trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : LW Buffalo Meetup at Buffalo Labs
by StonesOnCanvas — 2013-01-29T00:15:19.094Z

Discussion article for the meetup : LW Buffalo Meetup at Buffalo Labs

WHEN:
07 February 2013 07:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
2727 Broadway Ave. Suite 210, Cheektowaga, NY

Hi everyone!

For those of you who couldn't make the last meetup because it was on a Thursday, vote in the doodle poll: http://doodle.com/gvxedzauw37b8ryt57t63h45/admin?#table Every vote counts. (I promise to make the next meetup on a different day of the week, although I don't know which day I will have it yet.)

For this meetup, we'll be talking about Making Beliefs Pay Rent : http://lesswrong.com/lw/i3/making_beliefs_pay_rent_in_anticipated_experiences/ Its a great article so I strongly suggest reading it. If you can't, don't worry, I'll do a cliff-notes summary for everyone. Anyone can attend. Feel free to invite friends who might be interested. I'll bring some snacks and stuff as well. We'll also play some cool games.

P.S. Since Buffalo Lab is not clearly visible from the road, I'd recommend using google's satellite view to get a good idea of where to go. (it'll be second building from the road -a white building with 2727 in large print - second door. Look for the Buffalo Lab gear logo and we'll have some blinking lights to make it more visible.)

Discussion article for the meetup : LW Buffalo Meetup at Buffalo Labs
Isolated AI with no chat whatsoever
by ancientcampus — 2013-01-28T20:22:16.461Z

Suppose you make a super-intelligent AI and run it on a computer. The computer has NO conventional means of output (no connections to other computers, no screen, etc). Might it still be able to get out / cause harm? I'll post my ideas, and you post yours in the comments.

(This may have been discussed before, but I could not find a dedicated topic)

My ideas:
-manipulate current through its hardware, or better yet, through the power cable (a ready-made antenna) to create electromagnetic waves to access some wireless-equipped device. (I'm no physicist so I don't know if certain frequencies would be hard to do)
-manipulate usage of its hardware (which likely makes small amounts of noise naturally) to approximate human speech, allowing it to communicate with its captors. (This seems even harder than the 1-line AI box scenario)
-manipulate usage of its hardware to create sound or noise to mess with human emotion. (To my understanding tones may affect emotion, but not in any way easily predictable)
-also, manipulating its power use will cause changes in the power company's database. There doesn't seem to be an obvious exploit there, but it IS external communication, for what it's worth.

Let's hear your thoughts! Lastly, as in similar discussions, you probably shouldn't come out of this thinking, "Well, if we can just avoid X, Y, and Z, we're golden!" There are plenty of unknown unknowns here.
[LINK] NYT Article about Existential Risk from AI
by  — 2013-01-28T10:37:59.204Z

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/cambridge-cabs-and-copenhagen-my-route-to-existential-risk/

Author: Huw Price (Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge)

The article is mainly about the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and the author's speculation about AI (and his association with Jaan Tallinn). Nothing made me really stand up and think "This is something I've never heard on Less Wrong", but it is interesting to see Existential risk and AI getting more mainstream attention, and the author reproduces tabooing in his willful avoidance of attempting to define the term "intelligence".

The comments all miss the point or reproduce cached thoughts with frustrating predictability. I think I find them to be so frustrating because these do not seem to be unintelligent people (by the standards of the internet at least; their comments have good grammar and vocabulary), but they are not really processing.
Meetup : Paderborn Meetup Frebruary 6th 
by Just_existing — 2013-01-27T22:39:34.476Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Paderborn Meetup Frebruary 6th

WHEN:
06 February 2013 07:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Gownsmen's Pub, Uni Paderborn, Warburger Straße 100, Paderborn

We are meeting once again in Paderborn.

The topics of this evening will be the current series "Highly Advanced Epistemology 101 for Beginners", in particular the post "Casual Diagrams and Casual Models", some thoughts on lifehacks and some Bayes training. And of course whatever topics will come to our mind till then, or during the meetup.

If you live in the area, consider dropping by :).

Discussion article for the meetup : Paderborn Meetup Frebruary 6th
Meetup : Love and Sex in Salt Lake City
by hamnox — 2013-01-27T16:12:39.502Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Love and Sex in Salt Lake City

WHEN:
16 February 2013 01:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
1558 Palo Verde Way QE#12, cottonwood heights, ut 84121

It's February, the arbitrarily themed month of love and sex! Naturally, we're having a themed discussion to reflect this fact. We're also departing from the usual schedule and doing it on a Sunday so we can finally meet the mysterious can't-come-on-saturday crowd!
Any snacks you might want to bring would be dully appreciated.

