trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Some scary life extension dilemmas
by Ghatanathoah — 2013-01-01T18:41:21.421Z

Let's imagine a life extension drug has been discovered. One dose of this drug extends one's life by 49.99 years. This drug also has a mild cumulative effect, if it has been given to someone who has been dosed with it before it will extend their life by 50 years.

Under these constraints the most efficient way to maximize the amount of life extension this drug can produce is to give every dose to one individual. If there was one dose available for all seven-billion people alive on Earth then giving every person one dose would result in a total of 349,930,000,000 years of life gained. If one person was given all the doses a total of 349,999,999,999.99 years of life would be gained. Sharing the life extension drug equally would result in a net loss of almost 70 million years of life. If you're concerned about people's reaction to this policy then we could make it a big lottery, where every person on Earth gets a chance to gamble their dose for a chance at all of them.

Now, one could make certain moral arguments in favor of sharing the drug. I'll get to those later. However, it seems to me that gambling your dose for a chance at all of them isn't rational from a purely self-interested point of view either. You will not win the lottery. Your chances of winning this particular lottery are almost 7,000 times worse than your chances of winning the powerball jackpot. If someone gave me a dose of the drug, and then offered me a chance to gamble in this lottery, I'd accuse them of Pascal's mugging.

Here's an even scarier thought experiment. Imagine we invent the technology for whole brain emulation. Let "x" equal the amount of resources it takes to sustain a WBE through 100 years of life. Let's imagine that with this particular type of technology, it costs 10x to convert a human into a WBE and it costs 100x to sustain a biological human through the course of their natural life. Let's have the cost of making multiple copies of a WBE once they have been converted be close to 0.

Again, under these constraints it seems like the most effective way to maximize the amount of life extension done is to convert one person into a WBE, then kill everyone else and use the resources that were sustaining them to make more WBEs, or extend the life of more WBEs. Again, if we are concerned about ...
You can't signal to rubes
by Patrick — 2013-01-01T06:40:18.310Z

The word 'signalling' is often used in Less Wrong, and often used wrongly. This post is intended to call out our community on its wrongful use, as well as serve as an introduction to the correct concept of signalling as contrast.

"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.."

- John F. Kennedy

Why do peacocks grow such large, conspicuous tails? Why do people take degrees in subjects like Philosophy or Classics, despite these subjects having no obvious practical value? Why do people take pains to avoid splitting infinitives, even though everyone can understand split infinitives perfectly well?
These activities seem completely pointless, costly and difficult. Paradoxically, it is probably this very difficulty that serves to explain why they are done at all. Take the peacock’s tail. A peacock that has to struggle to survive while dragging around a conspicuous tail is clearly at a disadvantage. But if he can continue to survive, then clearly he must be pretty strong! So the peahens may choose to mate with him rather than the peacocks with less conspicuous tails, whose survival is thus a less impressive feat.
As for classics, getting a degree in classics may be pointless, but it’s also difficult. It requires one to read and memorize vast chunks of text, and to translate these texts between Greek, Latin and English precisely. So a person who has a degree in classics and got a good mark must be a person with a good memory who is able to execute tasks precisely. Qualities extremely useful in a civil servant, the occupation where many budding classicists find themselves. The rule that you mustn't split infinitives derives from Latin where splitting infinitives was impossible. So a person who doesn’t split infinitives is more likely to be a Latin scholar, with the qualities of class and intelligence that such a thing implies.
Even the decision to go to the moon might be explained in this way. Carl Sagan made the point that a rocket capable of going to the moon is certainly capable of reaching Moscow. And it’s clear why Kennedy in the middle of a Cold War would want to demonstrate such a thing.
When we explain a behaviour in this way, we say that the behaviour is signalling. The agent does not perform a task for its own sake, but to show oth...
Gauging of interest: LW stock picking?
by simplicio — 2013-01-01T06:36:12.132Z

EDIT: Based on criticism below, I am reconsidering how to proceed with this idea (or something in the neighbourhood).

A topic that has been on my mind recently is where, in our complicated lives, there might be low-hanging fruit ready to be picked by a motivated rationalist. Actual, practical, dollars-and-cents fruit.

In possibly-related news, here is how the writer of About.com's beginner's guide to investing describes the stock market:

Imagine you are partners in a private business with a man named Mr. Market. Each day, he comes to your office or home and offers to buy your interest in the company or sell you his [the choice is yours]. The catch is, Mr. Market is an emotional wreck. At times, he suffers from excessive highs and at others, suicidal lows. When he is on one of his manic highs, his offering price for the business is high as well, because everything in his world at the time is cheery. His outlook for the company is wonderful, so he is only willing to sell you his stake in the company at a premium. At other times, his mood goes south and all he sees is a dismal future for the company. In fact, he is so concerned, he is willing to sell you his part of the company for far less than it is worth. All the while, the underlying value of the company may not have changed - just Mr. Market's mood.

