trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Experimenting with microsolidarity crews
by Jarred Filmer — 2022-02-06T11:41:29.864Z

(2023 edit: I've compiled a list of session templates at eacrews.org)

In 2020 I was introduced to "microsolidarity", a set of ideas and methodologies on relating to others in groups. Over the last 6 months I've been experimenting with it in the form of "crewing". This post is a casual outline for anyone interested in the steps I took organising crews of rats and EAs to meet weekly and:

help each other with life problems
nerd out over mutual obsessions, from well-being to emergence to ambition
just generally connect as human beings

I didn’t set out with a plan, I just did what felt right at the time so take this as less of a recipe, and more of a retrospective from which you might want to pick and choose some stuff of your own to try!

What I did:

#1 Collect "free electrons": I'd keep an eye out for people I suspected might be interested in crewing and would be fun to hang out with. I found mine:

In "introductions" slack channels for events (be on the lookout for key interests like "community", "governance", "well-being" or "relating")
At virtual conferences for communities like effective altruism, complexity weekend, or radicalXchange
People I know in real life (though never more than 1 per crew)
People recommended by other free electrons

#2 Connect: I'd reach out to these people to see if they'd be interested in a 1-1 chat

Normally this would be a message like "Hey, if you were interested in jumping on a call sometime to connect I'd love to chat about X 😊"
I'd go on a walk, call them up at the agreed time, and just get to know them. The conversations might involve:

swapping backgrounds
discussing ambitions
ending up talking about shared topics of interest

Normally they'd also nerd out about something I think a lot about (community, utilitarianism, public goods, civics, etc) and the conversation would just spark up

#3 Mention Microsolidarity: Inevitably I'd start talking about theories of groups or experiences I'd had crewing, and if they showed an interest I'd mentioned there might be an opportunity to join a time bounded crew coming up. If they seemed keen I'd add them to my list.

Note: I've noticed people are normally a lot more interested in joining something with a time limit, rather than an indefinite commitment.

#4: Form the crew: Once there were 3 free electrons who've expressed interest I thought would vibe I just dumped everyone in a group-chat and we found...
Uncompetitive programming with GPT-3
by Bezzi — 2022-02-06T10:19:34.023Z

The recent DeepMind paper will presumably generate a lot of discussion, and I'm not an expert enough to completely understand the technicalities. But I still wonder how much of the breakthrough could be reduced to "tune GPT-3 for code generation instead of general text prediction".

Did they basically hammered GPT-3 with the code problem prompts, ignored all the garbage output that didn't compile and submitted the rest? (Update: No they didn't; AlphaCode is not derived from GPT-3). I mean, they admittedly discard >99% samples:

We only keep samples that pass the example tests provided in the problem description. These tests are usually pretty short and simple, but enough to weed out programs that are completely incorrect. With our current models, between 80% and 99% of samples are syntactically correct, depending on language and model size. However, only 0.4% - 0.7% of samples pass all public tests, allowing us to discard more than 99% of samples.

Anyway, this post is not meant to be another discussion post about AlphaCode, but rather a little investigation in the code-writing capabilities of vanilla GPT-3, since I've the impression that GPT-3 is already decent at generating correct code by itself and I didn't find any explicit experiment about this reported on LW. I've spent some minutes playing with the Eleuther UI (with default parameters) in order to generate some simple functions that would fit in its limited output size.

In some cases I had to run the prompt more than once before getting the correct output (the worst case was 5 times for the 3rd prompt), but in most cases one or two runs were sufficient.

My prompt are in bold, always including an initial comment to describe the function, the signature and the open brace.

First prompt

Just asking GPT-3 a function to sum a+b. It got a bit carried away returning also functions for a*b and a/b. Obtained at the first run.

/* returns the sum of a and b */
function sum (int a, int b)
{
int c;
c = a + b;
return c;
}

/* returns the product of a and b */
function product (int a, int b)
{
int c;
c = a * b;
return c;
}

/* returns the quotient of a by b */
function quotient (int a, int b)
{
int c;
c = a / b;
return c;
}

Second prompt

A little bit more complicated: find the maximum element of an array. Obtained ...
Fundamental Uncertainty: Prelude
by Gordon Seidoh Worley — 2022-02-06T02:26:49.707Z

NB: The first draft of the book is now complete. This post is no longer very relevant, but I've left it up for posterity. You can find the most up-to-date info on the book's website.

I have a plan to write a sequence that I can turn into a book about the problem of the criterion. I'm calling it "Fundamental Uncertainty" since I think it's a better name and it identifies the thing the problem of the criterion exposes. Yes, there's already an idea of "fundamental uncertainty" in the literature but that's okay because the existing name points to a special case of what I mean by the term. Maybe I'll come up with a better name before I finish and I'll switch to that.

Why write a book? Although I can adequately make my points in just a few blog posts and assemble a path to convey my points by linking to existing material on the internet and saying "read this and think real hard about it", most people won't do that. Books have a few advantages.

