case of taxes or visa applications). Anna Salamon mentions in the Checklist of Rationality Habits that she managed convince herself of the safety of the wire-guided fall at the Stratosphere Hotel in Las Vegas by imagining twice the population of her college doing the jump and surviving. Similarly, you can imagine maybe your entire city filling out the application and no one getting into significant trouble. Also, you can use simple mindfulness exercises to focus on the present.

4. Use Checklists. I cannot overstate the importance of this. Write down every single thing you need to finish and process it one at a time. Write down the deadline at the head of your checklist and keep that date steady in mind.

5. If you need to make appointments, make them early. I'm currently applying for a German visa. I kept postponing making a Visa appointment because I thought I'd get one easily, based on my experience of applying for a Canadian visa. But as it turns out I was wrong and now the appointment date is uncomfortably close to my date of travel. Making early appointments gives you a clear and comfortable dea...
[LINKS] Killer Robots and Theories of Truth
by fowlertm — 2013-06-30T22:57:02.361Z

Peter at the Conscious Entities blog wrote an essay on the problems with using autonomous robots for combat, and attempts to articulate some general principles which allow them to be used ethically. He says:

In essence I think there are four broad reasons why hypothetically we might think it right to be wary of killer robots: first, because they work well; second because in other ways they don’t work well, third because they open up new scope for crime, and fourth because they might be inherently unethical.

Unpacking this a little, autonomous robots will affect the characteristics of war and make it easier for many to carry out, can be expected to malfunction in especially complex and open-ended situations in very serious ways, might be re-purposed for crime, and because for various reasons they make the ethics surrounding war even more dubious.

He even takes a stab at laying out restrictive principles which will help mitigate some of the danger in utilizing autonomous robots:

P1. Killer Robots should not be produced or used in a way that allows them to fall into the hands of people who will use them unethically.

P2. Killer Robots should not be used for any mission which you would not be prepared to assign to a human soldier if a human soldier were capable of executing it.

P3. Killer Robots should not be used for any mission in unpredictable circumstances or where the application of background understanding may be required.

P4. Killer Robots should not be equipped with capacities that go beyond the immediate mission; they should be subject to built-in time limits and capable of being shut down remotely.

Though he is a non-expert in the field, I (also a non-expert) find his analysis capable and thorough, though I spotted some possible flaws. I mention it here at LessWrong because, while we may be decades away from superintelligent AI, work in AI risk and machine ethics is going to become especially important very soon as drones, robots, and other non-human combatants become more prevalent on battlefields all over the world.

Switching gears a bit, Massimo Pigliucci of Rationally Speaking fame lays out some common theories of truth and problems facing each one. If you've never heard of Charles Sanders Pierce and wouldn't know a verificationist account of truth if it hit you in the face, Massimo's article could b...
[LINK] Cantor's theorem, the prisoner's dilemma, and the halting problem
by Qiaochu_Yuan — 2013-06-30T20:26:03.002Z

I wouldn't normally link to a post from my math blog here, but it concerns a cute interpretation of Cantor's theorem that showed up when I was thinking about program equilibria at the April MIRI workshop, so I thought it might be of interest here (e.g. if you're trying to persuade a mathematically inclined friend of yours to attend a future workshop). A short proof of the undecidability of the halting problem falls out as a bonus.