trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Counterfactual Reprogramming Decision Theory
by lukeprog — 2012-09-10T01:35:22.839Z

Surprisingly, Ben Goertzel's (2010) Counterfactual Reprogramming Decision Theory (CRDT) has not been discussed even once on Less Wrong, so I present this discussion post as an opportunity to do so.

Here is Goertzel's abstract:

A novel variant of decision theory is presented. The basic idea is that one should ask, at each point in time: What would I do if the reprogrammable parts of my brain were reprogrammed by a superintelligent Master Programmer with the goal of supplying me with a program that would maximize my utility averaged over possible worlds? Problems such as the Prisoner's Dilemma, the value of voting, Newcomb's Problem and the Psychopath Button are reviewed from this perspective and shown to be addressed in a satisfactory way.

His first footnote acknowledges some debt to Less Wrong and to Wei Dai in particular:

Some interesting, albeit often confusing, discussion on CDT and hypothetical replacement decision theories may be found online at the Less Wrong blog... The decision algorithm presented by Dai on that blog page bears some resemblance to CRDT, but due to the rough and very informal exposition there, I'm not sure what is the precise relationship.

He also discusses Vladimir Nesov's counterfactual mugging scenario, and attempts to work toward a formalization of CRDT by making use of AIXI and some other stuff.

Thoughts?
A My Little Pony fanfic allegedly but not mainly about immortality
by PhilGoetz — 2012-09-10T01:02:01.972Z

My Little Pony (generation 4) has 2 immortal characters, who get a lot of sympathy from the bronies. "How sad! Poor Celestia and Luna must see everyone they know grow old and die. How much better to die yourself!"

I tried to write a fanfic saying that death was bad. But I had to make it a story, and it ended up having other themes. I don't know whether I like it or not, but it was very popular (now approaching 7000 views in 3 days on fimfiction).

I was pretty sure the message "death is bad" was still in there, because Celestia says things like "Death is bad" and "I'm afraid of dying." So imagine my surprise when comment after comment said, "Yes, immortality is such a curse!"

Why did so many people come away saying that? Tell me what you think. It will help to know that Twilight regularly writes "friendship report" letters to Celestia describing what she has learned about friendship, and that Twilight and Celestia have an especially close relationship.

Please leave comments on the google doc or here on LessWrong, not on fimfiction or Equestria Daily. Please don't down-vote the story if you aren't familiar with the characters or aren't calibrated to fimfiction voting.

Mortality Report on google docs (comment-enabled), 4000 words.

Spoilers after the bar.

I can see two things that happened:

I overplayed the "death is bad" angle, to the point where readers thought Celestia wanted to die to get away from having to deal with death. These readers didn't like the story as much, because they thought she was being selfish rather than selfless.

Most readers who figured out the evolutionary plan kicked back hard and called it evil. That implied that Celestia was rationalizing very badly in agreeing to the plan in theory, and they then presumed her final actions were selfish.
Chief Probability Officer
by lukeprog — 2012-09-09T23:45:40.808Z

Stanford Professor Sam Savage (also of Probability Management) proposes that large firms appoint a "Chief Probability Officer." Here is a description from Douglas Hubbard's How to Measure Anything, ch. 6:

Sam Savage... has some ideas about how to institutionalize the entire process of creating Monte Carlo simulations [for estimating risk].

...His idea is to appoint a chief probability officer (CPO) for the firm. The CPO would be in charge of managing a common library of probability distributions for use by anyone running Monte Carlo simulations. Savage invokes concepts like the Stochastic Information Packet (SIP), a pregenerated set of 100,000 random numbers for a particular value. Sometimes different SIPs would be related. For example, the company’s revenue might be related to national economic growth. A set of SIPs that are generated so they have these correlations are called “SLURPS” (Stochastic Library Units with Relationships Preserved). The CPO would manage SIPs and SLURPs so that users of probability distributions don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time they need to simulate inflation or healthcare costs.

Hubbard adds some of his own ideas to the proposal:

Certification of analysts. Right now, there is not a lot of quality control for decision analysis experts. Only actuaries, in their particular specialty of decision analysis, have extensive certification requirements. As for actuaries, certification in decision analysis should eventually be an independent not-for-profit program run by a professional association. Some other professional certifications now partly cover these topics but fall far short in substance in this particular area. For this reason, I began certifying individuals in Applied Information Economics because there was an immediate need for people to be able to prove their skills to potential employers.

