trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
How to Study Unsafe AGI's safely (and why we might have no choice)
by Punoxysm — 2014-03-07T07:24:45.334Z

TL;DR

A serious possibility is that the first AGI(s) will be developed in a Manhattan Project style setting before any sort of friendliness/safety constraints can be integrated reliably. They will also be substantially short of the intelligence required to exponentially self-improve. Within a certain range of development and intelligence, containment protocols can make them safe to interact with. This means they can be studied experimentally, and the architecture(s) used to create them better understood, furthering the goal of safely using AI in less constrained settings.

Setting the Scene

The year is 2040, and in the last decade a series of breakthroughs in neuroscience, cognitive science, machine learning, and computer hardware have put the long-held dream of a human-level artificial intelligence in our grasp. The wild commercial success of lifelike robotic pets, the integration into everyday work and leisure of AI assistants and concierges, and STUDYBOT's graduation from Harvard's Online degree program with an octuple major and full honors, DARPA, the NSF and the European Research Council have announced joint funding of an artificial intelligence program that will create a superhuman intelligence in 3 years.

Safety was announced as a critical element of the project, especially in light of the self-modifying LeakrVirus that catastrophically disrupted markets in 36 and 37. The planned protocols have not been made public, but it seems they will be centered in traditional computer security rather than techniques from the nascent field of Provably Safe AI, which were deemed impossible to integrate on the current project timeline.

Technological and/or Political issues could force the development of AI without theoretical safety guarantees that we'd certainly like, but there is a silver lining

A lot of the discussion around LessWrong and MIRI that I've seen (and I haven't seen all of it, please send links!) seems to focus very strongly on the situation of an AI that can self-modify or construct further AIs, resulting in an exponential explosion of intelligence (FOOM/Singularity). The focus on FAI is on finding an architecture that can be explicitly constrained (and a constraint set that won't fail to do what we desire).

My argument is essentially that there could be a critical multi-year period preceding any possible exponentially self-improving intelligence d...
Meetup : March Meetup: Body Hacking!
by Nova_Division — 2014-03-07T02:21:01.081Z

Discussion article for the meetup : March Meetup: Body Hacking!

WHEN:
15 March 2014 07:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
1314 Hosea L Williams Drive NE, Atlanta, GA 30317

(Rescheduled to March 15)

An overview of body hacking, what's possible, what's known, what needs more exploration, and what tools are available to you.

Presenters needed! Do you have expertise on any of this? Lemme know and you can do anything from a full presentation with slides and handouts to leading a discussion on a particular topic.

Also, please check out our facebook group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Atlanta.Lesswrong/

Discussion article for the meetup : March Meetup: Body Hacking!
Meetup : Canberra: Meta-meetup + meditation
by DanielFilan — 2014-03-07T01:04:58.151Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Canberra: Meta-meetup + meditation

WHEN:
28 March 2014 06:00:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
ANU Arts Centre

Our first regular meetup will have two parts: firstly, we will be discussing what we want to get out of meetups, what sort of things we would ilke to do in them, and related matters, and secondly, we will be taught how to meditate and have a practice session. Vegan snacks will be provided.

General meetup info:

Structured meetups are held on the second Saturday and fourth Friday of each month from 6 pm until 10 pm at the XSite (home of the XSA), located upstairs in the ANU Arts Centre.

There will be LWers at the Computer Science Students Association's weekly board games night, held on Wednesdays from 7 pm in the CSIT building, room N101.

Discussion article for the meetup : Canberra: Meta-meetup + meditation
Amanda Knox Redux: is Satoshi Nakamoto the real Satoshi Nakamoto?
by Cosmos — 2014-03-06T23:33:21.527Z

Many of you here have likely heard of Bitcoin, and maybe know something about it.

Earlier today, a story broke that a reporter had apparently tracked down the real Satoshi Nakamoto, infamous creator of the Bitcoin protocol.

This seems like an excellent opportunity to practice our Bayesian updating!

