trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : Sunday Meetup
by StonesOnCanvas — 2014-04-24T02:42:58.443Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Sunday Meetup

WHEN:
04 May 2014 04:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
Bidwell Park Bidwell and Elmwood, Buffalo, NY

Buffalo-area Less Wrong meetups on the first Sunday and Third Thursday of every month. (although you should always check out the meetup page for up to date information: http://www.meetup.com/Less-Wrong-Buffalo/)

Hi everyone, I was thinking we could try holding a meetup outdoors for once (weather permitting) at Bidwell Park. If its raining, we'll meet at the Elmwood Panera Bread instead.

Often times, we use "obviously wrong" beliefs as examples of what to avoid and why having correct beliefs is important. Beliefs like homeopathy or creationism are really tempting punching bags, but as Scott Alexander points out in the cowpox of doubt (http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/15/the-cowpox-of-doubt/), focusing on these easy targets can make it seem like most wrong beliefs are easy to spot and easy to avoid. With this in mind, let us kick off the spring with our own version of a spring cleaning: "epistemic spring cleaning"

Discussion article for the meetup : Sunday Meetup
LessWrongWiki User Pages Underutilized; Tag Proposal
by Gunnar_Zarncke — 2014-04-23T21:50:44.117Z

I think the LessWrong user pages are underutilized. There isn't even a wiki pages describing them (or at least I can't find it, otherwise I would have linked it here).

The user pages are what is shown when you click on a user like you would do to see that users other contributions, his karma and to send a personal message. These user pages are maintained and editable in the wiki but embedded in the blog view. This link makes these pages highly visible in everyday LW browsing and could create an awareness of LWers preferences.

Example: me in LW vs. me in LWWiki

Currently only 3 of the top ten poster have one (including EY). And this despite it being so easy to create them via the LWWiki (switch to the Wiki via the link in the nav bar and then click on your name). I guess it's partly because the sync-feature is relatively new.

JoshuaFox recently proposed to indicate your interest in business networking on the user page. But that is only one bit of information you could put there. Another information I'd like to see are the tags proposed on the LW Community Weekend Berlin which could indicate

your openness to personal messages

your willingness to answer questions (to specific topics); one special sub-case might be willingness to proofread posts of non-native speakers (the welcome page mentions four persons explicitly three of whom have not posted recently).

whether you operate under Crockers rules (a tag seen very often on the Berlin badges)

other information of this kind like offers of help, dating, ...

ADDED:

ete provided a Template:

I've made a template for UserInfo. Very open to suggestions on parameters, default text, ordering, category names. It's a wiki, so you're welcome to improve it if you feel you have something to add, or let me know and I'll do the editing.

Try it out on your userpages by adding {{UserInfo |network= |questions= |proofread= |messages= |helpwith= |crocker= }} to your userpage, or see the quick documentation for more details.
Meetup : Urbana-Champaign, Consciousness
by Mestroyer — 2014-04-23T16:54:09.534Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Urbana-Champaign, Consciousness

WHEN: 27 April 2014 12:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE: 300 S Goodwin Ave Apt 102, Urbana

Yes, really.

WHAT: What is consciousness? What things are conscious?

Recommended reading: http://lesswrong.com/lw/p9/the_generalized_antizombie_principle/ http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/consciousness.html

Feel free to post and add anything to the recommended reading, as long as it is short enough to read before Sunday. Don't post entire Hofstadter books.

WHERE: 300 S Goodwin Ave Apt 102, Urbana. The door directly to my ground-floor apartment, on which you can knock and I will hear it, is at the North-West corner of the building. Do not attempt to enter through the building's main door, because that requires keycard access, and I will not be waiting there to let you in. If you have trouble getting in, call me at REDACTED.

WHEN: 12pm Sunday.

