trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meta: Karma and lesswrong mainstream positions
by FAWS — 2011-04-07T10:44:28.446Z

My impression is that critiques of lesswrong mainstream positions and arguments for contrary positions are received well and achieve high karma scores when they are of very high quality. Similarly posts and comments that take lesswrong mainstream positions will still be voted down if they are of very low quality. But in between there seems to be a gulf: Moderately low quality mainstream comments will stay at 0 to -1 karma while contra-mainstream comments of (apparently) similar quality score solidly negative karma, moderately high quality mainstream comments achieve good positive karma while similar quality contra-mainstream comments stay at 0 to 2.

Do you share my impression? And if this is the case, should we try to do something about it?
96 Bad Links in the Sequences
by Alexandros — 2011-04-07T10:39:00.843Z

I've been scraping data from the sequences recently, where by sequences I mean all of Eliezer's posts up to and including Practical Advice Backed By Deep Theories. I've been doing this mostly to get some fun data out and maybe some more useful things like the Bring Back the Sequences project, but one of the things I found is that there is breakage from the move from OB (and OB's subsequent reorganization) that remains unfixed.

In particular, 96 links either give 404s (not found), used to link to a comment but now only link to the main article, or link under the summary fold for no apparent reason. To avoid overloading this article, I have posted the list on piratepad here:

http://piratepad.net/ep/pad/view/ro.eyxCVZYMZeO/latest

Note that I have only checked links that went to overcomingbias.com. This is not necessarily a complete list.

Some of these can be fixed by anyone with editing rights, but the ones pointing to comments can be fixed only by Eliezer or someone who knows what comment was meant to be linked. Alternatively, someone can go through the archive.org WayBack machine, figure out which comments were linked to, then find them in the equivalent LessWrong page, and finally provide the corrected link. I may modify the scraper to do this if someone is willing to make the substitution.

Also, a bunch of links (not in the above list) direct the user to OvercomingBias.com only to be redirected back to LessWrong. While this doesn't actually cause any breakage, it's a pity to be burdening OB's server for no real reason. I can produce a list of these if needed.

If I have managed to attract the attention of anyone with editorial rights, I would really appreciate it if you could help me out by removing certain formatting inconsistencies that greatly slow down and complicate my scraper. I can offer more details on demand, but these links to OB are near the top of the list.

I should be back with more interesting data soon. If you have any particular data-mineable queries about the sequences, let me know.

[Edit: The 4 links that point to a #comments fragment are actually processed correctly. That leaves 92 to be fixed.]
reply to benelliott about Popper issues
by curi — 2011-04-07T08:11:14.351Z

This is a discussion page because I got the message "Comment too long". Apparently the same formatting magic doesn't work here for quotes :( It is a reply to:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/3ox/bayesianism_versus_critical_rationalism/3ulv

> > You can conjecture Bayes' theorem. You can also conjecture all the rest, however some things (such as induction, justificationism, foundationalism) contradict Popper's epistemology. So at least one of them has a mistake to fix. Fixing that may or may not lead to drastic changes, abandonment of the main ideas, etc

> Fully agreed. In principle, if Popper's epistemology is of the second, self-modifying type, there would be nothing wrong with drastic changes. One could argue that something like that is exactly how I arrived at my current beliefs, I wasn't born a Bayesian.

OK great.

If the changes were large enough, to important parts (for example if it lost the ability to self-modify) I wouldn't want to call it Popper's epistemology anymore (unless maybe the changes were made very gradually, with Popper's ideas being valued the whole time, and still valued at the end). It would be departing from his tradition too much, so it would be something else. A minor issue in some ways, but tradition matters.

> I can also see some ways to make induction and foundationalism easer to swallow.

> A discussion post sounds about right for this, if enough people like it you might consider moving it to the main site.

104 comments later it's at 0 karma. There is interest, but not so much liking. I don't think the main site is the right place for me ;-)

> > I think you are claiming that seeing a white swan is positive support for the assertion that all swans are white. (If not, please clarify).

> This is precisely what I am saying.

