trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Polling Thread - Tutorial
by Gunnar_Zarncke — 2015-10-01T21:47:38.805Z

After some hiatus another 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.

Additionally this is your chance to learn to write polls. This installment is devoted to try out polls for the cautious and curious.

These are the 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 a somewhat 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 : Tel Aviv: Hardware Verification and FAI
by Squark — 2015-10-01T21:00:46.048Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Tel Aviv: Hardware Verification and FAI

WHEN:
28 October 2015 12:59:48AM (+0300)

WHERE:
Electra Tower

We will meet at Google Israel on the 29th floor, as always.

The speaker this time is Yoav Hollander, inventor of the "e" hardware verification language and founder of Verisity. His description of the talk:

"I'll (briefly) describe the FAI verification problem, and admit that I don't really know how to solve it. I'll also warn against 'magical thinking', i.e. assuming that because a fool-proof solution is needed, it will somehow appear before the window of opportunity slams on our finger tips.

I'll review what works (and what does not) in HW verification and in autonomous systems verification, and discuss why some of that may be relevant for FAI verification.

I'll then open the room for discussion."

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/907241922691991/
My phone: 0542600919 (Vadim)

Discussion article for the meetup : Tel Aviv: Hardware Verification and FAI
[Link] Differential Technology Development - Some Early Thinking
by  — 2015-10-01T02:08:55.829Z

This article gives a simple model to think about the positive effects of a friendly AI vs. the negative effects of an unfriendly AI, and let's you plug in certain assumptions to see if speeding up AI progress is worthwhile. Thought some of you here might be interested.

http://blog.givewell.org/2015/09/30/differential-technological-development-some-early-thinking/
The Two-Update Problem, Part 3
by abramdemski — 2015-09-30T21:52:54.000Z

Relevant posts: Part 1, Part 2, No good conditional, Monotonicity.

In the previous two parts of this sequence, I described the two different forms of the two-update problem and the attempt to solve them both at the same time by starting with a prior that knows nothing about logic and updating it on logical dependencies. The problem at the end of part 2 was that neither the simple coin-flip distribution nor the Solomonoff distribution remain well-defined when we condition on logic. A variant of the Solomonoff distribution with oracle machines can be updated in this way, but the result is not approximable.

Here, I discuss approaches to making such a thing approximable.

The reason that the Solomonoff distribution (powerful as it may be) cannot be updated on logic is that it outputs each bit sequentially, and there is no Turing machine which outputs tautologies in order from smallest to largest (and fails to ever output a contradiction); if there were such a machine, logical consequence would be decidable rather than only recursively enumerable.

One way to try and fix this is to ask the machines to enumerate logical sentences rather than decide them. We can use the same UTM (fed random bits) as in the Solomonoff distribution, but rather than letting the nth bit determine the truth value of the sentence with Goedel number n, we interpret its output as describing a sequence of sentences in arbitrary order. For example, n 1s in a row might mean "interpret the next n bits as a Goedel number of a sentence". After those n bits are interpreted, then again we look for the length of the next sequence of 1s. And so on. We interpret the machine as asserting each sentence it enumerates in this manner. (This encoding isn't particularly efficient, but it doesn't have to be -- the Turing machine can represent more efficient encodings.)

This includes the truths of logic as a hypothesis in the space, since there exists a Turing machine which takes the axioms and inference rules of logic and outputs each sentence which can be proved from those. Similarly, there exist modified machines with more axioms, so we have all the interesting logical hypotheses we could want.

How do we "update on logic?" As in the Demski prior, we can sample theories, but have a bounded-time consistency check running in the background and eliminate a sample if it's shown to be inconsistent. If we keep increasi

...
Towards reflection with relative optimal predictor schemes
by Vanessa Kosoy — 2015-09-30T15:44:21.000Z

We construct a family or oracles relative to which all estimation problems which have approximate solutions in exponential time are generatable. Relatively to these oracles, we can use the optimal predictor scheme Λ for assigning expectation values to arbitrary deterministic computations within time that is superquasipolynomial in the logarithm of the computation time. In particular, this should allow reflection in the sense of Garrabrant once we succeed to derandomize Λ relative to the same oracle.

