trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Destructive mathematics
by MrMind — 2013-03-08T09:31:52.642Z

Follow-up to: Constructive mathematics and its dual

In last post, I've introduced constructive mathmatics, intuitionistic logic (JL) and its dual, uninspiringly called dual-intuitionistic logic (DL).
I've said that JL differs from classical logic about the status of the law of excluded middle, a principle valid in the latter which states that a formula can be meaningfully only asserted or negated. This, in the meta-theory, means you can prove that something is true if you can show that its negation is false.
Constructivists, coming from a philosophical platform that regards mathematics as a construction of the human mind, refuse this principle: their idea is that a formula can be said to be true if and only if there is a direct proof of it. Similarly, a formula can be said to be false if and only if there's a direct proof of its negation. If no proof or refutation exists yet (as is the case today, for example, for the Goldbach conjecture), then nothing can be said about A.
Thus is no more a tautology (although it can still be true for some formula, precisely for those that already have a proof or a refutation).
Intuitionism anyway (the most prominent subset of the constructivist program), thinks that is still always false, and so JL incorporates , a principle called the law of non-contradiction.
Intuitionistic logic has no built-in model of time, but you can picture the mental activity of an adherent in this way: he starts with no (or very little) truths, and incorporates in his theory only those theorems of which he can build a proof of, and the negation of those theorems that he can produce a refutation of.
Mathematics, as an endeavour, is seen as an accumulation of truth from an empty base.

I've also indicated that there's a direct dual of JL, which is part of a wider class of systems collecively known as paraconsistent logics. Compared to the amount of studies dedicate to intuitionistic logic, DL is basically unknown, but you can consult for example this paper and this one.
In this second article, a model is presented for which DL is valid, and we can read the following quote: "[These semantics] reflect the notion that our current knowledge about the falsity of statements can increase. Some statements whose falsity status was previously indeterminate can down the track be established as false. The value false corresponds to firmly established falsity that ...
[SEQ RERUN] Fairness vs. Goodness
by MinibearRex — 2013-03-08T05:48:29.463Z

Today's post, Fairness vs. Goodness was originally published on 22 February 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

An experiment in which two unprepared subjects play an asymmetric version of the Prisoner's Dilemma. Is the best outcome the one where each player gets as many points as possible, or the one in which each player gets about the same number of points?

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 Wise Pretentions v.0, 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.
A problem with "playing chicken with the universe" as an approach to UDT
by Karl — 2013-03-08T02:34:27.571Z

Let's consider the agent given in A model of UDT with a halting oracle. One will notice that that agent is not quite well defined because it doesn't tell us in what order we are supposed to consider actions in step 1. But surely that doesn't matter, right? Wrong.

Let's consider the prisoner dilemma with payment matrix given by

1: C
1: D

2: C
(3, 3)
(5, 0)

2: D
(0, 5)
(2, 2)

and consider agent A which consider whether there is a proof that A()≠D before considering whether there is a proof that A()≠C and agent A' which do things in the opposite order. If A or A' is pitted against itself everything is well and mutual cooperation is the result of the game but what if A is pitted against A'? Then A break down and cry.

Let's call the utility functions of A U and the utility function of A' U' and consider a model of PA in which PA is inconsistent (such a model must exist if PA is consistent). In such a model we will have A()=D and A'()=C and so U()=5 and U'()=0. That means that A will not be able to prove that A()=D => U()=u for any u different from 5 and so either A will defect and A' will cooperate or A will break down and cry, but A' will not cooperate because it cannot prove A'()=C => U()=u' for any u' except possibly 0, so A will break down and cry. QED

More generally if M is a model of PA in which PA is inconsistent, an agent defined in this way will never be able to prove that A()=a => U()=u (where a is the first action considered in step 1) except possibly for u=u0 where u0 is the value of U() in M. That seems to create a huge problem for that approach to UDT.
[SEQ RERUN] Wise Pretentions v.0
by MinibearRex — 2013-03-07T06:30:02.536Z

Today's post, Wise Pretensions v.0 was originally published on 20 February 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

An earlier post, on the same topic as yesterday's post.

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 Pretending to be Wise, 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.
Trust in God, or, The Riddle of Kyon Fan Visual Novel
by DanielLC — 2013-03-07T05:48:39.956Z

I made Trust in God, or, The Riddle of Kyon, a Haruhi fanfic by Eliezer Yudkowsky, into a visual novel. At least, I started it. It still needs quite a bit of work. If anyone wants to edit it, message me.
Signaling bias in philosophical intuition
by KatjaGrace — 2013-03-07T05:08:57.000Z

Cross posted from Overcoming Bias. Comments there.