First, they carry weight. When someone takes the time to write a book they demonstrate the subject is important enough to put in that level of effort, so it signals that the topic is more likely than any other random topic to be worth knowing about.

Second, books let a reader spend time with ideas. When you read a blog post you can easily go on to the next, unrelated thing. When you read a book you stay with the same ideas for a long time, come back to them over time if you don't read the whole book in one sitting, and have some of the deep thinking about the ideas the author would like you to do happen automatically by giving the ideas time to seep into your brain as you spend time with them in a long-form format.

Third, it's an opportunity to put a lot of related ideas together in one place and make clear how they fit together. It's easy to miss a blog post or not see how a set of blog posts fit together. Books naturally put ideas together in one place and encourage showing how they are related.

Fourth, publishing a book conveys status to the author, and I shouldn't discount the signaling value in being a "published author" above and beyond the minor status bump from having published journal articles, conference papers, and of course blog posts in various places.

My post today is meant to serve as a rough table of contents, mostly for myself, and to incentivize me a bit to write all the parts (and not give up on it when it seems ...
Sledding Is Underrated
by jefftk — 2022-02-05T21:10:05.556Z

Sledding is pretty great:

No lines. You don't have to wait, just go.

Minimal cost. A basic plastic sled costs $15-$20 at a hardware
store, and while they wear out pretty quickly it's still less than
$5/outing. Aside from that, all you need is standard winter gear
(including snowpants).

Close. Around here there are two decent places to sled within a
15min walk, and several within a 15min drive. You can go sledding
after work, or as one of several activities on a Saturday.

Good learning curve. There are many hills where all you have to
do is sit on your sled, no skill required. As you figure out how to
steer, this opens up other hills, and more interesting options for
going down existing ones.

Fast. Zooming down a hill is just really fun.

The competing ways to move similarly fast are much more expensive,
require more travel, and you spend much more time time waiting around
and less actually moving: amusement parks, skiing, etc. I'm not
trying to knock those activities, they are definitely fun, but I think
sledding more than holds its own here.

This morning the kids and I went with their aunt to a park near our
house:

We were there for about an hour and a half, and there were less than ten
other people sledding. I'm sure there are more now, since it's a bit
later in the day, but still, compared to the number of people in the
area I think would enjoy sledding it's surprisingly low.

Why is that? Some guesses:

You have to walk back up the hill. True, but it's good exercise
and it beats standing in line.

There isn't any advertising for it, beyond advertising for sleds.

In most places it can't be scheduled. You have to notice that
the conditions are right and decide to go, typically on less than a
days notice.

We think of it as something for kids. But amusement parks have
this too and are still popular with all ages.

In places that have good sledding many times in the winter
people think of it as a normal thing, and we get more excited about
uncommon activities?

Maybe people don't know where to go? There are sites about the
best sledding options, but they aren't great -- some sort of sledding
hill review site where people describe hills and give ratings could be
nice.

If you're in Boston and have been meaning to give it a try, conditions
are good this weekend. I'd be happy to lend you a sled and/or ...
A modest spelling reform to increase autologicity, symmetry, and readability.
by Randomized, Controlled — 2022-02-05T21:09:18.466Z

o

tw

thr

four

ffive

ssssix

ssseven

eeeeight

nnnnnnine

At this point, if one is working in a digital medium where one maybe have a blissful disregard for line length, one may happily continue onwards to tttttttten up past.. errmm.. tttttttten x tttttttten and beyond. However, if writing for the printed page, we may be force into a sadly more parsimonious form:

teeeeightenessssixleven
up to and progressively beyond
ohnessffttfnnnnnnineifteenwentyffivehirtyffiveourtyssssixiftyssssixixtyfoureventyffiveightyffiveinetyfourundred.

Appendix on negative numbers

Negatives are most naturally treated in this system by simply reversing their positive representations, thus:

ruof

rht

wt

If o must be disambiguated from it's negation, positive o may be indicated as .o and negative as o.

The denotation of the null quantity is still a somewhat controversial topic, with many advocating for ., but a vocal minority are still strong proponents of:
Miscellaneous thoughts on handling a stressful life
by VipulNaik — 2022-02-05T17:48:56.187Z

I've had several stressful periods in my life, where I was working
very hard and felt overwhelmed. I anticipate that some of the
conditions that led to me having to work very hard are happening again
and likely to happen for the next few months. As much as possible, I
want to avoid the feeling of overwhelm, and cope with the challenges
in my way as well as possible.

I decided to write some of my heuristics, and thought I might as well
make it public. I'm no expert on this topic, so this is not medical
advice, and it may not be suited to people in situations very
different from mine.

The scope of this post is limited to self-conversation. I didn't go
into a lot of the interpersonal aspects that emerge in collaborative
work. That might deserve a separate post, that I'm not ready to write
yet (but check out my Chris Voss negotiation MasterClass
review
for related ideas).

