trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Suggestion: site-wide taboos
by  — 2013-01-16T01:50:52.136Z

Every so often, someone on Less Wrong uses a word wrong.

What does it mean to use a word wrong? Can't we use language however we want, as long as we manage to successfully communicate? Well, yes, we can, but we shouldn't. Jargon terms, in particular, are used by professionals in a certain field in order to communicate concepts that are applicable chiefly in that field. They often have very precise definitions—"incunable", for example, means "book printed in Europe before the year 1501", and "sweet crude oil" means "petroleum with a sulfur content less than 0.42%".

The thing about precisely-defined terms like these is that if you use one of them in a way that's at odds with its official definition, you can cause people to have more misunderstandings later on. I admit I can't think of a great example, but "obsessive–compulsive disorder" seems like a decent one: people often say "I'm so OCD" to mean that messy things annoy them, which seems like it could lead people to misunderstand when people actually have obsessive–compulsive disorder.

There are just two words I don't really like LW's usage of:

"Signaling". I'm not actually sure exactly what "signaling" means—which is arguably reason enough for us not to use it. I get the impression that it's usually used to mean exactly the same thing as "indicating". If that's the case, we should stop using it (or else only use it when everyone knows exactly what we mean by), and just say "indicating" instead. Or perhaps we don't use "signaling" to mean exactly the same thing as "indicating", but if that's the case, I don't know what the difference is, and I don't know whether or not it matches the "real" meaning of the word.

"Affect" (the noun). Wiktionary defines it as "a subjective feeling experienced in response to a thought or other stimulus; mood, emotion, especially as demonstrated in external physical signs". LW seems to use it as an exact synonym of "emotion".

Perhaps we do have good reasons for using these words as we do, but I feel like it's just as likely that people simply use these words in order to seem Less Wrong-y. If that's the case, I suggest that we simply taboo words like these everywhere on the entire site, using them only when we can give precise definitions of what we mean, and only when we have good reasons for using them.
Meetup : Buffalo Meetup
by StonesOnCanvas — 2013-01-15T22:50:37.462Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Buffalo Meetup

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

WHERE:
2727 Broadway Ave Suite 210, Cheektowaga NY 14227.

We're meeting up at Buffalo Lab this time! Come join us. We'll discus rationality and have some group activity or rationality game in the works. See you there.

Discussion article for the meetup : Buffalo Meetup
Study on depression
by Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg)  — 2013-01-15T21:58:18.255Z

I am currently running a study on depression, in collaboration with Shannon Friedman (http://lesswrong.com/user/ShannonFriedman/overview/). If you are interested in participating, the study involves filling out a survey and will take a few minutes of your time (half an hour would be very generous), most likely once a week for four weeks. Send me an email at mdixo100@uottawa.ca, and I can give you more details.

Thank you!
Morality: Theory and Practice
by JMiller — 2013-01-15T20:03:47.503Z

One of the criteria moral philosophers use to asses the credibility and power of a moral theory is "applicability". That is, how easy is it for humans to implement a moral rule? For example, a rule exists like "donate 23 hours a day to charity" it would be impossible for humans to fulfill the goal.

This lead me to start thinking about whether we want to be able to to pursue "the moral theoretical truth" should such a truth exist, or if we want to find the most applicable and practical set of rules, such that reasonably intramentaly rational (human) agents could figure out what is best in any given situation.

I feel like this is sort of like a map-territory distinction in a loose way. For example, the best thing to do in situation X might be A. A may be so difficult or require so much sacrifice, that B might be preferable, even if the overall outcome is not as good. This reminds me of how Eliezer says that the map is not the territory, but you can't fold the territory and put it in your pocket.

I'd love to be able to understand this issue a little better. If anyone has any thoughts, ideas or evidence, I'd appreciate hearing them.

Thanks,

Jeremy
The "Friendship is Witchcraft" expectation test
by PhilGoetz — 2013-01-15T17:56:12.327Z

My mother won't watch animated movies. It doesn't matter what the content is. Whether it's Sponge Bob or Grave of the Fireflies, she believes that animation is used only for shows for children, and that adults shouldn't watch shows for children. She's incapable of changing this belief, because even if I somehow convince her to sit and watch an animated film, she sees what she expects, not what's in front of her.

I think this is the same thing that creation scientists and climate-change deniers do. They literally cannot perceive what is in front of them, because they are already convinced they know what it is.