***

Intuitions are a major source of evidence in philosophy. Intuitions are also a significant source of evidence about the person having the intuitions. In most situations where onlookers are likely to read something into a person’s behavior, people adjust their behavior to look better. If philosophical intuitions are swayed in this way, this could be quite a source of bias.

One first step to judging whether signaling motives change intuitions is to determine whether people read personal characteristics into philosophical intuitions. It seems to me that they do, at least for many intuitions. If you claim to find libertarian arguments intuitive, I think people will expect you to have other libertarian personality traits, even if on consideration you aren’t a libertarian. If consciousness doesn’t seem intuitively mysterious to you, one can’t help wonder if you have a particularly un-noticable internal life. If it seems intuitively correct to push the fat man in front of the train, you will seem like a cold, calculating sort of person. If it seems intuitively fine to kill children in societies with pro-children-killing norms, but you choose to condemn it for other reasons, you will have all kinds of problems maintaining relationships with people who learn this.

So I think people treat philosophical intuitions as evidence about personality traits. Is there evidence of people responding by changing their intuitions?

People are enthusiastic to show off their better looking intuitions. They identify with some intuitions and take pleasure in holding them. For instance, in my philosophy of science class the other morning, a classmate proudly dismissed some point, declaring,’my intuitions are very rigorous’. If his intuitions are different from most, and average intuitions actually indicate truth, then his are especially likely to be inaccurate. Yet he seems particularly keen to talk about them, and chooses positions based much more strongly on they than others’ intuitions.

I see similar urges in myself sometimes. For instance consistent answers to the Allais paradox are usually so intuitive to me that I forget which way one is supposed to err. This seems good to me. So when folks seek to change normative rationality to fit their more popular intuitions, I’m quick to snort at such a project. Really, they and I have the sa...
Boring Advice Repository
by Qiaochu_Yuan — 2013-03-07T04:33:41.739Z

This is an extension of a comment I made that I can't find and also a request for examples. It seems plausible that, when giving advice, many people optimize for deepness or punchiness of the advice rather than for actual practical value. There may be good reasons to do this - e.g. advice that sounds deep or punchy might be more likely to be listened to - but as a corollary, there could be valuable advice that people generally don't give because it doesn't sound deep or punchy. Let's call this boring advice.

An example that's been discussed on LW several times is "make checklists." Checklists are great. We should totally make checklists. But "make checklists" is not a deep or punchy thing to say. Other examples include "google things" and "exercise."

I would like people to use this thread to post other examples of boring advice. If you can, provide evidence and/or a plausible argument that your boring advice actually is useful, but I would prefer that you err on the side of boring but not necessarily useful in the name of more thoroughly searching a plausibly under-searched part of advicespace.

Upvotes on advice posted in this thread should be based on your estimate of the usefulness of the advice; in particular, please do not vote up advice just because it sounds deep or punchy.
The Need for Human Friendliness
by Elithrion — 2013-03-07T04:31:37.224Z

Consider the following scenario. MIRI succeeds beyond my wildest expectations. It comes up with a friendliness theory, and then uses it to make provably friendly AGI before anyone else can make an unfriendly one. And then a year and a half later, we find that Eliezer Yudkowsky has become the designated god-emperor of the lightcone, and the rest of the major MIRI researchers are his ministers. Woops.

My guess for the probability of this type of scenario given a huge MIRI success along those lines is around 15%. The reasoning is straightforward. (1) We don't know what's going on inside any particular person's head. (2) Many or most humans are selfish. (3) Looking altruistic is more likely to draw support than explicitly setting out to take over the world. (5) And human acting abilities, while limited, are likely adequate (for example, spies seem quite successful at concealing their motives). I'd say those four things are reasonably independent and sufficient for some deception to be happening, so guessing at some probabilities, it works out to something like 1×0.5×0.8×0.5 = 0.2† At least if the person is sufficiently determined to achieve their goal no matter what.

Or to put it in a more interesting and LW-referring way, it has been argued that we might not be able to distinguish friendly from unfriendly AGI during their "take off" period, since both would probably act the same way to take over the world (before optimising it in a friendly or unfriendly way). We might also expect that as a person becomes more agenty, their behaviour more closely approximates that of an AGI, since an AGI is pretty much the embodiment of agency. It certainly seems like Eliezer is quite agenty for a human, so we clearly presently find ourselves in his take off period!