Certification for calibrated estimators. As we discussed earlier, an uncalibrated estimator has a strong tendency to be overconfident. Any calculation of risk based on his or her estimates will likely be significantly understated. However, a survey I once conducted showed that calibration is almost unheard of among those who build Monte Carlo models professionally, even though a majority used at least some subjective estimates. (About a third surveyed used mostly subjective

...
[Link] Article about rationality and CFAR
by Despard — 2012-09-09T17:06:31.727Z

http://issuu.com/nervemag/docs/issue-2?mode=window&pageNumber=18

A friend of mine runs Nerve, the new science magazine at the university where I work, and I offered to write about rationality for their second issue. The article is just out, with some quotes from some people you might recognise! Enjoy.

EDIT: the Wordpress version is now up, for those allergic to Flash.

http://nervemag.wordpress.com/2012/09/11/why-are-smart-people-so-stupid/
Call for Anonymous Narratives by LW Women and Question Proposals (AMA)
by daenerys — 2012-09-09T08:39:48.280Z

In another discussion going on right now, I posted this proposal, asking for feedback on this experiment. The feedback was positive, so here goes...

Original Post:

When these gender discussions come up, I am often tempted to write in with my own experiences and desires. But I generally don't because I don't want to generalize from one example, or claim to be the Voice of Women, etc. However, according to the last survey, I actually AM over 1% of the females on here, and so is every other woman. (i.e. there are less than 100 of us).

My idea is to put out a call for women on LessWrong to write openly about their experiences and desires in this community, and send them to me. I will anonymize them all, and put them all up under one post.

This would have a couple of benefits, including:

Anonymity allows for open expression- When you are in the vast minority, speaking out can feel like "swimming upstream," and so may not happen very much.

Putting all the women's responses in one posts helps figure out what is/is not a problem- Because of the gender ratio, most discussions on the topic are Men Talking About what Women Want, it can be hard to figure out what women are saying on the issues, versus what men are saying women say.

The plural of anecdote is data- If one woman says X, it is an anecdote, and very weak evidence. If 10% of women say X, it is much stronger evidence.

Note that with a lot of the above issues, one of the biggest problems in figuring out what is going on isn't purposeful misogyny or anything. Just the fact that the gender ratio is so skewed can make it difficult to hear women (think picking out one voice amongst ten). The idea I'm proposing is an attempt to work around this, not an attempt to marginalize men, who may also have important things to say, but would not be the focus of this investigation.

Even with a sample size of 10 responses (approximately the amount I would say is needed for this to be useful), according to the last survey, that is 10% of the women on this site. A sizable proportion, indeed.

In the following discussion, the idea was added that fellow LWers could submit questions to the Women of LW. The women can then use these as prompts in their narratives, if they like. If you are interested in submitting questions, please read the guidelines below in "Call for Questions" before posting.

If you are inter...
[SEQ RERUN] Competent Elites
by MinibearRex — 2012-09-09T05:42:18.054Z

Today's post, Competent Elites was originally published on 27 September 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

People in higher levels of business, science, etc, often really are there because they're significantly more competent than everyone else.

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 The Level Above Mine, 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.
Interested in learning Linux? Need hosting? Free shells!
by JohnWittle — 2012-09-09T05:35:43.389Z

Sign up form: Click Here

I own a personal server running Debian Squeeze which has a 1Gb/s symmetric connection and 15TB per month bandwidth.

I am offering free shell accounts to lesswrongers, with one contingency:

You'll be placed in a usergroup, 'lw', as opposed to various other usergroups for various other communities I belong to, which will be in other usergroups. Anything that ends up in /var/log is fair game. I intend to make lots of graphs and post them on all the communities I belong to. There won't be any personally identifying data in anything that ends up publicly.

Your shell account will start out with a disk quota of 5g, and if you need more you can ask me. I'm totally cool with you seeding your torrents. I do not intend to terminate accounts at any point for inactivity or otherwise; you can reasonably expect to have access for at least a year, probably longer.

Fill out the form at the top of the page, query me on freenode's irc (JohnWittle), send me an email: johnwittle@gmail.com, or reply to this thread with your own contact information.

If you'd like to ask questions about the server, or what good such a service might be for you, point your IRC client at johnwittle.com and /join #shells (you should also do this if you sign up), or find me on freenode, or comment below.

Also, while the results of my analysis are likely to go in Discussion, I was wondering if this offering of free service itself might go in discussion. I asked in IRC and was told that advertisements are seriously frowned upon and that I would lose all my karma. I was told that this is not too similar to advertising, and that it would fly.