Results

New notation

Given O⊆{0,1}∗ and appropriate sets X and Y, A:XO→Y denotes a pair consisting of O and an oracle machine that, supplied with oracle O, halts on every input in X and produces an output in Y. In particular, it defines a function from X to Y in the obvious way.

For every n∈N, we fix a prefix free universal oracle machine UOn with one program tape, n input tapes and one output tape (we are only going to use a finite number of ns). Given O⊆{0,1}∗, evO,n:N×{0,1}∗n+1O→{0,1}∗ is the following. When evkO,n(Q,x1…xn) is computed, Q is interpreted as a program for UOn and Q(x1…xn) is executed with oracle O for time k. The resulting output is produced.

The notation evkO(Q,x1…xn) means evkO,n(Q,x1…xn).

Given A:XO→Y and X′⊆X, TA(X′) will denote the maximal runtime of A on elements of X′. QA(X′) will denote the set of queries made to the oracle when applying A to elements of X′.

All the theory of predictors with logarithmic advice can be relativized with respect to an arbitrary oracle. We denote the corresponding concepts using the oracle as a superscript. For example, the relativized version of a Δ(poly,log)-optimal predictor schemes is Δ(poly,log)O-optimal predictor schemes etc.

Given μ a word ensemble, suppμ denotes ⋃k∈Nsuppμk. We previously defined a distributional estimation problem to be a pair (f,μ) where μ is a word ensemble and f is a function from {0,1}∗ to [0,1]. From now on, we allow f to be defined only on suppμ. This doesn't affect any of the previous results.

Omitting parentheses after an error space will mean zero advice. For example a Δ-sampler is a Δ(0)-sampler.

We start by constructing an exponential time estimation problem which is complete in the class of exponential time estimation problem with samplable word ensembles with respect to Δ-pseudo-invertible reductions (the concept of Δ-pseudo-invertible reductions was previously introdu

...
Improved error space for universal optimal predictor schemes
by Vanessa Kosoy — 2015-09-30T15:08:53.000Z

We construct an error space which is smaller than Δ2avg but admits analogous existence theorems for optimal predictor schemes.

Results

Construction

Given ϕ∈Φ we define Δ1ϕ to be the set of functions δ:N→R≥0 s.t. ∃ϵ>0:limk→∞ϕ(k)ϵδ(k)=0. It is easily seen Δ1ϕ is an error space.

Given ϕ∈Φ, denote tϕ(k):=⌊2(logk)ϕ(k)⌋. We define Δ2ll,ϕ to be the set of bounded functions δ:N2→R≥0 s.t. for any ϕ′∈Φ, if ϕ′≤ϕ then

tϕ′(k)−1∑j=2(loglog(j+1)−loglogj)δ(k,j)loglogtϕ′(k)∈Δ1ϕ′

We define Δ2ll:=⋂ϕ∈ΦΔ2ll,ϕ.

Proposition 1

Δ2ll,ϕ is an error space for any ϕ∈Φ. Δ2ll is an error space.

Proposition 2

Consider a polynomial q:N2→N. There is a function λq:N3→[0,1] s.t.

(i) ∀k,j∈N:∑i∈Nλq(k,j,i)=1

(ii) For any function ϵ:N2→[0,1] we have

ϵ(k,j)−∑i∈Nλq(k,j,i)ϵ(k,q(k,j)+i)∈Δ2ll

The proofs of Propositions 1 and 2 are in the Appendix. The following are proved using exactly like the analogous statements for Δ2avg and we omit the proofs.

Lemma

Consider (f,μ) a distributional estimation problem, (P,r,a), (Q,s,b) (poly,log)-predictor schemes. Suppose p:N2→N a polynomial and δ∈Δ2ll are s.t.

∀i,k,j∈N:E[(Pk,p(k,j)+i−f)2]≤E[(Qkj−f)2]+δ(k,j)

Then ∃δ′∈Δ2avg s.t.

E[(Pkj−f)2]≤E[(Qkj−f)2]+δ′(k,j)

Theorem 1

Consider (f,μ) a distributional estimation problem. Define Υ:N2×{0,1}∗3alg−→[0,1] by

Υkj(x,y,Q):=β(evj(Q,x,y))

Define υf,μ:N2→{0,1}∗ by

υkjf,μ:=argmin|Q|≤logjEμk×Uj[(Υkj(x,y,Q)−f(x))2]

Then, (Υ,j,υf,μ) is a Δ2ll(poly,log)-optimal predictor scheme for (f,μ).