Based on what you say later, I'm not sure if you mean this in the same way I meant it. I meant: it is positive support for "all swans are white" *over* all theories which assert "all swans are black" (I disagree with that claim). If it doesn't support them *more than those other theories* then I regard it as vaccuous. I don't believe the math you offered meets this challenge over supporting "all swans are white" more than various opposites of it. I'm not sure if you intended it to.

> > If so, this gets into important issues. Popper disputed the idea of positive support. The criticism of the co...
Popperian Decision making
by curi — 2011-04-07T06:42:38.957Z

Branching from: http://lesswrong.com/lw/54u/bayesian_epistemology_vs_popper/3uta?context=4

The question is: how do you make decisions without justifying decisions, and without foundations?

If you can do that, I claim the regress problem is solved. Whereas induction, for example, is refuted by the regress problem (no, arbitrary foundations or circular arguments are not solutions).

OK stepping back a bit, and explaining less briefly:

Infinite regresses are nasty problems for epistemologies.

All justificationist epistemologies have an infinite regress.

That means they are false. They don't work. End of story.

There's options of course. Don't want a regress? No problem. Have an arbitrary foundation. Have an unjustified proposition. Have a circular argument. Or have something else even sillier.

The regress goes like this, and the details of the justification don't matter.

If you want to justify a theory, T0, you have to justify it with another theory, T1. Then T1 needs justify by T2. Which needs justifying by T3. Forever. And if T25 turns out wrong, then T24 loses it's justification. And with T24 unjustified, T23 loses its justification. And it cascades all the way back to the start.

I'll give one more example. Consider probabilistic justification. You assign T0 a probability, say 99.999%. Never mind how or why, the probability people aren't big on explanations like that. Just do your best. It doesn't matter. Moving on, what we have to wonder if that 99.999% figure is correct. If it's not correct then it could be anything such at 90% or 1% or whatever. So it better be correct. So we better justify that it's a good theory. How? Simple. We'll use our whim to assign it a probability of 99.99999%. OK! Now we're getting somewhere. I put a lot of 9s so we're almost certain to be correct! Except, what if I had that figure wrong? If it's wrong it could be anything such as 2% or 0.0001%. Uh oh. I better justify my second probability estimate. How? Well we're trying to defend this probabilistic justification method. Let's not give up yet and do something totally differently, instead we'll give it another probability. How about 80%? OK! Next I ask: is that 80% figure correct? If it's not correct, the probability could be anything, such as 5%. So we better justify it. So it goes on and on forever. Now there's two problems. First it goes forever, and you can't ever stop, you...
Random advice: Teenage U.S. LW-ers should probably be taking more AP exams
by HonoreDB — 2011-04-07T04:37:37.980Z

If you're a smart young teenager who plans on attending college, consider taking lots of AP Exams.

Advanced Placement Exams are a suite of standardized tests created by the College Board, the same entity that administers the SAT and related tests. There are currently 34 of them, ranging from Art History to Environmental Science to Microeconomics to three flavors of Physics.

High school students are generally given a limited opportunity to take AP Classes. If you're in a good school and get good grades, you might get the chance to take as many as six by your senior year. However, if you're able to pay a small fee, you can take any of these tests at the end of any school year. Any school that administers AP Exams is required (I think) to allow you to take them, regardless of whether you've taken the course or are even enrolled in the school, and you can probably find a school within a few hours that offers any given exam. Colleges will treat a high score on the test the same whether or not you've taken the formal course.

When applying to a college, if your academic transcript contains, say, twelve passed AP Exams, it will look twice as impressive as that of a high-school valedictorian. You'll have proven in a very direct and comprehensible way that you are good at academics, that you have taken initiative, and that you are willing to work within the system to appear remarkable. You'll get into more colleges and get more merit-based scholarship offers.

Furthermore, you'll have an advantage in negotiating the college bureaucracy once you're in. Some colleges will let you apply all of your AP exams directly as course credit, which means you can enter as a sophomore if you have enough. This not only shortens the time necessary to get your degree, but gets you access to the advanced classes with high-quality professors faster. Most will at least let you use some of your tests in lieu of some of the general education requirements: e.g. if you've gotten a 4+ score on both Spanish Language and Spanish Literature, you probably never have to study a language again if you don't want to.

