trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Expertise and advice
by John_Maxwell — 2012-05-27T01:49:25.444Z

In his essay "How The Type Of Advice Someone Can Give Can Change Over Time", the author of SucceedSocially.com writes:

...as someone starts to become proficient in a field, they can start to take all the basic little steps for granted. With time they may even start to forget what it was like to be a beginner, or lose touch with how it felt to not have certain abilities. I've noticed this happening myself.

...

Once someone internalizes the basics and moves into more advanced levels of skill, I've noticed they can want to focus on the bigger picture. They'll want to figure out a handful of profound, succinct principles that tie all the advice about a field together.

...

I think beginners often need that drilled down, specific information though. Sometimes they need to learn some tactics as well before talk of larger strategies can really sink in. I also think if an advice giver gets too broad and abstract, his ideas can become vague to the point of being unhelpful.

If you're trying to learn something, it's natural to try to find the best people in the field to learn from. And if you're thinking of sharing your thoughts on something, it's natural to think twice unless you have a proven track record of accomplishments in that area.

A better model of advice dissemination might focus on the derivative of a person's abilities. For example, if you're an amateur at something and you stumble on something that really seems to help, write it up even if you haven't reached the peak of expertise yet. And if you're looking for advice, don't be afraid to read writing by other amateurs--they are the ones who are at your stage and trying to improve themselves.

Of course, experts who do a lot of hands-on work helping amateurs are probably the best.
2 Anthropic Questions
by abramdemski — 2012-05-26T22:51:53.783Z

I have just finished reading the section on anthropic bias in Nassim Taleb's book, The Black Swan. In general, the book is interesting to compare to the sort of things I read on Less Wrong; its message is largely very similar, except less Bayesian (and therefore less formal-- at times slightly anti-formal, arguing against misleading math).

Two points concerning anthropic weirdness.

First:

If we win the lottery, should we really conclude that we live in a holodeck (or some such)? From real-life anthropic weirdness:

Pity those poor folk who actually win the lottery! If the hypothesis "this world is a holodeck" is normatively assigned a calibrated confidence well above 10-8, the lottery winner now has incommunicable good reason to believe they are in a holodeck. (I.e. to believe that the universe is such that most conscious observers observe ridiculously improbable positive events.)

It seems to me that the right way of approaching the question is: before buying the lottery ticket, what belief-forming strategy would we prefer ourselves to have? (Ignore the issue of why we buy the ticket, of course.) Or, slightly different: what advice would you give to other people (for example, if you're writing a book on rationality that might be widely read)?

"Common sense" says that it would be quite silly to start believing some strange theory, just because I win the lottery. However, Bayes says that if we assign greater than 10-8 prior probability to "strange" explanations of getting a winning lottery ticket, then we should prefer them. In fact, we may want to buy a lottery ticket to test those theories! (This would be a very sensible test, which would strongly tend to give the right result.)

However, as a society, we would not want lottery-winners to go crazy. Therefore, we would not want to give the advice "if you win, you should massively update your probabilities".

(This is similar to the idea that we might be persuaded to defect in Prisoner's Dilemma if we are maximizing our personal utility, but if we are giving advice about rationality to other people, we should advise them that cooperating is the optimal strategy. In a somewhat unjustified leap, I suppose we should take the advice we would give to others in such matters. But I suppose that position is already widely accepted here.)

On the other hand, if we were in a position to ...
Posts I'd Like To Write (Includes Poll)
by orthonormal — 2012-05-26T21:25:31.019Z

Summary: There are a bunch of posts I want to write; I'd like your help prioritizing them, and if you feel like writing one of them, that would be awesome too!

I haven't been writing up as many of my ideas for Less Wrong as I'd like; I have excuses, but so does everyone. So I'm listing out my backlog, both for my own motivation and for feedback/help. At the end, there's a link to a poll on which ones you'd like to see. Comments would also be helpful, and if you're interested in writing up one of the ideas from the third section yourself, say so!

(The idea was inspired by lukeprog's request for post-writing help, and I think someone else did this a while ago as well.)

Posts I'm Going To Write (Barring Disaster)

These are posts that I currently have unfinished drafts of.

Decision Theories: A Semi-Formal Analysis, Part IV and Part V: Part IV concerns bargaining problems and introduces the tactic of playing chicken with the inference process; Part V discusses the benefits of UDT and perhaps wraps up the sequence. Part IV has been delayed by more than a month, partly by real life, and partly because bargaining problems are really difficult and the approach I was trying turned out not to work. I believe I have a fix now, but that's no guarantee; if it turns out to be flawed, then Part IV will mainly consist of "bargaining problems are hard, you guys".

