trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Chapter 8: Why is this Important?
by ld97 — 2020-03-02T10:11:06.162Z

If you will feel confused reading this paragraph - you failed your exam.

If the thing that is now happening was expected by you - A+
If you were thinking that I am wrong but understanding what's going on - A-.
If you can only explain why you were thinking so, but don't understand what's happening - B.
If you had noticed that something goes wrong before opening that article - C.

In all the cases except A+, the fist sentence was for you. But don't worry about it too much, this article is about it.

I know that feeling confused is not the best feeling. I know how does it hurt if you realized that you were wrong. I've been feeling that many times in my life. If you haven't received at least A+ - you were wrong. The other marks only show your current level. Let me explain what happened:

We hadn't understood what the Filter is in the previous part. We don't have an explanation. The only thing that we did - we connected it to the word you know: attention. I've created a circle reference, that doesn't look like a circle to your brain. It was not an accident. I was realizing what am I doing. And the exam is passed by you, only if you had predicted that it was an exam. But there is nothing bad if you hadn't. It was only a little game. And it's purpose is to be an example of what's happening during that kind of situation.

If you have a strong wish to justify yourself - you can try. I can give you a list of fine excuses: "It was a trick! I was tired! I've been reading your dumb article the whole day!". But it seems to me that in that case, you'll realize that you are tricking yourself. Is it better to be fooled double? Does usage of this workaround worth feeling better once?

And if you thought like: "No, it never worth it" - I've tricked you again. And more - writing that paragraph, I was thinking that excuses are wrong, and found that I am fooling myself.

The truth is - sometimes they are the only acceptable solution.

But while using them, you should be very careful.

Last summer, I was in depression. That's how it looks from inside: walking in circles of judging yourself for your mistakes. Without any hope to find an exit. Nothing makes sense. You're looking at the gift from your girlfriend and think: "Right now, I should be happy." But there is no feeling o...
Chapter 7: How to Focus?
by ld97 — 2020-03-02T10:08:09.743Z

//DISCLAIMER: BEFORE WRITING A COMMENT TO THIS ARTICLE READ NEXT ONE! THEY ARE STRONGLY COUPLED!

//DISCLAIMER II: You made the long path reading this series. I want you to know - you are great. And now I need your help. Take this Curious Sword - you'll need it, and in the end, you will understand why. Sorry, there is no time to explain it right now.

We need to filter references that Working memory (WM) will receive.

We can use:

The pool of references that are trying to get to our WM.
Current references in VM.
Information we have about our brain state.

If the Working memory is empty, we can fill it with any reference. But let's choose an object that had "strongest" activation. The object is consists of other objects and their connections. Let's summarize the weights of connections that were providing the signal. And if they are related to some object - each additional point will increase its probability to win our race to WM.

But our problem is that our inbox that receives messages from other parts of the brain is never empty. You can't stop it. Even if you are not thinking, you will process the sensory information itself. That's the thing that allows you "not to think." You are replacing your thoughts with sensory information processing. That's a great exercise to improve the control on your filter, but Working Memory still won't free. I think if you find a way to achieve it, you'll get BSOD, and probably the last word in this acronym will be completely literal.

It seems like our current question is not the easiest one. Maybe we should collect additional information? Let's try to create a simple example.

Imagine that you are listening to music. That's what you are focusing on. Your expectation model is trying to predict the next chord. You are happy because you can do it, and so on. And suddenly your internet connection lost. Music stops. You have a problem. You are looking on the screen of your device, and it shows you "No Network Available." In a panic, because today is the day then you needed to send the incredibly important presentation, you are trying to remember if you paid your ISP last month. Then something says "Meow" very close to the router. You realize that if you have a cat, it was not a great idea to put the cable on the floor. You stick the wire in the router,...
Chapter 6: How does it Work?
by ld97 — 2020-03-02T10:07:44.653Z

Finding a path in the Knowledge Graph - that's what this part about.
How works the machine that will provide our signal across the network?
We have only objects activations, connections strengths, and the rule "fire together - wire together." It seems like we need a hint.
I guessed that the pathfinding mechanism should be observable by ourselves. We can remember something, and it looks like we have some control over it. I decided that I need to know how does the thing named "I" works with memory.

