trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
How much was creating Google worth? 
by JonahS — 2013-06-02T04:56:20.548Z

I would greatly appreciate feedback on whether the assumptions in this post, as well as the conceptual framework, are reasonable. I recognize that I don't address positive externalities explicitly. I think that they may be picked up implicitly, but am unsure about this.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page made an outsized contribution to society by speeding the development of high quality online content filtering by creating Google. They became spectacularly wealthy as a result, but plausibly produced far more value than they captured.

One can estimate the value of creating Google by trying to place oneself in the shoes of somebody with average US earnings in 2000 (~$45,000/yr) and thinking about how much one would be willing to pay for Google to have been created, rather than its counterfactual replacement some years later.

Assumption 1: The counterfactual replacement would have been created 3 years later (in expectation).

Assumption 2: Contingent on knowing assumption 1, the mean 2000 US citizen would be willing to pay at least $1/week (about 0.3% of his or her income).

The average person spends about 15% of his or her income on utilities and entertainment combined. In view of this, we’ll assume

Assumption 3: The mean American would not be willing to pay more 5% of his or her income for three years.

Assumption 4: The percentage of income that one would be willing to pay for Google is approximately uniform over the entire population.

Putting these assumptions together, and using the fact that world GDP in 2000 was about $60 trillion, we get a ballpark estimate of the value of Google of 0.6 trillion — 9 trillion.

Since Brin and Page have total net worth about $40 billion, the remarks above suggest that they produced between 15x and 225x as much value as their aggregate earnings.

Thoughts?
Earning to Give vs. Altruistic Career Choice Revisited
by JonahS — 2013-06-02T02:55:23.414Z

A commonly voiced sentiment in the effective altruist community is that the best way to do the most good is generally to make as much money as possible, with a view toward donating to the most cost-effective charities. This is often referred to as “earning to give.” In the article To save the world, don’t get a job at a charity; go work on Wall Street William MacAskill wrote:

Top undergraduates who want to “make a difference” are encouraged to forgo the allure of Wall Street and work in the charity sector ... while researching ethical career choice, I concluded that it’s in fact better to earn a lot of money and donate a good chunk of it to the most cost-effective charities, a path that I call “earning to give.” ... In general, the charitable sector is people-rich but money-poor. Adding another person to the labor pool just isn’t as valuable as providing more money, so that more workers can be hired.

In private correspondence, MacAskill clarified that he wasn’t arguing that “earning to give” is the best way to do good, only that it’s often better than working at a given nonprofit. In a recent comment MacAskill wrote

I think there's too much emphasis on “earning to give” as the *best* option rather than as the *baseline* option

and raises a number of counter-considerations against “earning to give.” Despite this, the idea that “earning to give” is optimal has caught on in the effective altruist community, and so it’s important to discuss it.

Over the past three years, I myself have shifted from the position that “earning to give” is philanthropically optimal, to the position that it’s generally the case that one can do more good by choosing a career with high direct social value than by choosing a lucrative career with a view toward donating as much as possible.

In this post I’ll outline some arguments in favor of this view.

Responses to MacAskill’s Considerations

In the article To save the world, don’t get a job at a charity; go work on Wall Street, MacAskill gives three considerations in favor of “earning to give.” I respond to these considerations below. What I write should be read as a response to the article, rather than to MacAskill’s ...
Reductionism sequence now available in audio format
by Rick_from_Castify — 2013-06-02T02:55:00.971Z

The sequence "Reductionism", which includes the subsequences "Joy in the Merely Real" and "Zombies", is now available as a professionally read podcast.

Thanks to those who've been listening, let us know how your experience has been thus far and what you think of the service by dropping an email to support@castify.co.
Karma as Money
by diegocaleiro — 2013-06-02T01:46:53.931Z

How do you gather a theory of Counterfactuals, Karma, and Economics, into a revised algorithm for thinking about Lesswrong?

Thinking of Karma as money.

There are a lot of things that one may consider worth saying on Lesswrong. Things that go against the agenda, things that may make people unconfortable, things that are different from what the high-ranking officials would prefer to read here. But we don't do it, because we don't want to "loose" precious Karma points. Each Karma point loss is felt as an insecurity, as a tiny arrow penetrating the chest. But should it be that way?

Here is the alternative: Think of Karma as money. You work hard for getting a few karma points by writing interesting stuff on superintelligence and whatnot, society rewards you by paying some karma points. Then you go there and write something you think people need to hear, but will downvote for sure, at least initially. Some people by now will be very rich, which affords them the opportunity of saying a lot of things that they are not sure will get themselves upvoted, but are sure should be posted.