To figure out whether this will work for you, go to the College Board's Teacher's Guide site. For each subject that even vaguely interests you, download an old test or a practice exam (you may need to identify yourself as a teacher wh...
Bayesian Epistemology vs Popper
by curi — 2011-04-06T23:50:51.766Z

I was directed to this book (http://www-biba.inrialpes.fr/Jaynes/prob.html) in conversation here:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/3ox/bayesianism_versus_critical_rationalism/3ug7?context=1#3ug7

I was told it had a proof of Bayesian epistemology in the first two chapters. One of the things we were discussing is Popper's epistemology.

Here are those chapters:

http://www-biba.inrialpes.fr/Jaynes/cc01p.pdf

http://www-biba.inrialpes.fr/Jaynes/cc02m.pdf

I have not found any proof here that Bayesian epistemology is correct. There is not even an attempt to prove it. Various things are assumed in the first chapter. In the second chapter, some things are proven given those assumptions.

Some first chapter assumptions are incorrect or unargued. It begins with an example with a policeman, and says his conclusion is not a logical deduction because the evidence is logically consistent with his conclusion being false. I agree so far. Next it says "we will grant that it had a certain degree of validity". But I will not grant that. Popper's epistemology explains that *this is a mistake* (and Jaynes makes no attempt at all to address Popper's arguments). In any case, simply assuming his readers will grant his substantive claims is no way to argue.

The next sentences blithely assert that we all reason in this way. Jaynes' is basically presenting the issues of this kind of reasoning as his topic. This simply ignores Popper and makes no attempt to prove Jaynes' approach is correct.

Jaynes goes on to give syllogisms, which he calls "weaker" than deduction, which he acknowledges are not deductively correct. And then he just says we use that kind of reasoning all the time. That sort of assertion only appeals to the already converted. Jaynes starts with arguments which appeal to the *intuition* of his readers, not on arguments which could persuade someone who disagreed with him (that is, good rational arguments). Later when he gets into more mathematical stuff which doesn't (directly) rest on appeals to intution, it does rest on the ideas he (supposedly) established early on with his appeals to intuition.

The outline of the approach here is to quickly gloss over substantive philosophical assumptions, never provide serious arguments for them, take them as common sense, do not detail them, and then later provide arguments which are rigorous *given the assumptions glossed over earlier*. This ...
Interest in video-conference discussion about sequences and/or virtual meetups?
by jwhendy — 2011-04-06T22:13:11.024Z

Update: We're up to 9 participants. Per jsalvatier's suggestion, I have created a Google Group for this. It looks like we have 8-9 total, and the move toward finalizing groups and dates/times is now at the Google Group thread HERE.

I plan to ask if I may take meeting minutes for whatever group I end up in and report back on how it goes. If we have multiple groups, we could all combine notes afterward and give a summary. Perhaps interest will grow in this type of activity.

---

There's been a decent amount of talk lately about whether or not people have read the sequences, the costs and benefits of reading the sequences before posting, bringing back the sequences, other formats of "sequence-intake," and potential exercises coming down the pipes.

In other words, it seems that many are still interested in the sequences.

I happen to be 1 out of about 19 who has not read the sequences. (Gasp!) I'm working on remedying that.

Something else that's been frequently discussed as of late is the importance of community (and the desire/need for it).

Well, something occurred to me that might be of interest: combining interest in the sequences with the need for community. I'm inquiring about interest to have video (or audio) online conferences about the sequences, particularly for "n00bs" like myself who may not have been through the sequences. I'm in the midst of Map & Territory myself and am currently working though the Intro to Bayes.

Is anyone in a situation where they'd like to read a chunk of these and then have an online discussion? No one seems to be near enough to meetup in Minnesota, so perhaps the "online" route might work for others physically isolated from LWers.

I can see some hangups for this: bandwidth, moderating/getting off-topic, law-of-diminishing-returns, etc. I'm thinking a group of 3-5 per virtual discussion might be best to start. Skype or some other protocol (iChat, jabber, etc.) should work for most people.

