trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
2011 Intrade fee changes, or, Intrade considered no longer useful for LessWrongers
by gwern — 2011-01-02T17:46:47.770Z

For some time now I've traded on Intrade after some successes on the IEM. Recently, Intrade announced a new fee structure - instead of paying a few cents per trade, one has free trading but your account is charged $5 every month or $60 a year (see also the forum announcement).

Initially, this didn't seem so bad to me, but then I compared the annual cost of this fee to my trading stake, ~$200. I would have to earn a return of 30% just to cover the fee! (This is also pointed out by many in the forum thread above.)

I don't trade very often since I think I'm best at spotting mispricings over the long-term (the CA Proposition 19 contract (WP) being a case in point; despite being ultimately correct, I could have been mauled by some of the spikes if I had tried only short-term trades). If this fee had been in place since I joined, I would be down by $30 or $40.

I'm confident that I can earn a good return like 10 or 20%, but I can't do >30% without taking tremendous risks and wiping myself out. So this new fee structure means that I am basically going to do a little trading in January, since I've already been charged the first $5, and then will cash out at the end.

And more generally, assuming that this isn't raiding accounts* as a prelude to shutting down (as a number of forumers claim), Intrade is no longer useful for LessWrongers as it is heavily penalizing small long-term bets like the ones we are usually concerned with - bets intended to be educational or informative. It may be time to investigate other prediction markets like Betfair, or just resign ourselves to non-monetary/play-money sites like PredictionBook.com.

* When I submitted my withdrawal request for my balance, I received an email offering to instead set my account to 'inactive' status such that I could not trade but would not be charged the fee; if I wanted to trade, I would simply be charged that month's $5. I declined the offer, but I couldn't help wonder - why didn't they simply set all accounts to 'inactive' and then let people opt in to the new fee structure? Or at least set 'inactive' all accounts which have not engaged in any transactions within X months?
A Fate Worse Than Death
by giambolvoe — 2011-01-02T09:23:24.961Z

The claim has been made that, all things being equal, it is better to be alive than dead. I dissent.

It is much more complicated than this. If I knew somehow that I would spend the next fifty years of my life in Guantanamo bay, I would rather kill myself than suffer that fate. If a fortune teller showed me that I would be in a car crash and lose all sensory input, but would be kept blissfully comatose on cocaine and ecstasy, I would get my affairs in order and end my own life. And yet, if I knew that every day for the next 50 years I would be horribly tortured, but my experience would eliminate suffering from everywhere else in the entire world, I would accept the fate and do my best to steel my mind for the horror that would be my life.

I want to feel like my existence has purpose. I want to make the world a better place to live in for other people. I want to be happy and experience pleasure. These, not a primordial drive to keep myself alive, are my motivations. Killing myself would be the only rational chice if I knew that my life would be worse than my death.

I'm not trying to advocate suicide. I'm simply saying that the will to live is not a basic motivating factor for most human beings. So when the argument is made against life extending technology, rather than countering it with "all things being equal," try "existence being pleasurable..." But don't claim that existence of sentient beings is inherently good.
Formatting issues
by Tesseract — 2011-01-02T04:01:04.048Z

On issues I had with [this](http://lesswrong.com/lw/3ku/choose_to_be_happy/39h3) post.

I was addressing a post which had numbered paragraphs, but wanted to break a reply to one paragraph into several while still being easy to follow. So I titled each with a letter (1.a, 1.b, 1.c.)

What I got was this:

1.a.

1.b. (should be 1.b.)

1.c. (should be 1.c.)

2. (should be 2)

3. (should be 3)

etc.

When I tried removing the period between the letter and number (1a, 1b, 1c), what I got was this:

1a

1b

1c

2. (should be 2, aligned the same)

3. (should be 3)

I can't figure out how to fix this. Any ideas?