So, supposing we don't want god-emperor!Eliezer, what do we do? First, I think it is important to recognise that this problem is almost certainly not urgent. Selfish-Eliezer!optimisations and altruistic-Eliezer!optimisations probably require nearly the same work to not end up being paperclips!optimisations, so for the near future it doesn't particularly matter if he's secretly out to take over the world or not. In addition, having Eliezer be the god-emperor of the light cone is probably not all that bad—it might not be optimal, but it's likely to...
Don't Get Offended
by katydee — 2013-03-07T02:11:37.420Z

Related to: Politics is the Mind-Killer, Keep Your Identity Small

Followed By: How to Not Get Offended

One oft-underestimated threat to epistemic rationality is getting offended. While getting offended by something sometimes feels good and can help you assert moral superiority, in most cases it doesn't help you figure out what the world looks like. In fact, getting offended usually makes it harder to figure out what the world looks like, since it means you won't be evaluating evidence very well. In Politics is the Mind-Killer, Eliezer writes that "people who would be level-headed about evenhandedly weighing all sides of an issue in their professional life as scientists, can suddenly turn into slogan-chanting zombies when there's a Blue or Green position on an issue." Don't let yourself become one of those zombies-- all of your skills, training, and useful habits can be shut down when your brain kicks into offended mode!

One might point out that getting offended is a two-way street and that it might be more appropriate to make a post called "Don't Be Offensive." That feels like a just thing to say-- as if you are targeting the aggressor rather than the victim. And on a certain level, it's true-- you shouldn't try to offend people, and if you do in the course of a normal conversation it's probably your fault. But you can't always rely on others around you being able to avoid doing this. After all, what's offensive to one person may not be so to another, and they may end up offending you by mistake. And even in those unpleasant cases when you are interacting with people who are deliberately trying to offend you, isn't staying calm desirable anyway?

The other problem I have with the concept of being offended as victimization is that, when you find yourself getting offended, you may be a victim, but you're being victimized by yourself. Again, that's not to say that offending people on purpose is acceptable-- it obviously isn't. But you're the one who gets to decide whether or not to be offended by something. If you find yourself getting offended to things as an automatic reaction, you should seriously evaluate why that is your response.

There is nothing inherent in a set of words that makes them offensive or inoffensive-- your reaction is an internal, personal process. I've seen some people stay cool in ...
Getting myself to eat vegetables
by jefftk — 2013-03-07T01:48:54.065Z

I have a strategy for getting myself to eat vegetables. I've been using it for about six months now, and it works well:

Put the food I want to eat on my plate.

Put raw vegetables on top.

Eat through vegetables to get to the food I want.

Side effect: people who see my plate think I'm a very healthy eater. But sometimes they ask my "why is your salad steaming?"

I also posted this on my blog
"Why doesn't that cool thing happen when I *try* to do it?"
by Rukifellth — 2013-03-06T20:21:10.997Z

For the past year I've been noticing an interesting phenomenon, the "Why can't I do that on purpose?"-effect. This usually happens when I'm just walking by my computer desk or other piece of furniture, and throw whatever object I'm holding on it, in this case, a balled up bit of tin-foil from a piece of chocolate. The ball bounces off an emptied drumstick of chicken, instead of landing on the glass desk immediately.
Fascinated, I try and hit the chicken drumstick again with the balled tin-foil, without success.

"How the hell did I do that by accident?"
There are actually a number of different things on my desk that the balled up bit of tin-foil could have hit to elicit that same reaction from me; the plastic candy wrappers around the chicken drumstick, the fork next to it, anything. However, if I try to hit the chicken drumstick, my reaction to the balled up tin-foil hitting the candy wrapper instead will be "Why didn't I hit the chicken wing?"
In other words, suppose there's a 50% of eliciting reaction A, due to there being 5 objects, for each of which there is a 10% chance of hitting them. If I hit one of them and elicit reaction A, I decrease the probability of re-eliciting reaction A to 10%, because the other 4 objects, if hit, will be disregarded.
Meetup : Durham/RTLW HPMoR discussion, ch. 43-46
by therufs — 2013-03-06T17:05:54.939Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Durham/RTLW HPMoR discussion, ch. 43-46

WHEN:
09 March 2013 11:30:00AM (-0500)

WHERE:
726 Rigsbee Avenue, Durham NC 27701

Discussion of HPMoR chapters 43-46, i.e., The Humanism Chapters !!!eleven!.

Meetup will proceed as follows:

11:30: Obtain food from food trucks on Hunt Street (between Foster & Rigsbee). NB: Food trucks usually pack up by about noon, tho if you will be joining late & will want food, there are other options nearby.