Discussion article for the meetup : Love and Sex in Salt Lake City
Cryo and Social Obligations
by DataPacRat — 2013-01-27T07:32:43.415Z

I'm about a third of the way through "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" by David Graeber, and am enjoying the feeling of ideas shifting around in my head, arranging themselves into more useful patterns. (The last book I read that put together ideas of similar breadth was "Economix: How and Why Our Economy Works" by Goodwin.) "Debt" goes into the origins of debts, as compared to obligations; and related topics, such as exchanges considered beneath economic notice ("Please pass me the salt"), debts too big or unique to be repaid, peaceful versus violent interactions, the endless minor obligations that form the network of social connections, and even the basis of whole societies.
The reason I'm posting about this book here... is that it's giving me some new perspectives from which to consider the whole cryonics subculture, and, for instance, why it remains just a subculture of a couple of thousand people or so. For example, a standard LessWrong thought experiment is "Is That Your True Rejection?"; and most of the objections people raise to cryonics seem to be off enough that, even if those objections were solved, those particular people still wouldn't sign up - that is, they feel some fundamental antipathy to the whole idea of cryonics, and unconsciously pick some rationalization that happens to sound reasonable to them to explain it.
I still have two-thirds of "Debt" to go... but, at the moment, I have a strong hunch that one extremely strong reason people feel an emotional revulsion to cryo is, simply, that even if they do wake up in the future, they will have been cut off from all their social connections. This may not sound like much - but the part of "Debt" I'm currently reading discusses how one of the more fundamental aspects of slavery is that becoming a slave involves being cut off from one's family and society; and another fundamental aspect is that being a slave is being without honor, and in many senses literally having died (eg, in some societies, when someone was taken as a slave, their will was read and their spouse considered a widow). On a certain emotional level, many people really do seem to think that being probably-permanently cut off from all their loved ones is a fate no better than simply dying outright.
What's even more interesting is that if this idea has any actual basis in reality... then it offers the possibility of coming up with approache...
CEV: a utilitarian critique
by Pablo — 2013-01-26T16:12:20.846Z

I'm posting this article on behalf of Brian Tomasik, who authored it but is at present too busy to respond to comments.

Update from Brian: "As of 2013-2014, I have become more sympathetic to at least the spirit of CEV specifically and to the project of compromise among differing value systems more generally. I continue to think that pure CEV is unlikely to be implemented, though democracy and intellectual discussion can help approximate it. I also continues to feel apprehensive about the conclusions that a CEV might reach, but the best should not be the enemy of the good, and cooperation is inherently about not getting everything you want in order to avoid getting nothing at all."

Introduction

I'm often asked questions like the following: If wild-animal suffering, lab universes, sentient simulations, etc. are so bad, why can't we assume that Coherent Extrapolated Volition (CEV) will figure that out and do the right thing for us?

Disclaimer

Most of my knowledge of CEV is based on Yudkowsky's 2004 paper, which he admits is obsolete. I have not yet read most of the more recent literature on the subject.

Reason 1: CEV will (almost certainly) never happen

CEV is like a dream for a certain type of moral philosopher: Finally, the most ideal solution for discovering what we really want upon reflection!

The fact is, the real world is not decided by moral philosophers. It's decided by power politics, economics, and Darwinian selection. Moral philosophers can certainly have an impact through these channels, but they're unlikely to convince the world to rally behind CEV. Can you imagine the US military -- during its AGI development process -- deciding to adopt CEV? No way. It would adopt something that ensures the continued military and political dominance of the US, driven by mainstream American values. Same goes for China or any other country. If AGI is developed by a corporation, the values will reflect those of the corporation or the small group of developers and supervisors who hold the most power over the project. Unless that group is extremely enlightened, CEV is not what we'll get.

Anyway, this is assuming that the developers of AGI can even keep it under control. Most likely AGI will turn into a paperclipper or else evolve into some other kind of Darwinian force over which we lose control.

Objection 1: "Okay. Future military or corporate

...
Meetup : Shanghai Meetup
by Barry_Cotter — 2013-01-26T04:10:37.118Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Shanghai Meetup

WHEN: 28 January 2013 07:00:00PM (+0800)

WHERE: 45 Yue Yang Road, near Dong Ping Road, Shanghai

There's going to be a meetup 7p.m. Monday evening at Abbey Road. Two other people have said they'll be attending as well. I'll be giving a short talk on cognitive biases and the we can discuss it and chat. The food is good, and they have board games too for slightly later. I look like this and will have a copy of Thinking, Fast and Slow on the table.

Discussion article for the meetup : Shanghai Meetup
Best of Rationality Quotes, 2012 Edition
by DanielVarga — 2013-01-26T03:03:20.330Z

I finished creating the 2012 edition of the Best of Rationality Quotes collection. (Here is last year's.)

