trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Knights and Knaves
by filius — 2019-06-10T01:51:10.058Z

In the Knights and Knaves riddle you are facing a fork in the road, with one way leading to freedom and the other to death. There are two persons, a knight and a knave. The former always tells the truth while the latter always lies. You got to ask one yes/no question to find your way into freedom.

One solution is to use truth tables. For example in that the statements of both persons are concatenated together. According to the AND table it does not matter in which order true and false are combinated, the result is false. So if your question goes like »What would the other person say, if I'd ask him if this way leads to freedom?«, you always get a falsified answer and are able to identify the way into freedom.

A general assumption for this riddle is that both persons know the truth about whereto the ways lead. That introduces another approach, in that the knave must diversify between inner and outer opinion. To be able to always lie outwardly, he has to know the truth for himself, so his inner opinion is the truth. To take advantage of that, one could ask »Would you say for yourself, that this path leads to freedom?«. This provokes a contradiction in the knave's answer and can therefore be spotted.

Finally a similiar approach that uses the inner opinion is possible too. If both know of the truth, but are still acting differently, this must be on purpose. So in other words, one wants to harm you and the other not. A simpler question would therefore be »Do you want me to go this way?«. The good guy, you can take at his word, because he has your best interests in mind. The bad guy on the other hand would like to send you to	death, but since he's forced to lie, you can take him at his word too.
Ramifications of limited positive value, unlimited negative value?
by Raemon — 2019-06-09T23:17:37.826Z

This assumes you've read some stuff on acausal trade, and various philosophical stuff on what is valuable from the sequences and elsewhere. If this post seems fundamentally confusing it's probably not asking for your help at this moment. If it seems fundamentally *confused* and you have a decent sense of why, it *is* asking for your help to deconfuse it.

Also, a bit rambly. Sorry.

Recently, I had a realization that my intuition says something like:

positive experiences can only add up to some finite[1] amount, with diminishing returns
negative experiences get added up linearly

[edited to add]

This seems surprising and confusing and probably paradoxical. But I've reflected on it for a month and the intuition seems reasonably stable.

I can't tell if it's more surprising and paradoxical than other various flavors of utilitarianism, or other moral frameworks. Sometimes intuitions are just wrong, and sometimes they're wrong but pointing at something useful, and it's hard to know in advance.

I'm looking to get a better sense of where these intuitions come from and why. My goal with this question is to basically get good critiques or examinations of "what ramifications would this worldview have", which can help me figure out whether and how this outlook is confused. So far I haven't found a single moral framework that seems to capture all my moral intuitions, and in this question I'm asking for help sorting through some related philosophical confusions.

[/edit]

[1] or, positive experiences might be infinite, but a smaller infinity than the negative ones?

Basically, when I ask myself:

Once we've done literally all the things – there are as many humans or human like things that could possibly exist, having all the experiences they could possibly have...

...and we've created all the mind-designs that seem possibly cogent and good, that can have positive, non-human-like experiences...

...and we've created all the non-sentient universes that seem plausibly good from some sort of weird aesthetic artistic standpoint, i.e. maybe there's a universe of elegant beautiful math forms where nobody gets to directly experience it but it's sort of beautiful that it exists in an abstract way...

...and then maybe we've duplicated each of these a couple times (or a couple million times, just to be sure)...

...I...
On why mathematics appear to be non-cosmic
by KyriakosCH — 2019-06-09T20:42:56.370Z

Preface

I do fear that perhaps this post of mine (my fourth here) may cause a few negative reactions. I do try to approach this from a philosophical viewpoint, as befits my studies. It goes without saying that I may be wrong, and would very much like to read your views and even more so any reasons that my own position may be identified as untenable. I can only assure you that to me it currently seems that mathematics are not cosmic but anthropic.

*

There are so many quotes about mathematics, from celebrated mathematicians, philosophers, even artists; some are witty yet too polemical to identify as useful in a treatise that aspires to discuss whether math is merely anthropic or cosmic, and others are perhaps too focused on the order itself and thus come across a bit like the expected fawning of an admirer to his or her muse.

Yet the question regarding math being only a human concept, or something which is actually cosmic, is an important one, and it does deserve honest examination. I will try to present a few of my own thoughts on this subject, hoping that they may be of use – even if their use is simply to allow for fruitful reflection and possible dismissal.