Discussion article for the meetup : Urbana-Champaign, Consciousness
Meetup : Less Wrong Montreal - Easy Lifehacks
by bartimaeus — 2014-04-23T16:42:29.495Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong Montreal - Easy Lifehacks

WHEN:
28 April 2014 07:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
3459 Mctavish, Montréal, QC

There are lots of little things you can do to gain massive improvements in your life, and some of these tricks aren't widely known. Let's pool together any life hacks we've accumulated over the years, for the benefit of everyone. Hopefully, everyone will leave with something new to try!

The meetup is in a different room than the last few times; I'll update the event once I know exactly where it is. If anyone can't find it, PM me and I'll give you my phone number.

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong Montreal - Easy Lifehacks
Book Review: So Good They Can’t Ignore You, by Cal Newport
by Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg)  — 2014-04-23T03:27:15.308Z

Very brief summary of main themes

1) “Follow your passion” is terrible advice for most people. Don’t try to find your “true calling” because it’s a false concept.

2) The craftsman’s mindset: build skills through deliberate practice.

3) The importance of control: use your career capital to ask for and obtain autonomy, and other things that make jobs pleasant.

4) Have a mission: once you have skills, use them to explore options and find something that can be your life’s work and driving motivation.

Introduction

This book came to me highly recommended, and didn’t quite live up to its reputation. It’s not that I disagree with anything, but Newport seems to be trying to claim that his point is more new and exciting than I think it actually is. The style reeks of self-help manual. (This isn’t a thing wrong with the book itself, just a fact about my personal taste). Still. It has some points that would be new to me if not for LW/CFAR, and it frames them all together in a tidy package, which may not have happened before. I would definitely recommend it to the average smart high school student.

Favourable Points

1) Promoting Hufflepuff. The world needs more people making hard work and conscientiousness look shiny.

2) The concept of deliberate practice, associated with a career. Deliberate practice doesn’t seem to be an obvious concept, and I’ll get behind any popular book that explains it.

3) Pointing out that mastery can create its own enjoyment; that it’s possible to grow to love an arbitrary activity, if it’s challenging and you can take pride in your skill. Example: the author quoted a study1 that asked people whether they considered their work to be a job (just a way to pay the bills), a career (a path towards better work), or a calling (a vital part of your life and identity.) Looking at a single occupation, college administrative assistants, the study found that the employees were roughly evenly split between calling it a job, career, or calling, and that the strongest predictive factor was time spent in the position. Although there’s a possible sample bias here (employees whose needs aren’t satisfied will keep looking for other opportunities and leave if they find them), it&rsq...
Ergonomics Revisited
by diegocaleiro — 2014-04-22T21:57:55.873Z

Continuation of: Spend Money on Ergonomics, by Kevin

Three years have elapsed since Kevin wisely told us to spend money on treating our bodies well. It may be time to check for new gadgets, to verify what has worked and what has not etc...

If you have purchased an item for this purpose, or intend to buy one and don't know which, tell here, ask here.

Nick Bostrom uses a mouse that looks like a plane controller joystick.

I've seen keyboards that bend sideways, that are concave, that are convex, and that look like a sphere.

At FHI, dozens of books are used so that computer screens stay at eye level or above.

But I am no expert and I have not looked myself, nor would know how to. So please share in the comments the best knowledge about:

Keyboards

Mice

Chairs

Balls to sit on

Pillows

Beds/Matresses etc..

Screens - Size, position, brightness etc...

Other household office items - Stairs, Handles, Shower etc...
Link-Keeping organs alive on their own
by polymathwannabe — 2014-04-22T17:45:05.817Z

"A new medical device is keeping hearts warm and beating during transport, something that could be a major breakthrough in transplant history."

Video (the episode contains other news as well):

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/techknow/2014/04/heart-box-201442013591803545.html
The track record of survey-based macroeconomic forecasting
by VipulNaik — 2014-04-22T04:57:40.998Z

I'm interested in forecasting, and one of the areas where plenty of forecasting has been done is macroeconomic indicators. This post looks at what's known about macroeconomic forecasting.