Posts I Really Want To Write

These are posts that I feel I've already put substantial original work into, but I haven't written a draft. If anyone else wants to write on the topic, I'd welcome that, but I'd probably still write up my views on it later (unless the other post covers all the bases that I'd wanted to discuss, most of which aren't obvious from the capsule descriptions below).

An Error Theory of Qualia: My sequence last summer didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped, but I still think it's the right approach to a physically reductionist account of qualia (and that mere bullet-biting isn't going to suffice), so I'd like to try again and see if I can find ways to simplify and test my theory. (In essence, I'm proposing that what we experience as qualia are something akin to error messages, caused when we try and consciously introspect on something that introspection can't usefully break down. It's rather like the modern understanding of déjà vu.)

Weak Solutions in Metaethics: I've been mulling over a ce...
A novel approach to axiomatic decision theory
by lukeprog — 2012-05-26T21:18:30.111Z

In the standard approach to axiomatic Bayesian decision theory, an agent (a decision maker) doesn't prefer Act #1 to Act #2 because the expected utility of Act #1 exceeds that of Act #2. Instead, the agent states its preferences over a set of risky acts, and if these stated preferences are consistent with a certain set of axioms (e.g. the VNM axioms, or the Savage axioms), it can be proven that the agent's decisions can be described as if the agent were assigning probabilities and utilities to outcomes and then maximizing expected utility. (Let's call this the ex post approach.)

Peterson (2004) introduces a different approach, which he calls the ex ante approach. In many ways, this approach is more intuitive. The agent assigns probabilities and utilities directly to outcomes (not acts), and these assignments are used to generate preferences over acts. Using this approach, Peterson claims to have shown that the principle of expected utility maximization can be derived from just four axioms.

As Peterson (2009:75,77) explains:

The aim of the axiomatization [in the ex ante approach] is to show that the utility of an act equals the expected utility of its outcomes.

...The axioms... entail that the utility of an act equals the expected utility of its outcomes. Or, put in slightly different words, the act that has the highest utility (is most attractive) will also have the highest expected utility, and vice versa. This appears to be a strong reason for letting the expected utility principle guide one's choices in decision under risk.

Jensen (2012:428) calls the ex ante approach "controversial," but I can't find any actual published rebuttals to Peterson (2004), so maybe Jensen just means that Peterson's result is "new and not yet percolated to the broad community."

Peterson (2008) explores the ex ante approach in more detail, under the unfortunate title of "non-Bayesian decision theory." (No, Peterson doesn't reject Bayesianism.) Cozic (2011) is a review of Peterson (2008) that may offer the quickest entry point into the subject of ex ante axiomatic decision theory.

Peterson (2009:210) illustrates the controversy nicely:

...even if [this] discussion may appear a bit theoretical... the controversy over [ex post and ex ante approaches] is likely to have important practical implications. For example,

...
Meetup : Dallas/Fort Worth Metro Area Meetup, 5/27
by jumandtonic — 2012-05-26T17:45:53.901Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Dallas/Fort Worth Metro Area Meetup, 5/27

WHEN:
27 May 2012 01:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
America's Best Coffee, Arlington

Folks, the weekly meeting for the DFW LessWrong group is still on for the Sunday on Memorial Day Weekend (5/27).

Same time, same place as usual. America's Best Coffee in Arlington from 1 to 3 PM. Last week, we competed for real estate with a religious meetup group; I'd say avoid religious topics to avoid confrontation, if possible. We want to be good stewards of this coffee shop so we get invited back.

Come on by if you are free and in the area. Also, have a great Memorial Day Weekend.

Discussion article for the meetup : Dallas/Fort Worth Metro Area Meetup, 5/27
Meetup : Third Buenos Aires Meetup: 2 June 2012 4:00PM
by Pablo — 2012-05-26T07:47:09.998Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Third Buenos Aires Meetup: 2 June 2012 4:00PM

WHEN:
02 June 2012 04:00:00PM (-0300)

WHERE:
Florida 1, Ciudad de Buenos Aires

This will be our third Buenos Aires LessWrong meetup. Our previous meetup was a success; see here for details. If you read and like this blog and live in BA or just happen to be visiting the city, do join us. It will be a great opportunity to meet like-minded folks in the area. We will meet at the Starbucks Coffee in Florida and Rivadavia, and will be sitting upstairs; a copy of Greg Egan's Diaspora will be displayed at our table.