Best of Rationality Quotes 2012 (500kB page, 434 quotes)
and Best of Rationality Quotes 2009-2012 (1200kB page, 1140 quotes)

The page was built by a short script (source code here) from all the LW Rationality Quotes threads so far. (We had such a thread each month since April 2009.) The script collects all comments with karma score 10 or more, and sorts them by score. Replies are not collected, only top-level comments.

As is now usual, I provide various statistics and top-lists based on the data. (Source code for these is also at the above link, see the README.) I added these as comments to the post:

Top quote contributors by total karma score collected

Top quote contributors by karma score collected in 2012

Top quote contributors by statistical significance level (See this comment for a description of this metric.)

Top original authors by number of quotes

Top original authors by total karma score collected
Meetup : Washington DC Revealed New Years Resolutions
by rocurley — 2013-01-25T15:31:38.944Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC Revealed New Years Resolutions

WHEN:
27 January 2013 03:00:00AM (-0500)

WHERE:
washington dc portrait gallary

At this meetup, we'll be looking at what we did last year, and trying to derrive our new years resolutions of last year based on what we did.

We'll be meeting in the courtyard.

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC Revealed New Years Resolutions
Weekly LW Meetups: Austin, Buffalo, Cambridge MA, Dublin, Montreal, Moscow, Ohio, Purdue, Washington DC
by FrankAdamek — 2013-01-25T15:30:14.852Z

This summary was posted to LW main on January 18th. The following week's summary is here.

There are upcoming irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups in:

Second Purdue Meetup: 18 January 2013 07:00PM
Less Wrong Dublin: 19 January 2013 03:30PM
Moscow: Applied Rationality: 19 January 2013 04:00PM
Washington DC fun and games meetup: 20 January 2013 05:23PM
LessWrong Montreal - Social Resilience: 21 January 2013 06:30PM
Buffalo Meetup: 24 January 2013 07:00PM
Berlin social meetup: 26 January 2013 05:00PM
London Meetup 27th Jan: 27 January 2013 02:00PM
Brussels meetup: 16 February 2013 01:00PM

The following meetups take place in cities with regularly scheduled meetups, but involve a change in time or location, special meeting content, or simply a helpful reminder about the meetup:

Austin, TX: 19 January 2019 01:30PM
Ohio LessWrong in Cincinnati: 20 January 2013 02:00PM
Cambridge, MA third-Sunday meetup: 20 January 2013 02:00PM
Melbourne, practical rationality: 01 February 2013 07:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Cambridge, MA, Cambridge UK, Madison WI, Melbourne, Mountain View, New York, Ohio, Oxford, Portland, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Toronto, Waterloo, and West Los Angeles.

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 will continue to be posted on the front page every Friday. These will be an attempt to collect information on all the meetups happening in the next weeks. The best way to get your meetup featured is still to use the Add New Meetup feature, but you'll now also have the benefit of having your meetup mentioned in a weekly overview. These overview posts will be 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 the Friday before your meetup!

If you check Less Wrong irregularly, consider subscribing to one or more city-specific mailing list in order to be notified when an irregular meetup is happening: Atlanta, Berlin, Chicago, Helsinki, London, Marin CA, Ottawa, Pittsburgh, So...
Meetup : Moscow: Reality and Us
by Yuu — 2013-01-25T06:05:27.500Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow: Reality and Us

WHEN:
03 February 2013 04:00:00PM (+0400)

WHERE:
Russia, Moscow, ulitsa L'va Tolstogo 16

Please use the following guide to get to the meetup: link. You need the second door with the sign “Yandex Money” in Russian. I will be there at 15:45 MSK with “LW” sign. And we will also check the entrance at 16:00 and 16:15, so please do not be late.

Main topics:

Challenge each other's beliefs.

Plan our group's short-term and medium-term activities.

Find ways to optimize our daily life.

If you are going for the first time, you can fill this one minute form (in Russian), to share your contact information. You can also use personal messages here, or drop a message at lw@lesswrong.ru to contact me for any reason.

Report from the last session can be found here, in Russian.

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow: Reality and Us
The Hidden B.I.A.S.
by MaoShan — 2013-01-25T03:49:18.976Z

It would be a stretch to call this an article, but the answers that can be addressed by the questions it poses are potentially far-reaching with regard to revealing possible reasoning flaws, either in my own philosophy, or perhaps even yours. The flaws under my suspicion are caused by the modularity of the brain's systems, and the ability to hold to conflicting beliefs when they are not held directly against one another.

These particular ones escape notice, I think, because they tend to only be given reflection in specific situations; my thought experiment here should help to hold them near each other.