It is evident that mathematics have value. It is also evident that they allow for technological development. They do serve as a foundation for scientific orders that rest on experiment and thus are invaluable. However we should also consider what the primary difference between math as an order and scientific orders (physics, chemistry etc) easily let’s us know about math itself:

Primarily math differs from science in that it secures that its results are valid not from experiment, data and observation, but axiom-based proof. The use of proof in math is often attributed to the first Greek mathematicians, and specifically to either the first Philosopher, Thales of Miletus, or his students, Anaximander and Pythagoras. Euclid argued that the first Theorem that math presents is the one by Thales, which has to do with analogies between parts of 2D forms (eg triangles) inscribed in a circle. The idea of a proof proceeding from axioms, of a Theorem, is fundamental in mathematics – and it also is a crucial difference between math and orders such as physics. Fields of science that have to do with observing (and interacting with) the external world do significantly differ from a field (math) which only requires reflectin...
An attempt to list out my core values and virtues
by Ruby — 2019-06-09T20:02:43.122Z

Last week a friend pressed upon me the importance of writing your own culture. It was a small part of a multi-hour conversation, and I'm not sure if I'm interpreted their meaning correctly, but the correct-seeming-to-me position I took from it was something like this:

Write your own culture. Identify

your

values the things

you

consider to be virtues. Not those of the broader culture you exist in or those putatively held by the groups in which you have an identity. Those which are yours, for you, separate from what others might value or consider virtuous.

Perhaps for convenience, to date, I would round off my values/virtues to being Rationalist and EA values. Succinct, perhaps easier to communicate or even convenient as an internal mental handle. But with less personal ownership, or something. Like perhaps they're only "my values" because I'm part of those groups. And that's not true. While the groups might have helped me flesh out and identify my values, they are my values. Also when held this way there is far less nuance to them.

I already have them floating around in my head with my own particular characterization. Yet they float around individually, not as a coherent list. So here goes. Here's a first attempt to capture my values and virtues.

(What's the difference between a value and virtue? I'm not sure exactly, but my brain is labeling some items as more one than the other. Maybe values are things I optimize for and virtues are behaviors I endorse.)

(Also, this isn't an exhaustive list of absolutely everything I'd say I care about or think is good. These are top high-level virtues which subsume all the other things for me. I value cake, but cake arises as something I value further down the chain than anything list here.)

My Values/Virtues

(very loose/hazy ordering of priority)

Curiosity/ Wanting to know and understand the world.
Truth

Over what is comfortable or "instrumentally" advantageous.

It feels that I would choose truth even if it would destroy me. Though I wouldn't choose it if it would destroy Miranda (or the world) . . . so I guess there are limits.

An abhorrence of rationalization.
A revulsion of arguments (or even countenancing the possibility) that truth should be sacrificed for some other gain. I'm not saying that I never would, but I find the suggestion viscerally emotion

...
The expected value of extinction risk reduction is positive
by JanB — 2019-06-09T15:49:32.352Z

(Cross-post from the EA forum)

Short summary

There are good reasons to care about sentient beings living in the millions of years to come. Caring about the future of sentience is sometimes taken to imply reducing the risk of human extinction as a moral priority. However, this implication is not obvious so long as one is uncertain whether a future with humanity would be better or worse than one without it.

In this article, we try to give an all-things-considered answer to the question: “Is the expected value of efforts to reduce the risk of human extinction positive or negative?”. Among others, we cover the following points:

What happens if we simply tally up the welfare of current sentient beings on earth and extrapolate into the future; and why that isn’t a good idea

Thinking about the possible values and preferences of future generations, how these might align with ours, and what that implies

Why the “option value argument” for reducing extinction risk is weak

How the potential of a non-human animal civilisation or an extra-terrestrial civilisation taking over after human extinction increases the expected value of extinction risk reduction

Why, if we had more empirical insight or moral reflection, we might have moral concern for things outside of earth, and how that increases the value of extinction risk reduction

How avoiding a global catastrophe that would not lead to extinction can have very long-term effects

Long Summary

If most expected value or disvalue lies in the billions of years to come, altruists should plausibly focus their efforts on improving the long-term future. It is not clear whether reducing the risk of human extinction would, in expectation, improve the long-term future, because a future with humanity may be better or worse than one without it.

From a consequentialist, welfarist view, most expected value (EV) or disvalue of the future comes from scenarios in which (post-)humanity colonizes space, because these scenarios contain most expected beings. Simply extrapolating the current welfare (part 1.1) of humans and farmed and wild animals, it is unclear whether we should support spreading sentient beings to other planets.