Here's an interesting test, which I discovered by accident: There's a hilarious series of fan-made parodies of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic on YouTube called Friendship is Witchcraft. They took show videos and redubbed them to have different stories in which various ponies are robots, fascists, or cult members planning to awaken Cthulhu. I've shown these videos to four people without explanation, just saying "You've got to see this!" and bringing up "Cute From the Hip" on YouTube.

The same thing always happens. They watch with stony, I-must-be-polite-to-Phil faces, without laughing. Eventually I realize that they think they're watching an episode of My Little Pony. I explain that it's a parody, and they say, "Oh!" I'd think that lines like "I know we've taught you to laugh in the face of death," "If you think one of your friends is a robot, kids, report them to the authorities so that they can be destroyed!", "I'm covered in pig's blood!", or, "Are you busy Friday? We need a willing victim for our ritual sacrifice" would prompt some questions. They don't. They are so determined to see a TV show for little girls that that's what they see, regardless of what's in front of them.
[LINK] Cholesterol and mortality
by NancyLebovitz — 2013-01-15T16:06:09.040Z

Discussion of a Norwegian study looking at 50,000 people who didn't have pre-existing heart disease for ten years. http://drmalcolmkendrick.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/mortality-and-cholesterol1.png?w=600&h=309

As you can see, for women the story is very straightforward indeed. The higher the cholesterol level, the lower the risk of overall mortality. With regard to heart disease alone, the highest risk is at the lowest cholesterol level. For men there is more of a U shaped curve, but overall mortality is highest at the lowest cholesterol level.

Here's the study.

Here's the actual conclusion from the study, which dhoe pointed out in comments is considerably milder than the quote above:

Based on epidemiological analysis of updated and comprehensive population data, we found that the underlying assumptions regarding cholesterol in clinical guidelines for CVD prevention might be ﬂawed: cholesterol emerged as an overestimated risk factor in our study, indicating that guideline information might be misleading, particularly for women with ‘moderately elevated’ cholesterol levels in the range of 5–7 mmol L-1. Our ﬁndings are in good accord with some previous studies. A potential explanation of the lack of accord between clinical guidelines and recent population data, including ours, is time trend changes for CVD/IHD and underlying causal (risk) factors.

‘Know your numbers’ (a concept pertaining to medical risk factor levels, including cholesterol) is currently considered part of responsible citizenship, as well as an essential element of preventive medical care. Many individuals who could otherwise call themselves healthy struggle conscientiously to push their cholesterol under the presumed ‘danger’ limit (i.e. the recommended cut-off point of 5 mmol L-1), coached by health personnel, personal trainers and caring family members. Massive commercial interests are linked to drugs and other remedies marketed for this purpose. It is therefore of immediate and wide interest to ﬁnd out whether our results are generalizable to other populations.

However, the chart (the png link above-- I don't know how to make the image appear) shows that the all cause mortality for women was lower if their cholesterol results were higher.

A different big stud...
Assessing Kurzweil: the gory details
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2013-01-15T14:29:26.465Z

This post goes along with this one, which was merely summarising the results of the volunteer assessment. Here we present the further details of the methodology and results.

Kurzweil's predictions were decomposed into 172 separate statements, taken from the book "The Age of Spiritual Machines" (published in 1999). Volunteers were requested on Less Wrong and on reddit.com/r/futurology. 18 people initially volunteered to do varying amounts of assessment of Kurzweil's predictions; 9 ultimately did so.

Each volunteer was given a separate randomised list of the numbers 1 to 172, with instructions to go through the statements in the order given by the list and give their assessment of the correctness of the prediction (the exact instructions are at the end of this post). They were to assess the predictions on the following five point scale:

1=True, 2=Weakly True, 3=Cannot decide, 4=Weakly False, 5=False

They assessed a varying amount of predictions, giving 531 assessments in total, for an average of 59 assessments per volunteer (the maximum attempted was all 172 predictions, the minimum was 10). They generally followed the randomised order correctly - there were three out of order assessments (assessing prediction 36 instead of 38, 162 instead of a 172, and missing out 75). Since the number of errors was very low, and seemed accidental, I decided that this would not affect the randomisation and kept those answers in.

The assessments (anonymised) can be found here.

In parallel, volunteers on Youtopia were also given the task of assessing the predictions. They were given the same instructions (minus the 5th and 7th clause), except that they were free to work on whichever predictions they wanted to, with the proviso that they didn't overwrite someone else's assessments. Instead, they could post a second opinion (not necessarily different from the first) in a separate column.

