trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Research Opportunity/Scholarship for ALL students (High school through Post-doc)
by daenerys — 2011-12-12T05:26:24.020Z

I recently was reminded of some work I did last year, and thought that it is the type of opportunity some LW-ers would be interested in, since there are a lot of STEM students on here.

The following are details about a research/scholarship opportunity. You must be a student, but you can be of any level: high school, college, grad school, or post-doc. You do not have to go to any specific school, but you probably have to relocate to Dayton, OH for the 10 weeks of the summer program. You do not have to relocate for the rest of the year.

They are very flexible on their admissions! GPA isn't high enough? Not a US citizen? Can't commit to the entire 10 weeks? They will still accept you if you turn in a good essay!

Basic Info

Website: http://wbi-icc.com/

5 minute video: http://vimeo.com/31103711

Tec^Edge is a research opportunity/experiential learning scholarship that takes students and puts them in groups with mentors from academia (such as professors with research projects), government (such as the Air Force Research Labs (AFRL)) and business (such as General Dynamics).

Besides Tec^Edge, it also goes by: Academic Leadership Pipeline Scholarship (ALPS), Summer at the Edge (SATE), and Year at the Edge (YATE).

Summer At the Edge (SATE) is a 10-week program, and generally requires relocating for the summer to Dayton, OH, where the facility is. The work is full-time, though you make your own hours, and you get paid $4000 for the whole thing, generally in the form of a scholarship to your school (which means no taxes!). The facility is amazingly nice. Lots of high-tech things to work/play with.

It has been described as "Lock a bunch of smart people in a room with lots of gadgets, occasionally shove pizza under the door, and see what comes out."

Year at the Edge (YATE) is the "off-season". They ask for about 10 hours a week (so the scholarship is only $1000/10 weeks). But you do not have to be in Dayton. You can work from your school, but the occasional virtual meeting is required. For some reason, they were set on using Second Life instead of Skype for this, even though everyone disliked it. I am guessing it was for some sort of experiment..

There are lots of projects, and they try to put you on one that matches your interests. Many of the projects are sponsored by the Air Force Research Labs, so there are a lot involving sensors (...
Meetup : Any Salt Lake City residents who might be interested in a meetup?
by adamisom — 2011-12-12T03:38:34.164Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Any Salt Lake City residents who might be interested in a meetup?

WHEN:
29 December 2011 08:37:29PM (-0700)

WHERE:
Salt Lake City, Utah

(This post has been edited to reflect the fact that several people have expressed interest.) As for the purpose of the meeting, I'd love to hear suggestions. I will think about it in the meantime, and also let the first meetup refine the direction of a potentially regular meetup. Just to clarify, the date and time listed are not for a planned meetup. It looks like there are already a healthy amount of people interested, when I count four others, so I find this very encouraging! To make this work, it would be helpful to create a mailing list, so I'll ask for emails later or will create a Meetup group. The idea is that about mid-January I'll clarify the purpose and gather availability in terms of day, time, and place, and we'll first meet in the last week of January. TO CLARIFY: the date is NOT a suggested a meetup. I will make a second announcement in mid-January.

Discussion article for the meetup : Any Salt Lake City residents who might be interested in a meetup?
[SEQ RERUN] Stop Voting For Nincompoops
by MinibearRex — 2011-12-12T02:54:45.042Z

Today's post, Stop Voting For Nincompoops was originally published on 02 January 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Many people try to vote "strategically", by considering which candidate is more "electable". One of the most important factors in whether someone is "electable" is whether they have received attention from the media and the support of one of the two major parties. Naturally, those organizations put considerable thought into who is electable in making their decision. Ultimately, all arguments for "strategic voting" tend to fall apart. The voters themselves get so little say in why the next president is that the best we can do is just to not vote for nincompoops.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was The American System and Misleading Labels, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
Mitt Romney's $10,000 bet
by MileyCyrus — 2011-12-12T02:14:03.205Z

For those who don't follow politics, Mitt Romney offered to bet Rick Perry $10,000 that Perry had misquoted Romney. (video)

Most political commenters see the move as a gaffe. They claim the bet made Romney look out of touch, because it reminded voters that Romney is rich enough to afford $10,000.