I have heard this narrative many times before, and I'd like to test whether it is accurate - and in particular, whether LWers can consistently beat the market.

The skeptic may well ask: why should LWers have an advantage? Why not go to the professionals - investment advisors? Also, isn't there a whole chapter in Kahneman about how even smart people suck at picking stocks? And what do you, simplicio, know about this anyway?

LWers may have an advantage by virtue of being educated about such topics as cognitive biases, sunk cost fallacy, probabilistic prediction, and expected utility - topics with which investment advisors et al. may or may not be familiar on a gut level. I am not sure if we're any better, but I'd like to test it. Also, if LW turns out to be any good at offering such advice, that advice would presumably be free, unlike that of yon advisor (fees tend to kill returns on investment - just ask anybody who uses Intrade). As for what I personally know - not very much yet. But I find competition very stimulating.

Accordingly, my proposal is for a contest: o...
[Link] Economists' views differ by gender
by GLaDOS — 2012-12-31T13:34:08.944Z

Edit: ParagonProtege has provided a link to the original study. Thank you! (^_^)

Link.

A new study shows a large gender gap on economic policy among the nation's professional economists, a divide similar -- and in some cases bigger -- than the gender divide found in the general public.

What does an economist think of that?

A lot depends on whether the economist is a man or a woman. A new study shows a large gender gap on economic policy among the nation's professional economists, a divide similar -- and in some cases bigger -- than the gender divide found in the general public.

Differences extend to core professional beliefs -- such as the effect of minimum wage laws -- not just matters of political opinion.

Female economists tend to favor a bigger role for government while male economists have greater faith in business and the marketplace. Is the U.S. economy excessively regulated? Sixty-five percent of female economists said "no" -- 24 percentage points higher than male economists.

Can this be reasonably explained by self-interest? Female and male economists' views are probably coloured by gender solidarity. Government jobs may be more likeable to women than men because of their recorded greater risk aversion. Regardless of the reason government jobs are more important for women than for men. Also in the US where the study was done middle class white women benefit quit a bit from affirmative action in government hiring.

"As a group, we are pro-market," says Ann Mari May, co-author of the study and a University of Nebraska economist. "But women are more likely to accept government regulation and involvement in economic activity than our male colleagues."

Opinion differences between men and women are well-documented in the general public. President Obama leads Mitt Romney by 10 percentage points among women. Romney leads Obama by 3 percentage points among men, according to the latest Gallup Poll.

Politics is the mind-killer probably does play a role in explaining the difference.

The survey of 400 economists is one of the first to examine whether gender differences matter within a profession. The answer for economists: Yes.

How economists think:

Health insurance. Female economists thought employers should be required to provide health insurance for full-time workers: 40% in favor to 37% against, with the rest offering no opinion. By contrast, men wer

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[Link] The Collapse of Complex Societies 
by  — 2012-12-31T12:11:04.764Z

TGGP a frequent commenter at Overcoming Bias (and hence old LessWrong), writes about his thoughts on a book by Joseph Tainter.

I’ve seen Joseph Tainter’s “The Collapse of Complex Societies” recommended in a few different places. Jared Diamond’s book might be one of them, the guest-posts of Captain David Ryan aka “Tony Comstock” for James Fallows at the Atlantic might be another. The sidebar of John Robb’s “Global Guerrillas” blog is the only one I remember with certainty. It’s a not a very long book, and you can get the gist of it from Tainter’s wikipedia page.

Lots of people have found civilizational collapses to be interesting, and Tainter reviews many of their theories while finding them wanting. The “eleven major themes in the explanation of collapse” he lists are depletion/cessation of a vital resource, establishment of a new resource base (which I found too stupid to take seriously even momentarily), insurmountable catastrophe, insufficient response to circumstances (which is almost tautological), other complex societies, intruders, class conflict or elite mismanagement, social dysfunction, mystical factors, chance concatenation of events (almost tautological if you don’t think collapse is predetermined) and economic factors. Like Tainter, I find the “mystical” theories to not really constitute theories at all, although some of the most popular writers on the subject (Spengler, Toynbee, various ancients) are included there. Tainter often contrasts “integrative” (or “functional”) theories on the origin of the state/complexity vs “conflict” theories, and acknowledges that he is more partial toward the former. Unfortunately, most of the latter theorists he lists are Marxists and carry a lot of baggage. The observation that throughout much of history some set of people ruled over others as a result of military victory regardless of any benefit to the subjects (though a Leviathan may happen to have upsides) predates Marx, with Ibn Khaldun being one of the few non-Marxist examples Tainter mentions. That’s not to say Tainter is anti-Marxism, he actually compares Marxist “social science” to Einsteinian physics and Darwinian biology! I suppose there is (or was) just such a heavy rep

