trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Clumping Solstice Singalongs in Groups of 2-4
by Raemon — 2020-01-05T20:50:51.247Z

This post assumes you're familiar with rationalist solstice. (It also assumes that while yes, ritual is something to be epistemically careful about, the overall effect size is relatively small compared to spending much of your life thinking about a topic with peers that think that topic is important, and meanwhile having community identities is valuable. If you want to debate that please do so on one of those previous posts)

If you run a solstice ceremony with singalongs, there's particular value in:

Doing at least 16 singalongs
Clumping* them together in groups of 2-4, rather than alternating song / story / song / story. (Clumping is valuable even if you are doing a smaller number of songs)

This isn't the right approach for all possible solstice aesthetics, but there's a magic thing that can happen here if you do. And if you're not doing it (i.e. most solstice organizers seem to default to the "story/song/story/song" thing), you won't receive any feedback that there's a different thing you could do with a magic, synergistic outcome.

Reasons to want more songs, and to cluster them in groups of 2-4:

It takes people awhile to get comfortable singing.
Context switching makes it harder to get into the headspace of singing.
There is a secret, deeper headspace of singing that you only get to if you do a LOT of it, in a row, in an environment that encourages being thoroughly un-self-conscious about it.
There is a long game that I think singalong solstice celebrations can help with, which is to restore musicality as a basic skill, which in turn allows you to have much richer musical traditions than if it's an incidental thing you do a little of sometimes. The payoff for this comes on a multi-year timescale.

There are reasons not to want this many songs, or to have them clustered this way. Some people get more value out of the speeches or other activities than songs. One organizer of a small solstice mentioned their primary concern was "Have each person bring one activity to the solstice", and most of them weren't comfortable with songleading. Getting people directly involved with Solstice indeed seems valuable if that's an option. (This makes more sense for smaller communities)

But my impression is that much of the time, the ratio of songs/stories and their placement was determined somewhat arbitrarily, ...
UML V: Convex Learning Problems
by Rafael Harth — 2020-01-05T19:47:44.265Z

(This is part five in a sequence on Machine Learning based on this book. Click here for part 1.)

The first three posts of this sequence have defined PAC learning and established some theoretical results, problems (like overfitting), and limitations. While that is helpful, it doesn't actually answer the question of how to solve real problems (unless the brute force approach is viable). The first way in which we approach that question is to study particular classes of problems and prove that they are learnable. For example, in the previous post, we've looked (among other things) at linear regression, where the loss function has the form ℓ:Rd→R and is linear. In this post, we focus on convex learning problems, where the loss function also has the above form and is convex.

Convexity

We begin with sets rather than functions.

Convex sets

A set M (that is part of a vector space) is called convex iff for any two points in that set, the line segment which connects both points is a subset of M.

The condition that M is part of a vector space is missing in the book, but it is key to guarantee that a line between two points exists. Convexity cannot be defined for mere topological spaces, or even metric spaces. In our case, all of our sets will live in Rd for some d∈N+.

As an example, we can look at letters as a subset of the plane. None of the letters in this font are quite convex – l and I are closest but not quite there. The only convex symbols in this post that I've noticed are . and ' and | and –.

Conversely, every regular filled polygon with n corners is convex. The circle is not convex (no two points have a line segment which is contained in the circle), but the disc (filled circle) is convex. The disc with an arbitrary set of points on its boundary (i.e. the circle) taken out remains convex. The disc with any other point taken out is not convex, neither is the disc with any additional point added. You get the idea. (To be precise on the last one, the mathematical description of the disc is D={x∈R2|||x||≤1}, so there is no way to add a single point that somehow touches the boundary.)

Convex functions

Informally, a function f:Rd→R is convex iff the set of all points on and above the function is convex as a subset of Rd+1, where the dependent variable goes up/downward.

(Here, the middle function (x3) ... ,
Homeostasis and “Root Causes” in Aging
by johnswentworth — 2020-01-05T18:43:33.038Z

Let’s start with a stylized fact: almost every cell type in the human body is removed and replaced on a regular basis. The frequency of this turnover

ranges

from a few days (for many immune cells and cells in the gastrointestinal lining) to ten years (for fat, heart, and skeleton cells). Only a handful of tissues are believed to be non-renewing in humans - e.g. eggs, neurons, and the lens of the eye (and even out of those, neurons are debatable).

This means that the number of cells of any given type is determined by “homeostatic equilibrium” - the balance of cell removal and replacement. If an ulcer destroys a bunch of cells in your stomach lining, they’ll be replaced over a few days, and the number of stomach cells will return to roughly the same equilibrium level as before. If a healthy person receives a bunch of extra red blood cells in a transfusion, they’ll be broken down over a few months, and the number of blood cells will return to roughly the same equilibrium level as before.