As a believer in prediction markets, I am disappointed in the public's reaction. Romney made a bold move by making his beliefs pay rent. Critics point out that $10,000 is "chump change" for Romney, but Romney still but himself at risk. If he had lost the bet, Perry could have made a production about cashing a $10,000 check from a disgraced Romney. Besides, if money were the issue, Perry could have countered with a non-monetary bet. "Loser has to attend the next debate in a clown suit" or something.

If politicians had to face real consequences every time they made a false statement, they would have a larger incentive to tell the truth. It's a shame Romney's bet probably won't catch on.

----

This post is not an endorsement of Mitt Romney or his politics. All I am endorsing is political betting.
khan Academy - Rationality series?
by Goobahman — 2011-12-12T01:54:15.428Z

Does the LW community think it might be a good idea to approach Khan Academy about including a series on Rationality, based on some of the LW sequences?

Khan Academy already has a great reputation as a centre for learning, and has large amounts of traffic going through it. Perhaps we could take advantage of that?

What would be the pros and cons?

How would we go about doing it?

Has anyone made a video series of any of our sequences that we could offer?

13.12.11 update:
It sounds like this is a really good idea that just hasn't seen action yet. I'd actually really be interested in helping make this happen, and whilst I probably personally lack the skills to do it all, I'm sure that between the contributors here we have enough contacts/expertise to put something forward.
If you'd be interested in being a part of this please message me your email address, and I will look into making a team who can put some resources into making this happen.
And keep the comments/suggestions coming. They're providing me with great direction in terms of how to go about this.
Where do you live? Meetup planners want to know
by Metus — 2011-12-11T21:08:09.977Z

Disclaimer: English is not my mother's tongue so I am prone to make mistakes. Please correct and forgive me if I do.

In the recent LessWrong survey 1090 people responded. Sadly, information about the place of residence was not asked for but could have been very useful to people willing to plan a meetup. Since a similar questionaire in German was quite successful with 24 respondents I now translated the form to english and ask you to provide the information.

I ask you only to provide your country and general area of residence via postal code. The form is hosted at Google Docs and the spreadsheet will be published in a few days to ensure anonymity for the first few respondents. The data can not be traced back to specific individuals and would be useless in most cases.

Link to the form

Link to the responses

Have fun and please provide feedback in the comments.
A Brief Summary of Recent Happenings at the Singularity Institute
by MichaelAnissimov — 2011-12-11T20:59:46.344Z

Posted at http://singinst.org/blog/2011/12/11/a-brief-summary-of-recent-happenings-at-the-singularity-institute/

The Singularity Summit was a huge success. We raised over $300,000, one-third of that a donation from Jaan Tallinn, another third from a variety of generous donors who gave during or immediately after the Summit, and a third from ticket sales. We have roughly $500,000 in the bank, while annual payroll expenses are about $350,000. We almost have enough money to make it through the next year without adding any research staff, though we definitely would like to add additional researchers. In the meantime, our (unpaid) Research Associates team has been growing, and is tackling a variety of projects.

Since the Singularity Summit in October, our President Michael Vassar moved on to help found Personalized Medicine, a company we are all excited about, and Luke Muehlhauser was appointed Executive Director. Luke answered questions about these changes and our future plans in a recent video Q&A. I encourage you to watch it, and submit additional questions you may have about the Singularity Institute.

We have seven staff at this time: Luke, Michael Anissimov, Anna Salamon, Carl Shulman, Amy Willey, Louie Helm, and Eliezer Yudkowsky. Our internal collaboration has increased, we're keeping work logs, and we regularly eat dinner together. It's becoming more of a family.

What are we all doing? Luke and Michael are working on a new website for the Singularity Institute. Amy and Luke are working hard to expand the Singularity Summit brand and bring the Summit to "the next level." Anna and Eliezer are building a curriculum for the new Rationality Org, which we hope to spin off as a separate organization from Singularity Institute sometime next year. Luke, Anna, and Carl have been working on a variety of research papers, and Carl has also been working with the fast-growing "optimal philanthropy" movement, which is now poised to direct substantial funds over the next few years to reducing existential risks. Louie is working on donor relations, fundraising, recruiting, operations, and has also contributed to some of our forthcoming research articles.