Lastly, while my initial thought was to have some post-processing discussion regarding specific sequences... I could also see this as being a neat idea for those with no meetup groups near them, like myself. I thoroughly enjoy discussing with others here, and suspect that even were the discussions not to be explicitly on rationality, it would be very enjoyable to "meet" others here, hear about their lives...
My favorite philosophers
by lukeprog — 2011-04-06T20:48:22.143Z

Those interested in philosophy might wonder: Who are the favorite philosophers of someone (like me) who has a very low opinion of philosophy?

Well, ask no longer. Here are some of my favorite philosophers:

Eliezer Yudkowsky (independent) only does philosophy because he needs to solve philosophical problems to build Friendly AI. As a philosophy outsider, he has managed – mostly on his own – to solve a great many philosophical problems correctly. There is, simply put, no philosopher with whom I agree more often. My one major complaint is that he does not write academic-style articles, citing the relevant research and speaking the same language as others and so on. On the other hand, this is partly why he has made so much fast progress. Academic papers are clear and crisp and well-footnoted and thus generous to their readers, but as a result they take a lot of effort to write. If I could fuse the minds of Yudkowsky and Bostrom, that person would be an even better philosopher. Luckily, those two minds seem to be slowly fusing on their own. (Yudkowsky is tugging Bostrom his way, and Bostrom is tugging Yudkowsky his way.)

Nick Bostrom (Oxford) is one of today’s most important philosophers. This is not due to Kripkean superintelligence or Einsteinian revolutionary insights – though, Bostrom is no slouch in intellect or insight – but because he has devoted himself to working on the most important problems. Oddly enough, these were problems that (at the time) nobody else was working on very seriously: existential risks to humanity.

Noam Chomsky (MIT) is an interdisciplinary genius. The most important linguist of the 20th century, he is also one of the founders of cognitive science, a major geopolitical theorist, a philosopher, and one of the most productive social activists in history. He embodies his philosophy more successfully than any other philosopher I know. Though he holds different philosophical positions than I do, in many ways his views are like mine but with an extra dose of skepticism about everything.

Stephen Stich (Rutgers) is one of the “guardians” of good philosophy, arguing against unproductive analytic practices like heavy appeal to intuition, and working so vigorously at the border of science and philosophy that he played a founding role in the rise of experimental philosophy. He has also done a great

...
Cryptanalysis as Epistemology? (paging cryptonerds)
by SilasBarta — 2011-04-06T19:06:53.526Z

Short version: Why can't cryptanalysis methods be carried over to science, which looks like a trivial problem by comparison, since nature doesn't intelligently remove patterns from our observations? Or are these methods already carried over?

Long version: Okay, I was going to spell this all out with a lot of text, but it started ballooning, so I'm just going to put it in chart form.

Here is what I see as the mapping from cryptography to science (or epistemology in general). I want to know what goes in the "???" spot, and why it hasn't been used for any natural phenomenon less complex than the most complex broken cipher. (Sorry, couldn't figure out how to center it.)

EDIT: Removed "(cipher known)" requirement on 2nd- and 3rd-to-last rows because the scientific analog can be searching for either natural laws or constants.
Edinburgh LW Meetup Saturday April 16th
by sark — 2011-04-06T18:00:22.669Z

According to statistics, Edinburgh has a reasonable number of LW readers. Currently no Edinburgh meetups exist for Less Wrong so we might as well arbitrarily set one in the near future and see if it could work out (if there are enough people who are interested in a meetup here).

Date/time: Saturday 16th of April at 2:00pm.

Place: A pub called the Auld Hoose.

I would be holding a sign with "Less Wrong" written on it.

EDIT: definite time/place.

EDIT2: moved to main site (and changed article author :p)
Edinburgh Lesswrong meetup
by Elias_Kunnas — 2011-04-06T17:14:54.975Z

According to statistics, Edinburgh has a reasonable number of LW readers. Currently no Edinburgh meetups exist for Less Wrong so we might as well arbitrarily set one in the near future and see if it could work out (if there are enough people who are interested in a meetup here).