And here, I remembered memory models. They don't fit for describing what happens inside, but now we can do it! We know about Long-Term Potentiation that allows us to remember things for short and long periods. We know about Hebb's rule. Maybe we can connect our experience with their description of the behavioral part, improve them, and create our one?
And so I decided to re-read about them. And there was one strange fact. The number of random things that people can remember at one time is not dependent on "information size".
You can simply remember "world", "within", "enormous", "logging", "dog", "workaround", "apple"
But if I will give you: 1, 5, 30, 94, 83, 18, 12, 48, 0, 43, 134 - you'll probably fail to remember them by reading one time. And the amount of information in that number row is much less than in word-sequence, no matter how you will count.
And yes, that random was like in XKCD: Random Number, but in real experiments, it wasn't.
We have one part of that puzzle. We organize information in the strongly coupled networks. Numbers were less coupled, there were more objects. But why does our "UI/UX" part even care about the number of objects?
If we were copying information, we shouldn't care about "objects."
But who said that we copy it?
If we build an application, we have a simple UI part, that cares only about showing us information. And we have a powerful server behind it that solves complicated tasks.
What if all the solution is performing in the server part? What if "Me" only exists to choose the next task in a row?
What if our UI doesn't have enough memory to store the data?
The small amount of memory + evidence about different sizes of data retrieved + evidence about the constant amount of obje...
Chapter 5: How to Describe?
by ld97 — 2020-03-02T10:07:03.166Z

A quick reminder about rules: We have a network of objects and two different parts of it activated at the same time. The connection between them hasn't established yet. If we try to increase the strength of the signal or reduce the activation threshold - we will receive a complete mess as an output. Our goal is to create a mechanism that will work only using existing information about the network.
Now I will add some mathematics to describe our problem with more formal language. There won't be any complicated stuff. We've been already using it all this time, but haven't used this terminology.
First of all, let's rename our network of objects to Knowledge Graph. If "graph" sounds scary to you, or you feel like "oh, it was that thing from discrete mathematics," - don't worry. I will quickly explain what it is and why our network is a graph.
The graph is a set of vertices and edges between them. Imagine circles and lines connecting them.
Vertices are circles. Lines are edges.
In our network, vertices are objects. Connections between them are edges.
We were talking about graphs all the time you are reading this sequence. But didn't call them so. And most of the time, we were talking about Oriented Weighted Graph.
Oriented means that instead of lines, we will use arrows. They show us how the signal can travel among the graph. If we have an arrow from the vertex (object), the signal can go from vertex-sender to vertex-receiver.
Weighted means that every arrow will have some number on top of it. In our case, it will be connection strength.
Graph theory is about finding some common rules for structures that can be described with vertices and edges. It answers questions like:
How can ve travel between vertices using edges?
Can we color vertices by some rule? For example, can we color graph the way no neighbors (connected vertices) won't have the same color?
And etc.
Here comes the trickiest part of all this stuff. Remember, how did we define objects? The strongly coupled subnetworks of neurons. Inside they are also graphs! So we have a Graph of graphs. And vertices of inner graphs can have their own "independent" connections. And that's why we can split the object "Special Relativity" to "relativity" and "special" parts, that have separate connections and meanings. W...
Chapter 4: What's the Problem?
by ld97 — 2020-03-02T10:04:52.514Z

To solve some task, you need to have it. What's the reason to have a task? Why do we work on it? Imagine someone has a job for you. Or you defined your mission by yourself. What do you trying to achieve?

I've described it like this: I am solving Problem.

