trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Upcoming meet-ups: Bangalore, Ottawa, Edinburgh, North Carolina, Paris, Logan, Irvine
by FrankAdamek — 2011-06-26T21:29:41.141Z

ETA: Note that no further meetup summary posts are planned. Further coordination will take place via the Upcoming Meetups tab on the right-side site navigation bar.

There are upcoming irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups in:

Ottawa LW meetup, June 23, 7pm; two Bayesian Conspiracy sessions
Edinburgh LW meetup reminder, Saturday, June 18th, 2pm
Research Triangle, NC, Meetup - Saturday, June 18th, 2 p.m.
Bangalore Meetup: 19th of June, 4 pm
Paris Meetup Saturday June 25
Logan, UT meetup Sat 18 Jun 4pm
Irvine Meetup Tuesday June 21 Note that the linked post describes some changes to the regular Irvine schedule.

Cities with regularly scheduled meetups: New York, Berkeley, Mountain View, Cambridge, MA, Toronto, Seattle, San Francisco, Irvine. And now, Washington, DC 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!

To reduce front page clutter, the new plan is for meetups to be initially posted in the Discussion section, and for Anna Salamon to make a promoted post "upcoming meetups" post every Friday that links to every meet-up that has been planned for the next two weeks. For this week, please let me know if your meetup is omitted.

Please note that for your meetup to appear in the weekly meetups feature, you need to post about 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.
psychology and applications of reinforcement learning: where do I learn more? 
by jsalvatier — 2011-06-26T20:56:26.514Z

Minicamp made me take the notion of an Ugh Field seriously, and I've found Ugh Fields a fairly useful model for understanding how my brain works. I have/had lots of topics that have been unpleasant to think about and the cause of that unpleasantness seems to be strongly correlated with previous negative experiences.

More generally, animals, including humans, seem to use something like Temporal Difference learning very frequently (one source of that impression). If that's so, then understanding TD and related psychological research should give me a more accurate model of myself. I would expect it to help me understand when my dispositions and habits are likely to be useful (by knowing how they developed) and understand how to change my dispositions and habits. Thus I have a couple of questions:

Are my impressions accurate?

What books, papers, posts are the best for understanding these topics? I'd like material that addresses any of the following:

How TD or related algorithms work

What evidence says about whether human and/or animal brains frequently use TD or related algorithms and what situations brains use it for

Practical consequences of the research (e.g. Ugh Fields, doing X is a good way to build habit Y, smiling is a reinforcement, etc.)
Finally just created comprehensive resource collections/guides for autodidactism/several scientific subjects
by InquilineKea — 2011-06-26T20:47:29.620Z

Autodidactism

Individual academic subjects: http://www.quora.com/Alex-K-Chen/Useful-Science-Learning-Resource-Collections

Data Science already covered by Alex Kamil: http://www.quora.com/Educational-Resources/How-do-I-become-a-data-scientist

Can anyone please give me some feedback? Thanks!
Review of Doris, 'The Moral Psychology Handbook' (2010)
by lukeprog — 2011-06-26T19:33:53.327Z

The Moral Psychology Handbook (2010), edited by John Doris, is probably the best way to become familiar with the exciting interdisciplinary field of moral psychology. The chapters are written by philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists. A few of them are all three, and the university department to which they are assigned is largely arbitrary.

I should also note that the chapter authors happen to comprise a large chunk of my own 'moral philosophers who don't totally suck' list. The book is also exciting because it undermines or outright falsifies a long list of popular philosophical theories with - gasp! - empirical evidence.

Chapter 1: Evolution of Morality (Machery & Mallon)

The authors examine three interpretations of the claim that morality evolved. The claims "Some components of moral psychology evolved" and "Normative cognition is a product of evolution" are empirically well-supported but philosophically uninteresting. The stronger claim that "Moral cognition (a kind of normative cognition) evolved" is more philosophically interesting, but at present not strongly supported by the evidence (according to the authors).

The chapter serves as a compact survey of recent models for the evolution of morality in humans (Joyce, Hauser, de Waal, etc.), and attempts to draw philosophical conclusions about morality from these descriptive models (e.g. Joyce, Street).

Chapter 2: Multi-system Moral Psychology (Cushman, Young, & Greene)

The authors survey the psychological and neuroscientific evidence showing that moral judgments are both intuitive/affective/unconscious and rational/cognitive/conscious, and propose a dual-process theory of moral judgment. Scientific data is used to verify or falsify philosophical theories proposed as, for example, explanations for trolley-problem cases.

