trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : West LA: Fiction Considered Harmful
by abramdemski — 2015-09-05T03:48:23.638Z

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA: Fiction Considered Harmful

WHEN:
09 September 2015 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
11066 santa monica la ca

How to Find Us: Go into this Del Taco. We will be in the back room if possible.

Parking is free in the lot out front or on the street nearby.

Discussion: Fiction is not a lie, but it is a variety of untruth. It absorbs time and energy which could be spent on fact. Although we make a conscious distinction between fictional worlds and reality, we will often use fictional examples when evaluating real-life situations. It has been argued that we should learn to take joy in the world we actually live in. Why should we allow fiction to warp our view of reality?

Perhaps fiction offers a fun, relaxing break. I can understand this claim in two different ways. The first version is that reading fiction gives us a rest from serious thinking, restoring us in some way. So, is this really true? Often when we feel tired of thinking, we're really tired of thinking about some particular thing. We gain new mental energy when we switch to something else. We think this means we're unable to do productive work, and need to take a break; but often, we could continue to be productive on a sufficiently different task, which gave us the same variety as a "break" would. (This is anecdotal. I recall seeing a discussion of this in a lesswrong post, but didn't figure out which one.) Alternatively, if we really are exhausted, reading fiction might not be restoring our energy as much as taking a nap or perhaps meditating. In either case, the pro-fiction argument seems murky. Answering this question is difficult, because it's far from obvious why certain types of thinking seem to take "mental effort" and leave us feeling drained. (It seems it might be a mechanism for sensing high opportunity cost, or it might be due to depleting a physical resource in the brain.)

A second way to interpret this is that consuming fiction is closer to being an end, rather than a means. The joy which fiction creates, or the rich inner experience, may be a good in and of itself. Whether it's useful for restorative purposes or not, it's good that society keeps churning the fiction mill, because it's one of the things which makes life worthwhile. Some people will readily agree with this, whil

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Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2015-09-05T02:39:58.792Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on August 28th. The following week's summary is here.

New meetups (or meetups with a hiatus of more than a year) are happening in:

Rochester LessWrong and Transhumanists: 12 September 2015 01:00PM

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

Oslo Lesswrong meetup, September: 27 September 2015 04:00PM
San Antonio Meetup: 30 August 2015 12:30PM
San Francisco Meetup: Projects: 31 August 2015 06:15PM
Urbana-Champaign: Quorum for discourse: 06 September 2015 02:00PM
Warsaw August Meetup: 30 August 2015 03:00PM

The remaining meetups take place in cities with regular scheduling, but involve a change in time or location, special meeting content, or simply a helpful reminder about the meetup:

Austin, TX - Caffe Medici: 29 August 2015 01:30PM
[Berkeley] Schelling Cafe: 29 August 2015 03:00PM
Melbourne September Dojo: Vagueness: 06 September 2015 08:44PM
Moscow meetup: copyright debates, culture keynote, working on beliefs, attribution error: 30 August 2015 02:00PM
Sydney Rationality Dojo - September: 06 September 2015 04:00PM
Sydney Meetup - September: 23 September 2015 06:30PM
[Tel Aviv] Biases and making better decisions: 01 September 2015 07:00PM
Vienna: 26 September 2015 03:00PM
[West LA] Discussions on Determining Between Right and Wrong: 02 September 2015 01:10AM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buffalo, Cambridge UK, Canberra, Columbus, Denver, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Moscow, Mountain View, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, Seattle, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers.

If you'd like to talk with other LW-ers face to face, and there is no meetup in your area, consider starting your own meetup; it's easy (more resources here). Check one out, stretch your rationality skills, build community, and have fun!

In addition to the handy sidebar of upcoming meetups, a meetup overview is posted on the front page every Friday. These are an attempt to collect information on all the meetups happening in upcoming weeks. The best way to get your meetup featured is still to use the Add New Meetup feature, but you'll also have the benefit of having your meetup mentioned in a weekly overview. These ov...
Why Don't Rationalists Win?
by Adam Zerner — 2015-09-05T00:57:28.156Z

Here are my thoughts on the "Why don't rationalists win?" thing.

Epistemic

I think it's pretty clear that rationality helps people do a better job of being... less wrong :D

But seriously, I think that rationality does lead to very notable improvements in your ability to have correct beliefs about how the world works. And it helps you to calibrate your confidence. These abilities are useful. And I think rationality deserves credit for being useful in this area.

I'm not really elaborating here because I assume that this is something that we agree on.

However, I should note that rationalists aren't really making new and innovative discoveries (the non-superstar ones anyway), and that this may increase the "why don't rationalists win?" thing. I think that a big reason for this lack of progress is because a) we think about really really really difficult things! And b) we beat around the bush a lot. Big topics are often brought up, but I rarely see people say, "Ok, this is a huge topic so in order to make progress, we're going to have to sit down for many hours and be deliberate about this. But I think we could do it!". Instead, these conversations seem to be just people having fun, procrastinating, and never investing enough time to make real progress.

