trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
How to Become a 1000 Year Old Vampire
by  — 2013-10-02T05:07:03.690Z

This is based on a concept we developed at the Vancouver Rationalists meetup.

Different experiences level a person up at different rates. You could work some boring job all your life and be 60 and not be much more awesome than your average teenager. On the other hand, some people have such varied and so much life experience that by 30 they are as awesome as a 1000 year old vampire.

This reminds me that it's possible to conduct your life with more or less efficiency, sometimes by orders of magnitude. Further, while we don't have actual life extension, it's content we care about, not run time. If you can change your habits such that you get 3 times as much done, that's like tripling your effective lifespan.

So how might one get a 100x speedup and become like a 1000 year old vampire in 10 years? This is absurdly ambitious, but we can try:

Do Hard Things

Some experiences catapult you forward in personal development. You can probably systematically collect these to build formidability as fast as possible.

Paul Graham says that many of the founders he sees (as head of YC) become much more awesome very quickly as need forces them to. This seems plausible and it seems back up by other sources as well. Basically "learn to swim by jumping in the deep end"; people have a tendency to take the easy way that results in less development when given the chance, so the chance to slack off being removed can be beneficial.

That has definitely been my personal experience as well. At work, the head engineer got brain cancer and I got de-facto promoted to head of two of the projects, which I then leveled up to be able to do. It felt pretty scary at first, but now I'm bored and wishing something further would challenge me. (addendum: not bored right now at all; crazy crunch time for the other team, which which I am helping) It seems really hard to just do better without such forcing; as far as I can tell I could work much harder than now, but willpower basically doesn't exist so I don't.

On that note, a friend of mine got big results from joining the Army and getting tear gassed in a trench while wet, cold, exhausted, sleep deprived, and hungry, which pushed him through stuff he wouldn't have thought he could deal with. Apparently it sortof re-calibrated his feelings about how well he should be doing and how hard things are such that he is now a millionaire and awesome.

So the mechanism b...
A Muggle Studies course
by polymathwannabe — 2013-10-02T02:42:49.029Z

At my local Harry Potter fanclub (Bogotá, Colombia) some members teach "classes" on subjects they're passionate about. We've had informal courses on history, creative writing, English, etc. But recently some other classes have appeared that have made me worry seriously: astrology, divination, ancient runes, and all other sorts of nonsense. They're not taught as folklorical pieces of the past, but as serious practices that are supposed to actually work. I think this is particularly dangerous for the small kids that comprise the majority of the fanclub and still need help learning that magic doesn't exist.

So I proposed the fanclub chief that I could teach a Muggle Studies class: logic, critical thinking, philosophy of science, etc. In two weeks we'll have our first class, and I intend to begin talking about the most common biases. I already downloaded this website's PDF guide to holding a Less Wrong meeting. Aside from that, what can you suggest for a successful Muggles Studies course?
Meetup : Chicago Open Discussion
by Nic_Smith — 2013-10-02T01:58:51.428Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Chicago Open Discussion

WHEN:
05 October 2013 03:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
Corner Bakery, 360 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL

This is our not-quite-regular open discussion meetup in Chicago.

Discussion article for the meetup : Chicago Open Discussion
Should effective altruists care about the US gov't shutdown and can we do anything?
by Ishaan — 2013-10-01T20:24:46.864Z

For those who haven't heard, NIH and NSF are no longer processing grants, leading to many negative downstream effects.
I've been directing my attention elsewhere lately and don't have anything informative to say about this. However, my uninformed intuition is that people who care about effective altruism (research in general, infrastructure development, X-risk mitigation, life-extension...basically everything, actually) or have transhumanist leanings should be very concerned.
The consequences have already been pretty disastrous. To provide just one, immediate example, the article says that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has shut down. I think that this is almost certain to directly cause a nontrivial number of deaths. Each additional day that this continues could have huge negative impact down the line, perhaps delaying some key future discoveries by years. This event *might* be a small window of opportunity to prevent a lot of harm very cheaply.
So the question is:
1) Can we do anything to remedy the situation?
2) If so, is it worth doing it? (Opportunity costs, etc)
What are you working on? October 2013
by David_Gerard — 2013-10-01T20:24:27.828Z

This is the supposedly-bimonthly-but-we-keep-skipping 'What are you working On?' thread. Previous threads are here. So here's the question:

What are you working on?

Here are some guidelines:

Focus on projects that you have recently made progress on, not projects that you're thinking about doing but haven't started.

