trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : Tempe, AZ (ASU)
by MumpsimusLane — 2014-03-03T20:46:53.518Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Tempe, AZ (ASU)

WHEN:
07 March 2014 06:30:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
300 E Orange Mall, Tempe, AZ

We are meeting at the entrance to Hayden Library at ASU.
Tentative discussion topics include:
wrap up How To Measure Anything;
planning / meta;
belated New Year's resolutions andor goals in general

Discussion article for the meetup : Tempe, AZ (ASU)
Meetup : Utrecht: Effective Altruism
by SoerenMind — 2014-03-03T19:55:11.665Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Utrecht: Effective Altruism

WHEN:
07 March 2014 07:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Oudegracht 158, Utrecht, the Netherlands

In this meetup we will discuss topics related to effective altruism.
This meetup is not directly related to the previous one in Utrecht. It is also not purely a LessWrong meetup. We have already created an event on Facebook, where 5 people are planning to attend (I can add you to the event if you comment here). Most of those are also active on LW and we would be more than happy to have more LWers on board.

Some topics we may discuss are altruistic career choice, selection of causes, and whether we can create an effective altruism community in the Netherlands. Getting to know each other is also an important part.

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, since we have at least one German participant..

I will be holding a sign that says 'LW' on it.

Discussion article for the meetup : Utrecht: Effective Altruism
Group Rationality Diary, March 1-15
by therufs — 2014-03-02T23:56:33.700Z

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for March 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: March 16-31

Immediate past diary: January 16-31

Rationality diaries archive
Proportional Giving
by gjm — 2014-03-02T21:09:07.597Z

Executive summary: The practice of giving a fixed fraction of one's income to charity is near-universal but possibly indefensible. I describe one approach that certainly doesn't defend it, speculate vaguely about a possible way of fixing it up, and invite better ideas from others.

Many of us give a certain fraction of our income to charitable causes. This sort of practice has a long history:

Deuteronomy 14:22 Thou shalt truly tithe all the increase of thy seed, that the field bringeth forth year by year.

(note that "tithe" here means "give one-tenth of") and is widely practised today:

GWWC Pledge: I recognise that I can use part of my income to do a significant amount of good in the developing world. Since I can live well enough on a smaller income, I pledge that from today until the day I retire, I shall give at least ten percent of what I earn to whichever organizations can most effectively use it to help people in developing countries. I make this pledge freely, openly, and without regret.

And of course it's roughly how typical taxation systems (which are kinda-sorta like charitable donation, if you squint) operate. But does it make sense? Is there some underlying principle from which a policy of giving away a certain fraction of one's income (not necessarily the traditional 10%, of course) follows?

The most obvious candidate for such a principle would be what we might call

Weighted Utilitarianism: Act so as to maximize a weighted sum of utility, where (e.g.) one's own utility may be weighted much higher than that of random far-away people.

But this can't produce anything remotely like a policy of proportional giving. Assuming you aren't giving away many millions per year (which is a fair assumption if you're thinking in terms of a fraction of your salary) then the level of utility-per-unit-money achievable by your giving is basically independent of what you give, and so is the weight you attach to the utility of the beneficiaries.

So suppose that when your income, after taking out donations, is $X, your utility (all else equal) is u(X), so that your utility per marginal dollar is u'(X); and suppose you attach weight 1 to your own utility and weight w to that of the people who'd benefit from your donations; and suppose their gain in utility per marginal dollar given is t. Then when your income is S you will set your giving g so that u'(S-g) = wt.

What this s...
Political Skills which Increase Income
by Xodarap — 2014-03-02T17:56:32.568Z

Summary: This article is intended for those who are "earning to give" (i.e. maximize income so that it can be donated to charity). It is basically an annotated bibliography of a few recent meta-analyses of predictors of income.

Key Results

The degree to which management “sponsors” your career development is an important predictor of your salary, as is how skilled you are politically.

Despite the stereotype of a silver-tongued salesman preying on people’s biases, rational appeals are generally the best tactic.

After rationality, the best tactics are types of ingratiation, including flattery and acting modest.