As organisms age, we see a change in the homeostatic equilibrium level of many different cell types (and other parameters, like hormone and cytokine levels). In particular, a wide variety of symptoms of aging involve “depletion” (i.e. lower observed counts) of various cell types.

However, human aging happens on a very slow timescale, i.e. decades. Most cell counts equilibrate much faster - for instance, immune cell counts equilibrate on a scale of days to weeks. So, suppose we see a decrease in the count of certain immune cells with age - e.g. naive T cells. Could it be that naive T cells just wear out and die off with age? No - T cells are replaced every few weeks, so a change on a timescale of decades cannot be due to the cells themselves dying off. If the count of naive T cells falls on a timescale of decades, then either (a) the rate of new cell creation has decreased, or (b) the rate of old cell removal has increased (or both). Either of those would require some “upstream” change to cause the rate change.

More generally: in order for cell counts, or chemical concentrations, or any other physiological parameter to decrease/increase with age, at least one of the following must be true:

the timescale of turnover is on the order of decades (or longer)
rate of removal increases/decreases
rate of creation decreases/increase

...
What is Life in an Immoral Maze?
by Zvi — 2020-01-05T13:40:00.589Z

Previously in sequence: Moloch Hasn’t Won, Perfect Competition, Imperfect Competition, Does Big Business Hate Your Family?

This post attempts to give a gears-level explanation of maze life as experienced by a middle manager in systems with many levels of management, as depicted in Moral Mazes.

The ‘maze level’ of corporations differs wildly. These dynamics do not reliably fully take over until you have many levels of management. Questions of what causes high maze levels will be dealt with in future sections.

Again, if you have not yet done so, you are highly encouraged to read or review Quotes from Moral Mazes. I will not have the space here to even gloss over many important aspects.

An Immoral Maze can be modeled as a super-perfectly competitive job market for management material. All the principles of super-perfect competition are in play. The normal barriers to such competition have been stripped away. Too many ‘qualified’ managers compete for too few positions.

If an aspirant who does not devote everything they have, and visibly sacrifice all slack, towards success, they automatically fail. Those who do make such sacrifices mostly fail anyway, but some of them “succeed”. We’ll see later what success has in store for them.

The Lifestyle of a Middle Manager

At the managerial and professional levels, the road between work and life is usually open because it is difficult to refuse to use one’s influence, patronage, or power on behalf of another regular member of one’s social coterie. It therefore becomes important to choose one’s social colleagues with some care and, of course, know how to drop them should they fall out of organizational favor. (Moral Mazes, Location 884, Quote #117)

We have this idea that there is work and there is not-work, and once one leaves work one is engaged in not-work distinct from work. We also have this idea that there are things that are off limits even at work, like sexual harassment.

For a person without anyone reporting to them, who is ‘on the line’ in the book’s parlance, this can be sustained.

For those in middle management who want to succeed, that’s not how things work. Everything you are is on the table. You’d better be all-in.

You will increasingly choose your friends to help you win. You will increasingly choose your hobbies, and what you eat, and your politics, and your house, and y

...
Q & A with Stuart Russell in AISafety.com Reading Group
by Søren Elverlin — 2020-01-05T11:23:39.732Z

On Wednesday the 8th 11:45 PST = 19:45 UTC, Stuart Russell will be joining the online AISafety.com Reading Group, and answer questions about his book, Human Compatible.

If you'd like to join, please add me on Skype ("soeren.elverlin").

This book has previously been discussed on LessWrong in 2 posts:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nd692YfFGfZDh9Mwz/an-69-stuart-russell-s-new-book-on-why-we-need-to-replace

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FuGDYNvA6qh4qyFah/thoughts-on-human-compatible
Dissolving Confusion around Functional Decision Theory
by scasper — 2020-01-05T06:38:41.699Z

Summary

Functional Decision Theory (FDT), (see also

causal

,

evidential

,

timeless

,

updateless

, and

anthropic

decision theories) recommends taking cooperative, non-greedy actions in

twin prisoners dilemmas,

Newcombian problems,

Parfit’s hitchhiker

-like games, and counterfactual muggings but not

smoking lesion situations

. It’s a controversial concept with important implications for designing agents that have optimal behavior when embedded in environments in which they may potentially interact with models of themselves. Unfortunately, I think that FDT is sometimes explained confusingly and misunderstood by its proponents and opponents alike. To help dissolve confusion about FDT and address key concerns of its opponents, I refute the criticism that FDT assumes that causation can happen backward in time and offer two key principles that provide a framework for clearly understanding it:

Questions in decision theory are not questions about what choices you should make with some sort of unpredictable free will. They are questions about what type of source code you should be running.
I should consider predictor P to “subjunctively depend” on agent A to the extent that P makes predictions of A’s actions based on correlations that cannot be confounded by my choice of what source code A runs.