Why this project and not others? Mention reasons why you're doing the project and/or why others should contribute to your project (if applicable).

Talk about your goals for the project.

Any kind of project is fair game: personal improvement, research project, art project, whatever.

Link to your work if it's linkable.
October 2013 Media Thread
by ArisKatsaris — 2013-10-01T19:38:53.086Z

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

Rules:

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

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

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

If you think there should be a thread for a particular genre of media, please post it to the Other Media thread for now, and add a poll to the Meta thread asking if it should be a thread every month.
Meetup : Frankfurt (including effective altruism presentation)
by Kendra — 2013-10-01T08:27:40.475Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Frankfurt (including effective altruism presentation)

WHEN:
27 October 2013 02:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Frankfurt, Ginnheimer Landstraße

We have another meetup! The location is a private flat. Please contact me beforehand: 0176 34 095 760
If you suffer from social anxiety or have any other problems that might make it difficult for you to attend, please tell me in advance, we'll try to accommodate your needs!
We also have a mailing list: less-wrong-frankfurt@googlegroups.com

It will start at 2pm (14:00).

Discussion article for the meetup : Frankfurt (including effective altruism presentation)
Meetup : Paris Meetup: Sunday, October 6: New people, games...
by Emile — 2013-09-30T22:16:45.283Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Paris Meetup: Sunday, October 6: New people, games...

WHEN:
06 October 2013 02:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Café des Arts et Métiers‎, 51 Rue Turbigo, Paris

The next Paris Meetup will be Sunday, October 6, at the Café des Arts et Métiers opposite the Museum.

Topics:
* Welcome new people
* Board games
* Plan future meetups
* Other suggestions? Someone wanted to talk about quantum mechanics...

Reminder: there is the LessWrong France mailing list for discussing and organizing meetups (that for now mostly happen in Paris and Lyon): https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups=#!forum/lesswrong-france

Discussion article for the meetup : Paris Meetup: Sunday, October 6: New people, games...
Meetup : Boulder CO
by yakurbe0112 — 2013-09-30T20:26:36.037Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Boulder CO

WHEN:
03 October 2013 07:00:00PM (-0600)

WHERE:
Old Chicago 1102 Pearl St, Boulder, CO

I've been sota bussy and the best time for the next meetup would be thursday. If you would like to come, I'll be showing everyone zendo.

Discussion article for the meetup : Boulder CO
Group Rationality Diary, October 1-15, plus frequency poll
by therufs — 2013-09-30T19:44:31.547Z

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for October 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.

New this month: If you have preferences about the future frequency of rationality diary posts, please express them in the poll below!

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

Immediate past diary: September 16-30

Rationality diaries archive
Meetup : West LA Meetup: What are the odds?
by Scott Garrabrant — 2013-09-30T19:10:22.449Z

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup: What are the odds?

WHEN:
02 October 2013 07:00:00AM (-0700)

WHERE:
10850 West Pico Blvd, Suite 312, Los Angeles, CA, 90064

When: 7:00pm Wednesday, October 2nd.

Where: The Westside Tavern in the upstairs Wine Bar (all ages welcome), located inside the Westside Pavillion on the second floor, right by the movie theaters. The entrance sign says "Lounge".

Parking is free for 3 hours.

Discussion:

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

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

This Wednesday, we will try to define "probability." (Spoiler: It is hard. We will fail.) We will discuss what we mean, or think we mean, and what we think other people mean by the word probability. We will look at the mathematical properties of probabilities, and (without actually doing the measure theory) try to understand just how much very weird math goes into defining the seemingly simple concept of probability. We will discuss different interpretations of how probabilities apply to the real world, such as frequentist and Bayesian interpretations. There many more questions to be answered, even after we hit the "Bayesian" applause light.

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup: What are the odds?
Book Review: Naïve Set Theory (MIRI course list)
by So8res — 2013-09-30T16:09:02.824Z

I'm reviewing the books on the MIRI course list. I followed Category Theory with Naïve Set Theory, by Paul R. Halmos.

Naïve Set Theory

This book is tiny, containing about 100 pages. It's quite dense, but it's not a difficult read. I'll review the content before giving my impressions.