From a more general perspective (part 1.2), future agents will likely care morally about the same things we find valuable or about any of the things we are neutral towards. It seems very unlikely that they would see valu...
In Defense of Those Reclusive Authors
by KyriakosCH — 2019-06-09T14:14:38.644Z

Notable Authors of the 20th Century Who Were Introverted

Writing fiction is usually a solitary profession. Among those individuals who end up producing art to express themselves, one can logically assume that there will be many who like to keep their distance from society. While there have always been writers who are sociable, a few of the greats were largely solitary and lonely, socially awkward, or even reclusive individuals.

Apart from the 20th century’s very famous cases of this type of creator—the Argentinian writer J.L. Borges, the Portuguese author Fernando Pessoa and the Czech-Jewish allegorist Franz Kafka—reclusive attitudes and highly introverted interests can be easily identified in a number of notable artists who merely happen to have earned less renown. H.P. Lovecraft, with his imagining of a world populated by primordial monstrosities, or Robert Walzer, who despite having been one of Kafka’s literary heroes, remains virtually unknown to this day. Yet he penned hundreds of short stories as well as a few large novels which were all about the sense of alienation and lack of belonging to the world. And Henry James (with his nominally secured position in the literary canon of 20th century English literature notwithstanding) who is by now only infrequently referenced as an insightful anatomist of introversion and co-morbid indifference to the external world.

Regarding the Degree of Introversion

Pronounced, evident lack of interest – or at least professed such lack of interest – about the external world, can be observed in a number of quotes by the aforementioned writers. During the First World War, Franz Kafka wrote in his diary that he was then being rewarded for never have been involved in worldly affairs… Borges – far more reclusive than Kafka – had penned silent cries, in which he accused his contemporary society of being even unworthy of suffering in Hell; he argues, that is, that human malice is just too crude to deserve a metaphysical punishment! Pessoa, who spent his days as a shadow in the busy streets of downtown Lisbon, working as a translator for various trading firms, claimed, in one of his most famous poems, that he put on clothes which didn’t suit him, and was taken for someone else, and was subsequently lost…

Then and Now

While in more recent years – primarily, perhaps, due to the ubiquity of television – ...
Learning magic
by Smaug123 — 2019-06-09T12:29:06.484Z

Magic (primarily misdirection and cold-reading, but also the mechanics like sleight-of-hand) seems like an extremely good case-study in the study of how the human mind works and the predictable ways in which human maps differ from the territory. There are several magicians out there who offer to teach classes and so forth, but are there any who can be vouched for as really "knowing their stuff" as a teacher if I wanted to approach the subject in this light? Relatedly, can anyone vouch for the quality of the Penn and Teller course on the MasterClass platform?

Bonus points for teachers in London who can be hired for small (up to 10 people) groups.
Paternal Formats
by abramdemski — 2019-06-09T01:26:27.911Z

In How to Make a Complete Map of Every Thought You Think, Lion Kimbro introduces the idea of coercive vs uncoercive formats for information. [Re-named to "Paternal vs Navigable" here, at the suggestion of MakoYass.]

Paternal:

Stories.
Lesson plans; course prerequisites.
Videos.
Linear text which must be read in order. Introducing terminology and ideas once (rather than wherever they're needed), without an index or other better reference mechanisms.
Explaining what you're getting at only via your chain of argumentation, rather than up-front.
Intertwining development of many different themes (making it impossible to look for only the information you want).

Navigable:

Blueprints.
Wikis.
Reference manuals.
Hyperlinks.
TLDRs.
Tools which make it easy to quickly get an overview, such as paper abstracts or introductions which actually summarize a work (rather than teasing its conclusions or giving autobiographical context, etc).
Diagrams/tables/charts and other graphic elements. (The eye is free to roam to whichever part is of interest; also, these elements can often be made fairly self-explanatory, so that one doesn't have to read everything else to see what is going on.)
Tables of contents; outlines.
Chapters and sections which can be read independently.

I initially wrote the above lists as two paragraphs. Turning them into bulleted lists made them feel less paternal. The rest of this post is paternal, in that I don't separate out different topics in an easily distinguishable way.