So, how likely do you think it is that this man is the founder of Bitcoin? What do you believe and why?
What we learned about Less Wrong from Cognito Mentoring advising
by VipulNaik — 2014-03-06T21:40:06.406Z

In late December 2013, Jonah, my collaborator at Cognito Mentoring, announced the service on LessWrong. Information about the service was also circulated in other venues with high concentrations of gifted and intellectually curious people. Since then, we're received ~70 emails asking for mentoring from learners across all ages, plus a few parents. At least 40 of our advisees heard of us through LessWrong, and the number is probably around 50. Of the 23 who responded to our advisee satisfaction survey, 16 filled in information on where they'd heard of us, and 14 of those 16 had heard of us from LessWrong. The vast majority of student advisees with whom we had substantive interactions, and the ones we felt we were able to help the most, came from LessWrong (we got some parents through the Davidson Forum post, but that's a very different sort of advising).

In this post, I discuss some common themes that emerged from our interaction with these advisees. Obviously, this isn't a comprehensive picture of the LessWrong community the way that Yvain's 2013 survey results were.

A significant fraction of the people who contacted us via LessWrong aren't active LessWrong participants, and many don't even have user accounts on LessWrong. The prototypical advisees we got through LessWrong don't have many distinctive LessWrongian beliefs. Many of them use LessWrong primarily as a source of interesting stuff to read, rather than a community to be part of.

About 25% of the advisees we got through LessWrong were female, and a slightly higher proportion of the advisees with whom we had substantive interaction (and subjectively feel we helped a lot) were female. You can see this by looking at the sex distribution of the public reviews of us from students.

Our advisees included people in high school (typically, grades 11 and 12) and college. Our advisees in high school tended to be interested in mathematics, computer science, physics, engineering, and entrepreneurship. We did have a few who were interested in economics, philosophy, and the social sciences as well, but this was rarer. Our advisees in college and graduate school were also interested in the above subjects but skewed a bit more in the direction of being interested in philosophy, psychology, and economics.

Somewhat surprisingly and endearingly, many of our advisees were interested in effective altruism and social impac

...
[LINK] Latinus rationalior ist.
by VAuroch — 2014-03-06T18:32:38.731Z

http://mappingignorance.org/2014/02/03/mandela-was-right-the-foreign-language-effect/

Summary: Across the board, people are less prone to cognitive bias in a non-native language.

Conclusion: If all important discourse was conducted in Latin, or any other language native to no one, people would make better decisions.
Corollary: All the attempts to make a constructed "scientific language" actually could have worked relatively well, for reasons entirely unconnected to the painstaking scientific structure of the languages.
Meetup : Moscow, Meet up
by Yuu — 2014-03-06T05:31:02.138Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow, Meet up

WHEN:
09 March 2014 04:00:00PM (+0400)

WHERE:
Russia, Moscow, ulitsa L'va Tolstogo 16

We will gather at the same second entrance, but we will go to a room inside the building at 16:00. So please do not be late. We will have:

Report about “Zen to Done”.

Report about cognitive biases.

Stumbling on happiness for rationalists presentation.

Report about "Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work" book.

Cognitive behavioural therapy workshop.

We gather in the Yandex office, you need the second revolving door with the sign “Яндекс”, here is the photo of the entrance you need. You need to pass the first entrance and through the archway. Here is additional guide how to get there: link.

You can fill this one minute form (in Russian), to share your contact information.

We start at 16:00 and sometimes finish at night. Please pay attention that we only gather near the second entrance and then come inside.

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow, Meet up
Meetup : Auckland Preliminary Meetup
by Slackson — 2014-03-06T04:31:05.498Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Auckland Preliminary Meetup

WHEN:
08 March 2014 02:00:00PM (+1300)

WHERE:
Albert Park, Auckland

I got back from the second Melbourne CFAR workshop recently and it was good. It's well worthwhile having a local rationalist community and while there are some good thinkers in my immediate circle of friends, meeting more and learning from each other would be awesome.

