trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Anthropics and Biased Models
by casebash — 2016-04-15T02:18:11.959Z

The Fine-tuned Universe Theory, according to Wikipedia is the belief that, "our universe is remarkably well suited for life, to a degree unlikely to happen by mere chance". It is typically used to argue that our universe must therefore be the result of Intelligent Design.

One of the most common counter-arguments to this view based on the Anthropic Principle. The argument is that if the conditions were not such that life would be possible, then we would not be able to observe this, as we would not be alive. Therefore, we shouldn't be surprised that the universe has favourable conditions.

I am going to argue that this particular application of the anthropic principle is in fact an incorrect way to deal with this problem. I'll begin first by explaining one way to deal with this problem; afterwards I will explain why the other way is incorrect.

Two model approach

We begin with two modes:

Normal universe model: The universe has no bias towards supporting life

Magic universe model: The universe is 100% biased towards supporting life

We can assign both of these models a prior probability, naturally I'd suggest the prior probability for the later should be rather low. We then update based on the evidence that we see.

p(normal universe|we exist) = p(we exist|normal universe)/p(we exist) * p(normal universe)

The limit of p(normal universe|we exist) as p(we exist|normal universe) approaches 0 is 0 (assuming p(normal universe)!=1). This is proven in the supplementary materials at the end of this post. In plain English, as the chance of us existing in the normal universe approaches zero, as long as we assign some probability to the magic universe model we will at some point conclude that the Magic universe model is overwhelming likely to be correct. I should be clear, I am definitely not claiming that the Fine-Tuned Universe argument is correct. I expect that if we come to the conclusion that the Magical model is more likely than the Normal model of the universe, than that is because we have set our prior for the magical model of the universe to be too high or the chances of life inside the normal universe model to be too low. Regarding the former, our exposure to science fiction and fantasy subjects us to the availability bias, which biases our priors upwards. Regarding the later, many scientists make arguments that life can only exist in a very specific form,

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Commitments and affordances
by KatjaGrace — 2016-04-14T20:56:55.000Z

[Epistemic status: a thing I’ve been thinking about, and may be more ignorant about than approximately everyone else.]

I don’t seem to be an expert on time management right now. But piecing through the crufty wreckage of my plans and lists and calendars, I do have a certain detailed viewpoint on particular impediments to time management. You probably shouldn’t trust my understanding here, but let me make some observations.

Sometimes, I notice that I wish I did more of some kind of activity. For instance, I recently noticed that I did less yoga than I wanted—namely, none ever. I often notice that my room is less tidy than I prefer. Certain lines of inquiry strike me as neglected and fertile and I have an urge to pursue them. This sort of thing happens to me many times per day, which I think is normal for a human.

The most natural and common response to this is to say (to oneself or to a companion) something like, ‘I should really do some yoga’, and then be done with it. This has the virtue of being extremely cheap, and providing substantial satisfaction. But sophisticated non-hypocritical materialists like myself know that it is better to take some sort of action, right now, to actually cause more yoga in the future. For instance, one could make a note in one’s todo list to look into yoga, or better yet, put a plan into one’s reliable calendar system.

Once you have noticed that merely saying ‘I should really do some yoga’ has little consequence, this seems quite wondrous—a set of rituals that can actually cause your future self to do a thing! What power. Yet somehow, life does not become as excellent as one might think as a result. It instead becomes a constant stream of going to yoga classes that you don’t feel like.

One kind of problem seems to come from drawing conclusions that are too strong from the feeling of wanting to do a thing. For instance, hearing your brain say, ‘Ooh babies! I want babies!’ at a baby, and assuming that means you want babies, and should immediately stop your birth control. This is especially a problem if the part of your brain that wants things (without regard to trade-offs) also follows up with instructions on how to get them. “Oh man, I really love drawing with oil pastels…I should get some…I could set up a little studio in my basement, and ente...
Meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Board Games
by rocurley — 2016-04-14T03:32:27.269Z

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Board Games

WHEN:
18 April 2016 06:15:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
1597 Howard St. San Francisco, CA

We'll be meeting to hang out and play games! We'll spend the first half hour hanging out and ordering food, and will start the meetup proper at 6:45.

You can call 301-458-0764 to be let in.

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Board Games
Several free CFAR summer programs on rationality and AI safety
by AnnaSalamon — 2016-04-14T02:35:03.742Z

CFAR will be running several free summer programs this summer which are currently taking applications. Please apply if you’re interested, and forward the programs also to anyone else who may be a good fit!

EuroSPARC — July 19-27, 2016

Free applied rationality program for mathematically talented high school students (ages 16-19), located in Oxford, UK. Intended for students from any country — we have funding to assist with flights from e.g. South America or Australia or China. Apply here.

