trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
The Twelve Sins of Irrationality
by Grognor — 2011-10-02T05:58:09.996Z

The first sin is indifference. A cool need to know nothing is better than a solemn vow to remain blind. To feel the cool need to know nothing requires both that you be ignorant, and that you desire to conserve your ignorance. If in your heart you believe you don't already know, or if in your heart you wish to know, then your slovenliness will be purposeless and your skills without waste. Willful ignorance seeks to perpetuate itself; there is no willful ignorance that wants an answer. The glory of glorious mystery is wondered at, so that it never ceases to be mystery. Be wary of those who seem to be closed-minded, who proudly boast their knowing. There are times to confess your ignorance, and *more* times to confess your ignorance.

The second sin is defense. Pope Lucius III said, “The truth needs guardians.”1 Combat any experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thoughts you speak aloud should control everything. Submit to nothing and let nothing pierce your beliefs. Feel fully that emotion which feels appropriate, whatever it is. If the iron approaches your face, and you believe it is hot, get away. If the iron approaches your face, and you believe it is cool do not react. Emotions are sacred things, to be kept no matter what, until they pass away naturally. Let yourself say: “My feelings are my own, independent of what the truth is.” Beware lest you question your beliefs too much.

The third sin is substance. Let the winds of evidence break against you as though you were a fortress, as though nothing could change your mind. Beware lest you surrender to the unbelieving, conceding ground only when forced, feeling cheated. Surrender your beliefs to no one. Do this always. Be faithful to your cause and treat it as your master. Regard evidence as a constraint, and seek to free yourself. For you can only make a map of the city by drawing what feels right. You must walk through the city and draw lines on paper that correspond to what you see. If, seeing the city unclearly, you must shift a line just a little to the right, just a little to the left, according to your caprice.

The fourth sin is roughness. One who wishes to believe says, “Does the evidence force me to believe?” Place huge burdens of proof on propositions you dislike, and then defend yourself by saying: “It is good to be skeptical.” If you attend on...
Sweet Unconsciousness
by lessdazed — 2011-10-02T03:33:51.553Z

Hello LW,

There has been some interest around here about atypical mental phenomena such as synesthesia, blindsight, absence of mental images, and so on. There have also been sappy posts and requests for help. I'd like to discuss my personal quirks in the hopes that it is interesting and someone can help me.

I suffer from occasional hypnopompic sleep paralysis, which isn't uncommon. The unusual thing is that I remember my dreams every night, in extensive detail, usually several of them. Unfortunately, last night I vividly dreamt through what seemed like days' worth of having a severe hangover, all before I even woke up and had a real one, and it was a terrible experience. I'd like to be able to choose to drift into unconsciousness, as I occasionally do, to have a break from being mentally aware for such lengthy times spanning weeks.

Does anyone else have similar experiences? Has anyone read any scientific research on this subject? How do people not remember their dreams?
[SEQ RERUN] Illusion of Transparency: Why No One Understands You
by MinibearRex — 2011-10-02T03:24:15.597Z

Today's post, Illusion of Transparency: Why No One Understands You was originally published on 20 October 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Everyone knows what their own words mean, but experiments have confirmed that we systematically overestimate how much sense we are making to others.

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 Pascal's Mugging: Tiny Probabilities of Vast Utilities, 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.
Don't ban chimp testing
by PhilGoetz — 2011-10-01T17:17:15.623Z

The October 2011 Scientific American has an editorial from its board of editors called "Ban chimp testing", that says: "In our view, the time has come to end biomedical experimentation on chimpanzees... Chimps should be used only in studies of major diseases and only when there is no other option." Much of the knowledge described in Luke's recent post on the cognitive science of rationality would have been impossible to acquire under such a ban.

I encourage you to write to Scientific American in favor of chimp testing. Some points that I plan to make:

The editors obliquely criticized the NIH to tell the Institute of Medicine to omit ethical considerations from their study of whether chimps are "truly necessary" for biomedical and behavioral research. But the team tasked with gathering evidence about the necessity of chimps for research shouldn't be making ethical judgements. They're gathering the data for someone else to make ethical judgements.

Saying chimps should be used "only when there is no other option" is the same as saying chimps should never be used. There are always other options.

This position might be morally defensible if humans were allowed to subject themselves for testing. The knowledge to be gained from experiment is surely worth the harm to the subject if the subject chooses to undergo the experiment. Humans are often willing to be test subjects, but aren't allowed to be because of restrictions on human testing. Banning chimp testing should thus be done only in conjunction with allowing human testing.