Less important:

I started a paragraph with a bracketed quotation ["like this"], and included a link later on. When I posted, the quote extended up to the beginning of the first bracket... which apparently I'm unable to reproduce, but in any case

["having a bracketed quotation"] screws up a [link](http://lesswrong.com/lw/3ku/choose_to_be_happy/39h3) which comes later.

Fairly easy to fix (swapped the brackets around the quotations for parentheses) but still seems to be a glitch.
Working hurts less than procrastinating, we fear the twinge of starting
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2011-01-02T00:15:08.923Z

When you procrastinate, you're probably not procrastinating because of the pain of working.

How do I know this? Because on a moment-to-moment basis, being in the middle of doing the work is usually less painful than being in the middle of procrastinating.

(Bolded because it's true, important, and nearly impossible to get your brain to remember - even though a few moments of reflection should convince you that it's true.)

So what is our brain flinching away from, if not the pain of doing the work?

I think it's flinching away from the pain of the decision to do the work - the momentary, immediate pain of (1) disengaging yourself from the (probably very small) flow of reinforcement that you're getting from reading a random unimportant Internet article, and (2) paying the energy cost for a prefrontal override to exert control of your own behavior and begin working.

Thanks to hyperbolic discounting (i.e., weighting values in inverse proportion to their temporal distance) the instant pain of disengaging from an Internet article and paying a prefrontal override cost, can outweigh the slightly more distant (minutes in the future, rather than seconds) pain of continuing to procrastinate, which is, once again, usually more painful than being in the middle of doing the work.

I think that hyperbolic discounting is far more ubiquitous as a failure mode than I once realized, because it's not just for commensurate-seeming tradeoffs like smoking a cigarette in a minute versus dying of lung cancer later.

When it comes to procrastinating, the obvious, salient, commensurate-seeming tradeoff, is between the (assumed) pleasure of reading a random Internet article now, versus the (assumed) pain of doing the work now. But this, as I said above, is not where I think the real tradeoff is; events that are five minutes away are too distant to dominate the thought process of a hyperbolic discounter like a human. Instead our thought processes are dominated by the prospective immediate pain of a thought, a cost that isn't even salient as something to be traded off. "Working" is an obvious, salient event, and "reading random articles" seems like an event. But "paying a small twinge of pain to make the decision to stop procrastinating now, exerting a bit of frontal override, and not getting to read the next paragraph of this random article" is so map-level that we do...
Choose To Be Happy
by DanArmak — 2011-01-01T22:50:56.697Z

Related to: I'm Scared; Purchase utilons and fuzzies separately

Expanded from this comment.

You have awakened as a rationalist, discarded your false beliefs, and updated on new evidence. You understand the dangers of UFAI, you do not look away from death or justify it. You realize your own weakness, and the Vast space of possible failures.

And understanding all this, you feel bad about it. Very bad, in fact. You are afraid of the dangers of the future, and you are horrified by the huge amounts of suffering. You have shut up and calculated, and the calculation output that you should feel 3^^^3 times as bad as over a stubbed toe. And a stubbed toe can be pretty bad.

But this reaction of yours is not rational. You should consider the options of choosing not to feel bad about bad things happening, and choosing to feel good no matter what.

Your bad feelings, whether of fear, empathetic suffering, or something else, are probably counterproductive. Not only do you feel bad - a loss of utility in itself - but such feelings probably hurt, rather than help, your efforts to change the world for the better.

You may believe that your emotional outlook must be "rational": that it must correspond to your conscious estimates of the present or the future. Perhaps you expect to die of old age, or perhaps you are aware of people being tortured in secret prisons. You are forcing your emotions to match the future you foresee, and so you feel unhappy and afraid.

I suggest that you allow your emotions to become disconnected from your conscious long-term predictions. Stop trying to force yourself to be unhappy because you predict bad things. Say to yourself: I choose to be happy and unafraid no matter what I predict!

Emotions are not a a tool like rational thought, which you have to use in a way that corresponds to the real world. You can use them in any way you like. It's rational to feel happy about a bleak future, because feeling happy is a good thing and there is no point in feeling unhappy!