Theorem 2

There is an oracle machine Λ that accepts an oracle of signature SF:N×{0,1}∗→{0,1}∗×[0,1] and a polynomial r:N→N where the allowed oracle calls are SFk(x) for |x|=r(k) and computes a function of signature N2×{0,1}∗2→[0,1] s.t. for any ϕ∈Φ, (f,μ) a distributional estimation problem and G:=(S,F,rS,aS) a corresponding Δ1ϕ(log)-generator, Λ[G] is a Δ2ll,ϕ(poly,log)-optimal predictor scheme for (f,μ).

Appendix

Proof of Proposition 1

The only slightly non-obvious condition is (v). We have

limsupk→∞ϕ(k)ϵαEκkϕ[δ(k,j)α]≤limsupk→∞ϕ(k)ϵαEκkϕ[δ(k,j)]α

limsupk→∞ϕ(k)ϵαEκkϕ[δ(k,j)α]≤(limsupk→∞ϕ(k)ϵEκkϕ[δ(k,j)])α

limk→∞ϕ(k)ϵαEκkϕ[δ(k,j)α]=0

Proof of Proposition 2

Given functions q1,q2:N2→N s.t. q1(k,j)≥q2(k,j) for k,j≫0, the proposition for q1 implies the proposition for q2 by setting

λq2(k,j,i):={λq1(k,j,i−q1(k,j)+q2(k,j))if i−q1(k,j)+q2(k,j)≥00if i−q1(k,j)+q2(k,j)<0

Therefore, it is enough to prove

...
Five Worlds Collide 2015 - unconference in Vienna
by AnnaLeptikon — 2015-09-30T13:34:50.646Z

Welcome to Five Worlds Collide, the (un)conference for effective altruism, quantified self, rationality/scientific thinking, transhumanism and artificial intelligence.

Based on some feedback I heard about the EA Global events where people said they want to have more additional opportunity to present their own thoughts and because I (co)organize multiple meetups in Vienna, which to my mind have a huge overlap, I plan and organize this event in December 2015.

What: Present your own thoughts and projects, get inspired by new input, discuss, disagree, change your mind and grow – and connect with new amazing people and form ideas and projects together. In practice this means there will be five keynote talks and a lot of opportunity to give short lightning talks yourself.

When: it starts in the evening of Friday the 4th of December - and ends in the evening on Sunday the 6th of December 2015 (so it’s 2,5 days).

Where: sektor5 is an amazing and huge coworking space in Vienna. They even won the “Best Coworking Space” in the Austrian national round of the Central European Startup Awards 2015! Vienna is a city worth visiting – it is especially beautiful during Christmas season and interesting because of its history („Vienna Circle“, Gödel, Schrödinger – it’s even mentioned in the „Logicomix“).

How much: the ticket for the whole event will be 50 Euro. This includes lunch on Saturday on Sunday - it does not include accommodation, breakfast and dinner (but I offer advice and recommendations for those). Still this is the absolute minimum needed to create this event so there is also the option on Eventbrite to donate additional money to make the event as great as possible. (Any overshoot will be used for “Effective Altruism Austria” and/or donated effectively to GiveWell top charities.)

Always updated version on Facebook here.

Get your ticket here.

I am very thankful for all the great events I attended in the last months. For example the European LessWrong Community Weekend 2015, EA Global in San Francisco and Oxford. They added value to my life and gave me opportunity to learn new things, exchange thoughts and get to know amazing humans as well as meet friends again. I hope I can give the same back to others.

Also I am happy about feedback and helping hands – right now it’s mostly a...
Five Worlds Collide 2015 - unconference in Vienna
by AnnaLeptikon — 2015-09-30T13:20:34.806Z

Welcome to Five Worlds Collide, the (un)conference for effective altruism, quantified self, rationality/scientific thinking, transhumanism and artificial intelligence.

Based on some feedback I heard about the EA Global events where people said they want to have more additional opportunity to present their own thoughts and because I (co)organize multiple meetups in Vienna, which to my mind have a huge overlap, I plan and organize this event in December 2015.

What: Present your own thoughts and projects, get inspired by new input, discuss, disagree, change your mind and grow – and connect with new amazing people and form ideas and projects together. In practice this means there will be five keynote talks and a lot of opportunity to give short lightning talks yourself.

