trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
TPP is about as good as it is supposed to be
by Zvi — 2015-05-19T15:00:15.000Z

Tyler Cohen stakes out quite a sensible position on whether or not we should approve the trade deal called TPP:

What would convince me to oppose TPP if is somebody did a study showing the following: when you use a better trade model, use better data, and/or add in the neglected costs of TPP (which are real), those gains go away and indeed become negative.

Then I would change my mind, or at least weigh those economic costs against possibly favorable geopolitical benefits from the deal.

What does not convince me is when people simply list various costs and outrages associated with TPP.

This is the full utilitarian, rationalist-style, ‘Shut up and multiply’ response to the question. This is a strong argument. The deal has already been negotiated, so insisting on modifications at this point is akin to turning down the deal; it is a de facto yes or no offer. The geopolitical benefits are clearly net positive to the United States, and all the economic forecasts are large and positive because free trade is somewhere between compound interest and sliced bread on the awesomeness index. The arguments against the deal that I have seen all take the form of pointing out something in the deal that may be less than awesome, but nothing that can compete with an estimated trillion dollars of economic surplus, so what is the problem?

In some cases, not being able to follow the basic case was exactly the problem. Many of the opponents of the deal are indeed suffering from simple ignorance or simple scope insensitivity. Either they do not realize that trade is the reason we have nice things, and need to understand that before participating in any conversations surrounding trade agreements, or they do not understand that this bigger consideration is so massively big that it makes everything else involved (except possibly the geopolitical impact of the deal, which is a direct consequence of trade being that awesome) seem like chump change. Hopefully some of those people will read Tyler’s piece, realize they are being foolish, and change their minds.

The trickier problem is decision theory and game theory. Fast track authority for a trade deal has a lot in common with the dictator game.

The basic dictator game is that there is a delicious pie, which the dictator then divides into two pieces. He then proposes to give some of the pie to himself and the rest to the other player. The other...
Agents that can predict their Newcomb predictor
by orthonormal — 2015-05-19T10:17:08.000Z

There's a certain type of problem where it appears that having more computing power hurts you. That problem is the "agent simulates predictor" Newcomb's Dilemma.

As Gary Drescher put it:

There's a version of Newcomb's Problem that poses the same sort of challenge to UDT that comes up in some multi-agent/game-theoretic scenarios.

Suppose:

The predictor does not run a detailed simulation of the agent, but relies instead on a high-level understanding of the agent's decision theory and computational power.

The agent runs UDT, and has the ability to fully simulate the predictor.

Since the agent can deduce (by low-level simulation) what the predictor will do, the agent does not regard the prediction outcome as contingent on the agent's computation. Instead, either predict-onebox or predict-twobox has a probability of 1 (since one or the other of those is deducible), and a probability of 1 remains the same regardless of what we condition on. The agent will then calculate greater utility for two-boxing than for one-boxing.

Meanwhile, the predictor, knowing that the the agent runs UDT and will fully simulate the predictor, can reason as in the preceding paragraph, and thus deduce that the agent will two-box. So the large box is left empty and the agent two-boxes (and the agent's detailed simulation of the predictor correctly shows the predictor correctly predicting two-boxing).

The agent would be better off, though, running a different decision theory that does not two-box here, and that the predictor can deduce does not two-box.

EDITED 5/19/15: There's a formal model of this due to Vladimir Slepnev where the agent and the predictor both have different types of predictive powers, such that in some sense they each know how the other will act in this universe. We'll write this out along with another case where things work out properly.

(One algorithm has more computing power, but the other has stronger axioms: in particular, strong enough to prove that the other formal system is sound, as ZFC proves that PA is sound.)

In one of the following cases, proof-based UDT one-boxes for correct reasons; in the other case, it two-boxes analogously to the reasoning above.

In both cases, we'll use the following lemma:

Lemma: Let A() be an algorithm that returns either 1 or 2, such that ZFC has a proof of length ≈log(N) of "A() returns in ≤N steps". Then ZFC has a proof

...
The Best Popular Books on Every Subject
by iarwain1 — 2015-05-19T01:02:00.590Z

I enjoy reading popular-level books on a wide variety of subjects, and I love getting new book recommendations. In the spirit of lukeprog's The Best Textbooks on Every Subject, can we put together a list of the best popular books on every subject?

Here's what I mean by popular-level books:

Written very well and clearly, preferably even entertaining.

Does not require the reader to write anything (e.g., practice problems) or do anything beyond just reading and thinking, except perhaps on very rare occasions.

Cannot be "heavy" reading that requires the reader to proceed slowly and carefully and/or do lots of heavy thinking.

Can be understood by anyone with a decent high school education (not including calculus). However, sometimes this requirement can be circumvented, if the following additional criteria are met:

There must be other books on this list that cover all the prerequisite information.