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[Link] Statistically, People Are Not Very Good At Making Voting Decisions
by  — 2012-12-31T11:50:48.104Z

Link. Nothing surprising considering previous work on the subject, but a good reminder.

A study by three scientists in the American Political Science Review finds that voters are not competent at accurately evaluating incumbent performance and are easily swayed by rhetoric, unrelated circumstances and recent events.

Gregory Huber, Seth Hill, and Gabriel Lenz constructed a 32-round game where players received payments from a computer "allocator." The goal is to maximize the value of those payments.

Halfway through, at round sixteen, the player had to decide whether to get a new allocator or to stick with the old one.

The allocators pay out over a normal distribution based on a randomly selected mean. Getting a new allocator means that a new mean is selected. This was meant to simulate an election based on performance.

The group ran three experiments where they changed some of the rules of the game in order to find out how voters could be manipulated or confused over performance. Essentially, how good were voters at accurately analyzing the performance of the "allocator?"

The first experiment merely alerted the player at round twelve that they would have the chance to pick a new allocator at round sixteen. This "election in November" reminder made the player weight recent performance in rounds 12-16 over earlier performance in rounds 1-12.

The second experiment involved a lottery held at round eight or round sixteen. The payout was either -5000, 0, or 5000 tokens. The participant was told that the lottery was totally unrelated to the current allocator, but players still rewarded or punished their current allocator based on their lottery performance.

The third experiment primed the player with a question right before the election. The question took an adapted form of either Ronald Reagan's "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" or John F. Kennedy's "The question you have to decide on November 8 is, is it good enough? Are you satisfied?"

The conclusion:

Participants overweight recent performance when made aware of the choice to retain an incumbent closer to election rather than distant from it (experiment 1), allowed unrelated events that affected their welfare to influence evaluations of incumbents (experiment 2), and were influenced by rhetoric to focus less on cumulative incumbent performance (ex

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[SEQ RERUN] We Agree: Get Froze
by MinibearRex — 2012-12-31T05:22:29.448Z

Today's post, We Agree: Get Froze was originally published on December 12, 2008. A summary:

Despite disagreement about AI FOOMs, Robin Hanson and Eliezer Yudkowsky both agree that cryonics is worth investing in.

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 Not Taking Over the World, 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.
Should a judge do it's job or maximize overall happiness
by ChristianKl — 2012-12-30T19:47:50.854Z

John Smith is a head judge. He's living in a state with has a three strikes law. He personally doesn't believe in the three strikes law. He resides in the highest appellate court in his state. He's operating in a state without juries.

As part of John's job he writes down his confidence on whether a witness tell the truth whenever he's hearing an witness make a statement. He has an assistant that checks his results. John quite frequently is 99,99% sure that a witness lies. He was never wrong when he made the prediction because of his skills at reading bodylanguage.

In his private time he also trains his ability to tell whether people tell the truth in training cases where it's easy to determine the truth afterwards. He's perfectly caliberated.

He gets a court case where Bob is accused of bribing a lot of politicians in an African state. He's supposed to have given them bribes to drop a law that forbids vaccination. Bob himself claims that he only talked with the African politicians and they afterwards saw Bob's wisdom and changed the law. In any case Bob got the law changed and produced massive utility in the process. Bob also pledges to do other lobbying in African countries to get rid of very harmful laws in the future.

After Bob attempts of getting the law Bribing officials of other countries is a felony is Bob's state. Bob already has two court judgements against him so being judged for bribing would put him for the rest of his life behind bars.

Carol is a billionaire. She is supposed to have give Bob $100,000 for his lobbying efforts to change the law in the African state. Carol however claims that she only payed Bob $3,000 for his traveling costs in the process and she never gave him an amount of money that would be enough to bribe the African policitians.

Through his bodylanguage reading skills John knows that Bob and Carol are lying to him. One previous court thought that Bob did the crime, the second court thought that Bob didn't.

John gets asked by his fellow judges on the court whether he thinks the two are lying. His fellow judges know of his impressive bodylanguage reading ability and fully trust him.