When: it starts in the evening of Friday the 4th of December - and ends in the evening on Sunday the 6th of December 2015 (so it's 2,5 days).

Where: sektor5 is an amazing and huge coworking space in Vienna. They even won the “Best Coworking Space” in the Austrian national round of the Central European Startup Awards 2015! Vienna is a city worth visiting – it is especially beautiful during Christmas season and interesting because of its history („Vienna Circle“, Gödel, Schrödinger – it’s even mentioned in the „Logicomix“).

How much: the ticket for the whole event will be 50 Euro. This includes lunch on Saturday on Sunday - it does not include accommodation, breakfast and dinner (but I offer advise and recommendations for those). Still this is the absolute minimum needed to create this event so there is also the option on Eventbrite to donate additional money to make the event as great as possible. (Any overshoot will be used for "Effective Altruism Austria" and/or donated effectively to GiveWell top charities.)

Always updated version on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1505431786437253/

get your ticket:
http://www.eventbrite.de/e/five-worlds-collide-tickets-18785324411

I am very thankful for all the great events I attended in the last months. For example the European LessWrong Community Weekend 2015, EA Global in San Francisco and Oxford. They added value to my life and gave me opportunity to learn new things, exchange thoughts and get to know amazing humans as well as ...
Meetup : Five Worlds Collide - Vienna
by AnnaLeptikon — 2015-09-30T12:37:55.001Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Five Worlds Collide - Vienna

WHEN:
04 December 2015 08:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Siebenbrunngengasse 44, 1050 Wien

Here is the always updated version of the event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1505431786437253/

Welcome to Five Worlds Collide, the (un)conference for effective altruism, quantified self, rationality/scientific thinking, transhumanism and artificial intelligence.

What: Present your own thoughts and projects, get inspired by new input, discuss, disagree, change your mind and grow – and connect with new amazing people and form ideas and projects together. In practice this means next to five keynote talks there will be a lot of opportunity to give short lightning talks yourself.

When: it starts in the evening of Friday the 4th of December - and ends in the evening on Sunday the 6th of December 2015 (so it's 2,5 days)

Where: sektor5 is an amazing and huge coworking space in Vienna. They even won the “Best Coworking Space” in the Austrian national round of the Central European Startup Awards 2015!

How much: the ticket for the event will be 50 Euro. This is the absolute minimum needed to create this event so there is also the option on Eventbrite to donate additional money to make the event as great as possible. (Any overshoot will be used for "Effective Altruism Austria" and/or donated effectively to GiveWell top charities.)

The “five wolds” we want to link already have a huge overlap. People who are interested in one of those topics are in most cases also interested in another one.
EA ∧ QS: My self is not limited to my body and health - how can I quantify and measure my positive impact on the world?
H+ ∧ AI: what are the consequences of AI for the future of humanity?
QS ∧ H+: How can we use self tracking and big data to improve humanity; make it happier, healthier, smarter?
[...]

program:
[to be announced]

keynotes:
QS - [to be announced]
EA - [to be announced]
H+ - [to be announced]
R&S - [to be announced]
AI - [to be announced]

logistics and FAQ:
[to be announced]

get your ticket:
http://www.eventbrite.de/e/five-worlds-collide-tickets-18785324411
[sale starts on 30.09.2015 - 18:00]

further resources:

effective altruism
http://whatiseffectivealtruism.com/
http://effectivealtruism.at/

rationality & scientific thinking
http:

...
Meetup : Five Worlds Collide - Vienna
by AnnaLeptikon — 2015-09-30T12:37:20.345Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Five Worlds Collide - Vienna

WHEN:
04 December 2015 08:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Siebenbrunngengasse 44, 1050 Wien

Here is the always updated version of the event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1505431786437253/

Welcome to Five Worlds Collide, the (un)conference for effective altruism, quantified self, rationality/scientific thinking, transhumanism and artificial intelligence.

What: Present your own thoughts and projects, get inspired by new input, discuss, disagree, change your mind and grow – and connect with new amazing people and form ideas and projects together. In practice this means next to five keynote talks there will be a lot of opportunity to give short lightning talks yourself.