But what is the Problem? When do you have problems? Let's find some examples. I feel like I have a Problem:

When I want an ice-cream, but there is no shop around.
When I want to buy a new smartphone because I've broken my old one.
When I realize that there is only one smartphone of reasonable size that will fit in my hand released in 2019.
When I see that this smartphone created by a Japanese company and it doesn't ship to my country.
When I find that if I will buy it somewhere and ship it to myself, I'll pay twice.
When I want to know what the Problem is, but no definition fits my needs.

(Sorry for all those smartphone examples, but they have stupidly enormous sizes)

You can think about it yourself too. What are your problems?

By asking the previous question, I've created another problem. But don't think about it too much. Continuous recursive thinking makes your brain ache. That's was not an example of reverse motivation, really don't go too deep! And the previous sentence wasn't also. And... Sorry, I couldn't resist it.

What's common with all these examples?

We have some expectation about how should the World look like:

"There should be something common in these examples" or
"There should exist a small smartphone with 3.5 jack" or
"I can remember some of my problems" or
"I can make some definition of "problem."

What we also have is our current state:

"I don't know what's common in these examples" or
"I don't know any smartphone that fits my needs" or
"Right now I am not thinking about any of my problems" or
"I hadn't defined "problem" yet."

We have a difference between them. And basically, that's it. The Problem is the difference between your expectations and the current state.

But how to map it on our model? There are no expectations, only objects, and their connections. How to realize that there is a problem? Let's define the parts.

Our current state is a result of the processing of our sensory information. It represents "me r...
Chapter 3: What's an Object?
by ld97 — 2020-03-02T10:04:32.583Z

In the real world, there are no "objects" in the way we get used to feeling them. While working with computers, we map "objects" to bytes by compiling programs. And we use "object" word for different stuff: variables, functions, etc. If you will look from the physics point on your chair, there is no "chair object." That's something even more complicated. But the "objectivization" of that complex "something" makes you don't care about all this philosophic stuff when you want to sit on it. I've decided to find what represents an "object" in the world of neurons.

I'd been playing with texts, words, letters, optical illusions for months. That was driving my friends and colleagues mad. I've been creating quizzes. I've been asking them to finish phrases or read words without some lttrs. I've been giving them examples like "theory epigenetics memory" and "Epigenetics memory theory." Or "relativity special" and "Special relativity."

I've found that well-known pattern they were describing like "one object," but if I had broken arrangement and decoupled it, they were describing it as a "set of objects."

Decoupled and broken arrangement. Sounds pretty similar to Hebb's rule!

To represent the model of each letter you are reading from your screen, we need to use thousands of neurons. Maybe more, I haven't tested yet. But there are about 80 billion of them in the brain. And with that amount of free memory, thousands won't make a big deal.

And if two neurons can wire together - there should be strongly coupled subnetworks of thousands of them. And if we will activate enough parts of a subnetwork that will enable it whole.

If strongly-coupled networks exist, we should have a less strong connection in between. If we adapt Hebb's rule to subnetworks level, it will explain why people count "Special relativity" as one, but "relativity special" as two objects. Because one is a pattern that fires without any noticeable delay, and the other is not.

It also explains why do we see optical illusions. They provide us information that is enough to activate some patterns in our brain. And yep, that's why cartoon characters look normal. They have the only specific subset of p...
Chapter 2: What's Inside?
by ld97 — 2020-03-02T10:03:54.325Z

I've been such a fool, thinking that memory would be the evident part. There were some memory models. But they were describing memory by duration, type of information, etc. That was exciting to read about experiments their authors made. Like "magic number 7", and Baddeley's experiments on different types of data like sound/visual. But there were a few problems:

There was no one MODEL TO RULE THEM ALL. They were separately explaining different kinds of behavior.
There was no way to connect any of them to my knowledge about neurons and all neuroscience-related stuff. In my opinion, they were full of: "And here happens some magic, and it does the trick."