I'm not sure if others will be using it, but let's meet near the gazebo in Albert Park at 2pm Saturday. I'll be carrying my CFAR bag and water bottle if you want to come over and say hi. I would be wearing a "Just shy, not antisocial" shirt if I had one. If you're interested in coming, just comment, or come anyway.

Cheers,
Marcel.

Discussion article for the meetup : Auckland Preliminary Meetup
How my math skills improved dramatically
by JonahS — 2014-03-05T20:27:25.322Z

When I was a freshman in high school, I was a mediocre math student: I earned a D in second semester geometry and had to repeat the course. By the time I was a senior in high school, I was one of the strongest few math students in my class of ~600 students at an academic magnet high school. I went on to earn a PhD in math. Most people wouldn't have guessed that I could have improved so much, and the shift that occurred was very surreal to me. It’s all the more striking in that the bulk of the shift occurred in a single year. I thought I’d share what strategies facilitated the change.

I became motivated to learn more

I took a course in chemistry my sophomore year, and loved it so much that I thought that I would pursue a career in the physical sciences. I knew that understanding math is essential for a career in the physical sciences, and so I became determined to learn it well. I immersed myself in math: At the start of my junior year I started learning calculus on my own. I didn’t have the “official” prerequisites for calculus, for example, I didn’t know trigonometry. But I didn’t need to learn trigonometry to get started: I just skipped over the parts of calculus books involving trigonometric functions. Because I was behind a semester, I didn’t have the “official” prerequisite for analytic geometry during my junior year, but I gained permission to sit in on a course (not for official academic credit) while taking trigonometry at the same time. I also took a course in honors physics that used a lot of algebra, and gave some hints of the relationship between physics and calculus.

I learned these subjects better simultaneously than I would have had I learned them sequentially. A lot of times students don’t spend enough time learning math per day to imprint the material in their long-term memories. They end up forgetting the techniques that they learn in short order, and have to relearn them repeatedly as a result. Learning them thoroughly the first time around would save them a lot of time later on. Because there was substantial overlap in the algebraic techniques utilized in the different subjects I was studying, my exposure to them per day was higher, so that when I learned them, they stuck in my long-term memory.

I learned from multiple expositions

This is related to the above point, but is w...
Meetup : Washington DC Fun and Games Meetup
by rocurley — 2014-03-05T17:04:27.215Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC Fun and Games Meetup

WHEN:
09 March 2014 03:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

We'll be meeting to hang out and play games.

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC Fun and Games Meetup
Meetup : Israel Less Wrong Meetup - Social and Board Games
by SoftFlare — 2014-03-05T17:01:20.532Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Israel Less Wrong Meetup - Social and Board Games

WHEN:
06 March 2014 07:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
google tel aviv

We're going to have a meetup on Thursday, March 6th at Google Israel's offices, Electra Tower, 98 Yigal Alon st., Tel Aviv.

This time we're going to have a social meetup! Unlike previous meetups where we had a set agenda, an a talk - this time we'll be socializing and playing games. Specifically, we look forward to playing any cool board or card game anyone will bring.

We'll start the meetup at 19:00, and we'll go on as much as we like to. Feel free to come a little bit later, as there is no agenda. (We've decided to start slightly earlier this time to give us more time and accommodate people with different schedules).

We'll meet at the 29th floor of the building (Note: Not the 26th where Google Campus is).
If you arrive and cant find your way around, call Anatoly who is graciously hosting us at 054-245-1060.

Things that might happen:
- You'll trade cool ideas with cool people from the Israel LW community.
- You'll discover kindred spirits who agree with you about one/two boxing.
- You'll kick someone's ass (and teach them how you did it) at some awesome boardgame.
- You'll discover how to build a friendly AGI running on cold fusion (well probably not)

Things that will happen for sure:
- You'll get to hang out with awesome people and have fun!

There is also talk of food and beers, and if you'd like to bring some too - that would be great. (But you don't have to).