Consequentialist moral judgments are more associated with rational thought than deontological judgment, but both deontological and consequentialist moral judgments have their sources in emotion. Deontological judgments are associated with 'alarm bell' emotions that circumvent reasoning and provide absolute demands on behavior. Alarm bell emotions are rooted in (for example) the amygdala. Consequentialist judgments are associated with 'currency' emotions provide negotiable motivations that weigh for and against particular behaviors, and are roo...
Preview button
by MarkusRamikin — 2011-06-26T16:29:52.290Z

Surely I can't be the first person to have thought of it, but Uncle Google suggests this hasn't been discussed before. Would it be difficult to make a preview button available when posting comments? Was it lacking from the software being used or is it just disabled? This blog uses different ways of text formatting than I think a lot of us are used to from other discussion forums, so if it happens to be easy to do, it'd be good to be able to experiment and see the results before making one's comment available.

I just tried that sandbox linked to from the wiki and it doesn't seem trustworthy, what should come out as italics comes out as some sort of a highlight...

Funny, I felt that bystander reluctance thing while posting this. "Why hasn't anyone posted this before? Is it because nobody wants to be the one asking for something? Or is it a silly request in some way I don't see now?"

EDIT:

I see Uncle Google failed me. Or is it that I failed Uncle Google? ;)
Thanks for the reponses, all.
The Kolmogorov complexity of a superintelligence 
by Thomas — 2011-06-26T12:11:38.392Z

The most simple, able to self-improve "seed" for a superintelligence must be how complex?

Give your (wild) estimation or a pure guess in the terms of bits.

Do you reckon it is 1000 bits enough? At least 1000000 is required? More than 10^20 bits?

I wonder what your approximate numbers are.

Thank you!
Health Inflation, Wealth Inflation, and the Discounting of Human Life
by XiXiDu — 2011-06-26T10:31:49.345Z

Abstract:

This Article presents two new arguments against “discounting” future human lives during cost-benefit analysis, arguing that even absent ethical objections to the disparate treatment of present and future humanity, the economic calculations of cost-benefit analysis itself - if properly calculated - counsel against discounting lives at anything close to current rates. In other words, even if society sets aside all concerns with the discounting of future generations in principle, current discounting of future human lives cannot be justified even on the discounters’ own terms. First, because cost-benefit analysis has thus far ignored evidence of rising health care expenditures, it underestimates the “willingness to pay” for health and safety that future citizens will likely exhibit, thereby undervaluing their lives. Second, cost-benefit analysis ignores the trend of improved material conditions in developed countries. As time advances, residents of rich countries tend to live better and spend more, meaning that a strict economic monetization of future persons values the lives of our expected descendents above those of present citizens. These two factors justify “inflation” of future lives that would offset, perhaps completely, the discount rate used for human life. Until regulators correct their method of discounting the benefits of saving human lives in the future, the United States will continue to suffer the fatal costs of underregulation, and agencies will remain in violation of legal requirements to maximize net benefits.

Link: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1845504

Paper (PDF): SSRN-id1845504.pdf

Via: marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/06/dont-apply-positive-discount-rates-to-human-lives.html
[SEQ RERUN] Professing and Cheering
by Tyrrell_McAllister — 2011-06-26T03:59:08.693Z

Today's post, Professing and Cheering, was originally published on 02 August 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

A woman on a panel enthusiastically declared her belief in a pagan creation myth, flaunting its most outrageously improbable elements. This seemed weirder than "belief in belief" (she didn't act like she needed validation) or "religious profession" (she didn't try to act like she took her religion seriously). So, what was she doing? She was cheering for paganism — cheering loudly by making ridiculous claims.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, in which we're 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 Bayesian Judo, 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 : Austin, TX
by Vaniver — 2011-06-26T03:38:10.417Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Austin, TX

WHEN:
02 July 2011 01:30:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
2222B Guadalupe St Austin, Texas 78705

Our recurring meetup continues! Note that we've also created a Google Group, which is probably how we're going to get in touch for non-talky things (like, possibly, TF2, other steam games, or adventures).

Discussion article for the meetup : Austin, TX
Discussion: Yudkowsky's actual accomplishments besides divulgation
by Raw_Power — 2011-06-25T23:02:11.643Z

Basically this: "Eliezer Yudkowsky writes and pretends he's an AI researcher but probably hasn't written so much as an Eliza bot."

While the Eliezer S. Yudkowsky site has lots of divulgation articles and his work on rationality is of indisputable value, I find myself at a loss when I want to respond to this. Which frustrates me very much.