Ng et al. performed a metastudy of over 200 individual studies of objective and subjective career success. Here are the variables they found best correlated with salary:

Predictor

Correlation

Political Knowledge & Skills

0.29

Education Level

0.29

Cognitive Ability (as measured by standardized tests)

0.27

Age

0.26

Training and Skill Development Opportunities

0.24

Hours Worked

0.24

Career Sponsorship

0.22

(all significant at p = .05)

(For reference, the “Big 5” personality traits all have a correlation under 0.12.)

Before we go on, a few caveats: while these correlations are significant and important, none are overwhelming (the authors cite Cohen as saying the range 0.24-0.36 is “medium” and correlations over 0.37 are “large”). Also, in addition to the usual correlation/causation concerns, there is lots of cross-correlation: e.g. older people might have greater political knowledge but less education, thereby confusing things. For a discussion of moderating variables, see the paper itself.

Career Sponsorship

There are two broad models of career advancement: contest-mobility and sponsorship-mobility. They are best illustrated with an example.

Suppose Peter and Penelope are both equally talented entry-level employees. Under the contest-mobility model, they would both be equally likely to get a raise or promotion, because they are equally skilled.

Sponsorship-mobility theorists argue that even if Peter and Penelope are equally talented, it’s likely that one of them will catch the eye of senior management. Perhaps it’s due to one of them having an early success by chance, making a joke in a meeting, or simply just having a more ...
Solomonoff Cartesianism
by Rob Bensinger — 2014-03-02T17:56:23.442Z

Followup to: Bridge Collapse; An Intuitive Explanation of Solomonoff Induction; Reductionism

Summary: If you want to predict arbitrary computable patterns of data, Solomonoff induction is the optimal way to go about it — provided that you're an eternal transcendent hypercomputer. A real-world AGI, however, won't be immortal and unchanging. It will need to form hypotheses about its own physical state, including predictions about possible upgrades or damage to its hardware; and it will need bridge hypotheses linking its hardware states to its software states. As such, the project of building an AGI demands that we come up with a new formalism for constructing (and allocating prior probabilities to) hypotheses. It will not involve just building increasingly good computable approximations of AIXI.

Solomonoff induction has been cited repeatedly as the theoretical gold standard for predicting computable sequences of observations.1 As Hutter, Legg, and Vitanyi (2007) put it:

Solomonoff's inductive inference system will learn to correctly predict any computable sequence with only the absolute minimum amount of data. It would thus, in some sense, be the perfect universal prediction algorithm, if only it were computable.

Perhaps you've been handed the beginning of a sequence like 1, 2, 4, 8… and you want to predict what the next number will be. Perhaps you've paused a movie, and are trying to guess what the next frame will look like. Or perhaps you've read the first half of an article on the Algerian Civil War, and you want to know how likely it is that the second half describes a decrease in GDP. Since all of the information in these scenarios can be represented as patterns of numbers, they can all be treated as rule-governed sequences like the 1, 2, 4, 8… case. Complicated sequences, but sequences all the same.

It's been argued that in all of these cases, one unique idealization predicts what comes next better than any computable method: Solomonoff induction. No matter how limited your knowledge is, or how wide the space of computable rules that could be responsible for your observations, the ideal answer is always the same: Solomonoff induction.

Solomonoff induction has only a few components. It has one free parameter, a choice of universal Turing machine. Once we specify a Turing machine, that gives us a fixed encoding...
Learning languages efficiently.
by Fivehundred — 2014-03-02T15:57:53.578Z

I'm not at all sure how this site works yet (I've gone only on traditional forums), so bear with me please if I do something foolish. I'm being drafted to the IDF in a few months and I need to learn Hebrew very quickly if I want to avoid being put into a program for foreign speakers. I currently reside in the US, but I've previously lived in (and have citizenship of) both countries.

After experiencing the government-sponsored Hebrew programs, I totally refuse to accept such a ridiculously inefficient and traumatic method of teaching a language. When I get enlisted, I'll want to focus whatever little time I have left on studying more important things. Something that will damage me psychologically, not to mention take up huge amounts of time and effort, will take away any opportunity I might get.

I can speak a few basic phrases in Hebrew and and can understand a bit more. Immersion is not an option for me currently. My attempts at teaching myself the language have been stunningly misguided (which is to say, like reading Atlas Shrugged to get a proper understanding of Objectivism) and I'm not interested in a lengthy trial and error process. Obviously getting literature on language acquisition is out of the question. I wouldn't even know where to start.