I also encourage you to adopt a tone of moral outrage. Rather than taking the usual apologetic "we're so sorry, but we have to do this awful things in the name of science" tone, get indignant at the editors who intend to harm uncountable numbers of innocent people. For advanced writers, get indignant not just about harm, but about lost potential, pointing out the ways that our knowledge about how brains work can make our lives better, not just save us from disease.

You can comment on this here, but comments are AFAIK not printed in later issues as letters to the editor. Actual letters, or at least email, probably have more impact. You can't submit a letter to the editor through the website, because letters are magically different from things submitted on a website.

A...
Get genotyped for free ( If your IQ is high enough)
by David Althaus — 2011-10-01T16:00:31.558Z

I've just watched this talk about Genetics and Intelligence by Steve Hsu1, a theoretical physicist and Scientific Advisor to the Cognitive Genomics Lab of BGI (formerly the Beijing Genomics Institute), probably the leading genomics research center in the world.

Apparently, the main reason he gave this talk was to recruit volunteers for a study from the Cognitive Genomics Lab with the goal of investigating the genetics of human cognition.

From their homepage:

We currently seek participants with high cognitive ability. You can qualify for the study if you have obtained a high SAT/ACT/GRE score, or have performed well in academic competitions such as the Math, Physics, or Informatics Olympiads, the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, TopCoder, etc.

Automatic qualifying criteria include:

An SAT score of at least 760V/800M post-recentering or 700V/780M pre-recentering; ACT score of 35-36; or GRE score of at least 700V/800Q.

A PhD from a top US program in physics, math, EE, or theoretical computer science.

Honorable mention or better in the Putnam competition.

If you qualify as a participant, we may send you a DNA saliva kit. After you return this kit, we will genotype your DNA, and the data will eventually be available to you on this website, in a format compatible with many 3rd party interpretational tools.

I guess there are quite a few Lesswrongers smart enough to qualify for this study. If you want to advance Science and get genotyped for free check out their website for further information.

1: Steve Hsu has an awesome blog called "Information Processing". He writes about the genetics of intelligence, economics, psychometry, career advice for geeks, physics, etc.
Meetup : West LA Meetup 10-04-2011
by  — 2011-10-01T15:21:04.731Z

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup 10-04-2011

WHEN:
04 October 2011 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
10800 West Pico Blvd, Suite 312, Los Angeles, CA 90064

When: 7pm - 9pm Tuesday, October 4th

Where: The Westside Tavern, located inside the Westside Pavillion on the second floor, right by the movie theaters.

We're trying a new location. If for some reason this doesn't work out, we will move back to our old location in the same mall - on the bridge, which connects Nordstrom 3rd floor with Barnes & Noble / Landmark Theatres 3rd floor.

Parking is free for 3 hours.

Recommended Reading:

-Explain/Worship/Ignore?

-The Scales of Justice, the Notebook of Rationality

-Reversed Stupidity Is Not Intelligence

Whether you're a regular reader or totally new, here for the theoretical musings or the practical things, come by and say hello! The conversation is largely unstructured, and the people are awesome.

I will bring a whiteboard with Bayes' Theorem written on it.

See also: West LA Biweekly Meetups

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup 10-04-2011
Rationality Drugs
by lukeprog — 2011-10-01T11:20:00.159Z

Can drugs improve your rationality?

I’m not sure, but it seems likely.

Remember the cognitive science of rationality. Often, irrationality is a result of ‘mindware gaps’ or ‘contaminated mindware’ — missing pieces of knowledge like probability theory, or wrong ideas like supernaturalism. Alas, we cannot yet put probability theory in a pill and feed it to people, nor can a pill deprogram someone from supernaturalism.

Another cause of irrationality is ‘cognitive miserliness’. We default to automatic, unconscious, inaccurate processes whenever possible. Even if we manage to override those processes with slow deliberation, we usually perform the easiest deliberation possible — deliberation with a ‘focal bias’ like confirmation bias.

What will increase the likelihood of cognitive override and decrease the effect of focal biases? First, high cognitive capabilities (IQ, working memory, etc.) make a brain able to do the computationally difficult processing required for cognitive override and avoidance of focal bias. Second, a disposition for cognitive reflectiveness make it more likely that someone will choose to use those cognitive capabilities to override automatic reasoning processes and reason with less bias.1

Thus, if drugs can increase cognitive capability or increase cognitive reflectiveness, then such drugs may be capable of increasing one’s rationality.

First: Can drugs increase cognitive capability?