When you suggest the book, list any prerequisites.

There shouldn't be more than 2 or 3 prerequisites.

Textbooks are actually ok, as long as they meet all the above criteria.

I'm going to start off by also requiring the following, as per lukeprog. But if people prefer I might relax these:

Post the title of your favorite book on a given subject.

You must have read at least two other books on that same subject.

You must briefly name the other books you've read on the subject and explain why you think your chosen book is superior to them.

ETA: If you really liked a book but didn't read alternatives, an easy way to fulfill these extra requirements is to look at reviews at Amazon, Goodreads, or similar. Usually you can find reviews that compare the book to one or more alternatives.

Finally, the purpose of this list is to try to be as comprehensive as possible. Copying books that have already been recommended on other lists is therefore to be encouraged, even if you yourself haven't read those books.

ETA 2: It seems everybody has their own ideas about what should be the criteria for this list. So how about everybody just add in books using whatever criteria they would prefer for a list of "The Best Popular Books on Every Subject".
We Should Introduce Ourselves Differently
by NancyLebovitz — 2015-05-18T20:48:25.596Z

I told an intelligent, well-educated friend about Less Wrong, so she googled, and got "Less Wrong is an online community for people who want to apply the discovery of biases like the conjunction fallacy, the affect heuristic, and scope insensitivity in order to fix their own thinking." and gave up immediately because she'd never heard of the biases.

While hers might not be the best possible attitude, I can't see that we win anything by driving people away with obscure language.
Possible improved introduction: "Less Wrong is a community for people who would like to think more clearly in order to improve their own and other people's lives, and to make major disasters less likely."
Mistakes I’ve made part 3: Poor sacrificial accounting
by KatjaGrace — 2015-05-18T19:33:42.000Z

There was a time when I routinely refused car travel, in favor of my more sustainable bicycle. Not always, but I had a high bar—if it was bucketing down with rain and I had no plastic pants, this was not sufficient excuse for instance. I would sometimes decline a ride even when others were purportedly driving somewhere anyway, to avoid encouraging them to be ‘driving anyway’ more often. I did enjoy cycling, on a good day, but many days weren’t good. People at school laughed at me on my bike, so sometimes I walked instead because I couldn’t stand them looking at me. Refusing cars was often a sacrifice.

My concern was the climate. My basic model of ‘sustainability’ was this: humanity has a bunch of resources, and when they run out we all die. If we use them slow enough, they can mostly last forever, but if we use them faster, we will die soon. Much like a bank account that earns lots of interest, or can be spent down in an afternoon. Space in the atmosphere for greenhouse gasses was a key resource. Driving was known to be unsustainable: it added carbon dioxide to the atmosphere faster than could be supported. This model has a few problems I think, but it is debatable, and this blog post is not about them. So lets suppose for now that I was right, and every car trip took humanity a notch closer to annihilation.

Given that driving was unsustainable, I wanted people to stop driving, so we wouldn’t all die. Naturally, it followed that I should not drive (I thought). If the cost of a billion people driving was too great for the benefits of a billion people driving, then the cost of one of those people driving was probably too great for the benefit of that person driving. Furthermore, I seemed a particularly easy person to convince, from my perspective. Furthermore, the benefit of me getting to school sooner and with dry pants was obviously unimaginably minuscule compared to any decrement in humanity’s ability to survive in the long term.

This is all very wrong. Why? Let’s say cycling cost me ten minutes per day (it took more like half an hour per day, but driving also takes time, and cycling had some benefits, such as exercise). If I had spent this 5h per month on writing about the problem, I think I could have convinced more than one person ever to habitually ride a bike. If I had just earned money and given it to an organization specializing in this, they prob...
The ganch gamble
by  — 2015-05-18T18:43:36.369Z

[Translated from Yu. V. Pukhnatchov, Yu. P. Popov. *Mathematics without formulae*. - Moscow. - 'Stoletie'. - 1995. - pp. 404-405. All mistakes are my own.]

The East is famous for her legends... They say that once upon a time, in a certain town, there lived two well-known carvers of ganch (alabaster that hasn't quite set yet.) And their mastery was so great, and their ornaments were so delightful, that the people simply could not decide, which one is more skillful.

And so a contest was devised. A room of a house just built, which was to be decorated with carvings, was partitioned into two halves by a [nontransparent] curtain. The masters went in, each into his own place, and set to work.

And when they finished and the curtain was removed, the spectators' awe knew no bounds...

... for the ornaments in both halves were identical, up to the smallest cartouche!

Only when the people looked closely at their work, they saw that one master did his part conscientiously, and the other decided to apply his wit, and polished the walls into mirrors, so that they reflected the embellishments on the other walls.