Citizen: Wait, you said counterfactuals...

Yes, just like your State doesn't really care or like you going out in your hovercraft through the river and using equipment to climb a mountain, so the people here may not care about putting attention into that idea which you think they should hear. Thus, they dowvote it. They make you pay for their attention. If you mentalize it as "they are drawing my soul and life is worthless if karma is negative", then you are much less likely to end up posting something controversial that may be counterfactually relevant.

Just like efficient charity donation works because the vast majority of people are not paying to effectively cause others into being happier, using karma as money works because the vast majority of people are afraid their soul is being sucked every time a downvote comes. But it isn't, this is just the price people charge for their attention, if you think the way I'm tentatively suggesting. It is just a test worth trying, not necessarily something that I fully endorse. I like the idea, and have been using it since forever. Every post linked here, or an earlier subpart of it, has been negative at some point, and from before posting, I knew it would be a "costly one". Try it, if you are rich, you may h...
June 2013 Media Thread
by ArisKatsaris — 2013-06-01T23:37:31.970Z

This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.

If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.

Please use the comment trees for genres. There is a meta thread for comments about future threads.

If you think there should be a thread for a particular genre of media, please post it to the Other Media thread for now, and add a poll to the Meta thread asking if it should be a thread every month.
Two Weeks of Meditation can Reduce Mind Wandering and Improve Mental Performance. 
by fowlertm — 2013-06-01T09:58:26.343Z

There are any number of reasons why the Less Wrong crowd might be interested in mindfulness meditation. Cultivating an ability to observe thoughts without being swept away in them could help in noticing when you're confused, looking into the dark, and, if you are skilled enough, actually changing your mind. I've been on a couple of retreats myself, and I value meditation because it's a useful technique with a lot of field testing that can be studied free of the religious context it generally comes packaged in. The results have been positive -- I've learned what a mess my mind really is and my metacognitive awareness has improved noticeably.

Recent research suggests that we can add improved cognitive functioning to the list (Mrazek et al., 2013).

There is no shortage of researchers and individuals interested in better thinking, and perhaps the most effective way of doing so is to "target a cognitive process underlying performance in a variety of contexts". A great example of such a process is "the ability to attend to a task without distraction", as unrelated thoughts compete with the job at hand for limited working memory. Based on this it makes sense to hypothesize that, if mindfulness training can reduce mind-wandering and distractedness, it ought to boost mental performance.

Psychologists at the University of California Santa Barbara examined this hypothesis using a test of reading comprehension and a test of working memory capacity. Forty eight subjects, all undergraduates, were given two tasks: one, a modified version of the GRE verbal section and two, a test of working memory called the operation span task. The verbal section simply had all the vocabulary questions removed, while the operation span task alternates something that must be memorized (like a letter) with something irrelevant (like an equation which must be evaluated as true or false). If compared to someone else you can hold a longer string of memorized letters in your mind while also accurately evaluating equations, then you have a better working memory.

Importantly, during these tasks a couple of different techniques were used to assess mind-wandering, including asking subjects to assess themselves after the fact and asking them semi-randomly during the task.

Then the subjects were divided into a group which attended a two-week c...
A disclaimer about my effective philanthropy posts (in connection with astronomical waste)
by JonahS — 2013-06-01T02:00:48.801Z

My recent posts Robustness of Cost-Effectiveness and Effective Philanthropy and Earning to Give vs. Altruistic Career Choice Revisited concern optimal philanthropy, and I’ll be writing more posts about optimal philanthropy in the near future.

My use of examples from prosaic domains such as global health has given rise to some confusion, because some members of the Less Wrong community believe that existential risk reduction is by far the best target for optimal philanthropy, and also believe that effective philanthropy in the context of global health is very disanalogous to effective philanthropy in the context of x-risk reduction. For example, Eliezer wrote

…talking about AMF [Against Malaria Foundation] in the same breath as x-risk just seems really odd. The key issues are going to be very different when you're trying to do something so near-term, established, without scary ambiguity, etc. as AMF.

I believe that studying the issues surrounding philanthropic opportunities in areas such as global health is in fact helpful for better understanding how to assess x-risk reduction opportunities. My reasons for thinking this don’t fit into a few sentences, and fully understanding them requires understanding some of my thoughts about more prosaic domains. So I’ll respond to Eliezer’s comment at a later date.

For now, I’ll just remark:

My discussion of prosaic philanthropic domains should not be interpreted as carrying the connotation that I think that they offer more promising philanthropic opportunities than x-risk reduction charities do (though in some cases I believe that they may be).