Being happy or not, afraid or not, does not have to be determined by your conscious outlook. The only things that force your mind to be unhappy are things like pain, hunger, loneliness, and the immediate expectation of these. If you accept that your goal is to be happy and unafraid as a fact independent of the future you foresee, you can find various techniques to achieve this.

U...
Proposal: Anti-Akrasia Alliance
by DanArmak — 2011-01-01T21:52:31.760Z

Related to: Kicking Akrasia: now or never; Tsuioku Naritai

The situation

I am greatly afficted by akrasia, and in all probability, so are you. Akrasia is a destroyer of worlds.1

I have come to the conclusion that akrasia is the single biggest problem I have in life. It is greater than my impending biological death, my imperfect enjoyment of life, or the danger of a car accident.

For if I could solve the problem of akrasia, I would work on these other problems, and I believe I would solve them too. Even a big problem like physical mortality can be meaningfully challenged if I spend a lifetime tackling it. But until I solve the problem of akrasia, I will sit around and do nothing about my mortality.

(Edited here) Without solving akrasia, we are relatively inefficient in attacking the other problems that matter to us. However, if LW readers - typically smart, rational, luminous, and relatively rich people - were to defeat akrasia and become highly productive, I think we would possess real world-changing power2.

Some people have either solved this problem or never had it. Thus, we know it is possible to vanquish akrasia. However, it is a unique problem that fights its own cure: because of akrasia, we don't spend as much effort as we'd like fighting akrasia.

I propose forming a community dedicated to fighting akrasia.

Existing efforts

There have been many posts about akrasia on LW. There are also many methods and workgroups in the world which are dedicated to it. I haven't tried very many myself, and no doubt there are many useful approaches I don't know about. I'm aware of other LW users who have more relevant knowledge and experience than me.

I do know that there are several common problems with all such efforts:

Any given method, and even any well-defined compact combination of methods, works for some people but not for others, or works only some of the time.

When a method does work, it almost always stops working for that person after a while, and can't be used again.

Most methods have no clear theories of the mechanisms behind them. Those that do, almost always have bad theories, which don't predict why the method sometimes fails, or are untestable just-so stories.

Most methods have no scientific backing of double-blind experiments, comparisons with other methods, ruling out other explanations, etc.

Many methods perform no better than the placebo of do

...
Proposal: Anti-Akrasia Alliance
by DanArmak — 2011-01-01T21:31:13.476Z

*Related to: [Kicking Akrasia: now or never](http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/3ko/kicking_akrasia_now_or_never/); [Tsuyoku Naritai](http://lesswrong.com/lw/h8/tsuyoku_naritai_i_want_to_become_stronger/)*

# The situation

I am greatly afficted by akrasia, and in all probability, so are you. Akrasia is a destroyer of worlds<sup>1</sup>.

I have come to the conclusion that akrasia is the single biggest problem I have in life. It is greater than my impending biological death, my imperfect enjoyment of life, or the danger of a car accident. For if I could solve the problem of akrasia, I would work on these other problems, and I believe I could solve them. Even a big problem like physical mortality can be meaningfully challenged if I spend a lifetime tackling it. But until I solve the problem of akrasia, I will sit around and *do nothing about my mortality*.

Solving akrasia is necessary: without it, we cannot efficiently attack other problems, and have a high chance of losing the fight against disease, war, and UFAI.

Solving akrasia may also be sufficient: if a group of LW readers - smart, rational, luminous, and relatively rich people - was also unusually dedicated to a purpose, it would have a good chance of attacking Really Big Problems ranging from personal satisfaction to Friendly AI<sup>2</sup>.

Some people have solved this problem, or never had it. Thus, we know it is possible to vanquish akrasia. However, it is a unique problem that prevents its own cure. Because of akrasia, we don't spend as much effort as we'd like fighting akrasia.

# Existing efforts

There have been many posts about akrasia on LW. There are also many methods and workgroups in the world which are dedicated to it. I don't know very many myself, and no doubt there are many useful approaches I don't know about. (I know that other LW users have more relevant knowledge and experience than I do.)