In the coming year, we look forward to improving communication and transparency with our supporters, and to increasing the rate of our published research output.
[POLL] LessWrong census, mindkilling edition [closed, now with results]
by Oligopsony — 2011-12-11T09:23:01.146Z

Some have been curious about what the politics of this community would look like if broken down further; here's a shot at figuring it out. I've also included a few other questions that folks expressed curiosity about. Aside from one sensitive question, there's no option to keep your answers private, since in my opinion that would defeat the point - just don't answer if you have concerns - but there's also no overlap with the old survey, aside from asking you how you answered the original politics question. (This should help with interpreting those results even if the n for this is much lower than and somehow biased relative to the big survey.)

For entertainment purposes only, don't use the below space to discuss politics directly, &c. Early suggestions are likely to be incorporated, given what I assume to be the low quality of the first draft.

Edit: "left" and "right" operationalized for the questions they appear in; poor language cleared up in mental health question.

Edit 2: results here; see comment below for some preliminary thoughts. Because there were several unique regional responses, I did not publish responses that question.
[SEQ RERUN] The American System and Misleading Labels
by MinibearRex — 2011-12-11T06:48:43.026Z

Today's post, The American System and Misleading Labels was originally published on 02 January 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

The conclusions we draw from analyzing the American political system are often biased by our own previous understanding of it, which we got in elementary school. In fact, the power of voting for a particular candidate (which is not the same as the power to choose which candidates will run) is not the greatest power of the voters. Instead, voters' main abilities are the threat to change which party controls the government, or extremely rarely, to completely dethrone both political parties and replace them with a third.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was The Two-Party Swindle, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
Are multiple uploads equivilant to extra life?
by MileyCyrus — 2011-12-11T06:20:13.818Z

Suppose I have choice between the following:

A) One simulation of me is run for me 100 years, before being deleted.

B) Two identical simulations of me are run for 100 years, before being deleted.

Is the second choice preferable to the first? Should I be willing to pay more to have multiple copies of me simulated, even if those copies will have the exact same experiences?

Forgive me if this question has been answered before. I have Googled to no avail.
Why we need better science, example #6,281
by lukeprog — 2011-12-10T23:25:39.363Z

Avorn (2004) reports:

In a former British colony, most healers believed the conventional wisdom that a distillation of fluids extracted from the urine of horses, if dried to a powder and fed to aging women, could act as a general tonic, preserve youth, and ward of a variety of diseases. The preparation became enormously popular throughout the culture, and was widely used by older women in all strata of society. Many years later modern scientific studies revealed that long-term ingestion of the horse-urine extract was useless for most of its intended purposes, and that it causes tumors, blood clots, heart disease, and perhaps brain damage.

The former colony is the United States; the time is now; the drug is the family of hormone replacement products that include Prempro and Premarin (manufactured from pregnant mares' urine, hence its name). For decades, estrogen replacement in postmenopausal women was widely believed to have "cardio-protective" properties; other papers in respected medical journals reported that the drugs could treat depression and incontinence, as well as prevent Alzheimer's disease. The first large, well-conducted, controlled clinical trial of this treatment in women was not published until 1998: it found that estrogen replacement actually increased the rate of heart attacks in the patients studied. Another clinical trial published in 2002 presented further evidence that these products increased the risk of heart disease, stroke, and cancer. Further reports a year later found that rather than preventing Alzheimer's disease, the drugs appeared to double the risk of becoming senile.

Armstrong (2006) adds:

The treatment seemed to work because those who used the drug tended to be healthier than those who did not. This was because it was used by people who were more interested in taking care of their health.
For those in the Stanford AI-class
by Dr_Manhattan — 2011-12-10T22:54:38.294Z

I posted an obligatory FAI question for the Thrun/Norvig office hours. You can vote here https://www.ai-class.com/sforum/?modSeries=19a660&modTopic=45&modSubmission=5cabd7. Only top questions will be answered :)

ETA: it's now the top question in the category by a nice margin!
Just the facts, ma'am!
by lukeprog — 2011-12-10T22:54:24.208Z

“There’s something odd about the experience of talking to [Singularity Institute researcher] Carl Shulman,” I said.

“He never blinks?” said my friend.

“No. I mean: Yes, but that’s not what I was thinking of.”

“He speaks only facts.”

I paused.

“Yes,” I said. “That is what I meant.”