John swore an oath to fulfill the law. Should John break his oath and tell his collegues that Bob and Carol are telling the truth? Or should he tell them that they lie. John knows that telling his collegues that they lie would mean...
Meetup : Durham LW Meetup: Zendo
by evand — 2012-12-30T19:30:34.095Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Durham LW Meetup: Zendo

WHEN:
03 January 2013 07:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
Francesca's cafe, 706 9th Street, Durham, NC 27705

We'll be meeting to play Zendo and chat about general rationality topics. Come join us and play or learn to play if you haven't before!

Discussion article for the meetup : Durham LW Meetup: Zendo
Three kinds of moral uncertainty
by Kaj_Sotala — 2012-12-30T10:43:30.669Z

Related to: Moral uncertainty (wiki), Moral uncertainty - towards a solution?, Ontological Crisis in Humans.

Moral uncertainty (or normative uncertainty) is uncertainty about how to act given the diversity of moral doctrines. For example, suppose that we knew for certain that a new technology would enable more humans to live on another planet with slightly less well-being than on Earth[1]. An average utilitarian would consider these consequences bad, while a total utilitarian would endorse such technology. If we are uncertain about which of these two theories are right, what should we do? (LW wiki)

I have long been slightly frustrated by the existing discussions about moral uncertainty that I've seen. I suspect that the reason has been that they've been unclear on what exactly they mean when they say that we are "uncertain about which theory is right" - what is uncertainty about moral theories? Furthermore, especially when discussing things in an FAI context, it feels like several different senses of moral uncertainty get mixed together. Here is my suggested breakdown, with some elaboration:

Descriptive moral uncertainty. What is the most accurate way of describing my values? The classical FAI-relevant question, this is in a sense the most straightforward one. We have some set values, and although we can describe parts of them verbally, we do not have conscious access to the deep-level cognitive machinery that generates them. We might feel relatively sure that our moral intuitions are produced by a system that's mostly consequentialist, but suspect that parts of us might be better described as deontologist. A solution to descriptive moral uncertainty would involve a system capable of somehow extracting the mental machinery that produced our values, or creating a moral reasoning system which managed to produce the same values by some other process.

Epistemic moral uncertainty. Would I reconsider any of my values if I knew more? Perhaps we hate the practice of eating five-sided fruit and think that everyone who eats five-sided fruit should be thrown to jail, but if we found out that five-sided fruit made people happier and had no averse effects, we would change our minds. This roughly corresponds to the "our wish if we knew more, thought faster" part of Eliezer's original CEV description. A solution to epistemic moral uncertainty would involve finding out m...
A Game for Probabilistic Thinking
by Erdrick — 2012-12-30T08:20:02.254Z

I friend of mine recently recommended a small independent game to me called Clairvoyance (www.gameofclairvoyance.com), that I thought might be of interest to the LW community. It's effectively a competitive turn-based strategy game, but it's distinguishing feature is that each player places 5 moves at a time, which are then interlaced and executed with the opponent's 5 moves. Thus requiring the clairvoyance of the game's name - you need to anticipate your opponent's moves in order plan your own, included anticipating their anticipations of your actions, etc.

It's clearly not intended as a rationality aid, and I originally did not approach it as such. But after getting trounced in my first few games, I found it very helpful to approach each turn probabilistically - thinking of each round in terms of a probability cloud of possible positions for various pieces, and planning around attacking swathes of that cloud rather than specific squares. Though early on, I can also foresee an element of theory-of-mind practice emerging if you play one opponent repeatedly and begin to learn their particular style.

If any one cares to give it a whirl, the game is just $5 while still in beta. It's cheap, it's fun and easy to learn, and games are relatively fast. If anyone wants to rumble, my handle in-game is also Erdrick - I have a feeling the crowd here would provided for some excellent opponents.

-Brett
Meetup : West LA Meetup - Defense Against the Dark Arts, Part I
by  — 2012-12-30T06:54:20.893Z

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup - Defense Against the Dark Arts, Part I

WHEN:
02 January 2013 07:00:00PM (-0800)

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

When: 7:00pm Wednesday, January 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.

Lecture/Discussion: Defense Against the Dark Arts is a tricky topic to teach, and a vast field to learn. Salman and I will conduct this experimental meetup by presenting to you some introductory morsels of this essential knowledge. There will be at least one activity as well. By the end of next year we hope to give you enough tools and training to ward off any basic attempts to persuade you to act against your best interests.

No foreknowledge or exposure to Less Wrong is necessary; this will be generally accessable and useful to anyone 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!

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

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup - Defense Against the Dark Arts, Part I