Getting Up to Speed

I think that functional decision theory (FDT) is a beautifully counterintuitive and insightful framework for instrumental rationally. I will not make it my focus here to talk about what it is and what types of situations it is useful in. To gain a solid background, I recommend

this post of mine

or the

original paper on it

by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares.

Additionally, here are four different ways that FDT can be explained. I find them all complimentary for understanding and intuiting it well.

The decision theory that tells you to act as if you were setting the output to an optimal decision-making process for the task at hand.
The decision theory that has you cooperate in situations similar to a prisoners’ dilemma against a model of yourself--including when your opponent locks in their choice and shows it to you before you make yours.
The decision theory that has you one-box it in situations similar to

Newcombian games

--including when the boxes are transparent; see also

Parfit’s Hitchhiker

.
The decision theory that shifts focus from what type of decisions you shou

...
Credit Cards for Giving
by jefftk — 2020-01-04T23:00:01.650Z

The standard advice for how to physically make a donation is something
like: if you're donating less than ~$1,000 use a credit card,
otherwise use a check or other method with lower fees. For example,
GiveWell

writes:

We recommend that gifts up to $1,000 be made online by credit card. If
you are giving more than $1,000, please consider one of these
alternatives: Check, Bank Transfer, ...

And the Against Malaria Foundation writes:

However you prefer to make a donation is fine.

All other things being equal, we prefer:

For donations less than US$5,000, an online donation using credit or
debit card

For donations more than US$5,000, an offline donation - by bank
transfer or by mail (cheque/check) - to eliminate fees.

This makes sense: if the charity is paying 2.25%
on your donation, that's $25 on a $1,000 donation, and $125 on a
$5,000 one.

The ideal, though, would to be able to donate with a credit card, get
credit card rewards, but still have the charity get the full amount.
I wouldn't expect this to exist, but it turns out that it does!

There
are platforms (ex: Facebook) which will cover the credit card fees for
charities, so that if you donate $1,000 the charity receives the full
$1,000. Not only that, but your purchase is eligible for regular
credit card rewards, so 1-3% savings over sending a check.

The main downside of this approach is that you generally can't direct
your donation. You can make a donation to the Malaria Consortium, but
not to their Seasonal
Malaria Chemoprevention program that GiveWell recommends.
Likewise, you can donate to the Centre for
Effective Altruism but not a specific
EA fund.

Again, however, there is an exception: the EA Giving Tuesday team has
been coordinating with EA charities to create FB fundraisers for
specific programs. At least for 2019 these were only open for a
couple weeks leading up to Giving
Tuesday, but during that window you could use your credit card for
no-fee donations to specific programs at EA charities. Potentially
the EA Giving Tuesday folks should advertise this as something to use
their fundraisers for, and keep them open a bit longer in December?

EDIT: Avi, from the EA Giving Tuesday group, doesn't think this is a good idea.

There could also be other opportunities available on short notice. For
example, we could find out in November 2020 that there's somethi...
Less Wrong Poetry Corner: Walter Raleigh's "The Lie"
by Zack_M_Davis — 2020-01-04T22:22:56.820Z

Followup to: Rationalist Poetry Fans, Unite!, Act of Charity

This is my favorite poem about revealing information about deception! It goes like this (sources: Wikipedia, Poetry Foundation, Bartleby)—

Go, Soul, the body's guest,

Upon a thankless arrant:

Fear not to touch the best;

The truth shall be thy warrant:

Go, since I needs must die,

And give the world the lie.

Say to the court, it glows

And shines like rotten wood;

Say to the church, it shows

What's good, and doth no good:

If church and court reply,

Then give them both the lie.

Tell potentates, they live

Acting by others' action;

Not loved unless they give,

Not strong, but by a faction:

If potentates reply,

Give potentates the lie.

Tell men of high condition,

That manage the estate,

Their purpose is ambition,

Their practice only hate:

And if they once reply,

Then give them all the lie.

Tell them that brave it most,

They beg for more by spending,

Who, in their greatest cost,

Seek nothing but commending:

And if they make reply,

Then give them all the lie.