So, I'd just like some methods or heuristics for picking up languages as fast as possible. (I am extremely literate, so there's that.)
LINK-Misunderstanding risk of murder reincidence
by polymathwannabe — 2014-03-02T13:14:45.402Z

People don't want this institutionalized murderer to get free because they don't understand there's no such thing as "zero risk."

http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/straighttalk/archives/2014/02/20140228-142409.html
Find a study partner - March 2014 thread
by Mati_Roy — 2014-03-02T06:00:10.483Z

This is the monthly thread to find a study partner.

For reasons mentioned in So8res article as well as for other reasons: studying with a partner can be very good.

So if you're looking for a study partner for an online course, reading a manual or else (whether it's in the MIRI course list or not) tell others in the comment section.

The past treads about finding a study partner can be found under the tag study_thread. However, you have higher probabilities of finding a study partner in the most recent thread. If you haven't found a study partner last month, you are welcome to post the same comment again here.
[link] Shulman & Bostrom: "Embryo Selection for Cognitive Enhancement: Curiosity or Game-changer?"
by Pablo — 2014-03-02T03:57:53.052Z

Carl Shulman & Nick Bostrom, Embryo Selection for Cognitive Enhancement: Curiosity or Game-changer?, Global Policy, vol. 5, no. 1 (February, 2014), pp. 85–92.

Abstract:

Human capital is an important determinant of individual and aggregate economic outcomes, and a major input to scientific progress. It has been suggested that advances in genomics may open up new avenues to enhance human intellectual abilities genetically, complementing environmental interventions such as education and nutrition. One way to do this would be via embryo selection in the context of in vitro fertilization (IVF). In this article, we analyze the feasibility, timescale, and possible societal impacts of embryo selection for cognitive enhancement. We find that embryo selection, on its own, may have significant (but likely not drastic) impacts over the next 50 years, though large effects could accumulate over multiple generations. However, there is a complementary technology – stem cell-derived gametes – which has been making rapid progress and which could amplify the impact of embryo selection, enabling very large changes if successfully applied to humans.

An earlier version of this paper has been available for some time at Bostrom's website. Here are some quotes from that version, courtesy of gwern. And here are some comments by Luke Muehlhauser.
Meetup : Montreal: Let's relax and hang out
by Oriane — 2014-03-02T02:31:00.123Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Montreal: Let's relax and hang out

WHEN:
02 March 2014 07:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
4109 Ch. de la Côte des Neiges, Apt 14

Meetup.com is currently not working so here are the infos for tomorrow's social meetup. Feel free to bring drinks and snacks. Call me if you get lost: 514 582 1052

Discussion article for the meetup : Montreal: Let's relax and hang out
Polling Thread
by Gunnar_Zarncke — 2014-03-01T23:57:53.846Z

This is the second installment of the Polling Thread.

This is your chance to ask your multiple choice question you always wanted to throw in. Get qualified numeric feedback to your comments. Post fun polls.

There are some rules:

Each poll goes into its own top level comment and may be commented there.

You must at least vote all polls that were posted earlier than you own. This ensures participation in all polls and also limits the total number of polls. You may of course vote without posting a poll.

Your poll should include a 'don't know' option (to avoid conflict with 2). I don't know whether we need to add a troll catch option here but we will see.

If you don't know how to make a poll in a comment look at the Poll Markup Help.

This is not (yet?) a regular thread. If it is successful I may post again. Or you may. In that case do the following :

Use "Polling Thread" in the title.

Copy the rules.

Add the tag "poll".

Link to this Thread or a previous Thread.

Create a top-level comment saying 'Discussion of this thread goes here; all other top-level comments should be polls or similar'

Add a second top-level comment with an initial poll to start participation.
Meetup : Washington DC: Dog Clickers
by rocurley — 2014-03-01T16:57:02.373Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC: Dog Clickers

WHEN:
02 March 2014 03:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC 20001, USA

We'll be meeting to see if we can train people to do things with dog clickers.

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC: Dog Clickers
March 2014 Media Thread
by ArisKatsaris — 2014-03-01T15:49:07.367Z

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.
Rationality Quotes March 2014
by MalcolmOcean — 2014-03-01T15:34:22.614Z

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. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.