So, to avoid this sort of situation in the future, I have to ask: What did the man, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky, actually accomplish in his own field?

Please don't downvote the hell out of me, I'm just trying to create a future reference for this sort of annoyance.
Help me fix a cognitive bug
by jsteinhardt — 2011-06-25T22:22:31.484Z

I have this cognitive bug, and the best way to describe it is that I am bad at macro (for anyone who plays StarCraft). Basically, whenever the optimal strategy is to do a lot of one thing, or to create a base of production, I fail to notice. (To demonstrate how bad this is, I at one point participated in a stock-market simulation and bought one of a bunch of different stocks...using up less than 5% of my total capital.)

So my question to you guys is, any ideas on how I can fix this? What habits can I drill into myself to get better at macro-ing?
The Ideological Turing Test
by Paul Crowley — 2011-06-25T22:17:25.746Z

Bryan Caplan:

Mill states it well: "He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that." If someone can correctly explain a position but continue to disagree with it, that position is less likely to be correct. And if ability to correctly explain a position leads almost automatically to agreement with it, that position is more likely to be correct.

[...] Put me and five random liberal social science Ph.D.s in a chat room. Let liberal readers ask questions for an hour, then vote on who isn't really a liberal. Then put Krugman and five random libertarian social science Ph.D.s in a chat room. Let libertarian readers ask questions for an hour, then vote on who isn't really a libertarian. Simple as that.

My challenge: Nail down the logistics, and I'll happily bet money that I fool more voters than Krugman.

Leah at Unequally Yoked:

Just like Caplan, I'd like to put my money where my mouth is and play in an ideological Turing Test against a Christian blogger.

UPDATE: Two Christians have contacted me to tell me they're interested. Please suggest format ideas for us to talk over and let me know if you'd like to join in!

update to clarify: When the panel is made up of mostly genuine Blues and one or a few Greens pretending to be Blue, then the judges are all Blue.
Meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup
by EvelynM — 2011-06-25T21:53:45.463Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup

WHEN:
29 June 2011 07:00:00PM (-0600)

WHERE:
144 North College Avenue Fort Collins, CO 80524

Chat about The Sequences, HPMoR and other topics of interest to rationalists.

Discussion article for the meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup
What LW/Sequences ideas to cover in next Rationality Matters comic?
by DataPacRat — 2011-06-25T21:02:01.247Z

I'm becoming more committed to producing a third Rationality Matters comic, and to make it the best as I can at what I want it to do: to persuade furries and libertarians to adopt LessWrong/Sequences ideas and become more rational.

I'm trying to use the idea from HP:MoR's chapter 25 about how to go about doing that... and, as part of that, I'm trying to figure out which particular LessWrong ideas to promote - things that are more specific than rah-rahing rationality as 'how to win'. Page-space is limited, and I doubt I'll make a fourth "Rationality Matters" in the same format, so... which LessWrong thoughts would you most like to see mentioned? Which ones do you feel are most valuable, or important, or at the very least are easy to compress into a comprehensible soundbite?
Are Many Worlds and the Multiverse the Same Idea [LINK]
by Swimmy — 2011-06-25T16:17:14.051Z

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/05/26/are-many-worlds-and-the-multiverse-the-same-idea/

I am woefully unable to judge the quality of this claim, but if true, it seems that many "fine-tuning" questions would be officially answered. It also seems elegant to me, but I admit I don't understand in the least bit the discussion of black hole complementarity.

Discussion? Help?
Entangled with Reality: The Probabilistic Inferential Learning Model (Link)
by XiXiDu — 2011-06-25T13:27:29.849Z

If you flip a light switch and nothing happens, there are a couple of possible explanations. One is that something has gone wrong in the external world — maybe the bulb has burned out. Alternatively, you may have made a mistake, perhaps flipping the wrong switch.

Infants can integrate prior knowledge with statistical data to make these distinctions at a very young age [...] 16-month-old infants can, based on very little information, make accurate judgments of whether a failed action is due their own mistake or to circumstances beyond their control.

[...] very young infants can quickly learn basic principles about how the world works, then use those rules to interpret the statistical evidence they see. [...] “They can use very, very sparse evidence because they have these rich prior beliefs and they can use that to make quite sophisticated, quite accurate inferences about the world.”

In one condition, babies saw a toy that played music when one experimenter pushed a button on the toy but failed when a second experimenter tried, suggesting that the failure was due to the agent. In another condition, the button sometimes activated the toy and sometimes failed for each of the two experimenters, suggesting that something was wrong with the toy.