The Setup: Julian finds himself in the waiting-room of the Speedy-dupe office. Beyond that waiting room are three isolated rooms (P, Q, and R). Anyone who walks into Room P, which contains the Speedy-dupe device, will be scanned down to the most exact level imaginable, causing them to lose consciousness. Anyone who has used the Speedy-dupe will remember everything up until the point they entered the waiting-room, and begin forming new memories within seconds after regaining consciousness.

Situation 1:

If Julian walks into Room P, and the Speedy-dupe runs, and then Julian walks out of Room P, and also another Julian walks out of Room Q, which is the "original" Julian? What makes Julian-P more original than Julian-Q?

Possible Answers 1:

You probably would say that Julian-P is the original Julian, due to your prior beliefs regarding causality--but how many times have you encountered the Speedy-dupe? For all we know, the person who walks into Room P is vaporized after scanning, and duplicated in Room P and in Room Q. If you still feel that Julian-P is the original, ask yourself what other reason do you have for the way you feel? What is it that you aren't mentioning?

Situation 2:

If Julian walks into Room P, runs the Speedy-dupe, and Julian walks out of Rooms Q and R, but not out of Room P, which is the original Julian? Why not?

Possible Answers 2:

You might be saying to yourself, "Ah, now, you can't trick me. Neither of them is the original!" If they are both practically identical copies of the original Julian, what now stops you from identifying the original Julian with his identical copies? Are legal property issues really the only thing stopping you from modifying your views on identity?

Situation 3:

But what about if Julian walks into Room P,...
Meetup : Montreal LessWrong - The Future is Awesome
by Paul_G — 2013-01-25T02:07:20.042Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Montreal LessWrong - The Future is Awesome

WHEN:
28 January 2013 06:30:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
655 Avenue du Président Kennedy, Montréal, QC

Bringing in articles and discussing the progress of technology that remains hidden from our normal lives.

It's good to see what sort of progress is being made, and where the future will likely take us!

Discussion article for the meetup : Montreal LessWrong - The Future is Awesome
Meetup : Vancouver rationality practice case: Evaluating Transhumanism
by  — 2013-01-24T19:12:09.466Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Vancouver rationality practice case: Evaluating Transhumanism

WHEN:
26 January 2013 01:00:00PM (-0800)

WHERE:
2505 W broadway, vancouver

Last week, someone brought up the question of whether transhumanism was true. Our meetup regulars are mostly transhumanists or very familiar with it, but we totally fumbled the question and didn't get anything like conclusive answers or even enlightening discussion. I pronounce that to be a rationality fail.

Therefor, this week we will be applying all the rationalist techniques from the sequences to answer the question "is transhumanism true?". The focus will mostly be on the application of the techniques and ideas, but I also expect some good discussion and clarification on actual transhumanism.

So come on out for some concrete application of LW ideas! We will meet at Benny's Bagels in Kitsilano at 13:00 on Saturday. As usual, join us on the mailing list.

See you there!

(Yes I know that the question is meaningless. That's part of the excercise. Don't work on the problem/dump spoilers in the comments please.)

Discussion article for the meetup : Vancouver rationality practice case: Evaluating Transhumanism
In the beginning, Dartmouth created the AI and the hype
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2013-01-24T16:49:09.586Z

I've just been through the proposal for the Dartmouth AI conference of 1956, and it's a surprising read. All I really knew about it was its absurd optimism, as typified by the quote:

An attempt will be made to find how to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves. We think that a significant advance can be made in one or more of these problems if a carefully selected group of scientists work on it together for a summer.

But then I read the rest of the document, and was... impressed. Go ahead and read it, and give me your thoughts. Given what was known in 1955, they were grappling with the right issues, and seemed to be making progress in the right directions and have plans and models for how to progress further. Seeing the phenomenally smart people who were behind this (McCarthy, Minsky, Rochester, Shannon), and given the impressive progress that computers had been making in what seemed very hard areas of cognition (remember that this was before we discovered Moravec's paradox)... I have to say that had I read this back in 1955, I think the rational belief would have been "AI is probably imminent". Some overconfidence, no doubt, but no good reason to expect these prominent thinkers to be so spectacularly wrong on something they were experts in.
Meetup : Durham HPMoR Discussion, chapters 30-33
by evand — 2013-01-24T04:51:22.959Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Durham HPMoR Discussion, chapters 30-33

WHEN:
26 January 2013 11:00:00AM (-0500)

WHERE:
Foster's Market, 2694 Durham-Chapel Hill Blvd., Durham, NC

Our regular HPMoR reading meetup. Please feel free to come, even if you haven't done all (or any) of the reading. We'll summarize and discuss the chapters and other relevant (or perhaps not-quite-so-relevant) topics.

Discussion article for the meetup : Durham HPMoR Discussion, chapters 30-33