(SPARC itself is also running this summer, and remains awesome, but applications are now closed; it'll run again in 2017, though!)

Workshop on AI Safety Strategy — May 29-June 5 (plus the May 18-23 CFAR workshop if needed)

8 days*; 12 participants; located in the SF Bay Area (some travel assistance available). WAISS is aimed at (technical or non-technical) folks who want to better understand AI risk and how they can personally impact it. The workshop will include: (1) forecasting skills, and skills for modeling the AI strategic landscape; (2) further applied rationality skills, building from the standard CFAR workshop; and (3) space in which to brainstorm diverse pathways via which an individual might aim to impact AI risk with their career.

Apply here

MIRI Summer Fellows Program — June 19-July 4

16 days; 20 participants; SF Bay Area; aimed at folks with strong math backgrounds who are interested in technical AI safety research. MSFP is an intensive workshop that includes both applied rationality content, and practice doing technical research toward AI safety; it is co-run with MIRI technical researchers. (Funded by MIRI.) Apply here.

CFAR for ML Researchers (CMLR) -- Aug 30-Sept 4

5 days; 45 participants; SF Bay Area; free, including flights.

CMLR will be an adapted version of our standard 4-day CFAR workshop, aimed at researchers in the field of machine learning or artificial intelligence. This includes graduate & undergraduate students, postdocs, faculty, and researchers from industry. The workshop will include a 5th "bonus day" for discussion of long-term AI impacts. (Funded by a grant from FLI.) Apply here.

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We are also still running our by now well-honed paid workshops, which remain awesome -- and which let you into our increasingly awesome alumni community :) Our next mainline CFAR

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Meetup : UMBC / Baltimore Weekly Meetup: How To Actually Change Your Mind
by iarwain1 — 2016-04-13T22:50:47.948Z

Discussion article for the meetup : UMBC / Baltimore Weekly Meetup: How To Actually Change Your Mind

WHEN:
17 April 2016 03:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
Performing Arts and Humanities Bldg Room 456, 1000 Hilltop Cir, Baltimore, MD 21250

Meetup is in Room 456, the philosophy department conference room. As usual, parking restrictions don't apply on weekends so park wherever you want.

For the next few weeks we'll be going through How to Actually Change Your Mind. This week we'll be discussing Sequence E: Overly Convenient Excuses and Sequence F: Politics and Rationality.

Discussion article for the meetup : UMBC / Baltimore Weekly Meetup: How To Actually Change Your Mind
The many counterfactuals of counterfactual mugging
by Scott Garrabrant — 2016-04-12T20:04:38.000Z

This post is roughly an explanation of my current understanding of what the correct solution to the counterfactual mugging problem might look like. This post is all philosophy, with no real math. The interesting part, is that even if we could perform the standard counterfactuals on what if I take a different action, and look at a counterfactual in which the coin flip went another way, we would still not be done, because we would not know the true probability of the coin.

The Problem:
You are a deterministic agent who knows a bunch of facts about math. In particular, you know that 22222 starts with a 2 in base 10. Ω comes up to you and shows you his source code. In Ω's source code, you see that Ω first calculates the first digit of 22222. If it is even, Ω shows you this code and asks you for 10 dollars. If it is odd, then Ω tries to predict what you would do if the digit is even, and pays you 9 dollars if and only if he predicts that you would have paid the 10 dollars.

One possible solution:
So first, since I am a deterministic agent, I either pay the 10 dollars or I don't. Therefore, I have to do the standard decision theory counterfactuals. I compute counterfactually what happens if I pay the 10, and counterfactually what happens if I don't. (One of these two counterfactuals is the actual world.) Note that in these first two counterfactuals, 22222 still starts with a 2, so the only difference is that I lose 10 dollars if I pay the 10.

Observe that I cannot trust Ω's source code to tell me about the counterfactual world in which 22222 starts with an odd number. For all I know, maybe Ω would not exist if 22222 didn't start with a 2. So first, I have to myself compute the counterfactual world in which 22222 starts with an odd number. If in this counterfactual, I am not playing this game at all, I probably should not pay the 10 dollars. Assume I perform this counterfactual, and I see a world in which Ω is running the same code.

Within this counterfactual, Ω is performing his own counterfactual. Ω is computing what I do in the counterfactual in which 22222 starts with an even number. (This is in fact a counterfactual, because it is taking place within the counterfactual world in which 22222 starts with an odd number.)