For some reason, prediction number 20 ("LUIs are frequently combined with animated personalities") was left out of the Youtopia assessment. In total, 204 assessments were made (171 primary assessments, 33 second opinions).

The results of that exercise, with identifying information removed, can be found here.

Instructions

The instructions given to the assessors were as follows:

1) The timeline of Kurzweil's prediction is up to 2011, and the location (unless sp...
Discussion of LW going on in felicifia
by somervta — 2013-01-15T05:59:03.984Z

So I recently found myself in a bit of an awkward position.

I frequent several Facebook discussion groups, several of which are about LW-related issues. In one of these groups, a discussion about identity/cryonics led to one about the end Massimo Piglucci's recent post (the bit where he says that the idea of uploading is a form of dualism), which turned into a discussion of LW views in general, at which point I revealed that I was, in fact, a LWer.

This put me in the awkward position of defending/explicating the views of the entirety of LW. Now, I've only been reading LessWrong for <10 months, and I've only recently become a more active part of the community. I've been a transhumanist for less time than that, seriously thinking about cryonics and identity for even less, and I suddenly found myself speaking for the intersection of all those groups

The discussion was crossposted to Felicifia a few days ago, and I realized that I was possibly out of my depth. I'm hoping I haven't grossly misrepresented anyone, but rereading the comments, I'm no longer sure.

Felicifia:

http://www.felicifia.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=801

Original FB Group :

https://www.facebook.com/groups/utilitarianism/permalink/318563281580856/

EDIT: If you're commenting on the topic, please state whether or not you'd mind me quoting you at felicifia (If you have a felicifia account, and you'd prefer to post it there yourself, be my guest.)
[SEQ RERUN] Can't Unbirth a Child
by MinibearRex — 2013-01-15T04:17:07.546Z

Today's post, Can't Unbirth a Child was originally published on 28 December 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

As a piece of meta advice for how to act when you have more power than you probably should, avoid doing things that cannot be undone. Creating a new sentient being is one of those things to avoid. If you need to rewrite the source code of a nonsentient optimization process, this is less morally problematic than rewriting the source code of a sentient intelligence who doesn't want to be rewritten. Creating new life forms creates such massive issues that it's really better to just not try, at least until we know a lot more.

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 Nonsentient Optimizers, 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.
Meetup : Second Purdue Meetup
by Curiouskid — 2013-01-15T03:01:46.094Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Second Purdue Meetup

WHEN: 18 January 2013 07:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE: Purdue- Hicks Library

The first meetup went really well. We had 5 people show up in total. We're hoping more people will show up for the next one.

EDIT: We had 8 people show up for the second meetup.

Discussion article for the meetup : Second Purdue Meetup
[Link] Aschwin de Wolf on Chemical Brain Preservation
by lsparrish — 2013-01-15T01:33:14.476Z

Aschwin de Wolf, a cryonics researcher at Advanced Neural Biosciences, has written two new articles discussing reasons for sticking with cryopreservation as opposed to chemopreservation.

Chemical Brain Preservation and Human Suspended Animation

Excerpt:

Executive Summary
Scientific and practical considerations strongly support cryopreservation rather than chemopreservation for the stabilization of critically ill patients. Technology for achieving solid state chemopreservation of brains larger than a mouse brain does not yet exist. Chemical fixation is irreversible without very advanced technologies. Chemical fixation permits no functional feedback or development pathway toward reversible suspended animation. By contrast, cryopreservation seeks to maintain viability of the brain as far downstream as our capabilities and resources permit — an approach that reflects our view of cryonics as an extension of contemporary medicine. Cryopreservation preserves more options in that a cryopreserved brain could be scanned in future, or later chemically fixed, but the process of chemical fixation cannot be reversed and replaced by just low temperature storage. The cost benefits of chemopreservation over cryopreservation are exaggerated, largely because the standby and treatment procedures for effective chemopreservation would be just as extensive as for cryopreservation, if not more so, even assuming that highly toxic chemicals could be worked with safely in the field. Chemopreservation is being inherently tied to mind uploading, an association that is likely to limit its acceptance as a form of experimental critical care medicine by apparently requiring acceptance of the idea of substrate independent minds.

In praise of cold

Excerpt:

Some observers believe that cryonics advocates are reluctant to subject their theories to experimental scrutiny because this could damage their (uncritical) belief in future resuscitation. Similarly, one might think that cryonicists would react with a mix of hostility and dismissal to alternative strategies for personal survival. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it is exactly because our personal survival is at stake that forces us to be wary of dogmatism.