If you have any question feel free to email me at hochbergg@gmail.com or call me at 054-533-0678 or call Anatoly at 054-245-1060.

See you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : Israel Less Wrong Meetup - Social and Board Games
Proposal: LW courses
by iarwain1 — 2014-03-05T16:18:09.867Z

For a long time I have tried to study things on my own, at my own pace. But it was always an uphill struggle against strong akrasia issues, and eventually I came to the conclusion that the only thing that really seems to work is to have externally-imposed deadlines. The only way I could think of to do this was to sign up for classes, so I enrolled in a number of MOOCs. So far this has worked wonders - I went from basically spending most of my time playing around and wasting time, to several recent days where I studied for several hours straight.

The only thing I don't like about this setup is that there's a very limited number of really good MOOCs out there on the subjects I want to study. Also, most MOOCs are geared for a wider audience and are therefore dumbed-down to a certain degree.

So I had the following idea: A lot of us on LW seem to be studying a lot of the same material, whether it's the sequences, MIRI course list, CFAR booklist, or any of the various recommended reading lists. What if those who were studying the same thing would get together and set a schedule for themselves to finish the reading material, complete with deadlines? This might not be a normal "externally imposed" deadline, but at least it's a deadline with some social pressure to back it up. I can't be the only one on LW who could benefit from a deadline.

The details would need to be worked out, but here's a preliminary version of the way I envision it:

There should be a monthly thread for requests for new classes. The request should specify the text to be used, or it could ask for suggestions for a good text. The request should also specify the approximate pace (very slow - slow - normal - fast - very fast), or an approximate weekly time commitment.

The next thing that would be needed for each proposed class would be for someone who's already gone through that text to propose a rough calendar for the course. For example, they could say that given the requested pace / time commitment, you should expect to spend about 3 months on that particular text. Also, some chapters are harder than others, so the calendar should specify, for example, that you should expect to spend just one week on Chapters 1-3, but Chapter 7 will need to spread over three weeks. It would also be very useful to specify what prerequisites are needed for that text. (Similar to this thread. Keep in mind that differe

...
Meetup : Urbana-Champaign: Discussion
by Manfred — 2014-03-05T09:14:28.458Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Urbana-Champaign: Discussion

WHEN:
09 March 2014 01:00:02PM (-0600)

WHERE:
412 W. Elm St., Urbana, IL

Starting topic: should we expect there to be easy ways to improve your life (life hacks)? Two articles that bear on this by Gwern and Scott.

Also, I'm going to finish up my sequence of posts on logical uncertainty (starts here) by then, and would be pleased to answer questions.

Discussion article for the meetup : Urbana-Champaign: Discussion
LessWrong Hamburg Third Meetup Notes: Small Steps Forward
by Gunnar_Zarncke — 2014-03-04T23:25:30.458Z

Review of our third Meetup : LessWrong Hamburg - Structure

Summary

To make it short: We didn't follow the nice agenda we planned. We did the procrastination topic but diverged a lot.

Course of events

In the long open beginning (expected) we talked a lot, played some MindTrap and had lunch together.

Then to get started I began the presentation of the main topic of this meetup: procrastination. This was basically a summary of

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrastination

http://lesswrong.com/lw/9wr/my_algorithm_for_beating_procrastination/

http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.de/2010/05/cure-for-procrastination-forgive.html

http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastinate.html

This led to lots of satellite discussions which partly diverged but mostly were centered on examples of procrastination (though afterwards some felt that this got out of hand with too many personal details; this was controversial). This part was all in all very long but also led to quite some understanding of the problems of and strategries against procrastination.

In the previous meetups there was an interest in the topics of and the objectives behind lesswrong. To get an authentic handle on the former I posted a topic poll in the Polling Thread. This I presented shortly (see appendix).