Altruistic

I also think that rationality is doing a great job in helping people to do a better job at being altruistic. Another thing that:

I'm going to assume that we mostly agree on, and thus not really elaborate.

I think deserves to be noted and given credit.

Is useful.

For people with altruistic goals, rationality is helping them to achieve their goals. And I think it's doing a really good job at this. But I also think that it doesn't quite feel like the gains being made here are so big. I think that a major reason for this is because the gains are so:

High level.

Likely to be realized far in the future.

Are the sort of thing that you don't personally experience (think: buying a poor person lunch vs. donating money to people in Africa).

But we all know that (1), (2), and (3) don't actually make the gains smaller, it just makes them feel smaller. I get the impression that the fact that the gains feel smaller results in an unjustified increase in the "rationalists don't win" feeling.

Success

I get the impression that lack of success plays a big role in the "why don't rationalists win?" thing.

I guess an...
Lesswrong real time chat
by Elo — 2015-09-04T02:29:00.359Z

This is a short post to say that I have started and am managing a Slack channel for lesswrong.

Slack has only an email-invite option which means that I need an email address for anyone who wants to join. Send me a PM with your email address if you are interested in joining.

There is a web interface and a mobile app that is better than google hangouts.

If you are interested in joining; consider this one requirement:

You must be willing to be charitable in your conversations with your fellow lesswrongers.

To be clear; This means (including but not limited to);

Steelman not strawman of discussion

Respect of others

patience

So far every conversation we have had has been excellent, there have been no problems at all and everyone is striving towards better understanding of each other. This policy does not come out of a recognition of a failure to be charitable; but as a standard to set when moving forward. I have no reason to expect it will be broken but all the same; I feel it is valuable to have.

I would like this to have several goals and purposes (some of which were collaboratively developed with other lesswrongers in the chat, and if more come up in the future too that would be good)

an aim for productive conversations, to make progress on our lives.

a brains trust for life-advice in all kinds of areas where, "outsource this decision to others" is an effective strategy.

collaborative creation of further rationality content

a safe space for friendly conversation on the internet (a nice place to hang out)

A more coherent and stronger connected lesswrong

Development of better ideas and strategies in how to personally improve the world.

So far the chat has been operating by private invite from me for about two weeks as a trial. Since this post was created we now have an ongoing conversation with exciting new ideas being produced all the time. If nothing else - its fun to be in. If something - we are generating a growing space for rationality and other ideas. I have personally gained two very good friends already; that I now talk to every day. (Which coincidentally slowed me down from posting this notice because I was too busy with other things and learning from new people)

I realise this type of medium is not for all. But I am keen to make it work.

I also realise that when peo

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Meetup : Boston Meetup
by NoSignalNoNoise — 2015-09-04T01:46:49.330Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Boston Meetup

WHEN:
06 September 2015 03:30:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
98 Elm St, Apt 1, Somerville, MA (Porter Square)

—Phase 1: Arrival, greetings, unstructured conversation. This starts at 3:30; before then, Citadel residents will be busy. Looking forward to seeing you at 3:30!
—Phase 2: The headline event. This starts promptly at 4pm, and lasts 30-60 minutes.
—Phase 3: Further discussion. We'll explore the ideas raised in phase 2, often in smaller groups.

—Phase 4: Dinner.

Discussion article for the meetup : Boston Meetup
[LINK] Vladimir Slepnev talks about logical counterfactuals
by Squark — 2015-09-03T18:29:55.566Z

Vladimir Slepnev (aka cousin_it) gives a popular introduction to logical counterfactuals and modal updateless decision theory in the Tel Aviv LessWrong meetup.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad30JlVh4dM&feature=youtu.be]
Actually existing prediction markets?
by Douglas_Knight — 2015-09-02T22:24:45.470Z

What public prediction markets exist in the world today? Have you used one recently?

What attributes do they have that should make us trust them or not, such as liquidity and transaction costs? Do they distort the tails? Which are usable by Americans?

This post is just a request for information. I don’t have much to say.

Intrade used to be the dominant market, but it is gone, opening up this question. The most popular question on prediction markets has been the US Presidential election. If a prediction market wants to get off the ground, it should start with this question. Since the campaign is gearing up, markets that hope to fill the vacuum should exist right now, hence this post.

Many sports bookies give odds on the election. Bookmakers are not technically prediction markets, but they are awfully close and I think the difference is not so important, though maybe they are less likely to provide historical data. They may well be the most liquid and accurate sources of odds. But the fact that they concentrate on sports is important. It means that they are less likely to expand into other forms of prediction and less likely to be available to Americans. I suspect that there are too many covering the election for an exhaustive list to be interesting, but feel free point to point out interesting ones, such as the most liquid, most accessible to Americans, or with the most extensive coverage of non-sports events.