The legend says that the victory was given to the second one. And we, as mathematicians, would without doubt join this decision. For having turned the walls into mirrors, he exhibited not only mastery (of which everybody already knew), but also a deep understanding of the very nature of ornament, which lies exactly in the repetitiveness of the elements. […]

So! The first one cooperated, the second one defected:) and if both defected or both cooperated, the room would be worse off, though at least in the last case the carvers would still be judged for their skill... No associations, anyone?:))
Strategies and tools for getting through a break up
by lululu — 2015-05-18T18:01:45.047Z

Background:

I was very recently (3 weeks now) in a relationship that lasted for 5.5 years. My partner had been fantastic through all those years and we were suffering no conflict, no fights, no strain or tension. My partner also was prone to depression, and is/was going through an episode of depression. I am usually a major source of support at these times. Six months ago we opened our relationship. I wasn't dating anyone (mostly due to busy-ness), and my partner was, though not seriously. I felt him pulling away somewhat, which I (correctly) attributed mostly to depression and which nonetheless caused me some occasional moments of jealousy. But I was overall extremely happy with this relationship, very committed, and still very much in love as well. It was quite a surprise when my partner broke up with me one Wednesday evening.

After we had a good cry together, the next morning I woke up and immediately started researching what the literature said about breaking up. My goals were threefold:

Stop feeling so sad in the immediate moment

"Get over" my partner

Internalize any gains I had made over the course of our relationship or any lessons I had learned from the break up

I made most of my gains in the first few days, by day 3 I was 50% over it. Two weeks later I was 90% over the relationship, with a few hold-over habits and tendencies (like feeling responsible for improving his emotional state) which are currently too strong but which will serve me well in our continuing friendship. My ex, on the other hand (no doubt partially due to the depression) is fine most of the time but unpredictably becomes extremely sad for hours on end. Originally this was guilt at having hurt me but now it is mostly nostalgia+isolation based. I hope to continue being close friends and I've been doing my best to support him emotionally, at the distance of a friend. Below are the states of mind and strategies that allowed me to get over it more quickly and with good personal growth.

Note: mileage may vary. I have low neuroticism and a slightly higher than average base level of happiness. You might not get over the relationship in 2 weeks, but your getting-over-it will certainly be sped up from their default speed.

Strategies (in order of importance)

1. Decide you don't want to get back in the relationship. Decide that it is over and given the oppo...
Open Thread, May 18 - May 24, 2015
by Gondolinian — 2015-05-18T00:01:52.881Z

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.
Meetup : Canberra: Deep Learning
by DanielFilan — 2015-05-17T21:34:09.597Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Canberra: Deep Learning

WHEN:
22 May 2015 06:00:00PM (+1000)

WHERE:
108 North Road, Acton, ACT

Deep learning has been making waves: many domains of machine learning have their best results from deep learning approaches. The cynical view is that deep learning is just a new term for neural networks, and the truth is probably somewhere in between, deep learning makes use of new tricks, better hardware and more data to better train neural networks. What is certain is that neural networks have made a comeback. During the talk, I [Mayank Daswani] hope to make you aware of some basic deep learning techniques, and then show you some very cool applications. My knowledge comes primarily from the course on deep learning taught at Stanford this semester (CS224d) that I'm following along (videos, notes, assignments available online). I highly recommend checking it out.

As always, vegan snacks are provided.

General meetup info:

If you use Facebook, please join our group.

Structured meetups are (usually) held on the second Saturday and fourth Friday of each month from 6 pm until late in the CSIT building, room N101.

Discussion article for the meetup : Canberra: Deep Learning
The Twelve Virtues of Rationality
by Zvi — 2015-05-17T17:47:54.000Z

Yesterday, Raymond Arnold sent out an email announcing that those at Highgarden had come up with a really cool art project and invited everyone to come down and participate. The idea was to paint panels depicting the Twelve Virtues of Rationality, to put on the upper panels of the wall in the living room area, and they had headed off to buy paint. This did in fact sound like quite the cool art project and a chance to influence what would be on the walls for potentially quite a while, so Laura, Alexander and I got our things together and headed down to check it out. While we were sad that one of those who came up with the idea had left, things otherwise went pretty great, complete with fresh baked goods.

Brainstorming for the panels offered a few obvious good ideas, some of which were even practical for people at our skill level to paint. Mostly, you had your classics. One does not want to take things too far and end up with virtual clip art, but books scattered all around is hard to beat for scholarship, people arguing is hard to beat for argument, and things like telescopes and microscopes are hard to beat for Great Visual Moments in Empiricism, as much as I was hoping for the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Others were more difficult to get a handle on.

I had an instinct that we should take the sword metaphor and have them running through the panels as a linking motif, and it sounded really cool, but on reflection we all agreed that was both more martial than we would like and an awkward fit in too many places.