Normally, when I ask someone “Do you think human-level AI will arrive in the next 30 years?” or “Should we encourage faster development of whole brain emulation?” I get answers like “Yes” or “No, I don’t think so.”

When I ask Carl a question like “Do you think human-level AI will arrive in the next 30 years?” he instead begins to state known facts relevant to answering the question, such as facts about the history of Moore’s law, progress in algorithms, trends in scientific progress, past examples of self-improving systems, and so on.

Maybe this is a bit rude. Carl didn’t answer my question about his opinion. He answered a different question instead, about facts.

But I never feel like it’s rude. Carl went out of his way to make his answer more useful to me. His testimony alone would have been helpful, but argument screens off authority, so Carl’s “flood of facts” way of answering questions gives me more evidence about what’s true than his mere opinion could.

Why isn’t this more common? For one thing, most people don’t know many facts. I’ve read a lot of facts, but do I remember most of them? Hell no. If I forced myself to respond to questions only by stating facts, I’d be worried that I have fewer facts available to me than I’d like to admit. I often have to tell people: “I can’t remember the details in that paper but I remember thinking his evidence was weak.”

But it's worth a try. I think I've noticed that when I try to answer with facts more often, my brain is primed to remember them better, as if it's thinking: "Oh, I might actually use this fact in conversation, so I should remember it." But I haven't measured this, so I could be fooling myself.

Also see: Share likelihood ratios, not posterior beliefs
Why I write about the basics
by lukeprog — 2011-12-10T22:49:04.594Z

In a thread on A Rationalist's Tale, lessdazed wrote:

Being levels above in [rationality] means doing rationalist practice 101 much better than others, [just like] being a few levels above in fighting means executing a basic front-kick much better than others.

Eliezer replied:

I regret that I only have one upvote to give this comment.

You may have noticed I write mostly about the basics of rationality, and lessdazed's comment explains why. There's something like the 80-20 rule going on here: 80% of the benefits come from 20% of the rationality skills. We aspiring rationalists don't usually fail because we failed to account for the optimizer's curse, but because we fail at a more basic level: we fail to say "oops", or we decide we have an incurable disease called "akrasia" instead of doing that which is known to fix akrasia.

More writing on the basics of rationality is needed, especially if it involves exercises and training in addition to reading. Less Wrong could use more work on teachable rationality skills, like the skill of connecting your beliefs.
Clarification of AI Reflection Problem
by paulfchristiano — 2011-12-10T22:30:15.928Z

Consider an agent A, aware of its own embedding in some lawful universe, able to reason about itself and use that reasoning to inform action. By interacting with the world, A is able to modify itself or construct new agents, and using these abilities effectively is likely to be an important component of AGI. Our current understanding appears to be inadequate for guiding such an agent's behavior, for (at least) the following reason:

If A does not believe "A's beliefs reflect reality," then A will lose interest in creating further copies of itself, improving its own reasoning, or performing natural self-modifications. Indeed, if A's beliefs don't reflect reality then creating more copies of A or spending more time thinking may do more harm than good. But if A does believe "A's beliefs reflect reality," then A runs immediately into Gödelian problems: for example, does A become convinced of the sentence Q = "A does not believe Q"? We need to find a way for A to have some confidence in its own behavior without running into these fundamental difficulties with reflection.

This problem has been discussed occasionally at Less Wrong, but I would like to clarify and lay out some examples before trying to start in on a resolution.

Gödel Machines

The Gödel machine is a formalism described by Shmidhuber for principled self-modification. A Gödel machine is designed to solve some particular object level problem in its allotted time. I will describe one Gödel machine implementation.

The initial machine A has an arbitrary object level problem solver. Before running the object level problem solver, however, A spends half of its time enumerating pairs of strings (A', P); for each one, if A' is a valid description of an agent and P is a proof that A' does better on the object level task than A, then A transforms into A'.

Now suppose that A's initial search for self-modifications is inefficient: a new candidate agent A' has a more efficient proof checker, and so is able to examine more proofs before defaulting to the original object level problem solver. Intuitively, A' is an improvement over A, and this is (a very mild version of) the sort of self-modification which we would like our agents to perform. For example, a human is easily able to recognize that it can achieve higher utility by modifying itself to think faster. Bu...