Lets say that my counterfactual in which 22222 starts with an odd number, and Ω's counterfactual in which 22222 starts with an even number turn out to

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Meetup : Brisbane Govindas Dinner
by Elo — 2016-04-12T07:44:02.780Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Brisbane Govindas Dinner

WHEN: 13 April 2016 06:00:00PM (+1000)

WHERE: 99 Elizabeth St, Brisbane City QLD 4000

Sorry for the late notice; all welcome, call or text ------------------ if you want to let me know you are coming, otherwise - see you there - 6pm.

dinner is a Govindas

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1469995636588748/permalink/1704727533115556/

Discussion article for the meetup : Brisbane Govindas Dinner
How to provide a simple example to the requirement of falsifiability in the scientific method to a novice audience?
by Val — 2016-04-11T21:26:31.130Z

(I once posted this question on academia.stackexchange, but it was deemed to be off topic there. I hope it would be more on-topic here)

I would like to introduce the basics of the scientific method to an audience unfamiliar with the real meaning of it, without making it hard to understand.
As the suspected knowledge level of the intended audience is of the type which commonly thinks that to "prove something scientifically" is the same as "use modern technological gadgets to measure something, afterwards interpret the results as we wish", my major topic would be the selection of an experimental method and the importance of falsifiability. Wikipedia lists the "all swans are white" as an example for a falsifiable statement, but it is not practical enough. To prove that all swans are white would require to observe all the swans in the world. I'm searching of a simple example which uses the scientific method to determine the workings of an unknown system, starting by forming a good hypothesis.
A good example I found is the 2-4-6 game, culminating in the very catchy phrase "if you are equally good at explaining any outcome, you have zero knowledge". This would be one of the best examples to illustrate the most important part of the scientific method which a lot of people imagine incorrectly, it has just one flaw: for best effect it has to be interactive. And if I make it interactive, it has some non-negligible chance to fail, especially if done with a broader audience.
Is there any simple, non-interactive example to illustrate the problem underlying the 2-4-6 game? (for example, if we had taken this naive method to formulate our hypothesis, we would have failed)
I know, the above example is mostly used in the topic of fallacies, like the confirmation bias, but nevertheless it seems to me as a good method in grasping the most important aspects of the scientific method.

I've seen several good posts about the importance of falsifiability, some of them in this very community, but I did not yet see any example which is simple enough so that people unfamiliar with how scientists work, can also understand it. A good working example would be one, where we want to study a familiar concept, but by forgetting to take falsifiability into account, we arrive to an obviously wrong (and preferably humorous) conclusion.

(How I imagine such an example to work? My favorite example in a dif...
The Science of Effective Fundraising: Four Common Mistakes to Avoid
by Gleb_Tsipursky — 2016-04-11T15:19:17.167Z

This article will be of interest primarily for Effective Altruists. It's also cross-posted to the EA Forum.

Summary/TL;DR: Charities that have the biggest social impact often get significantly less financial support than rivals that tell better stories but have a smaller social impact. Drawing on academic research across different fields, this article highlights four common mistakes that fundraisers for effective charities should avoid and suggests potential solutions to these mistakes. 1) Focus on individual victims as well as statistics; 2) Present problems that are solvable by individual donors; 3) Avoid relying excessively on matching donations and focus on learning about your donors; 4) Empower your donors and help them feel good.

Co-written by Gleb Tsipursky and Peter Slattery

Acknowledgments: Thanks to Stefan Schubert, Scott Weathers, Peter Hurford, David Moss, Alfredo Parra, Owen Shen, Gina Stuessy, Sheannal Anthony Obeyesekere and other readers who prefer to remain anonymous for providing feedback on this post. The authors take full responsibility for all opinions expressed here and any mistakes or oversights. Versions of this piece will be published on The Life You Can Save blog and the Intentional Insights blog.

Intro

Charities that use their funds effectively to make a social impact frequently struggle to fundraise effectively. Indeed, while these charities receive plaudits from those committed to measuring and comparing the impact of donations across sectors, many effective charities have not successfully fundraised large sums outside of donors focused highly on impact.

In many cases, this situation results from the beliefs of key stakeholders at effective charities. Some think that persuasive fundraising tactics are “not for them” and instead assume that presenting hard data and statistics will be optimal as they believe that their nonprofit’s effectiveness can speak for itself.
The belief that a nonprofit’s effectiveness can speak for itself can be very harmful to fundraising efforts as it overlooks the fact that donors do not always optimise their giving for social impact. Instead, studies suggest that donors’ choices are influenced by many other considerations, such as a desire for a warm glow, social prestige, or being captured by engrossing stories. Indeed, ch...
The Sally-Anne fallacy
by philh — 2016-04-11T13:06:10.345Z

Cross-posted from my blog

I'd like to coin a term. The Sally-Anne fallacy is the mistake of assuming that somone believes something, simply because that thing is true.1

The name comes from the Sally-Anne test, used in developmental psychology to detect theory of mind. Someone who lacks theory of mind will fail the Sally-Anne test, thinking that Sally knows where the marble is. The Sally-Anne fallacy is also a failure of theory of mind.