Edit: As far as illicit activities go... I am precommitting here to fully cooperating with any law enforcement entities who approach me with regards to the server. By using the server, you are agreeing to abstain from any activities which will get me in trouble even if I cooperate fully with law enforcement.
Meetup report: How harmful is cannabis, and will you change your habits?
by Nisan — 2012-09-09T04:50:10.943Z

A week ago the meetup group in Berkeley discussed a new article in PNAS titled "Persistent cannabis users show neuropsychological decline from childhood to midlife". Several people who didn't attend said they were interested in how that conversation went.

Before discussing the specifics of the article, we went around the room and stated how many IQ points we'd be willing to spend for some level of cannabis use. The median answer given was 4 points for moderate usage. Then someone pointed out that since we responded out loud, there may have been an anchoring effect here.

My understanding of the group's understanding of the scientific result is that smoking so much marijuana that you're diagnosable as cannabis-dependent (whatever that means) before the age of 18 will give you an IQ hit of 9-11 points, maybe more, over 20 years, compared to nonusers.

People who were diagnosable as dependent on cannabis but not before 18 got an IQ hit of 4 or 5 points, on average. We don't know if this is because cannabis is bad for adults, or if it's bad for people just over 18.

People who have used cannabis but were not diagnosed as dependent got an IQ hit of 1 or 2 points on average. The article gives us little information on what the risks of various moderate levels of cannabis use are.

We didn't discuss any methodological errors in the study, but the general attitude of the group was that the scientific result is worth taking seriously.

After the discussion, people who use cannabis opportunistically or not at all — especially the younger attendees — said that after learning about the study they now have another reason not to use cannabis. One person who uses cannabis less than once per week said they wouldn't change their usage habits.
How to deal with someone in a LessWrong meeting being creepy
by Douglas_Reay — 2012-09-09T04:41:06.895Z

One of the lessons highlighted in the thread "Less Wrong NYC: Case Study of a Successful Rationalist Chapter" is Gender ratio matters.

There have recently been a number of articles addressing one social skills issue that might be affecting this, from the perspective of a geeky/sciencefiction community with similar attributes to LessWrong, and I want to link to these, not just so the people potentially causing problems get to read them, but also so everyone else knows the resource is there and has a name for the problem, which may facilitate wider discussion and make it easier for others to know when to point towards the resources those who would benefit by them.

However before I do, in the light of RedRobot's comment in the "Of Gender and Rationality" thread, I'd like to echo a sentiment from one of the articles, that people exhibiting this behaviour may be of any gender and may victimise upon any gender. And so, while it may be correlated with a particular gender, it is the behaviour that should be focused upon, and turning this thread into bashing of one gender (or defensiveness against perceived bashing) would be unhelpful.

Ok, disclaimers out of the way, here are the links:

An Incomplete Guide to Not Creeping

Don’t Be A Creeper

How to not be creepy

My friend group has a case of the Creepy Dude. How do we clear that up?

The C-Word

Some of those raise deeper issues about rape culture and audience as enabler, but the TLDR summary is:

Creepy behaviour is behaviour that tends to make others feel unsafe or uncomfortable.

If a significant fraction of a group find your behaviour creepy, the responsibility to change the behaviour is yours.

There are specific objective behaviours listed in the articles (for example, to do with touching, sexual jokes and following people) that even someone 'bad' at social skills can learn to avoid doing.

If someone is informed that their behaviour is creeping people out, and yet they don't take steps to avoid doing these behaviours, that is a serious problem for the group as a whole, and it needs to be treated seriously and be seen to be treated seriously, especially by the 'audience' who are not being victimised directly.

EDITED TO ADD:

Despite the way some of the links are framed as being addressed to creepers, this post is aimed at least as much at the community as a whole, intended to trigger a discussion on h...
How to Improve Field Cryonics
by Dolores1984 — 2012-09-08T21:14:34.032Z

I just read this article (which is well worth reading for anyone interested in cryonics). One of the important things that the article points out is that, while it takes some time for the memory structures of the brain to degrade due to ischemia, one of the more rapid effects is blood clotting in the fine capillaries of the brain after fairly brief ischemia. This reduces the flow of cryoprotectant, and causes large swathes of neural tissue to be frozen, instead of vitrified, which would be catastrophic for personal identity. While this is not a problem for best-case 'standby' cryonics, it is a problem for those who cannot afford a standby team, or are simply hit by cars.