Macroeconomic indicators such as total GDP, GDP per capita, inflation, unemployment, etc. are reported through direct measurement every so often (on a yearly, quarterly, or monthly basis). A number of organizations publish forecasts of these values, and the forecasts can eventually be compared against the actual values. Some of these forecasts are consensus forecasts: they involve polling a number of experts on the subject and aggregating the responses (for instance, by taking an arithmetic mean or geometric mean or appropriate weighted variant of either). We can therefore try to measure the usefulness of the forecasts and the rationality of the forecasters.

Why might we want to measure this usefulness and rationality? There could be two main motivations:

A better understanding of macroeconomic indicators and whether and how we can forecast them well.

A better understanding of forecasting as a domain as well as the rationality of forecasters and the inherent difficulties in forecasting.

My interest in the subject stems largely via (2) rather than (1): I'm trying to understand just how valuable forecasting is. However, the research I cite has motivations that involve some mix of (1) and (2).

Within (2), our interest might be in studying:

The usefulness and rationality of individual forecasts (that are part of the consensus) in absolute terms.

The usefulness and rationality of the consensus forecast.

The usefulness and rationality of individual forecasts relative to the consensus forecasts (treating the consensus forecast as a benchmark for how easy the forecasting task is).

The macroeconomic forecasting discussed here generally falls in the near but not very near future category in the framework I outlined in a recent post.

Here is a list of regularly published macroeconomic consensus forecasts. The table is taken from Wikipedia (I added the table to Wikipedia).

Organization name	Forecast name	Number of individuals surveyed	Number of countries covered	List of countries/regions covered	Frequency	How far ahead the forecasts are made for	Start date

Consensus Economics[2][3]
Consensus ForecastsTM
More than 700[2][3]
85[2][3]
Member countries of the G-7 industralized nation

...
How do you approach the problem of social discovery?
by InquilineKea — 2014-04-21T21:05:18.890Z

As in, how do you find ways to meet the right people you talk to? Presumably, they would have personality fit with you, and be high on both intelligence and openness. Furthermore, they would be in the point of their life where they are willing to spend time with you (although sometimes you can learn a lot from people simply by friending them on Facebook and just observing their feeds from time to time).

Historically, I've made myself extremely stalkable on the Internet. In retrospect, I believe that this "decision" is on the order of one of the very best decisions I've ever made in my life, and has made me better at social discovery than most people I know, despite my dual social anxiety and Asperger's. In fact, if a more extroverted non-Aspie could do the same thing, I think they could do WONDERS with developing an online profile.

I've also realized more that social discovery is often more rewarding when done with teenagers. You can do so much to impact teenagers, and they often tend to be a lot more open to your ideas/musings (just as long as you're responsible).

But I've wondered - how else have you done it? Especially in real life? What are some other questions you ask with respect to social discovery? I tend to avoid real life for social discovery simply because it's extremely hit-and-miss, but I've discovered (from Richard Florida's books) that the Internet often strengthens real-life interaction because it makes it so much easier to discover other people in real life (and then it's in real life when you can really get to know people).
Meetup : Ottawa - How to Run a Successful Less Wrong Meetup Group
by amacfie — 2014-04-21T17:41:52.641Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Ottawa - How to Run a Successful Less Wrong Meetup Group

WHEN: 30 April 2014 07:30:00PM (-0400)

WHERE: Royal Oak on the Canal, 221 Echo Dr, Ottawa, ON K1S 1N1, Canada

We'll go through and discuss the How to Run a Successful Less Wrong Meetup Group document, try some fun activities, and go meta: a meetup about meetups. There'll be a "LW" sign on the table.

Discussion article for the meetup : Ottawa - How to Run a Successful Less Wrong Meetup Group
Hawking/Russell/Tegmark/Wilczek on dangers of Superintelligent Machines [link]
by Dr_Manhattan — 2014-04-21T16:55:56.240Z

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-hawking/artificial-intelligence_b_5174265.html

Very surprised none has linked to this yet:

TL;DR: AI is a very underfunded existential risk.