No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Self-Congratulatory Rationalism
by ChrisHallquist — 2014-03-01T08:52:13.172Z

Quite a few people complain about the atheist/skeptic/rationalist communities being self-congratulatory. I used to dismiss this as a sign of people's unwillingness to admit that rejecting religion, or astrology, or whatever, was any more rational than accepting those things. Lately, though, I've started to worry.

Frankly, there seem to be a lot of people in the LessWrong community who imagine themselves to be, not just more rational than average, but paragons of rationality who other people should accept as such. I've encountered people talking as if it's ridiculous to suggest they might sometimes respond badly to being told the truth about certain subjects. I've encountered people asserting the rational superiority of themselves and others in the community for flimsy reasons, or no reason at all.

Yet the readiness of members of the LessWrong community to disagree with and criticize each other suggests we don't actually think all that highly of each other's rationality. The fact that members of the LessWrong community tend to be smart is no guarantee that they will be rational. And we have much reason to fear "rationality" degenerating into signaling games.

What Disagreement Signifies

Let's start by talking about disagreement. There's been a lot of discussion of disagreement on LessWrong, and in particular of Aumann's agreement theorem, often glossed as something like "two rationalists can't agree to disagree." (Or perhaps that we can't foresee to disagree.) Discussion of disagreement, however, tends to focus on what to do about it. I'd rather take a step back, and look at what disagreement tells us about ourselves: namely, that we don't think all that highly of each other's rationality.

This, for me, is the take-away from Tyler Cowen and Robin Hanson's paper Are Disagreements Honest? In the paper, Cowen and Hanson define honest disagreement as meaning that "meaning that the disputants respect each other’s relevant abilities, and consider each person’s stated opinion to be his best estimate of the truth, given his information and effort," and they argue disagreements aren't honest in this sense.

I don't find this conclusion surprising. In fact, I suspect that while people sometimes do mean it when they talk about respectful disagreement, often they realize this is a polite fiction (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). Deep down, they know that ...
Meetup : Urbana-Champaign: Games
by Mestroyer — 2014-02-28T21:49:02.228Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Urbana-Champaign: Games

WHEN:
02 March 2014 12:00:00PM (-0800)

WHERE:
40.110430, -88.223784

Available games will include Wits and Wagers, Zendo, Cards Against Humanity, Pandemic, probably Flux, and the closed beta of Dystheism, a cooperative multiplayer puzzle game.
Meetup will be held at my apartment:
300 S. Goodwin Ave Apt 102 Urbana IL.
Coordinates: 40.110430, -88.223784
At 2pm, Sunday.
The main entrance to the building requires card access, but there is a door you can knock on where we will hear you at the north end of the west side of the building.
If you have any trouble getting in, call REDACTED.
Cross posted on the mailing list.

Discussion article for the meetup : Urbana-Champaign: Games
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2014-02-28T17:04:16.649Z

This summary was posted to LW main on February 21st. The following week's summary is here.

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

Atlanta Lesswrong Meetup: How to Increase Your Brainpower: 23 February 2014 07:00PM
Bratislava Meetup X.: 24 February 2014 06:00PM
[Canberra] Second Canberra Meetup - Paranoid Debating: 28 February 2014 06:30PM
Hamburg - about Procrastination: 21 February 2014 07:00PM+1:00 (MET)
Montreal Less Wrong - Easy Lifehacks: 24 February 2014 07:00PM
Moscow, Different Reports: 23 February 2014 04:00PM
Princeton NJ Meetup: 22 February 2014 01:00PM
Sydney Meetup: February: 26 February 2014 06:30PM
Urbana-Champaign: Bridging laws: 23 February 2014 02:00PM

The remaining 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:

Austin, TX: 22 February 2020 01:30PM
[Berlin] Community Weekend in Berlin: 11 April 2014 04:00PM
London VOI meetup 16/2, plus socials 9/2 and 23/2: 23 February 2014 02:00PM
Washington DC EA meetup (now with guests!): 23 February 2014 03:00PM
West LA—Practical Taoism: 26 February 2014 07:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Berlin, Brussels, Cambridge, MA, Cambridge UK, Columbus, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Mountain View, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, Waterloo, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers.

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...