I believe that the points that I raise in connection with prosaic philanthropic domains will eventually offer input that's helpful for thinking about optimal philanthropy within the astronomical waste framework.

My reason for restricting my discussion to prosaic philanthropic domains (in some posts) is to keep the discussion from become muddled by simultaneously considering of many orthogonal issues.

Note: I formerly worked as a research analyst at GiveWell. All vie

...
Jaan Tallinn: A Skype founder on biomonitors, existential risk and simulated realities
by Kevin — 2013-06-01T00:52:57.304Z

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324412604578513472554236916.html

By ALEXANDRA WOLFE

As we try to talk by Skype, Jaan Tallinn is fading in and out on my computer screen. Sitting in his living room in Estonia, he is having trouble with his connection, which may seem ironic for a co-founder of Skype, the wildly successful video chat service. But these particular technical difficulties are not Mr. Tallinn's problem these days. Since Skype was sold for $2.6 billion in 2005, making him tens of millions of dollars, he has moved on to bigger issues—like extending the span of a healthy human life and saving the species. And those are just this spring's initiatives.

When the screen finally clears up, Mr. Tallinn comes into view. A youthful 41-years-old, with short blond bangs and fair skin, he could be a poster boy for his latest venture, MetaMed, which promises customers personalized health-care research and analysis of their medical conditions.

Health care is a relatively new focus for Mr. Tallinn, who has been interested in computer science and technology since he was 10. Born in Estonia to an architect mother and a father who directs for film and TV, he didn't get access to a computer until he was 14, when the father of one of his schoolmates selected a group of them to work in his office. There he met the friends who would eventually join him in developing Kazaa, the file-sharing application turned music-subscription service, in 2000 and then Skype in 2002.

He launched MetaMed last March after a $500,000 investment from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. So far, the New York-based company has about a dozen employees and 20 clients, half of them friends who are trying it pro bono. The idea emerged from another of Mr. Tallinn's goals: "surviving as a species this century." He has also been developing a new nonprofit called the Cambridge Project for Existential Risk with two academics.

What risks worry him? "The first one is artificial intelligence," he says. "The second is the things that technological progress might create that we're unaware of right now."

He has just read an early draft of a book by his friend Max Tegmark, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, arguing that the only reason nuclear bombs can't be made from instructions downloaded from the Internet is that the laws of physics luckily make it hard to do. "There's no gua...
A World War I example showing the danger of deceiving your own side
by James_Miller — 2013-06-01T00:00:51.680Z

The following is a summary of the short article The Avenger Ignored by Charles Sanders, published in Military History Magazine.

French Intelligence bought what turned out to be partial German military plans for WWI around a decade before the outbreak of the war. The plans detailed a German invasion of Belgium for the obvious purpose of then attacking France from the North. French intelligence compared map to territory finding that the plans explained much German construction which until then had seemed “random and unthreatening”. Many in the French high command came to correctly believe in the plans’ authenticity and by 1907 French military strategy reflected this.

In 1913 many in the French military wanted to take an offensive posture with respect to the German threat. This posture would be more justified if Germany intended to directly attack France rather than go via Belgium. Therefore, French military officer Lt. Col. Edmond Buat falsely claimed to have found a copy of a German military document “under his seat during a train trip in Germany” that showed this. This imaginary document purportedly outlined a direct German attack on France that would largely ignore Belgium.

Buat described but never showed the document to anyone. His hoax was still believed and France based its military deployment on the imaginary document, to disastrous effects. When the French military command received reports of an actual gigantic German attack on Belgium (consistent with the real military plans French Intelligence bought a decade ago) an important French General telephoned French commanders to say “reports on German forces in Belgium are greatly exaggerated. There is no cause for alarm.” France went ahead and executed its existing military strategy “as if the massive, deadly threat now clearly sweeping down from the north did not exist.”

In 1915 Buat admitted his deception, but this didn't stop him from going on to hold “numerous important assignments in the postwar army.”

I found The Avenger Ignored article through a History According to Bob Podcast.
Will the world's elites navigate the creation of AI just fine?
by lukeprog — 2013-05-31T18:49:10.861Z

One open question in AI risk strategy is: Can we trust the world's elite decision-makers (hereafter "elites") to navigate the creation of human-level AI (and beyond) just fine, without the kinds of special efforts that e.g. Bostrom and Yudkowsky think are needed?

Some reasons for concern include:

Otherwise smart people say unreasonable things about AI safety.

Many people who believed AI was around the corner didn't take safety very seriously.