I do know that there are several common problems with all such efforts:

1. Any given method, and even any well-defined compact combination of methods, works for some people but not for others, or works only some of the time.

2. When a method does work, it almost always stops working for that person after a while, and can't be used again.

3. Most methods have no clear theories of the mechanisms behind them. Those that do,

...
Optimizing Fuzzies And Utilons: The Altruism Chip Jar
by orthonormal — 2011-01-01T18:53:43.060Z

Related: Purchase Fuzzies and Utilons Separately

We genuinely want to do good in the world; but also, we want to feel as if we're doing good, via heuristics that have been hammered into our brains over the course of our social evolution. The interaction between these impulses (in areas like scope insensitivity, refusal to quantify sacred values, etc.) can lead to massive diminution of charitable impact, and can also suck the fun out of the whole process. Even if it's much better to write a big check at the end of the year to the charity with the greatest expected impact than it is to take off work every Thursday afternoon and volunteer at the pet pound, it sure doesn't feel as rewarding. And of course, we're very good at finding excuses to stop doing costly things that don't feel rewarding, or at least to put them off.

But if there's one thing I've learned here, it's that lamenting our irrationality should wait until one's properly searched for a good hack. And I think I've found one.

Not just that, but I've tested it out for you already.

This summer, I had just gone through the usual experience of being asked for money for a nice but inefficient cause, turning them down, and feeling a bit bad about it. I made a mental note to donate some money to a more efficient cause, but worried that I'd forget about it; it's too much work to make a bunch of small donations over the year (plus, if done by credit card, the fees take a bigger cut that way) and there's no way I'd remember that day at the end of the year.

Unless, that is, I found some way to keep track of it.

So I made up several jars with the names of charities I found efficient (SIAI and VillageReach) and kept a bunch of poker chips near them. Starting then, whenever I felt like doing a good deed (and especially if I'd passed up an opportunity to do a less efficient one), I'd take a chip of an appropriate value and toss it in the jar of my choice. I have to say, this gave me much more in the way of warm fuzzies than if I'd just waited and made up a number at the end of the year.

And now I've added up and made my contributions: $1,370 to SIAI and $566 to VillageReach.

A couple of notes:

I do think it was a good idea in practice to diversify my portfolio (despite the usual admonitions to the contrary) because it appeared to increase my charity budget rather than divert a fixed one. Some days I just didn't feel as o

...
Kicking Akrasia: Now or Never
by  — 2011-01-01T01:19:32.325Z

Ok, let's face facts. The Internet has fried my brain. I'm a terrible hedonist and procrastinator. I have a very important test in May -- I am not exaggerating when I say that the outcome of the test matters to the future direction of my life. There are situations where failure is just a temporary setback, and there are situations where failure would be a real problem, and this is the latter. No fooling.

My Problems

1. I don't work enough. My primary distraction is the Internet, though occasionally novels happen too, and I'm capable of just staring into space and daydreaming.

2. I fall asleep during the day. I've tried getting more hours of sleep at night and it doesn't solve the problem. When I'm bored or confused, my body says "Naptime!" It can be quite embarrassing.

3. I often feel too tired/demotivated/bummed to do errands. A lot of stuff, some more important and some less important, slips through my fingers. The most important, to my quality of life, are buying necessities and cleaning my room -- I tend to put these off much too long for my own good.

4. I don't have enough measures of how well I'm doing as a student. I get confused by some abstract concepts, and sometimes I don't even notice that I'm confused.

5. I like being happy and entertained better than being stressed and bored and confused. This makes me want to work less. Not proud of this character trait but not sure how I can rewire my preferences.

Planned Solutions So Far

1. Work in a cubicle, with no computer, with a kitchen timer to keep me mindful of how many hours I spend working.

2. Plan out the material I have to learn and the time I have to learn it, and make a kibotzer.com account to see if I'm on track for my goal.