When: it starts in the evening of Friday the 4th of December - and ends in the evening on Sunday the 6th of December 2015 (so it's 2,5 days)

Where: sektor5 is an amazing and huge coworking space in Vienna. They even won the “Best Coworking Space” in the Austrian national round of the Central European Startup Awards 2015!

How much: the ticket for the event will be 50 Euro. This is the absolute minimum needed to create this event so there is also the option on Eventbrite to donate additional money to make the event as great as possible. (Any overshoot will be used for "Effective Altruism Austria" and/or donated effectively to GiveWell top charities.)

The “five wolds” we want to link already have a huge overlap. People who are interested in one of those topics are in most cases also interested in another one.
EA ∧ QS: My self is not limited to my body and health - how can I quantify and measure my positive impact on the world?
H+ ∧ AI: what are the consequences of AI for the future of humanity?
QS ∧ H+: How can we use self tracking and big data to improve humanity; make it happier, healthier, smarter?
[...]

program:
[to be announced]

keynotes:
QS - [to be announced]
EA - [to be announced]
H+ - [to be announced]
R&S - [to be announced]
AI - [to be announced]

logistics and FAQ:
[to be announced]

get your ticket:
http://www.eventbrite.de/e/five-worlds-collide-tickets-18785324411
[sale starts on 30.09.2015 - 18:00]

further resources:

effective altruism
http://whatiseffectivealtruism.com/
http://effectivealtruism.at/

rationality & scientific thinking
http:

...
Meetup : Rationality Meetup Vienna
by AnnaLeptikon — 2015-09-30T12:20:25.735Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Rationality Meetup Vienna

WHEN:
21 November 2015 04:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Kaisermühlenstraße 24, Vienna

Event on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/events/550127651805751/
You need to be part of this group to see it:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/rationalityvienna/

Location
http://web.student.tuwien.ac.at/~e0326238/rationality_meetup/directions.html

Topic:
Not defined yet

Discussion article for the meetup : Rationality Meetup Vienna
Meetup : Rationality Meetup Vienna
by AnnaLeptikon — 2015-09-30T12:18:53.955Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Rationality Meetup Vienna

WHEN:
17 October 2015 03:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Kaisermühlenstraße 24, Vienna

Event on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1626674870922372/
You need to be part of this group to see it:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/rationalityvienna/

Location
http://web.student.tuwien.ac.at/~e0326238/rationality_meetup/directions.html
!Alternative meetup room this time!

Topic:
Not defined yet

Discussion article for the meetup : Rationality Meetup Vienna
The Trolley Problem and Reversibility
by casebash — 2015-09-30T04:06:00.343Z

The most famous problem used when discussing consequentialism is that of the tram problem. A tram is hurtling towards the 5 people on the track, but if you flick a switch it will change tracks and kill only the one person instead. Utilitarians would say that you should flick the switch as it is better for there to be a single death than five. Some deontologists might agree with this, however, much more would object and argue that you don’t have the right to make that decision. This problem has different variations, such as one where you push someone in front of the train instead of them being on the track, but we’ll consider this one, as if it is accepted then it moves you a large way towards utilitarianism.

Let’s suppose that someone flicks the switch, but then realises the other side was actually correct and that they shouldn’t have flicked it. Do they now have an obligation to flick the switch back? What is interesting is that if they had just walked into the room and the train was heading towards the one person, they would have had an obligation *not* to flick the switch, but, having flicked it, it seems that they have an obligation to flick it back the other way.

Where this gets more puzzling is when we imagine Bob having observed Aaron flicking the switch? Arguably, if Aaron had no right to flick the switch, then Bob would have obligation to flick it back (or, if not an obligation, this would surely count as a moral good?). It is hard to argue against this conclusion, assuming that there is a strong moral obligation for Aaron not to flick the switch, along the lines of “Do not kill”. This logic seems consistent with how we act in other situations; if someone had tried to kill someone or steal something important from them; then most people would reverse or prevent the action if they could.

But what if Aaron reveals that he was only flicking the switch because Cameron had flicked it first? Then Bob would be obligated to leave it alone, as Aaron would be doing what Bob was planning to do: prevent interference. We can also complicate it by imagining that a strong gust of wind was about to come and flick the switch, but Bob flicked it first. Is there now a duty to undo Bob's flick of the switch or does that fact that the switch was going to flick anyway abrogate that duty? This obligation to trace back the history ...