Tell zeal it wants devotion;

Tell love it is but lust;

Tell time it is but motion;

Tell flesh it is but dust:

And wish them not reply,

For thou must give the lie.

Tell age it daily wasteth;

Tell honour how it alters;

Tell beauty how she blasteth;

Tell favour how it falters:

And as they shall reply,

Give every one the lie.

Tell wit how much it wrangles

In tickle points of niceness;

Tell wisdom she entangles

Herself in over-wiseness:

And when they do reply,

Straight give them both the lie.

Tell physic of her boldness;

Tell skill it is pretension;

Tell charity of coldness;

Tell law it is contention:

And as they do reply,

So give them still the lie.

Tell fortune of her blindness;

Tell nature of decay;

Tell friendship of unkindness;

Tell justice of delay;

And if they will reply,

Then give them all the lie.

Tell arts they have no soundness,

But vary by esteeming;

Tell schools they want profoundness,

And stand too much on seeming:

If arts and schools reply,

Give arts and schools the lie.

Tell faith it's fled the city;

Tell how the country erreth;

Tell, manhood shakes off pity;

Tell, virtue least preferreth:

And if they do reply,

Spare not to give the lie.

So when thou hast, as I

Commanded thee, done blabbing,—

Although to give the lie

Deserves no less than stabbing,—

Stab at thee he that will,

No stab the soul can kill.

The English is a bit dated; Walter Raleigh (probabl

...
Underappreciated points about utility functions (of both sorts)
by Sniffnoy — 2020-01-04T07:27:28.041Z

(Edit May 9th: I've gone and added a quick addendum to the end.)

In this post I'd basically like to collect some underappreciated points about utility functions that I've made in the comments of various places but which I thought were collecting into a proper, easily-referenceable post. The first part will review the different things referred to by the term "utility function", review how they work, and explain the difference between them. The second part will explain why -- contrary to widespread opinion on this website -- decision-theoretic utility functions really do need to be bounded.

(It's also worth noting that as a consequence, a number of the decision-theoretic "paradoxes" discussed on this site simply are not problems since they rely on unbounded decision-theoretic utility. An example is the original Pascal's Mugging (yes, I realize that term has since been applied to a bunch of things that have nothing to do with unbounded utility, but I mean the original problem).)

Anyway. Let's get on with it.

Part 1: "Utility function" refers to two different things that are often conflated and you should be sure you know which one you're talking about

The term "utility function" refers to two significantly different, but somewhat related, things, which are, due to the terminological and conceptual overlap, often conflated. This results in a lot of confusion. So, I want to cover the distinction here.

The two things called utility functions are:

A function that describes the preferences of a given agent, assuming that agent's preferences satisfy certain rationality conditions, and which does not depend on any particular ethical theory, but rather is useful in decision theory and game theory more generally. If I need to be unambiguous, I'll call this a decision-theoretic utility function.

A function, used specifically in utilitarianism, that describes something like a person's preferences or happiness or something -- it's never been clearly defined, and different versions of utilitarianism suggest different ideas of what it should look like; these are then somehow aggregated over all people into an overall (decision-theoretic!) utility function (which is treated as if it were the decision-theoretic utility function describing what an ideal moral agent would do, rather than the preferences of any particular agent). If I need to be unambiguous, I'll call this

...
Running and Optimizing
by jefftk — 2020-01-04T02:40:02.032Z

Two years ago I decided I was going to start

running between my house and the subway station
each day on my commute, for a total of about five miles a week.
Initially I was very interested in getting faster, and would time
myself a couple days a week, trying to beat my previous best:

Unfortunately, after six months I was pushing myself too hard, and my
knees started hurting. I stopped timing my runs and stopped running
so hard, and they got better again. I'm still running, but at a
gentler pace.

This experience was a good illustration of how optimizing for a metric
can often bring you towards your overall goals for a while, but then
continuing to optimize on it can start to bring you away from them
again.
Meta-discussion from "Circling as Cousin to Rationality"
by Raemon — 2020-01-03T21:38:16.387Z

A lot of the discussion on this post ended up being about LessWrong norms. I've moved that particular thread over to the comments here, and left a comment there pointing over here.

(Some of those comments, including the initial one, were object-level relevant to this post. I apologize for moving all of them indiscriminately. Our comment-moving-features are a bit janky and it's easier to move an entire thread than individual subthreads. I also apologize for breaking a lot of the comment-permalinks in that thread, and we'll look into fixing those. Meanwhile, you can actually still hover-over the comments in question on LW to see a preview of the comment, and you can also copy the comment-hash from the link and apply it to the new post to get a working link)