Discussion article for the meetup : Third Buenos Aires Meetup: 2 June 2012 4:00PM
[SEQ RERUN] Timeless Identity
by MinibearRex — 2012-05-26T05:43:45.960Z

Today's post, Timeless Identity was originally published on 03 June 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

How can you be the same person tomorrow as today, in the river that never flows, when not a drop of water is shared between one time and another? Having used physics to completely trash all naive theories of identity, we reassemble a conception of persons and experiences from what is left. With a surprising practical application...

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 Principles of Disagreement, 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.
Share Your Checklists!
by lukeprog — 2012-05-26T04:12:03.811Z

Checklists are powerful, and I don't use them enough. You probably don't, either.

Below are some of my own checklists. Please share your own!

I don't know how to do X.

Check eHow, Google.

Skim-read the For Dummies book on the subject.

Check my social network for somebody who knows how to do X, ask the expert how to do X.

I don't understand X.

Check Wikipedia, BetterExplained, WiseGeek.

Read the relevant chapter(s) in a recent textbook, or find a recent review article. (See here.)

Check my social network for someone who understands X, ask for a tutorial. Offer to buy them coffee or lunch if necessary.

I feel mentally exhausted but can't afford to sleep right now.

Take a shower.

Watch 10 minutes of wimp.com, cats on YouTube, IGN video reviews, or movie trailers.

Go for a walk and listen to awesome music on high-quality headphones.

I don't want to get out of bed, but I should.

Imagine how good a hot shower will feel, then try again to get out of bed.

Set my phone alarm to go off in 5 minutes, then slide it across the floor to the other side of the room.

I'm procrastinating on task X.

Give the task to someone else. (Usually, this isn't possible, because I've always delegated away as much as possible.)

Think about which part of the procrastination equation is likely causing me the most trouble, and use one of the techniques aimed at tackling that specific problem that has worked best for me in the past.

Procrastinate on task X by doing a different task that is slightly less urgent/important but still productive. (See structured procrastination.)

I'm about to send an email / post a comment of some significance.

Is there criticism in the email or comment? Use the sandwich technique.

Emulate my reader(s) and predict what reaction they will have. If it's not the reaction I am aiming for with this communication, restructure the communication.

(I don't do these ones nearly enough! D'oh!)

I feel sad about not doing a better job at X.

Figure out something I can do better with regard to X, simulate in my head the steps required to execute that improvement, and if feasible then execute the improvement.

Think about all the things I'm doing pretty well despite running on fucked-up ape-brain software and hardware.

I'm about to make a decision of some significance.

Check consequentialism.

Check VoI. Can I improve my decision by purchasing some pie

...
What is the best programming language?
by lsparrish — 2012-05-26T00:58:05.309Z

Learning to program in a given language requires a non-trivial amount of time. This seems to be agreed upon as a good use of LessWrongers' time.

Each language may be more useful than others for particular purposes. However, like e.g. the choice of donation to a particular charity, we shouldn't expect the trade-offs of focusing on one versus another not to exist.

Suppose I know nothing about programming... And I want to make a choice about what language to pick up beyond merely what sounds cool at the time. In short I would want to spend my five minutes on the problem before jumping to a solution.

As an example of the dilemma, if I spend my time learning Scheme or Lisp, I will gain a particular kind of skill. It won't be a very directly marketable one, but it could (in theory) make me a better programmer. "Code as lists" is a powerful perspective -- and Eric S. Raymond recommends learning Lisp for this reason.

Forth (or any similar concatenative language) presents a different yet similarly powerful perspective, one which encourages extreme factorization and use of small well-considered definitions of words for frequently reused concepts.

Python encourages object oriented thinking and explicit declaration. Ruby is object oriented and complexity-hiding to the point of being almost magical.

C teaches functions and varying abstraction levels. Javascript is more about the high level abstractions.

If a newbie programmer focuses on any of these they will come out of it a different kind of programmer. If a competent programmer avoids one of these things they will avoid different kinds of costs as well as different kinds of benefits.

Is it better to focus on one path, avoiding contamination from others?

Is it better to explore several simultaneously, to make sure you don't miss the best parts?

Which one results in converting time to dollars the most quickly?

Which one most reliably converts you to a higher value programmer over a longer period of time?

What other caveats are there?
A Scholarly AI Risk Wiki
by lukeprog — 2012-05-25T20:53:27.955Z

Series: How to Purchase AI Risk Reduction

One large project proposal currently undergoing cost-benefit analysis at the Singularity Institute is a scholarly AI risk wiki. Below I will summarize the project proposal, because:

I would like feedback from the community on it, and

I would like to provide just one example of the kind of x-risk reduction that can be purchased with donations to the Singularity Institute.