Betting is illegal in America. This is rarely enforced directly against individuals, but often creates difficulty depositing money or using the sites. I don’t think that they usually run into problems if they avoid sports and finance. In particular, Intrade was spun off of a sports bookie specifically to reach Americans.

Here are a few comments on Wikipedia’s list. It seems to be using a strict market criterion, so it includes two sports sites just because they are structured as markets. Worse, it might exclude bookies that I would like to know about. Not counting cryptocurrency markets (which I would like to hear about), it appears that there are no serious money prediction markets. The closest is New Zealand-based iPredict, which is limited to a total deposit of US$6000, and it takes a 18 months to build up to that. The venerable Iowa Electronic Markets (restricted to federal elections) and the young NZ PredictIt have even smaller limits, in return for expl...
Stupid Questions September 2015
by polymathwannabe — 2015-09-02T18:26:09.079Z

This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.

Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.

To any future monthly posters of SQ threads, please remember to add the "stupid_questions" tag.
Bragging thread September 2015
by polymathwannabe — 2015-09-02T18:24:27.490Z

Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to comment on this thread explaining the most awesome thing you've done this month. You may be as blatantly proud of yourself as you feel. You may unabashedly consider yourself the coolest freaking person ever because of that awesome thing you're dying to tell everyone about. This is the place to do just that.

Remember, however, that this isn't any kind of progress thread. Nor is it any kind of proposal thread. This thread is solely for people to talk about the awesome things they have done. Not "will do". Not "are working on". Have already done. This is to cultivate an environment of object level productivity rather than meta-productivity methods.

So, what's the coolest thing you've done this month?

(Previous bragging thread)
Rough utility estimates and clarifying questions
by  — 2015-09-02T12:55:48.158Z

Related to: diminishing returns, utility.

I, for example, really don't care that much about trillions of dollars being won in a lottery or offered by an alien AI iff I make 'the right choice'. I mostly deal with things on pretty linear scales, barring sudden gifts from my relatives and Important Life Decisions. So the below was written with trivialities in mind. Why? Because I think we should train our utility-assigning skilz just like we train our prior-probability-estimating ones.

However, I am far from certain we should do it exactly this way. Maybe this would lead to a shiny new bias. At least I vaguely think I already have it, and formalizing it shouldn't make me worse off. I have tried to apply to myself the category of 'risk-averse', but in the end, it didn't change my prevailing heuristic: 'Everything's reasonable, if you have a sufficient reason.' Like, a pregnant woman should not run if she cares about carrying her child, but even then she should run if the house is on fire. Maybe my estimates of 'sufficient' are different than other people's, but they have served me so far; and setting the particular goal of ridding self of particular biases seems less instrumentally rational than just checking how accurate my individual predictions/impressions/any kind of actionable thoughts are.

So I drew up this list of utility components and will try it out at my leisure, tweaking it ad hoc and paying with time and money and health for my mistakes.

Utility of a given item/action for a given owner/actor = produced value + reduced cost + saved future opportunities + fun.

PV points: -2 if A/I 'takes from tomorrow'*, -1 if'harmful' only within the day, 0 if gives zero on net, 1 ifuseful within the day, 2 if 'gives to tomorrow'

*'tomorrow' is foreseeable future:)

RC points: -3 if takes from overall amount of money I have, less the *really* last-resort stash, -2 if takes from more than one-day-budget, -1 if takes from one-day-budget, 0 if zero on net, 1 if saves within a day (like 'saved on a ticket, might buy candy'), 2 saves for 'tomorrow' on net

SFO points: -2 if 'really sucks', -1 if no, 0 if dunno, 1 if yes

F points: -1 if no, 0 if okay, 1 if yes, 2 if hell yes.

U(bout of flue) =-2-3+0-1=-6. Even if I have flue, I might do research or call a friend or do something useful if it'snot very bad, then it will be only -5. On the other hand, I might get pneu...
Should there be more people on the leaderboard?
by casebash — 2015-09-02T11:52:27.771Z

I'm wondering what the optimal number of people on the leaderboard would be. I suspect that people who appear on the leaderboard post more often because they want to remain on it. The other advantage, is that if the leaderboard seems in reach, more people will compete to get on it.On the other hand, if too many people were added to the leaderboard, then "being on the leaderboard" would be worthless and people would only care if they had a high position.

There are currently 15 people on the leaderboard. I suspect that if there were 20 people on the leaderboard, that would increase the motivation effect, without significantly devaluing being on the leaderboard itself.

What do people think?
Rationality Quotes Thread September 2015
by elharo — 2015-09-02T09:25:19.804Z

Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)

Do not quote yourself.

Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.

No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.
No Good Logical Conditional Probability
by Scott Garrabrant — 2015-09-02T03:25:06.000Z

Fix a theory T over a language L. A coherent probability function is one that satisfies laws of probability theory, each coherent probability function represents a probability distribution on complete logical extensions of T.

One of many equivalent definitions of coherence is that P is coherent if P(s1)+P(s2)+…+P(sk)=1 whenever T can prove that exactly one of s1,…,sk is true.

Another very basic desirable property is that P(s)=1 only when s is provable. There have been many proposals of specific coherent probability assignments that all satisfy this basic requirement. Many satisfy stronger requirements that give bounds on how far P(s) is from 1 when s is not provable.

In this post, I modify the framework slightly to instead talk about conditional probability. Consider a function P which takes in a consistent theory T and a sentence s, and outputs a number P(s|T)∈[0,1], which represents the conditional probability of s given T.

We say that P is coherent if:

P(s1|T)+P(s2|T)+…+P(sk|T)=1 whenever T can prove that exactly one of s1,…,sk is true, and

P(s∧r|T)=P(r|T)⋅P(s|T∪{r}).

If s proves every sentence in T, then P(s|R∪T)≥P(s|R).

Theorem: There is no coherent conditional probability function P such that P(s|T)=1 only when T proves s.

Proof:

This proof will use the notation of log odds ℓ(p)=log2(p1−p) to make things simpler.

Let P be a coherent conditional probability function. Fix a sentence s which is neither provable nor disprovable from the empty theory. Construct an infinite sequences of theories as follows:

T0 is the empty theory.

To construct Tn+1, choose a sentence rn such that neither s→rn nor s→¬rn are provable in Tn. If P(s∧rn|Tn)≤P(s∧¬rn|Tn), then let Tn+1=Tn∪{s→rn}. Otherwise, let Tn+1=Tn∪{s→¬rn}.

Fix an n, and without loss of generality, assume P(s∧rn|Tn)≤P(s∧¬rn|Tn). Since P is coherent we have P(s∧r|Tn)+P(s∧¬r|Tn)=P(s|Tn). In particular, this means that P(s∧r|Tn)≤12P(s|Tn).

Observe that P(s∧(s→r)|Tn)=P(s|Tn+1)P(s→r|Tn), and P(¬s∧(s→r)|Tn)=P(¬s|Tn+1)P(s→r|Tn). Therefore,
P(s∧r|Tn)/P(¬s|Tn)=P(s|Tn+1)/P(¬s|Tn+1), so
12P(s|Tn)/P(¬s|Tn)≥P(s|Tn+1)/P(¬s|Tn+1).

In the language of log odds, this means that ℓ(P(s|Tn))−1≥ℓ(P(s|Tn+1)).

Let T∞ be the union of all the Tn. Note that by the third condition of coherence, ℓ(P(¬s|T∞))≥ℓ(P(¬s|Tn)) for all n, so ℓ(P(s|T∞))≤ℓ(P(s|Tn)) for all n

Consider ℓ(P(s|T0)) and ℓ(P(s|T∞)). These numbers cannot both be finite,

...
Meetup : San Antonio Meetup
by Bryan-san — 2015-09-02T01:21:54.523Z

Discussion article for the meetup : San Antonio Meetup

WHEN:
13 September 2015 12:30:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
12651 Vance Jackson Rd #118, San Antonio, TX 78230

Bubble tea, frozen yogurt, and discussion at Yumi Berry! All are welcome!

New Meetup to discuss rationality and all things LessWrong and meet the local community. Look for the sign that says Less Wrong!

Discussion article for the meetup : San Antonio Meetup
Meetup : Washington, D.C.: What If
by RobinZ — 2015-09-02T01:01:43.045Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: What If

WHEN:
06 September 2015 03:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
National Portrait Gallery

Crossposted from mailing list. Meeting in courtyard, gathering from 3:00pm, hard start 3:30pm - until closing.

In the spirit of XKCD creator Randall Munroe's What If, we'll be nerd sniping each other with ridiculous hypotheticals.

Come prepared!

Upcoming Meetups:

Sep 13: Sorting Hat

Sep 20: Fun and Games

Sep 27: Singing (weather permitting

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: What If
September 2015 Media Thread
by ArisKatsaris — 2015-09-01T22:42:59.557Z

This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.

If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.

Please post only under one of the already created subthreads, and never directly under the parent media thread.

Use the "Other Media" thread if you believe the piece of media you want to discuss doesn't fit under any of the established categories.

Use the "Meta" thread if you want to discuss about the monthly media thread itself (e.g. to propose adding/removing/splitting/merging subthreads, or to discuss the type of content properly belonging to each subthread) or for any other question or issue you may have about the thread or the rules.