[...]

Depending on the circumstances of the experiment, the babies did respond differently, indicating that they were able to weigh evidence for each explanation and react accordingly. Infants who saw evidence suggesting the agent had failed tried to hand the toy to their parents for help, suggesting the babies assumed the failure was their own fault. Conversely, babies who saw evidence suggesting that the toy was broken were more likely to reach for a new toy (a red one that was always within reach).

[...] 16-month-olds could use very limited evidence (the distribution of outcomes across the experimenters’ actions) to infer the source of failure and decide whether to ask for help or seek another toy. That finding lends strong support to the probabilistic inferential learning model.

“What the finding here seems to be is kids are smart, but the way in which they’re smart is really tracking statistics. They’re really good learners,” she says.

Link: web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/assigning-fault-0624.html

PDF: web.mit.edu/~hyora/www/Hyo/Research_files/Gw...
Music: The 21st Century Monads
by XiXiDu — 2011-06-25T10:38:14.023Z

The 21st Century Monads are an international musical collaboration whose songs address fundamental issues in philosophy, including specialized topics in contemporary analytic philosophy and the history of philosophy. The musical genres range from dance to folk. The songs are unique, original songs, not cheesy parodies.

Link: people.umass.edu/phil511/monads/

Via: m-phi.blogspot.com/2011/06/song-of-love-and-logic.html

It's all completely free. Here are some of the titles:

“We Can’t Stop Doing Metaphysics” MP3

“Your Body Is You” MP3

“Utilitarian Girlfriend” MP3

“My Paper Was Rejected Again” MP3

"In the land of P and not-P
You’d both be and not be mine" MP3
Leslie Valiant discusses the the "probably approximately correct," or PAC, model of machine learning.
by InquilineKea — 2011-06-25T10:27:18.053Z

http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2011/6/108655-qa-a-lifelong-learner/fulltext

Wow, this is quite interesting. What are your thoughts?

You made a number of important contributions to parallel computing in the 1980s. Can you tell me about your more recent work in that arena?

The root problem with parallel machines has not been that any one is inherently bad, but more that it is difficult to make sense of them as a totality. The most striking fact about sequential machines is that they are all the same—they emulate the von Neumann abstraction. This sameness has been vital to the growth of computing since it has enabled us to write portable software for this abstraction and make machines to emulate it. Thus the von Neumann model has served as the vital "bridging model" between the software and hardware.

I have been long interested in the question of whether a similarly effective bridging model exists for parallel machines and what that might be. Parallelism has now arrived with multiple cores in our laptops. My view is that the irresistible driving forces that have brought this about have been the imperatives of physics. It follows, I think, that we have to look to the driving physical limitations to see what is most fundamental about parallel computing. Computation, communication, synchronization, and memory all need various resources, which in turn are limited by the physical arrangements of the devices. The sought-after bridging model has to account for these costs. We have been spoiled over the last 60-odd years by having an abstraction as simple as the von Neumann model suffice. Life will become a little more complicated now. The absence of an accepted bridging model is evident even at the theoretical level of algorithms.

My most recent work addresses these issues via a particular proposed bridging model, called the Multi-BSP, which tries to capture the physical limitations of machines as simply as possible. It uses barrier synchronization in a hierarchical manner and idealizes a machine as a set of numerical parameters that specify a point in the space of possible machines. Mention of the many architectural details of current machines that are not inevitably suggested by physics is deliberately omitted.

Let's talk about your most recent work in computational neuroscience. Can you explain the "neuroidal model" you developed in your book Circuits of the

...
Meetup : Bangalore Meetup 
by subod_83 — 2011-06-25T05:46:01.210Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Bangalore Meetup

WHEN:
26 June 2011 04:00:00PM (+0530)

WHERE:
Barton Centre, Mg Road, Bangalore Karnataka Bengaluru India

Less Wrong Bangalore meetup, the turnout for the last meetup was good. Any new members please join the facebook group 'Less Wrong Bangalore'.

Discussion article for the meetup : Bangalore Meetup
[SEQ RERUN] Bayesian Judo
by Tyrrell_McAllister — 2011-06-25T05:09:29.811Z

Today's post, Bayesian Judo, was originally published on 31 July 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

You can have some fun with people whose anticipations get out of sync with what they believe they believe. This post recounts a conversation in which a theist had to backpedal when he realized that, by drawing an empirical inference from his religion, he had opened up his religion to empirical disproof.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, in which we're 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 Belief in Belief, 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.