Interesting points we arrived at:

The image of lukeprogs procastination algorithm led to a discussion of what we called the mathematical fallacy/bias: Just giving a mathematical formula naming properties of interest leads to the false impression of scientificity and presents a false image of correctness and precision that just isn't there. This is a method sometimes seen in pseudo-science publications to give the impression of science. It is also used in economic sciences to approximate tendencies numerically. The general pattern of the mathematical fallacy is that modelling complex human behavior (like procrastination) in a simple formula is a special case of over-simplification riding piggy-back on the habit to take formulas at face value. The disclaimer on such formular (lukeprog actually gave one) just cannot be large enough. In this special case it would have been better to just name the four (nonlinear, crossrelated) effects on motivation instead of using the formula (at least until the five quantities in the formula are actually shown or defined in ...
Don't teach people how to reach the top of a hill
by PhilGoetz — 2014-03-04T21:38:53.926Z

When is it faster to rediscover something on your own than to learn it from someone who already knows it?

Sometimes it's faster to re-derive a proof or algorithm than to look it up. Keith Lynch re-invented the fast Fourier transform because he was too lazy to walk all the way to the library to get a book on it, although that's an extreme example. But if you have a complicated proof already laid out before you, and you are not Marc Drexler, it's generally faster to read it than to derive a new one. Yet I found a knowledge-intensive task where it would have been much faster to tell someone nothing at all than to tell them how to do it.

I'm digitizing my books by chopping off their bindings and scanning them. I recently hired someone to do the chopping, and have been teaching him how to do it. The first step is to chop the book into sections of about 50 pages each, separating them at the binding. I do this by placing the opened book cover-down under a paper chopper, and cutting it precisely where the two opened pages meet.

The "chopper" is a manual paper-cutter with a 15-inch steel blade that weights about 10 pounds and is razor-sharp. If the blade is a fifth of a millimeter off its mark, it misses the gap between the pages and makes the cutting much harder, as it must go through paper instead of only glue. Being an entire millimeter off makes the blade catch the page maybe half a centimeter further away from its edge, depending on how the base of the page is angled, cutting off words and ruining the book. You can't see where the blade touches the book while making the cut. You can look before making the cut and position the book, but then you need one hand to operate the blade, and the physics of a book that wishes to spring shut, fall away from the blade, and fall onto one side, make it nearly impossible to keep the groove in the book in place for the blade with just one hand, unless you hold it with your fingers underneath the blade, which you can do only once.

My technique is to do this:

Face the chopper with the blade's hinge opposite you. The chopper has a square base. If you're facing north, the hinge is at its northeast corner; the blade will cut along the eastern edge.

Slide the book, cover-down, under the blade until the blade is over the binding.

Lower the blade until it almost touches the book.

Grasp the book with 2 hands, one on each side of the blade

...
Meetup : LW Vienna Meetup 
by RationalityVienna — 2014-03-04T16:33:25.881Z

Discussion article for the meetup : LW Vienna Meetup

WHEN:
15 March 2014 03:00:00PM (+0000)

WHERE:
Reichsratsstrasse 17, 1010 Vienna, Austria

Meetup at Cafe Votiv, where Anna Leptikon will present some psychological musings on rationality, followed by a discussion. Newcomers welcome. Please register for the FB event: https://www.facebook.com/events/627247490680732/?context=create

Discussion article for the meetup : LW Vienna Meetup
Intro to Rhetoric?
by rule_and_line — 2014-03-04T04:19:56.970Z

Is there an explicit summary somewhere of the the LW community's views on rhetoric?

There clearly exist people around this community who can persuasively carry a rational point. I also strongly expect that there exist specific instructions for training rhetorical skills, and these skills apply pretty generally.

But I also quasi-expect that rhetorical techniques LW community members appreciate might differ in specific ways from rhetorical techniques taught in popular books. All that being said, I can't find any page where somebody explains why he or she explicitly practices something picked up via LW (e.g. Eliezer's "concrete-abstract" writing pattern) to the exclusion of something else in a standard text on rhetoric.

So a brief search didn't find the evidence I weakly expected. What am I missing? Do we have a few pages somewhere? Do we normally point curious individuals to some standard text? Or do you have a favorite intro not mentioned on LW yet?