Elites have failed to navigate many important issues wisely (2008 financial crisis, climate change, Iraq War, etc.), for a variety of reasons.

AI may arrive rather suddenly, leaving little time for preparation.

But if you were trying to argue for hope, you might argue along these lines (presented for the sake of argument; I don't actually endorse this argument):

If AI is preceded by visible signals, elites are likely to take safety measures. Effective measures were taken to address asteroid risk. Large resources are devoted to mitigating climate change risks. Personal and tribal selfishness align with AI risk-reduction in a way they may not align on climate change. Availability of information is increasing over time.

AI is likely to be preceded by visible signals. Conceptual insights often take years of incremental tweaking. In vision, speech, games, compression, robotics, and other fields, performance curves are mostly smooth. "Human-level performance at X" benchmarks influence perceptions and should be more exhaustive and come more rapidly as AI approaches. Recursive self-improvement capabilities could be charted, and are likely to be AI-complete. If AI succeeds, it will likely succeed for reasons comprehensible by the AI researchers of the time.

Therefore, safety measures will likely be taken.

If safety measures are taken, then elites will navigate the creation of AI just fine. Corporate and government leaders can use simple heuristics (e.g. Nobel prizes) to access the upper end of expert opinion. AI designs with easily tailored tendency to act may be the easiest to build. The use of early AIs to solve AI safety problems creates an attractor for "safe, powerful AI." Arms races not insurmountable.

The basic structure of this 'argument for hope' is due to Carl Shulman, though he doesn't necessarily endorse the details. (Also, it's just a rough argument, and as stated is not deductively valid.)

Personally, I am not v...
[link] Join Wall Street. Save the World
by Pablo — 2013-05-31T16:49:23.151Z

A very interesting article on "earning to give", featuring LessWrong members Jeff Kaufman, Julia Wise, Holden Karnofsky, William MacAskill and Toby Ord. Some excerpts:

Jason Trigg went into finance because he is after money — as much as he can earn.

The 25-year-old certainly had other career options. An MIT computer science graduate, he could be writing software for the next tech giant. Or he might have gone into academia in computing or applied math or even biology. He could literally be working to cure cancer.

Instead, he goes to work each morning for a high-frequency trading firm. It’s a hedge fund on steroids. He writes software that turns a lot of money into even more money. For his labors, he reaps an uptown salary — and over time his earning potential is unbounded. It’s all part of the plan.

Why this compulsion? It’s not for fast cars or fancy houses. Trigg makes money just to give it away. His logic is simple: The more he makes, the more good he can do. [...]

Two former analysts at the mega-hedge fund Bridgewater and Associates have worked to change that. Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld created GiveWell, a nonprofit that analyzes charities to help people decide where to give, rather than how much to give. They take into account, for instance, that a malaria donation can save a life, while a check sent to the New York City Ballet probably cannot. (Although it may produce a slightly better version of “Swan Lake.”) [...]

Take Jeff Kaufman. A Cambridge, Mass.-based developer at Google, Kaufman and his wife, Julia Wise, managed to live on $10,000 in 2012, they say. Together, they give away at least 45 percent of their income each year (the rest goes to savings and taxes). Kaufman and Wise meticulously document their spending on their blogs. In 2010, for example, they spent a measly $164.44 on groceries each month and gave themselves $38 apiece to spend each week on nonessentials (including all non-grocery meals). In 2012, they moved in with Jeff’s family, which saved even more money, they say. [...]

If GiveWell makes the empirical argument to the public, Giving What We Can makes the moral one.

Toby Ord, the founder, is an Australian philosopher teaching at Oxford. That’s hardly an accident. Oxford’s philosophy department is chock-full of consequentialists, or ethicists w

...
Great big ocean waves in an even bigger blank spot
by NancyLebovitz — 2013-05-31T16:46:48.168Z

The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean is a book about very big ocean waves-- the science, the danger (mostly to ships), and the surfers.

Really big waves weren't scientifically verified until about ten years ago-- part of the problem was that even though sailors had been reporting huge waves, scientists had a theory that big waves (maybe over 80', though I don't have a sharp dividing line) required very rare conditions. Once satellite surveillance for waves was possible, it turned out that big waves were fairly common, and might explain why a ship or two per week disappears.

Russell Wynn: "The way the radar system works, the very big ones are difficult to measure," he said. When behemoth waves appeared in the satellite data, the space agencies considered these readings to be errors, and they were automatically deleted. "They give you missing value code instead, which is really annoying. We shout at them for that."

The reason I'm posting this is that I've become very skeptical about any theory which claims that something which is well-attested and physically possible is actually not happening.