Chapter List

The Axiom of Extension

The Axiom of Specification

Unordered Pairs

Unions and Intersections

Complements and Powers

Ordered Pairs

Relations

Functions

Families

Inverses and Composites

Numbers

The Peano Axioms

Arithmetic

Order

The Axiom of Choice

Zorn's Lemma

Well Ordering

Transfinite Recursion

Ordinal Numbers

Sets of Ordinal Numbers

Ordinal Arithmetic

The Schröder—Bernstein Theorem

Countable Sets

Cardinal Arithmetic

Cardinal Numbers

Normally I'd summarize each chapter, but chapters were about four tiny pages each and the content is mostly described by the chapter name. Zorn's Lemma states that if all chains in a set have an upper bound, then the set has a maximal element. (This follows from the axiom of choice.) The Schröder-Bernstein Theorem states that if X is equivalent to a subset of Y, and Y is equivalent to a subset of X, then X and Y are equivalent. The other chapter titles are self-evident.

Each chapter presented the concepts in a concise manner, then worked through a few of the implications (with proofs), then provided a few short exercises.

None of the concepts within were particularly surprising, but it was good to play with them first-hand. Most useful was interacting with ordinal and cardinal numbers. It was nice to examine the actual structure of each type of number (in set theory) and deepen my previously-superficial knowledge of the distinction.

Discussion

Before diving in to the review it's important to remember that the usefulness of a math textbook is heavily dependent upon your math background. I have a moderately strong background. Some specific subjects (analysis, type theory, group theory, etc.) have given me a solid, if indirect, foundation in set theory. This was the first time I studied set theory directly, but the concepts were hardly new.

Overview

I was pleased with this book. It is terse. It has exercises. It gives you information and gets out of your way, which is what I like in a textbook: It doesn't waste your time. I'm about to harp on the book for a spell, but please keep in mind that my overall feeling...
Estimation as a game
by AnatoliP — 2013-09-30T09:24:12.299Z

I was inspired to write this post after reading Gunnar_Zarncke's Raising numerate children.

Developing rational patterns of thought in children is very important and I'm glad Gunnar brought that issue up.

I wanted to share with you some thoughts I have regarding estimation games.

From an early age I've been constantly calculating various kinds of estimates - e.g. "how many people live in this building", "how long will it take to cross the US on foot", "what's the height of that tower", "how many BMWs are manufactured annually" and so on.

I believe that practising this technique is not only fun but also helpful. Sometimes one has no way or time to acquire accurate information regarding something and even a rough estimate can be very valuable.

People are often surprised when they see me do it whereas for me it is completely natural. I think the reason is that I do it from a very early age.

I think it's easy and natural for children to grasp if this method is introduced through everyday experiences. By making this into a game children can gain intuitive understanding of quantitative techniques. I suspect many children can enjoy this kind of games.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on the subject.

Do you remember yourself doing something like this? From what age? Do you practice anything similar with your children?
Video: What is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
by Eneasz — 2013-09-30T03:28:55.629Z

So a friend of mine took over running MALcon in Denver this year. She asked me to do a presentation on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. I said ok and put together the following little talk. It's about 25 minutes. I tried to cover what rationality is, why it makes fiction cool, and what HPMoR is. For the non-initiated. It was my first time doing public speaking, and I was nervous and, ok, borderline terrified. I hope I didn't screw anything up too badly. I recorded the presentation and I'm putting it up for critique. There's several chunks that, in retrospect, I think should have been placed differently in the talk, they didn't flow well. I need more eye-contact, less notes, and overall just a LOT more practice doing public speaking. Any suggestions are welcome.

Video on YouTube

The text I was reading from is below, although I deviated from it a bit, of course.
(bolding was to draw my eye, not for emphasis)

Hello. You’re all here for the Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality thing? OK. This is my first time doing public speaking so please make allowances for my noob mistakes. Also, for the same reason, please hold your questions until the end. You may wish to write down any that come to you so you don’t forget.

To start - I’m going to assume everyone here knows what fanfic is. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is fanfic written by decision theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky and it’s one of the most popular Harry Potter fanfics online. It’s the most reviewed and followed HP work on fanfiction.net and it’s received praise by award-winning authors. I don’t really have much to do with it, I’m mainly just a fan. I am big enough of a fan that I record and produce the audio-book version of it though, so I was asked to do this presentation. Plus I live a few blocks away. So that’s why I’m here.

You’re here because you all want to know what the big deal is.