11:50: Obtain coffee from Cocoa Cinnamon (northeast corner of Foster & Geer.)

12:00: Proceed to Fullsteam (southeast corner of Rigsbee & Geer) for consumption & discussion. Fullsteam doesn't open til noon, but the weather is supposed to be okay, so early arrivees can congregate at an outside table.

If you don't see anyone who looks particularly rational at food trucks or Cocoa Cinnmamon, simply obtain your comestibles of choice and proceed to Fullsteam, where again we will be identifiable by the impressive stack of spiral bound tomes.

If anyone is concerned about navigation/finding us/finding food/etc. and would like to be able to contact someone, my number will be in the archive of the RTLW Google group, which you may join here: http://groups.google.com/group/RTLW

Discussion article for the meetup : Durham/RTLW HPMoR discussion, ch. 43-46
Caelum est Conterrens: I frankly don't see how this is a horror story
by chaosmage — 2013-03-06T10:31:48.001Z

So Eliezer said in his March 1st HPMOR progress report:

I recommend the recursive fanfic “Friendship is Optimal: Caelum est Conterrens” (Heaven Is Terrifying). This is the first and only effective horror novel I have ever read, since unlike Lovecraft, it contains things I actually find scary.

So I read that and it was certainly very much worth reading - thanks for the recommendation! Obviously, the following contains spoilers.

I'm confused about how the story is supposed to be "terrifying". I rarely find any fiction scary, but I suspect that this is about something else: I didn't think Failed Utopia #4-2 was "failed" either and in Three Worlds Collide, I thought the choice of the "Normal" ending made a lot more sense than choosing the "True" ending. The Optimalverse seems to me a fantastically fortunate universe, pretty much the best universe mammals could ever hope to end up in, and I honestly don't see how it is a horror novel, at all.

So, apparently there's something I'm not getting. Something that makes an individual's hard-to-define "free choice" more valuable than her much-easier-to-define happiness. Something like a paranoid schizophrenic's right not to be treated,

So I'd like the dumb version please. What's terrifying about the Optimalverse?
[SEQ RERUN] Pretending to be Wise
by MinibearRex — 2013-03-06T05:24:53.887Z

Today's post, Pretending to be Wise was originally published on 19 February 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Trying to signal wisdom or maturity by taking a neutral position is very seldom the right course of action.

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 Against Maturity, 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.
SENS and Givewell: Conversation between Holden Karnofsky and Aubrey de Grey
by curiousepic — 2013-03-05T19:24:40.718Z

Givewell’s Holden Karnofsky, who has previously posted his thoughts on Givewell supporting SI/MIRI recently discussed the potential for Givewell to begin evaluating biomedical charities, in Givewell’s Yahoo Group. Someone suggested (as I have through less direct means) that they take a hard look at SENS Research Foundation, and then Aubrey de Grey appeared and began an interesting discussion with Holden.
The thread begins with Holden’s long initial post about Givewell’s stance on investigating and recommending biomedical charities, which is definitely worth the read for greater insight. The rest of the conversation is aggregated below for anyone else who can’t stomach Yahoo Groups’ interface.
Overall, Holden seems to agree with the goal of SENS, and interested in the details, but the conversation seems to have ended in October 2012 with Holden stating that he was waiting for Dario Amodei’s thoughts on SENS.

Holden,
First, I think that this is an excellent document. I checked for a
number of things that I had heard about (Breakout Labs, John
Ioannidis, Cochrane Collaboration) and they're all there in your
document.
The one thing that's not explicitly mentioned: longevity and life
extension research. At least prima facie, this seems like something
that should be more important than individual disease research, and it
seems like a classic "Valley of Death" case (pun unintended, but
noted) -- T1 stage to use your terminology. I think the SENS website
http://www.sens.org would be a good starting point for one of the (to
me promising) approaches to life extension. I recall from past
conversations that you were aware of SENS, so this is not new to you,
but I think that longevity should be included as part of any
discussion of biomedical research and given separate consideration
given that it has a much lower status than research into specific
conditions such as cancer, dementia, etc. You may ultimately conclude
that not enough can be done in this area, but I think it should be
part of your preliminary stuff. [btw, the United States has a National
Institute of Aging, but it's much lower-status than most of the other
grantmakers mentioned here].
Vipul

Hi Vipul,
Thanks for the thoughts. I had a followup conversation with Dario about this topic a few days ago. I think the question of "could one fund translational research to treat/prevent ag

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