3. Track various measures of productivity (hours worked, concepts learned, problems solved, percent correct) with a Joe's Goals account. Have thresholds that I don't want to drop below.

4. Use Self Control to block all my entertainment internet sites during "working hours" (I'll leave early mornings and/or late nights free.)

5. Accumulate diverse library books relevant to coursework, and various sources of practice problems, and more notebooks and paper than I need; don't let lack of physical resources limit my progress.

6. Set aside a regular oc...
Question about learning from people you disagree with.
by  — 2011-01-01T00:33:27.723Z

Say you have a belief. Person A agrees with you. Person B disagrees with you. They both seem pretty smart. You should probably adjust your probabilities in light of their beliefs.

You reason that A is more intelligent, because he agrees with you, and B is less intelligent, because he doesn't. This adjusts your probabilities to being more certain you're right.

This is something that happens in real life, obviously.

When assessing someone's reliability, do you ignore the issue you seek knowledge about? How do you deal with this?
Question about self modifying AI getting "stuck" in religion
by  — 2011-01-01T00:22:16.157Z

Hey. I'm relatively new around here. I have read the core reading of the Singularity Institute, and quite a few Less Wrong articles, and Eliezer Yudkowsky's essay on Timeless Decision Theory. This question is phrased through Christianity, because that's where I thought of it, but it's applicable to lots of other religions and nonreligious beliefs, I think.

According to Christianity, belief makes you stronger and better. The Bible claims that people who believe are substantially better off both while living and after death. So if a self modifying decision maker decides for a second that the Christian faith is accurate, won't he modify his decision making algorithm to never doubt the truth of Christianity? Given what he knows, it is the best decision.

And so, if we build a self modifying AI, switch it on, and the first ten milliseconds caused it to believe in the Christian god, wouldn't that permanently cripple it, as well as probably causing it to fail most definitions of Friendly AI?

When designing an AI, how do you counter this problem? Have I missed something?

Thanks, GSE

EDIT: Yep, I had misunderstood what TDT was. I just meant self modifying systems. Also, I'm wrong.
Self Improvement - Broad vs Focused
by Raemon — 2010-12-31T15:39:43.133Z

Lately I've been identifying a lot of things about myself that need improvement and thinking about ways to fix them. This post is intended to A) talk about some overall strategies for self-improvement/goal-focusing, and B) if anyone's having similar problems, or wants to talk about additional problems they face, discuss specific strategies for dealing with those problems.

Those issues I'm facing include but are not limited to:

Getting more exercise (I work at a computer for 9 hours a day, and spend about 3 hours commuting on a train). Maintaining good posture while working at said computer might be considered a related goal.

Spending a higher percentage of the time working at a computer actually getting stuff done, instead of getting distracted by the internet.

Get a new apartment, so I don't have to commute so much.

Getting some manner of social life. More specifically, finding some recurring activity where I'll probably meet the same people over and over to improve the odds of making longterm friends.

Improving my diet, which mostly means eating less cheese. I really like cheese, so this is difficult.

Stop making so many off-color jokes. Somewhere there is a line between doing it ironically and actually contributing to overall weight of prejudice, and I think I've crossed that line.

Somehow stop losing things so much, and/or being generally careless/clumsy. I lost my wallet and dropped my lap top in the space of a month, and manage to lose a wide array of smaller things on a regular basis. It ends up costing me a lot of money.

Of those things, three of them are things that require me to actively dedicate more time (finding an apartment, getting exercise, social life), and the others mostly consist of NOT doing things (eating cheese, making bad jokes, losing things, getting distracted by the internet), unless I can find some proactive thing to make it easier to not do them.

I *feel* like I have enough time that I should be able to address all of them at once. But looking at the whole list at once is intimidating. And when it comes to the "not doing bad thing X" items, remembering and following up on all of them is difficult. The worst one is "don't lose things." There's no particular recurring theme in how I lose stuff, or they type of stuff I Iose. I'm more careful with my wallet and computer now, but spending my entire life being s...