For this reason, I have always been interested in chemical fixation as a (low cost) alternative for cryonics. In fact, years before all the talk about the “conn

...
Meetup : Less Wrong Dublin
by Laoch — 2013-01-14T21:32:51.462Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong Dublin

WHEN:
19 January 2013 04:30:59PM (+0000)

WHERE:
28 Dame St Dublin, Co. Dublin

Martin O'Dea would like to talk about his ideas on the Open Ireland Party. Other topics and all welcome.
Provisionally I would suggest The Mercantile on Dame Street.

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong Dublin
Evolution, Sex, and Gender, Not to Mention Research
by NancyLebovitz — 2013-01-14T14:19:05.144Z

From The New York Times:

Take the question of promiscuity. Everyone has always assumed — and early research had shown — that women desired fewer sexual partners over a lifetime than men. But in 2003, two behavioral psychologists, Michele G. Alexander and Terri D. Fisher, published the results of a study that used a “bogus pipeline” — a fake lie detector. When asked about actual sexual partners, rather than just theoretical desires, the participants who were not attached to the fake lie detector displayed typical gender differences. Men reported having had more sexual partners than women. But when participants believed that lies about their sexual history would be revealed by the fake lie detector, gender differences in reported sexual partners vanished. In fact, women reported slightly more sexual partners (a mean of 4.4) than did men (a mean of 4.0).

So how sketchy is the research on human sexual behavior, anyway?
Meetup : Cambridge, MA third-Sunday meetup
by jimrandomh — 2013-01-14T11:36:48.262Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge, MA third-Sunday meetup

WHEN:
20 January 2013 02:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
25 Ames St Cambridge, MA 02139

Cambridge/Boston-area Less Wrong meetups on the first and third Sunday of every month, 2pm at the MIT Landau Building [25 Ames St, Bldg 66], room 148. Room number subject to change based on availability, signs will be posted with the actual room number.

Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge, MA third-Sunday meetup
[SEQ RERUN] Nonsentient Optimizers
by MinibearRex — 2013-01-14T06:57:19.767Z

Today's post, Nonsentient Optimizers was originally published on 27 December 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Discusses some of the problems of, and justification for, creating AIs that are knowably not conscious / sentient / people / citizens / subjective experiencers. We don't want the AI's models of people to be people - we don't want conscious minds trapped helplessly inside it. So we need how to tell that something is definitely not a person, and in this case, maybe we would like the AI itself to not be a person, which would simplify a lot of ethical issues if we could pull it off. Creating a new intelligent species is not lightly to be undertaken from a purely ethical perspective; if you create a new kind of person, you have to make sure it leads a life worth living.

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 Nonperson Predicates, 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.
Meetup : Washington DC fun and games meetup
by rocurley — 2013-01-14T02:06:53.432Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC fun and games meetup

WHEN:
20 January 2013 05:23:13PM (-0500)

WHERE:
National Portrait Gallery courtyard, Washington, DC 20001, USA

We'll be playing games! I'll bring Zendo: if you have a fun game, please bring it!

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC fun and games meetup
Seeking examples of people smarter than me who got hung up
by Mike Bishop — 2013-01-13T16:40:31.028Z

I'm looking for historical examples of scientists who were

a) very intelligent and still

b) continued to put themselves behind a theory in their discipline long after it was rejected. Maybe they got too attached to it, refused to be wrong, got emotional, but they somehow let their hangups get in the way.

Maybe I'm being too demanding, but if you can resist, give me fewer cranks, pseudoscience, and wierd sociopolitical commitments and more theories that were credible until they became incredible to all but their big fancy until-then-respected proponent.

To get you started:

* Fred Hoyle against the Big Bang

* Lord Kelvin and Hoyle on microbes from spce

* Tesla against relativity and other chunks of modern physics.

* Heaviside against relativity

* George Gaylord Simpson against plate tectonics

* Newton on alchemy

More?

Posted on behalf of a friend. Thanks.
[SEQ RERUN] Nonperson Predicates
by MinibearRex — 2013-01-13T09:50:06.344Z

Today's post, Nonperson Predicates was originally published on 27 December 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

An AI, trying to develop highly accurate models of the people it interacts with, may develop models which are conscious themselves. For ethical reasons, it would be preferable if the AI wasn't creating and destroying people in the course of interpersonal interactions. Resolving this issue requires making some progress on the hard problem of conscious experience. We need some rule which definitely identifies all conscious minds as conscious. We can make do if it still identifies some nonconscious minds as conscious.

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 Devil's Offers, 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.