In internet arguments, this will often come up as part of a chain of reasoning, such as: you think X; X implies Y; therefore you think Y. Or: you support X; X leads to Y; therefore you support Y.2

So for example, we have this complaint about the words "African dialect" used in Age of Ultron. The argument goes: a dialect is a variation on a language, therefore Marvel thinks "African" is a language.

You think "African" has dialects; "has dialects" implies "is a language"; therefore you think "African" is a language.

Or maybe Marvel just doesn't know what a "dialect" is.

This is also a mistake I was pointing at in Fascists and Rakes. You think it's okay to eat tic-tacs; tic-tacs are sentient; therefore you think it's okay to eat sentient things. Versus: you think I should be forbidden from eating tic-tacs; tic-tacs are nonsentient; therefore you think I should be forbidden from eating nonsentient things. No, in both cases the defendant is just wrong about whether tic-tacs are sentient.

Many political conflicts include arguments that look like this. You fight our cause; our cause is the cause of [good thing]; therefore you oppose [good thing]. Sometimes people disagree about what's good, but sometimes they just disagree about how to get there, and think that a cause is harmful to its stated goals. Thus, liberals and libertarians symmetrically accuse each other of not caring about the poor.3

If you want to convince someone to change their mind, it's important to know what they're wrong about. The Sally-Anne fallacy causes us to mistarget our counterarguments, and to mistake potential allies for inevitable enemies.

From the outside, this looks like "simply because you believe that thing".

Another possible misunderstanding here, is if you agree that X leads to Y and Y is bad, but still think X is worth it.

Of course, sometimes people will pretend not to believe the obvious truth so that they can further their dastardly e

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Meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Projects
by rocurley — 2016-04-11T03:16:56.632Z

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Projects

WHEN:
11 April 2016 06:15:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
1597 Howard St. San Francisco, CA

We'll be meeting to work on projects. Bring something to work on, come up with something there, or help other people out!

As always, I can be reached at 301-458-0764 if you need to be let in.

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Projects
Open Thread April 11 - April 17, 2016 
by  — 2016-04-10T21:01:35.912Z

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

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

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

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

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.
The Thyroid Madness: Two Apparently Contradictory Studies. Proof?
by johnlawrenceaspden — 2016-04-10T20:21:52.596Z

Recap: (See also: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/nef/the_thyroid_madness_core_argument_evidence/ and previous posts)
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia all look far too much like the classical presentation of hypothyroidism for comfort, but thyroid hormone blood tests are normal.
Many alternative medicine practitioners, most prominently John Lowe, and several conventional medical doctors, most prominently Kenneth Blanchard, a practising endocrinologist with a longstanding practice completely free of lawsuits, have tried diagnosing hypothyroidism 'by clinical symptoms', and treating it with various combinations of thyroid hormones, and they all report success, but the practice is dismissed as ignorant and dangerous quackery by conventional medicine.
I suspect that there are acquired 'hormone resistance' or 'type II' versions of all the various endocrine disorders. These would produce the symptoms without reducing the levels of the hormones in the blood. However hormone treatments should still work, simply by overwhelming the resistance.
We know that diabetes comes in two forms, (type I) gland failure and (type II), 'insulin resistance', and that the resistance version is usually acquired rather than inborn. The mechanism for the resistance version of diabetes is mysterious.
There are known to be corresponding 'gland failure' and 'resistance' versions of diseases associated with all the other endocrine hormones, but for some reason the resistance versions are thought to be very rare, and only to be inherited, never acquired.
Should such acquired resistance mechanisms exist and be common, then on evolutionary grounds they would have to be caused by the direct action of pathogens, be a side effect of immune defense against such pathogens, or have an environmental cause. Nothing else would be stable.
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome often seems to start with an infection.

I thought until recently that the problem must be rather complex, and depend on subtle balances of hormones in a complicated system. The idea is so simple and obvious that if it were straightforwardly true, it isn't credible that it would have been missed.
But it turns out that there have been two formal studies of the simplest possible version of idea (treat the symptoms of hypothyroidism with thyroxine) in the medical literature. And they're all I've managed to find. Further examples woul...
Meetup : Rochester Rationalists: Utopia discussion meetup
by mare-of-night — 2016-04-10T17:05:08.527Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Rochester Rationalists: Utopia discussion meetup

WHEN:
17 April 2016 01:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
302 Goodman St N, Rochester, NY 14607

Location: Nox

Whether reaching one is possible or not, utopian settings can be a useful thought experiment for examining our values. What's necessary to make a good one? What seemingly-good traits would go horribly wrong?

Some related articles (completely optional reading):

Just another day in utopia

Archipelago and atomic communitarianism (part III is where the meat of the article starts)

31 laws of fun

Discussion article for the meetup : Rochester Rationalists: Utopia discussion meetup