Part of the big deal is that it’s a really good story, but there’s lots of good fanfic and generally they don’t have their own panel to discuss them. The thing about Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality – which I’ll just be calling Methods for short – is that it captures the heart of the rationality movement. Maybe you’ve heard of this “rationality” th...
The Ultimate Sleeping Beauty Problem
by Scott Garrabrant — 2013-09-30T00:48:08.395Z

I got into a heated debate a couple days ago with some of my (math grad student) colleagues about the Sleeping Beauty Problem. Out of this discussion came the following thought experiment:

Sleeping Beauty volunteers to undergo the following experiment and is told all of the following details: She will be put to sleep. During the experiment, Beauty will be wakened, interviewed, and put back to sleep with an amnesia-inducing anti-aging drug that makes her forget that awakening. A fair coin will be tossed until it comes up heads to determine which experimental procedure to undertake: if the coin takes n flips to come up heads, Beauty will be wakened and interviewed exactly 3^n times. Any time Sleeping Beauty is wakened and interviewed, she is asked, "What is your subjective probability now that the coin was flipped an even number of times?"

I will defer my analysis to the comments.
Another question about utilitarianism and selfishness
by pragmatist — 2013-09-29T13:24:46.704Z

Thought of this after reading the discussion following abcd_z's post on utilitarianism, but it seemed sufficiently different that I figured I'd post it as a separate topic. It feels like the sort of thing that must have been discussed on this site before, but I haven't seen anything like it (I don't really follow the ethical philosophy discussions here), so pointers to relevant discussion would be appreciated.

Let's say I start off with some arbitrary utility function and I have the ability to arbitrarily modify my own utility function. I then become convinced of the truth of preference utilitarianism. Now, presumably my new moral theory prescribes certain terminal values that differ from the ones I currently hold. To be specific, my moral theory tells me to construct a new utility function using some sort of aggregating procedure that takes as input the current utility functions of all moral agents (including my own). This is just a way of capturing the notion that if preference utilitarianism is true, then my behavior shouldn't be directed towards the fulfilment of my own (prior) goals, but towards the maximization of preference satisfaction. Effectively, I should self-modify to have new goals.

But once I've done this, my own utility function has changed, so as a good preference utilitarian, I should run the entire process over again, this time using my new utility function as one of the inputs. And then again, and again... Let's look at a toy model. In this universe, there are two people: me (a preference utilitarian) and Alice (not a preference utilitarian). Let's suppose Alice does not alter her utility function in response to changes in mine. There are two exclusive states of affairs that can be brought about in this universe: A and B. Alice assigns a utility of 10 to A and 5 to B, I initially assign a utility of 3 to A and 6 to B. Assuming the correct way to aggregate utility is by averaging, I should modify my utilities to 6.5 for A and 5.5 for B. Once I have done this, I should again modify to 8.25 for A and 5.25 for B. Evidently, my utility function will converge towards Alice's.

I haven't thought about this at all, but I think the same convergence will occur if we add more utilitarians to the universe. If we add more Alice-type non-utilitarians there is no guarantee of convergence. So anyway, this seems to me a pretty strong argument against utilitar...
Reading habits/techniques/strategies (second post on the topic) 
by Torello — 2013-09-29T12:55:42.094Z

I'm looking to build up a “tool-box” of strategies/techniques/habits for reading non-fiction effectively and efficiently.

I’ve already posted on this topic; below, I’ve tried to distill/summarize some of strategies shared by Less Wrong users and those contained in the resources they recommended. Thanks to those who contributed.

As far as I know, the strategies below are not supported by a research/experimental literature. If you know of any such evidence, please link to it.

I know that there are many people on Less Wrong who read (and mentally integrate!) incredible amounts. I’m hoping more users will contribute to this post. I welcome any additional strategies/habits in the comments.

Please feel free to comment on the structure/writing of the post, and if you think it’s a topic worthy of being posted on the main page.

I’ve tried to break strategies down into things you should do before, during, and after reading, but I think some strategies are applicable across these divisions.

Before Reading

-Consider purpose

-are you looking for specific skill, broadening general knowledge

-Generate a question, if you can’t yet formulate a question, follow your interests

-Read selectively

-ask good readers to explain the thesis of a book, reevaluate your interest in a text

-select books that are frequently cited in bibliographies of texts related to your topic of interest

-read the Wikipedia page, gauge interest

-Assemble reading materials

-Create a bibliography for the topic of interest

-Quickly inspect the books (author, table of contents, index, Wikipedia page), as you consider the question “does this book deserve a lot of time and attention?”

-Select a few texts to read closely (though you won’t necessarily read them cover to cover)

-remove distractions (people, websites, wear noise canceling headphones)

-Make reading enjoyable

&

... ,