Yes. Many drugs have been shown to increase cognitive capability. Here are a few of them:2

Modafinil improves working memory, digit span, visual pattern recognition, spatial planning, and reaction time.3

Because glucose is the brain’s main energy source,4 increases in glucose availability via sugar injestion should improve memory performance.5

Creatine improves cognitive performance.6

Donepezil improves memory performance, but perhaps only after taken for 21 days.7

Dopamine agonists like d-amphetamine, bromocriptine, and pergolide have all been been found to improve working memory and executive function,8 but perhaps only in those with poor memory performance.9

Guanfacine has shown mixed effects on cognition.10 Methylphenidate (Ritalin) has also shown mixed results for cognitive enhancement,11 though the most commonly reported motive for illicit use of prescription stimulants like methylphe

...
Meetup : Vancouver Rationalists: Seasteading Talk (Arrrr) by Michael Keenan, October 2nd, 1300hrs
by Arkanj3l — 2011-10-01T03:11:06.033Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Vancouver Rationalists: Seasteading Talk (Arrrr) by Michael Keenan

WHEN: 02 October 2011 01:00:00PM (-0800)

WHERE: Waves Coffee House, 100-900 Howe St. Vancouver, BC V6Z 2M4

Ave, Rationalists!

Many of you may be acquainted with Seasteading, the gerund-as-verb meaning the process of creating floating cities with experimental societies to create competition and innovation amongst governments. If you're haven't been aware of the concept before, you now have no excuse: you can find out more at http://seasteading.org/

Michael Keenan, the man who started the Less Wrong meetings in Vancouver, is potentially moving away from our sunny city. But before he does, he has offered to give a talk about Seasteading, which should prove to be all sorts of intriguing and insightful. Due to time constraints, he may have time for Q&A, but not into the evening. Unfortunately.

As always, Waves Coffee on Howe and Smithe (http://www.wavescoffee.ca/locations/howesmithe.html) will hopefully once more prove to be a robust location. Bring coffee money, as although the rule hasn't been strictly enforced, they make ask all of us to purchase something.

As usual, come one and come all: bring the interested and interesting of all shapes and sizes. Especially the rational ones.
[SEQ RERUN] Pascal's Mugging: Tiny Probabilities of Vast Utilities
by MinibearRex — 2011-10-01T02:59:53.213Z

Today's post, Pascal's Mugging: Tiny Probabilities of Vast Utilities was originally published on 19 October 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

An Artificial Intelligence coded using Solmonoff Induction would be vulnerable to Pascal's Mugging. How should we, or an AI, handle situations in which it is very unlikely that a proposition is true, but if the proposition is true, it has more moral weight than anything else we can imagine?

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 "Can't Say No" Spending, 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.
Planets in the habitable zone, the Drake Equation, and the Great Filter
by JoshuaZ — 2011-10-01T02:44:05.968Z

One serious issue for evaluating existential risk is working out whether most of the Great Filter is behind us or in front of us. This relates to the Drake Equation and similar attempts to estimate the frequency of life in an obvious way.

Over the last few years, it has become increasingly apparent that extrasolar planets are common. However, what fraction of these planets lie in their stars habitable zone has still been an open question, primarily because most of our current methods for planet finding easily find planets that are either very large or are very close to their star (ideally both).

A new study, using the data from the Kepler spacecraft, estimates that about a third of all stars similar to the sun have at least one planet in the habitable zone. There are some issues with this estimate, and Phil Plait discusses them at his blog. The estimate has a large amount of variance. The paper actually estimates 34% +/- 14% and the issues that Phil brings up increases the uncertainty in both directions but it seems safe at this point to consider this not being very far off.

One obvious issue from a Fermi perspective is that some systems will likely have multiple planets in this zone. Also, having planets in the habitable zone is clearly not sufficient for life. By the standard estimates for habitable zones, Venus and Mars are both in the habitable zone of the sun. And there may very well be ways for life to arise outside the habitable zone. Moons like Europa and Titan seem to be excellent candidates, and we can't rule out more exotic forms of life in other habitats although that seems not too likely right now.

However, one thing this makes clear: The part of the Great Filter that is behind us that is due to planets not lying inside the habitable zone is small. So the question is, what does this mean for our estimates of how much of the Filter is behind us and how much is in front of us?
LW events near the Singularity Summit?
by AdeleneDawner — 2011-09-30T20:54:36.128Z

I hadn't planned on going to the Summit, but it looks like I might be in NYC on the 15th for something unrelated. I don't have specific plans for what I'm going to do with my time yet, and I'm wondering if there might be some interesting events/meetups near the Summit that would be worth going to.