I'm not going to claim that "less paternal" is always better. Paternal formats are often more fun to read, for example. On this spectrum, HPMOR would be more paternal than the sequences. Furthermore, you might want to present information in a paternal format if getting information in the wrong order is likely to make a person actively misunderstand a concept rather than only fail to understand. (Mere prerequisite concepts are not really a good excuse -- a wiki-style format, where prerequisite concepts are obsessively hyperlinked, works fine.)

A 'sequence' is a somewhat paternal format -- a set of posts intended to be read in a particular order. However, sequences on LW1.0 were less paternal than sequences as they exist on LW2.0. LW1.0 sequences (mostly?) listed the posts in a sequence with summaries of each post,, while LW2.0 sequences only...
Word-Idols (or an examination of ties between philosophy and horror literature)
by KyriakosCH — 2019-06-09T00:31:28.544Z

An examination of any ties between Philosophy and horror literature is, indeed, quite rare an undertaking... There are many reasons for the scarcity of articles on this topic, ranging from a reluctance to acknowledge horror literature as serious (literary) fiction, to Philosophy itself being dismissed as overrated, superfluous or obsolete. As with most cases of categorical nullification of entire genres or orders, this one as well can largely be attributed to lack of familiarity with the essential subjects they encompass.

It can be argued that there indeed are grounds to assert a link between Philosophy and Horror literature. Socrates himself, while pondering a definition of Philosophy, notes that the noun thámvos - the Greek term for dazzle – was traditionally regarded as the progenitor of philosophical thought, and goes on to speak favorably of this connection. Socrates offers the insight that Philosophy is a hunt for the source of the dazzling sense a thinker may have of there being unknown things in our own mental world; the sense that we are, both by necessity and will, progressing on a surface of things and sliding along, minding to steer away from any chasms, while below the level of consciousness is perpetuated a dark abyss of unknowns.

Anyone who has read H.P. Lovecraft would instantly recognize the aforementioned image. A deep, unexplored abyss teeming with potentially dangerous forces, juxtaposed to a relatively well-established surface area where humans carry on their everyday lives with neither the ability nor the will to investigate what lurks below. The lack of ability itself is to be expected: the human mind has its own limitations, and so does the conscious power of any individual. The absence of will, however, does signify fear.

That said, in Philosophy the subject matter does not – usually – allow for lack of will to manifest (what would a non-thinking philosopher be?). Nevertheless, it can be regarded as self-evident that will to examine the depths of one’s own mind is generally lacking in most people. It can be lacking in philosophically-inclined individuals as well, given there are topics which may cause even the supposedly self-indulgent thinker to make the conscious decision to back down from further examination; these topics primarily have to do with bringing into light what hasn’t been formed stably...
Mistakes with Conservation of Expected Evidence
by abramdemski — 2019-06-08T23:07:53.719Z

Epistemic Status: I've really spent some time wrestling with this one. I am highly confident in most of what I say. However, this differs from section to section. I'll put more specific epistemic statuses at the end of each section.

Some of this post is generated from mistakes I've seen people make (or, heard people complain about) in applying conservation-of-expected-evidence or related ideas. Other parts of this post are based on mistakes I made myself. I think that I used a wrong version of conservation-of-expected-evidence for some time, and propagated some wrong conclusions fairly deeply; so, this post is partly an attempt to work out the right conclusions for myself, and partly a warning to those who might make the same mistakes.

All of the mistakes I'll argue against have some good insight behind them. They may be something which is usually true, or something which points in the direction of a real phenomenon while making an error. I may come off as nitpicking.

1. "You can't predict that you'll update in a particular direction."

Starting with an easy one.

It can be tempting to simplify conservation of expected evidence to say you can't predict the direction which your beliefs will change. This is often approximately true, and it's exactly true in symmetric cases where your starting belief is 50-50 and the evidence is equally likely to point in either direction.

To see why it is wrong in general, consider an extreme case: a universal law, which you mostly already believe to be true. At any time, you could see a counterexample, which would make you jump to complete disbelief. That's a small probability of a very large update downwards. Conservation of expected evidence implies that you must move your belief upwards when you don't see such a counterexample. But, you consider that case to be quite likely. So, considering only which direction your beliefs will change, you can be fairly confident that your belief in the universal law will increase -- in fact, as confident as you are in the universal law itself.

The critical point here is direction vs magnitude. Conservation of expected evidence takes magnitude as well as direction into account. The small but very probable increase is balanced by the large but very improbable decrease.

The fact that we're talking about universal laws and counterexamp...