Being an engineer, my first thought is that this is ridiculous, and there has to be a better solution to the problem. It may be possible to build a device, maybe the size of a shoe box, which can be deployed in the field by a minimally-trained amateur (like a defibrillator), and perfuses the brain with cold saline and anti-coagulants -- or even a synthetic oxygen carrier). I'm picturing a cylinder of fluid, large needles with sterilizing caps for tapping the jugular and carotid arteries, and a gas cylinder to provide pressure. You'd simply break a chemical cold pack, put a plastic neck brace in place and insert the needles, and press a button.
Such a device could even be useful to non-cryonicists, as a way to prevent ischemic injury in people found medically dead at the scene of an accident, during transport to the hospital.
Does anyone with more of a medical background know if such a machine would be at all feasible? I can't imagine it would be expensive to construct.
Checking for the Programming Gear
by MBlume — 2012-09-08T20:38:01.580Z

People on this board have talked about programming as a gear in your brain that, to a first approximation, you have or you don't. I'm wondering if there's some well put-together resource you can direct someone with zero experience and just a web-browser to and say "if you're having fun an hour from now, you have the gear, good luck" -- maybe something on Khan academy?

(I learned to program a long time ago, and I started with BASIC program listings in my math textbook -- I don't actually know what the optimal onramps are now.)
Integrated Method for Policy Making Using Argument Modelling and Computer Assisted Text Analysis
by staticIP — 2012-09-08T16:13:17.835Z

IMPACT is conducting original research to develop and integrate formal, computational models of policy and arguments about policy, to facilitate deliberations about policy at a conceptual, language-independent level. These models will be used to develop and evaluate a prototype of an innovative argumentation toolbox for supporting open, inclusive and transparent deliberations about public policy.

The IMPACT project, funded by the EU, is building a tool to make debates easier to keep track of, and presumably more rational. It look sort of like an AI, where all the dirty work and low level stuff is done by humans, but the actual result is determined by the structure of the machine. Certainly you could subvert it by placing incorrect standards of evidence on particular papers/arguments, but on the whole it looks interesting.

Sort of a wiki-decision framework.

What do you think about this type of project? Are there any existing argument modelling languages, like UML for arguments? Is this the best approach?
[SEQ RERUN] The Level Above Mine
by MinibearRex — 2012-09-08T09:31:25.639Z

Today's post, The Level Above Mine was originally published on 26 September 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

There are people who have acquired more mastery over various fields than Eliezer has over his.

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 My Naturalistic Awakening, 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.
Friendship is Optimal: A My Little Pony fanfic about an optimization process
by iceman — 2012-09-08T06:16:09.920Z

[EDIT, Nov 14th: And it's posted. New discussion about release. Link to Friendship is Optimal.]

[EDIT, Nov 13th: I've submitted to FIMFiction, and will update with a link to its permanent home if it passes moderation. I have also removed the docs link and will make the document private once it goes live.]

Over the last year, I’ve spent a lot of my free time writing a semi-rationalist My Little Pony fanfic. Whenever I’ve mentioned this side project, I’ve received requests to alpha the story.

I present, as an open beta: Friendship is Optimal. Please do not spread that link outside of LessWrong; Google Docs is not its permanent home. I intend to put it up on fanfiction.net and submit it to Equestria Daily after incorporating any feedback. The story is complete, and I believe I've caught the majority of typographical and grammatical problems. (Though if you find some, comments are open on the doc itself.) Given the subject matter, I’m asking for the LessWrong community’s help in spotting any major logical flaws or other storytelling problems.

Cover jacket text:

Hanna, the CEO of Hofvarpnir Studios, just won the contract to write the official My Little Pony MMO. She had better hurry; a US military contractor is developing weapons based on her artificial intelligence technology, which just may destroy the world. Hana has built an A.I. Princess Celestia and given her one basic drive: to satisfy values through friendship and ponies. What will Princess Celestia do when she’s let loose upon the world, following the drives Hanna has given her?

Special thanks to my roommate (who did extensive editing and was invaluable in noticing attempts by me to anthropomorphize an AI), and to Vaniver, who along with my roommate, convinced me to delete what was just a flat out bad chapter.
[link] One-question survey from Robin Hanson
by fortyeridania — 2012-09-07T23:35:14.646Z

As many of you probably know, Robin Hanson is writing a book, and it will be geared toward a popular audience. He wants a term that encompasses both humans and AI, so he's soliciting your opinions on the matter. Here's the link: http://www.quicksurveys.com/tqsruntime.aspx?surveyData=AYtdr2WMwCzB981F0qkivSNwbj1tn+xvU6rnauc83iU=

H/T Bryan Caplan at EconLog.