I've decided to move on and try to connect all the facts I've learned with existing neuroscience.

Inside the brain, we have neurons. There are different types of them and several types of mediators. We don't care about them right now. We will use a simple model, where each neuron connects to others. While receiving input signals, it charges up.

Our goal is to store some data. And also retrieve that data.

It seems like retrieving data is related to neuron activation. When it's activated, it takes part in forming the model.

But what data is stored here? Let's see. Connections between neurons have different strengths. If it is weak, most probably, another neuron won't fire with ours. If it is strong, it will increase the probability of chain-reaction. So, we will keep the strength of our connections to other neurons as data. The questions of charging, leaking, threshold, we will leave behind the scene.

We defined our data as connections strengths. How to write this data?

There is one theory: Neurons that fire together, wire together. Then you coactivate two neurons - connection strength increases. That's called Hebb's rule. And with increasing strength, the probability that the second neuron will activate after activating first growing too.

But why do we tend to forget something?

After some period of inactivity, neurons that were connected by Hebb's rule start losing the connection power. If I understood it right, it could sustain for days, but not longer. For more information, and to check me, you can read about "Early Long-Term Potentiation" (E-LTP).

If we know that something Early exists, there should be something Late. I want to in...
Chapter 1: What's the Question?
by ld97 — 2020-03-02T10:03:25.691Z

Hello! I've created a simple model of how the brain processes information. It's very approximative but seems useful. I've never seen anything that looks similar to it. It makes me feel uncertain about if it's new or I missed something in my education. There won't be a lot of math formulas or tricky theorems. There won't be any complicated neuroscience. Of course, this model is strongly coupling with both. But one of the things I've learned working on it: starting from complex formulas - won't work in most cases. And I bet that at the end of this sequence you will better understand why.
As it usually happens, my path started from the Question. More precisely, from a set of questions:

Why can I remember Lego, that my parents gifted me on my 6th birthday, but can't remember that theorem of that guy, that I was learning for exams?
Why do I learn texts of songs and poems so smoothly? What differs from prose? And how does this difference helps me keep poetry in mind?
Why Feynman Lectures on Physics are enjoyable for me but a physics book from the university library - not?
Why can I read the HPMoR in two evenings, without any breaks?

Some of them were more meaningful:

How to learn something effectively?
How should I do my job? (I am an Android Software Engineer)
How to communicate with other people?

And a bunch of other questions that had simple wording, but unfortunately hadn't got an Answer.
Ok, there were a couple of answers. Some of them were like circle-dependent. Some were not complete:

How to learn something effectively? - Study hard.
How should I do my job? - You should write a clean code.
How to communicate with other people? - Interest them, listen to them, use your empathy.

I tried to ask more questions to clarify what do those answers mean. To understand, how should a "hard study" work. Or how to interest people. Where is the switch that enables "Interested mode"?
That switch should be somewhere in the brain. I had pretty strong evidence that people I was talking to had them. And they have been using brains to answer their questions.
If so, I can use mine to answer my Question!
I've decided that my little research should start with memory. I thought: "Working with information - is about operations with memory. If you don't know how does data store - how could you describe what h...
Is there any value in self-quarantine (from Coronavirus), if you live with other people who aren't taking similar precautions?
by Eli Tyre — 2020-03-02T07:31:10.586Z

I live in a house with four other people, including two that I share a bathroom with.