The Idea

Think Scholarpedia:

Open-access scholarly articles written at roughly the "Scientific American" level of difficulty.

Runs on MediaWiki, but articles can only be created and edited by carefully selected authors, and curated by experts in the domain relevant to each article. (The editors would be SI researchers at first, and most of the authors and contributors would be staff researchers, research associates, or "remote researchers" from SI.)

But the scholarly AI risk wiki would differ from Scholarpedia in these respects:

Is focused on the subject of AI risk and related subjects.

No formal peer review system. The articles would, however, be continuously revised in response to comments from experts in the relevant fields, many of whom already work in the x-risk field or are knowledgeable participants on LessWrong and in the SIAI/FHI/etc. communities.

Articles will be written for a broader educated audience, not just for domain experts. (Many articles on Scholarpedia aren't actually written at the Scientific American level, despite that stated intent.)

A built-in citations and references system, Biblio (perhaps with the BibTeX addition).

Example articles: Eliezer Yudkowsky, Nick Bostrom, Ben Goertzel, Carl Shulman, Artificial General Intelligence, Decision Theory, Bayesian Decision Theory, Evidential Decision Theory, Causal Decision Theory, Timeless Decision Theory, Counterfactual Mugging, Existential Risk, Expected Utility, Expected Value, Utility, Friendly AI, Intelligence Explosion, AGI Sputnik Moment, Optimization Process, Optimization Power, Metaethics, Tool AI, Oracle AI, Unfriendly AI, Complexity of Value, Fragility of Value, Church-Turing Thesis, Nanny AI, Whole Brain Emulation, AIXI, Orthogonality Thesis, Instrumental Convergence Thesis, Biological Cognitive Enhancement, Nanotechnology, Recursive Self-Improvement, Intelligence, AI Takeoff, AI Boxing, Coherent Extrapolated Volition, Coherent Aggregated Volition, Re...
Meetup : Moscow meetup, creating community
by Yuu — 2012-05-25T19:10:00.792Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow meetup, creating community

WHEN:
26 May 2012 04:00:00PM (+0400)

WHERE:
Rossiya, Moscow, ulitsa Ostozhenka 14

We will meet at “Subway” restaurant, entrance from Lopukhinskiy pereulok. Look for a table with “LW” banner, I will be there from 16:00 MSK.

Topics will be:

Creating Russian-speaking LessWrong community.

Building lesswrong.ru website.

We are also looking for Russian-speaking LessWrong readers to participate in discussions on the Russian forum, so please contact me, if you are the one!

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow meetup, creating community
PSA: Learn to code
by John_Maxwell — 2012-05-25T18:50:01.407Z

Presumably you read Less Wrong because you're interested in thinking better.

If so, you might be interested in another opportunity to improve the quality of your thinking: learn to code.

Like nothing else, coding forces you to identify flaws in your thinking. If your thinking is flawed, your program won't work, except by accident. There's no other discipline quite like this. If you're a mathematician or physicist and you solve a problem wrong, your paper won't tell you. Computer programmers have to measure their thinking against the gold standard of correctness constantly. The process of uncovering and fixing flaws in a program, usually called "debugging", typically takes up the majority of the time spent on software projects.

But this is only the beginning. You've probably heard something like "there are some problems that humans are good at and some problems that computers are good at". This is true. And once you learn to code, you'll be able to exploit computers to solve the problems they are good at. Having a computer to write software with is like having a hi-tech mental exoskeleton that lets your mind run harder and jump higher. Want to know what the second most common letter for an English word to end in is? That's a 15 line script. Tired of balancing chemical equations for your homework? Automate it.

Two more benefits that have less to do with thinking better:

Employment. You probably don't need a computer science degree. I know of two Less Wrong users who learned to program after college and got jobs at Silicon Valley startups with just a project or two on their resume. (MBlume and FrankAdamek.) See Advice on Getting a Software Job by Tom McCabe for more on this possibility.
Productivity software. Writing your own is much nicer than using stuff made by other people in my experience. The reason there are so many to-do list applications is because everyone's needs are different. If you use the terminal as your interface, it doesn't take much effort to write this stuff; you'll spend most of your time figuring out what you want it to do. (Terminal + cron on Linux with JSON log files has worked great for my needs.)

Having enough coding knowledge to be dangerous may take persistence. If you tried and failed in the past, you probably either got stuck and gave up because there was no ...