Nothing new here, but it's the biggest endorsement the cause has gotten so far. I'm greatly pleased they got Stuart Russell, though not Peter Norvig, who seems to remain lukewarm to the cause. Also too bad this was Huffington vs something more respectable. With some thought I think we could've gotten the list to be more inclusive and found a better publication; still I think this is pretty huge.
Meetup : Effective Altruism 102 (NYC)
by Raemon — 2014-04-21T14:53:21.799Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Effective Altruism 102 (NYC)

WHEN:
26 April 2014 05:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
851 Park Place, Brooklyn NY 11216

It's been a while since we explicitly discussed Effective Altruism. The movement has changed a lot in the past couple years:
• There's a much more deliberate focus on entrepreneurship, • Givewell is spinning off Givewell Labs to explore more complex but high payoff opportunities
• MIRI has shifted focus, emphasizing math workshops and outreach to current-generation Narrow AI Safety experts in addition to Artificial General Intelligence researchers
Early saturday evening, April 26th, we'll have a series of short talks about the state of the movement and opportunities you can pursue, including:
1) How to think strategically about doing good.
2) How to switch careers effectively
3) Recent updates by organizations in the Effective Altruism movement.
WHEN+WHERE:
Saturday, April 26th, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Highgarden House
851 Park Place,
Brooklyn NY 11216

Discussion article for the meetup : Effective Altruism 102 (NYC)
Meetup : Munich Meetup
by cadac — 2014-04-21T13:36:23.945Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Munich Meetup

WHEN:
11 May 2014 02:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Theresienstraße 41, 80333 München

You are invited to come to the May Munich LW Meeutp! One of our regulars will give a short talk, probably about meditation. Everyone is welcome to bring articles to discuss, rationality-related games to play etc. Like in April, we're planning to meet outside the mathematics building at the LMU. Depending on the weather, we'll stay outside or occupy a free room inside the math department. Whoever brings food for the group is awesome. :) It goes without saying that newcomers are very welcome

Discussion article for the meetup : Munich Meetup
Utilitarian discernment bleg
by VipulNaik — 2014-04-20T23:33:26.974Z

People who're engaging in learning partly or wholly for the explicit purpose of human capital need to be strategic about their learning choices. Only some subjects develop human capital useful to the person's goals. Within each subject, only some subtopics develop useful human capital. Even within a particular course, the material covered in some weeks could be highly relevant, and the material covered in other weeks need to be relevant. Therefore, learners need to be discerning in figuring out what material to focus their learning effort on and what material to just skim, or even ignore.

Such discernment is most relevant for self-learners who are unconstrained by formal mastery requirements of courses. Self-learners may of course be motivated by many concerns other than human capital acquisition. In particular, they may be learning for pure consumptive reasons, or to signal their smarts to friends. But at any rate, they have more flexibility than people in courses and therefore they can gain more from better discernment.

Those who're taking courses primarily for signaling purposes need to acquire sufficient mastery to attain their desired grade, but even here, they have considerable flexibility:

People who're already able to get the top grade without stretching themselves too much have flexibility in how to allocate additional time. Should they try to acquire some more mastery of the entire curriculum, or delve deeper into one topic?

People who're far from getting a top grade may have the same grade-per-unit-effort payoff from delving deep into one subtopic or acquiring a shallow understanding of many topics. Considerations regarding long-term human capital acquisition can then help them decide what path to pursue among paths that confer roughly similar signaling benefits.

What self-learners and people with some flexibility in a formal learning situation need is what I call utilitarian discernment: the ability to figure out what stuff to concentrate on. Ideally, they should be able to figure this out relatively easily:

Sequencing within the course: Important topics are often foundational and therefore done early on.

Relative time and emphasis placed on topics should give an indicator of their relative importance.

Important topics should be explicitly marked as important by course texts, videos, and syllabi.