Date/time: Saturday 16th of April at 2:00pm.

Place: A pub called the Auld Hoose.

I would be holding a sign with "Less Wrong" written on it.

EDIT: definite time/place.
Ottawa LW Meetup Saturday April 16th
by Cyan — 2011-04-06T16:20:21.315Z

My trip to New York City provided the spur I needed to get the LW Ottawa1 Chapter off the ground. My aspiration for the group is to provide a social milieu for improving thought patterns/processes and for providing feedback on setting goals, planning tactics and strategies, and tracking progress. I also intend to incorporate random fun -- while I was in NYC, a stunt class event was pre-empted by the 6th Annual NYC Pillow Fight Day, and how awesome is that?

Location: 349 Preston St. The meeting will be held in a small sitting area to the right of the security station in the lobby. The lobby is reachable through the Starbucks.

Time: Saturday, April 16th, 1:00pm. I commit to being there until 3:00pm 4:00pm.

1 That's Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. My apologies to any Ottawans located in Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, and/or Kansas.

Update: I'm really pleased with how our first meeting went. XFrequentist, Swimmer963, wiresnips, wmiles, and I attended (wmiles was a late arrival due to previous plans). We introduced ourselves and then did an impromptu goal-setting/mutual help exercise in which we described (i) our skills and abilities and (ii) our aspirations and goals. Then we went around the table to see what resources we had to help each other, with an eye to crossing out the easy stuff so we can focus on the tough stuff. We actually didn't finish before I had to go, so we'll take it up again next time.
First Waco, Texas LW Meetup, 4/09, 1PM
by SilasBarta — 2011-04-06T15:13:20.053Z

Date: Saturday, April 9

Time: 1PM

Location: Common Grounds Coffeehouse, IH-35 and S 8th Street (east side of interstate). (If you can't find parking behind the place, use the parking garage [free on weekends] just a short distance down the street.)

Well, I'm going through with it! We'll have our first Texas LW meetup. No other known Waco LWers, but it's not a bad drive (~90 minutes) from Austin, Dallas/Fort Worth, or Bryan/College Station.

I will be the guy in the blue blazer with a Less Wrong sign. I have no idea what the turnout will be, but I'll stay until at least 5pm, so come on by if you can.

The website reports an all-day 100 Cameras event, but this shouldn't interfere.

Edit: Looks like that was an old notice for the Saturday two weeks before this, so there is no interfering event to worry about.

Edit2: I've set up the Waco Meetup Group with this event shown. (And promoted it on Craigslist.)

REPORT: Success! Vaniver, NMJablonski, his wife, Clippy's humanoid robot, and I showed up. We talked about various rationality issues: the potential for the upcoming boot camp, the heritability of personality traits and intelligence, the inefficiencies and lost purposes in the economy today, and of course, string theory. At the end, we helped Clippy decide whether he should go to Rationalist Boot Camp (if he's accepted) by doing a probability-weighted CBA, which Vaniver helped coordinate very well.

Here is a picture of us at the meetup: from left to right: Vaniver, me, Laura (NMJablonski's wife), and NMJablonski. Clippy's robot did not want to be in it. (I tried to upload it to this site, but even after resizing it down to the limit it wouldn't accept.)

We're planning to have another Texas meetup in Austin in two weeks.
April 10 2011 Southern California Meetup
by JGWeissman — 2011-04-06T04:43:52.962Z

There will be a LessWrong meetup for Southern California on Sunday April 10th from 2:00PM to 8:00PM and we will probably linger later. Feel free to come for all or part of the time. The location is being kindly provided by the Harvey Mudd A.I. & Future Technology Club in the Platt Campus Center of Harvey Mudd College.

For travel planning purposes, the meetup is happening about 10 blocks north of the Claremont Metrolink Station, which connects to the hub at LA Union Station. Train schedules can be searched here. Also there should be car pooling opportunities in the comments.

As more meetups have happened attendance has been increasing. If you want to make sure to see future announcements so you don't miss a meetup, you can sign up for the mailing list.

See you there!