Does it help me at all to self quarantine, and not leave the house, if my housemates continue to go to work? I would mostly stay in my own room, except that I would need to go to the bathroom and wash dishes.
"What Progress?" Gwern's 10 year retrospective
by Ben Pace — 2020-03-02T06:55:09.033Z
Link: https://www.gwern.net/newsletter/2019/13#what-progress

This is a thrilling read. Some favourite lines:

And that was that. The FBI would later pay me some visits, but I was long done with the DNMs and had moved on.

and

The key result was Rietveld et al 2013, the first truly successful IQ GWAS. Rietveld et al 2013 found GWAS hits; further, it found between-sibling differences. (This sibling test would be replicated easily a dozen times by 2020.) Reading it was a revelation. The debate was over: behavioral genetics was right, and the critics were wrong. Kamin, Gould, Lewontin, Shalizi, the whole sorry pack—annihilated. IQ was indeed highly heritable, polygenic, and GWASes would only get better for it, and for all the easier traits as well. (“To see the gods dispelled in mid-air and dissolve like clouds is one of the great human experiences. It is not as if they had gone over the horizon to disappear for a time; nor as if they had been overcome by other gods of greater power and profounder knowledge. It is simply that they came to nothing.”)

and the final line

If I have not always been right from the start, I have at least been less wrong than most in updating faster than most (DNB, behavioral genetics, DL/DRL).
Is Coronavirus active in Summer? 
by Anton Lorenzen — 2020-03-01T20:57:20.606Z

It seems like the corona virus has spread mostly in cold climates on the northern hemisphere (in winter) and there are very few (confirmed) cases in Africa, South America and Australia. On the one hand the first two probably don't have the capabilities for testing on a large scale, but they should have it easier to detect the virus, since it can't be confused for the common cold. Could it be that the virus is transmitted (well) only in cold climates? And would that mean that the danger in Europe/the US will reduce drastically by May or June?
SARS, MERS and COVID-19
by jmh — 2020-03-01T20:53:06.459Z

Can anyone explain the difference (lay terms) between the coronavirus strain that produced SARS and the one the produced MERS?

On reason I ask is that SARS seems to have died out (last reported case in 2004). However MERS is still being reported periodically.

Would knowing these differences, and with what is currently known about COVID-19, can something be said about COVID-19 and expectations of how it plays out over time? Could we expect it to die out like SARS, be semi controlled but still infecting people over time?
Do 24-hour hand sanitizers actually work?
by gilch — 2020-03-01T20:41:43.288Z

With the recent virus scare, I've become more interested in hand sanitizers because even for "airborne" viruses, most transmission happens through contact with surfaces, so hand hygiene is very important. I came across one called Armor Mist that claims to work for 24 hours with a single application. (The label only says "12+ hours", the 24-hour "or ten hand washings" figure is from the FAQ on their website.) This sounds too good to be true (but so was the smallpox vaccine), so I'm not sure.

I'm rational enough to spot and avoid obvious woo with no plausible mechanism of action (like homeopathy), but once it passes that bar, I become really uncertain. The sonic mosquito repellers, for example, had me going for a while. The claim was that it mimicked the sound of a predator, like the wing-beats of a dragonfly. In principle, it could have worked. There's a plausible mechanism of action compatible with both biology and physics. There are also examples of using fake predators to control other pests. However, it turns out that mosquitoes are pretty much deaf and these are completely ineffective. That it seems to work at all is pure confirmation bias for those times that you happen to not encounter mosquitoes, and placebo because you can "hear it working". (In my case, during a camping trip, I was lucky to hear a report in-person from someone who tried using one instead of spray and got bites, so I never bought one.) Not only is this a waste of money, it's dangerous to rely on a defense that doesn't work if that means not using one that does (like bug spray).

Armor Mist does have a plausible mechanism of action. The active ingredient on the label is benzalkonium chloride 0.1% (BZK), which is a surfactant used as a preservative. It probably does kill bacteria. But how effectively and for how long? And does it work on coronavirus or influenza? They claim it works like a catalyst and is not consumed in the process--you only have to reapply because your skin naturally sloughs off over time. They also mentioned something about a positively-charged polymer. I have found some similar-looking BZK-based hand sanitizers, like Zylast and Germfree24. Zylast only claims to last for 6 hours though.

On the other hand, the FDA recently banned triclosan in soap due to questionable safety and effectiveness, along with a number of other antiseptics. BZK was also up for review around the

...