Important topics should receive more emphasis i

...
Human capital or signaling? No, it's about doing the Right Thing and acquiring karma
by VipulNaik — 2014-04-20T21:04:18.401Z

There's a huge debate among economists of education on whether the positive relationship between educational attainment and income is due to human capital, signaling, or ability bias. But what do the students themselves believe? Bryan Caplan has argued that students' actions (for instance, their not sitting in for free on classes and their rejoicing at class cancellation) suggest a belief in the signaling model of education. At the same time, he notes that students may not fully believe the signaling model, and that shifting in the direction of that belief might improve individual educational attainment.

Still, something seems wrong about the view that most people believe in the signaling model of education. While their actions are consistent with that view, I don't think they frame it quite that way. I don't think they usually think of it as "education is useless, but I'll go through it anyway because that allows me to signal to potential employers that I have the necessary intelligence and personality traits to succeed on the job." Instead, I believe that people's model of school education is linked to the idea of karma: they do what the System wants them to do, because that's their duty and the Right Thing to do. Many of them also expect that if they do the Right Thing, and fulfill their duties well, then the System shall reward them with financial security and a rewarding life. Others may take a more fateful stance, saying that it's not up to them to judge what the System has in store for them, but they still need to do the Right Thing.

The case of the devout Christian

Consider a reasonably devout Christian who goes to church regularly. For such a person, going to church, and living a life in accordance with (his understanding of) Christian ethics is part of what he's supposed to do. God will take care of him as long as he does his job well. In the long run, God will reward good behavior and doing the Right Thing, but it's not for him to question God's actions.

Such a person might look bemused if you asked him, "Are you a practicing Christian because you believe in the prudential value of Christian teachings (the "human capital" theory) or because you want to give God the impression that you are worthy of being rewarded (the "signaling" theory")?" Why? Partly, because the person attributes omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence to God, so that the ver...
LSD, Meditation, Enlightenment, and Ego Death
by Fink — 2014-04-20T19:41:39.459Z

A little background information first, I'm a computer science/neuroscience dual-major in my junior year of university. AGI is what I really want to work on and I'm especially interested in Gortzel's OpenCog. Unfortunately I do not have nearly the understanding of the human mind I would like, let alone the knowledge of how to make a new one.

DavidM's post on meditation is particularly interesting to me. I've been practicing mindfulness-based meditation techniques for some time now and I've seen some solid results but the concept of 'enlightenment' was always appealing to me, and I've always wanted to know if such a thing existed. I have been practicing his technique for a few weeks now and although it is difficult I believe I understand what he means by 'vibrations' in your attentional focus.

I've experimented with psilocybin mushrooms for about a year now. Mostly for fun, sometimes for better understanding my own brain. Light doses have enhanced my perception and led me to re-evaluate my life from a different perspective, although I am never as clear-headed as I would like.

I've read that LSD provides a 'cleaner' experience while avoiding some of the thought-loops of mushrooms, it also lasts much longer. Stanislav Grof once said that LSD can be to psychology what the microscope is to biology, with deep introspection we can view our thoughts coalesce. After months of looking for a reliable producer and several 'look-alike' drugs I finally obtained a few doses of LSD. Satisfied that it was the real thing I took a single dose and fell into my standard meditation session, trying to keep my concentration on the breath.

I experienced what wikipedia calls 'ego death'. That is I felt my 'self' splitting into the individual sub-components that formed consciousness. Acid is well-known for causing synaesthesia and as I fell deeper into meditation I felt like I could actually see the way sensory experiences interacted with cognitive heuristics and rose to the level of conscious perception. I felt that I could what see 'I' really was, what Douglas Hofstadter referred to as a 'strange loop' looking back on itself, with my perception switching between sensory input, memories, and thought patterns resonating in frequency with DavidM's 'vibrations'. Of course I was under the effects of an hallucinogenic drug, but I felt my experience was quite lucid.

DavidM hasn't posted in years

...