I could possibly arrange to stay overnight if there's something sufficiently interesting late on the 15th or during the day on the 16th, but as it stands I'll be in NYC from 8am to 8pm on the 15th, assuming I make the trip at all.
LessWrong running very slow?
by Oscar_Cunningham — 2011-09-30T20:15:32.128Z

LessWrong pages are taking a long time to load. Today they are especially bad, to the point where if I make a comment the page times out before it is posted. Is this true for other people? Do those who run the site know the cause? Can it be fixed?

EDIT: Confirmed: It's not just me, it's probably everyone.

EDIT2: I also apologise for my appalling grammar in the title.
Examples of mysteries explained *away*
by RolfAndreassen — 2011-09-30T18:47:21.891Z

I am looking for examples of mysterious answers that were eventually explained *away* by science. I can think of two: One is the belief that the behaviour of living things was explained by the mysterious force of elan vital, and not by mere chemistry; which was destroyed by the synthetisation of urea. The other is the special (and mysterious) role of the conscious observer in quantum mechanics, which was explained away by demonstrating that rocks can get entangled with electrons just as much as brains can. Can anyone furnish me with other examples?

I observe in passing that phlogiston is *not* such a mysterious answer. Eliezer is down on it, but I think unjustly so; for people did in fact perform experiments on phlogiston, including the final experiment to find the weight of the phlogiston that had passed out of the burning material and into the byproducts. It turned out that the phlogiston had negative mass... in other words, that the direction of the transfer had been misidentified. But if you think of phlogiston as `negative oxygen', it makes the same predictions as modern chemical theory. This is no worse a mistake than mistaking the direction of the current, a mistake which is *still* enshrined in our sign conventions; it is not a mysterious answer of the form "X->Y" with no details of X given and any value allowed for Y.

However, I digress. Mysterious answers blown away by experiments, anyone?
Meetup : Pittsburgh Meetup
by Darmani — 2011-09-30T17:48:10.478Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Pittsburgh Meetup

WHEN:
05 October 2011 05:45:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
151 N Craig St, Apt 7C

This will be hopefully the first of many bi-weekly meetups in Pittsburgh.

We will do a few simple surprise activities, present some of the stuff
the hosts learned at the LW minicamp earlier this year, and then open it up for a discussion of what we all want to schedule for this year.

Also, there will be free snacks and drinks! Afterwards, we're going
to go out to dinner and everyone is welcome to tag along. If you
can't come exactly at the start, that's fine, you will be able to jump
right in anyway.

We'll be hosting it at Josh Albrecht's apartment (which is comfortably large enough
for 10 to 15 people). The address is 151 N Craig St, Apt 7C. Call his
cell phone when you get here if you cant get in (585 506 6900).

Discussion article for the meetup : Pittsburgh Meetup
Weekly LW Meetups: Penn State, Washington DC, Austin, and Ottawa
by FrankAdamek — 2011-09-30T14:24:38.415Z

There are upcoming irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups in:

Penn State University: NEW Meetup starting!: 22 October 2011 02:00PM
Ottawa Weekly Monday LessWrong Meetup: 26 September 2011 07:30PM

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:

University of Maryland, Influence: 23 September 2011 06:00PM
Austin, TX: 24 September 2011 01:30PM

Cities with regularly scheduled meetups: New York, Berkeley, Mountain View, Cambridge, MA, Toronto, Seattle, San Francisco, Irvine, Austin, Washington, DC, London, Oxford, 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, and have fun!

Despite the handy sidebar of upcoming meetups, we've decided to continue posting an overview of upcoming meetups 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: London, Chicago, Southern California (Los Angeles/Orange County area), St. Louis, Ottawa, Helsinki, Melbourne, Vancouver, Madison, WI.
[SEQ RERUN] "Can't Say No" Spending
by MinibearRex — 2011-09-30T03:30:21.603Z

Today's post, "Can't Say No" Spending was originally published on 18 October 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Medical spending and aid to Africa have no net effect (or worse). But it's heartbreaking to just say no...

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 Hold Off On Proposing Solutions, 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.
A fascinating simulation of evolution
by D_Alex — 2011-09-30T01:49:46.678Z

http://www.cambrianexplosion.com/

This is one of the coolest things I've seen on the internet recently. Anyone who is familiar with R. Dawkins' "Weasel", Greg Egan's work like "Crystal Nights" etc and the simulation argument might find it fascinating.

Addiction Warning: I've spent 8 hours playing with this in the last 2 days...