By our skill level, of course, I mean Raymond and Grace’s skill levels. I haven’t painted since grade school, and from my brief experiment attempting to do so, my skills are at about the level where I last left them. Those with higher skill tried to explain that paint does not work the way I instinctively think about art working, and suggested started with a rich colorful background. It is quite likely I should have heeded this advice, but I felt like the chance of me creating something viable was pretty low anyway so I would experiment with smaller things, avoid wasting massive amounts of time and paint, and if I got somewhere then hey, maybe I would start over with a real background. The old instinct of one mustn’t waste things is almost always wrong for inexpensive values of things, given the value of time and life being short, but it was drilled into me pre...
You don't get to know what you're fighting for
by So8res — 2015-05-17T03:00:00.000Z
Link: https://mindingourway.com/you-dont-get-t/

A number of my recent posts may have given you the impression that I know exactly what I'm fighting for. If someone were to ask you, "hey, what's that Nate guy trying so hard to do," you might answer something like "increase the chance of human survival," or "put an end to unwanted death" or "reduce suffering" or something.

This isn't the case. I mean, I am doing those things, but those are all negative motivations: I am against Alzheimer's, I am against human extinction, but what am I for?

The truth is, I don't quite know. I'm for something, that's for damn sure, and I have lots of feelings about the things that I'm fighting for, but I find them rather hard to express.

And in fact, I highly doubt that anyone knows quite what they're fighting towards — though it seems that many people think they do, and that is in part why I'm writing this post.

When I wrote on rationality, one commenter replied:

I would just note upfront that

> Reasoning well has little to do with what you're reasoning towards.

and

> Rationality of this kind is not about changing where you're going, it's about changing how far you can go.

are white lies, as you well know. It's not unusual in the process of reasoning of how to best achieve your goal to find that the goal itself shifts or evaporates.

"How to best serve God" may result in deconversion.

"How to make my relationship with partner a happy one" may result in discovering that they are a narcissistic little shit I should run away from. Or that both of us should find other partners.

"How to help my neighborhood out of poverty" might become "How to make the most money" in order to donate as much as possible.

This is a fine point. Humans are well-known for their ability to start out pursuing one goal, only to find that goal shift drastically beneath them as their knowledge of the world increases. In fact, this is a major plot point in many stories (such as, say, The Foundation Trilogy, The Dresden Files, and The Neverending Story). The goal you think you're pursuing may well not survive a close examination.

I claim this is true even if you think your goals are simple, objective, obvious, high-minded, or sophisticated. Just as the theist setting out to do the most good might deconvert after deciding that they would still want humanity to flourish even without a divine mandate, so may the utilitarian setting out to do the most good discover that ...
Meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Group debugging
by rocurley — 2015-05-16T06:09:53.423Z

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Group debugging

WHEN:
17 May 2015 06:15:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
1061 Market St #4, San Francisco, CA 94103

We'll be meeting to try and solve each others problems!
As usual, call 301-458-0764 to be let in.

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Group debugging
Meetup : Sydney Meetup - September
by taryneast — 2015-05-16T00:17:51.691Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Meetup - September

WHEN:
23 September 2015 06:30:00PM (+1000)

WHERE:
565 George Street, Sydney, Australia 2000

Regular location - City of Sydney RSL The restaurant on Level 2

Regular time (starting about 6:30)

Come for general socialising and interesting discussions with like-minded people, or join the discussion on what you'd like from the Less-Wrong Sydney community.

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Meetup - September
Meetup : Sydney Meetup - August
by taryneast — 2015-05-16T00:16:39.442Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Meetup - August

WHEN:
26 August 2015 06:30:00PM (+1000)

WHERE:
565 George Street, Sydney, Australia 2000

Regular location - City of Sydney RSL The restaurant on Level 2

Regular time (starting about 6:30)

Come for general socialising and interesting discussions with like-minded people, or join the discussion on what you'd like from the Less-Wrong Sydney community.

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Meetup - August
Meetup : Sydney Meetup - July
by taryneast — 2015-05-16T00:15:40.684Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Meetup - July

WHEN:
22 July 2015 06:30:00PM (+1000)

WHERE:
565 George Street, Sydney, Australia 2000

Regular location - City of Sydney RSL
The restaurant on Level 2

Regular time (starting about 6:30)

Come for general socialising and interesting discussions with like-minded people, or join the discussion on what you'd like from the Less-Wrong Sydney community.

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Meetup - July
Meetup : Sydney Meetup - June
by taryneast — 2015-05-16T00:14:21.222Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Meetup - June

WHEN:
24 June 2015 06:30:00PM (+1000)

WHERE:
565 George Street, Sydney, Australia 2000

Regular location - City of Sydney RSL
The restaurant on Level 2

Regular time (starting about 6:30)

Come for general socialising and interesting discussions with like-minded people, or join the discussion on what you'd like from the Less-Wrong Sydney community.

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Meetup - June