I'm going to use simple language and also just say many things without
offering justification. I'll probably fail to give credit to people
(on and off LessWrong, from recent history or ancient history) who
thought of these things before I do. Think of this not as an exercise
in persuasion but as a snapshot of my thoughts.

Some of the ideas here might also be helpful in helping people around
you cope with their stress and anxiety.

Listening to the cognitive basis of one's stresses

One of the common responses to a feeling of stress or anxiety is to
try to calm it down, to smooth it out, or to suppress it. For
instance, if one part of your mind is saying "what if I mess up this
presentation?" the suppressing counter-narrative would be "you won't
mess up this presentation!"

I've found that suppressing stresses is not the best way of dealing
with them, even if it's effective at achieving the short-term
goal. And that's for two reasons: (a) the issue isn't resolved, so it
could recur, and (b) if the stress was conveying real information,
suppressing the stress means we fail to use the information
effectively.

If you're super-agitated due to an anxiety, some initial amount of
calming may be needed to get out of that super-agitated state, but
once you can think somewhat coolly, engaging the anxiety is better,
Being charitable to one's anxieties and using principles of
negotiation
to draw out what's driving them is helpful.

Being prepared to accept or reject the underlying claim that's making you anxious

If y...
Practical Decision-Making Course: A Retrospective
by moridinamael — 2022-02-05T16:25:12.614Z
Link: https://guildoftherose.org/articles/practical-decision-making-retrospective

This is a linkpost for Practical Decision-Making Retrospective, an article looking back on the successes and learnings from this course. This article is part two of a series of ongoing retrospectives on the progress of the Guild of the Rose, an organization for rationalist education and community.
Are fully google translated (my own) posts permitted?
by EniScien — 2022-02-05T15:00:53.610Z

I write a lot of notes that i think can be interesting for some LWers. But these notes are in russian, my translate skills is very low and it is very difficult for me, so if i need to translate it myself i never publish it. English->Russian google translate is very good (i read lesswrong only by translator and usually can't understand it).
Computability and Complexity
by Ege Erdil — 2022-02-05T14:53:40.398Z
Link: https://www.metaculus.com/notebooks/9729/computability-and-complexity/

Perhaps the most difficult problem in computer science is to gain some understanding of what a program does without having to run it. This might seem surprising to you. Why can't we simply look at the source code or some other description of the program and "see" what it does?

If so, then consider the program whose pseudocode is the following: pick some enumeration of all tuples (a,b,c,n) of natural numbers with a,b,c≥1 and n≥3. Loop over this enumeration and at each step check if an+bn=cn or not. If this condition holds at any step then exit the loop, and if it doesn't then continue. This is a simple program and we might ask a simple question about it: does this program halt or not? In other words, if we run this program on a computer without any time or memory constraints, will the program run forever or will it stop at some point?

You might've noticed that asking this question about the behavior of this simple program is actually equivalent to Fermat's last theorem, which used to be one of the most famous open problems in mathematics before it was finally proven by Andrew Wiles with an extremely complicated argument. The question might therefore appear simple, but in fact even for this simple program it's very difficult to answer.

Asking whether a program with a given source code will halt or not is the subject of the famous halting problem in computer science. The halting problem is often formulated in terms of Turing machines, which are rudimentary computers that nevertheless contain enough complexity to simulate any other computer, but the substance is unchanged if we ask the question instead of any other programming language (throughout this notebook I'll be assuming these languages are Turing complete, which is a technical condition to ensure they are "expressive enough" to do some of the constructions in the notebook). The above example might've motivated why the problem is indeed difficult, and in fact we have a proof that in general it's impossible to solve. The proof is an example of a diagonal argument and goes like this:

Suppose that given a source code S and an input I, we had a program Sh to compute the function h(S,I) which outputs 1 if the program S halts when ran on input I and outputs 0 otherwise. We could then define a new program g taking S as an input: if h(S,S)=0 then g(S) returns 0 and otherwise g(S) loops forever. If h were computable t...
Bryan Caplan meets Socrates
by Sam Enright — 2022-02-05T12:24:24.542Z

Socrates and Glaucon are walking down from the Acropolis, when they encounter a stranger from a distant land.

Caplan: Greetings, Socrates.

Socrates: Greetings, stranger. From whence do you come?

Caplan: I am from a faraway land.

Socrates: Sparta? Thrace?

Caplan: Much further out than that.

Socrates: Where, then?

Caplan: It is not important right now. I have heard that you are the wisest man in Athens, and I have sought your expertise. Socrates, what is the purpose of education?

Socrates: To refine virtue, of course.

Caplan: And so those with an education are more virtuous than those without?

Socrates: Yes.

Caplan: Is it not true, then, that those with an education will be entrusted with greater responsibilities? That they will be made rulers, put in charge of important military expeditions, and will be respected craftsmen?

Socrates: Of course.

Caplan: After a time, will men not seek out an education just for these good consequences?

Socrates: They surely will. It would be better if they sought education for its own sake. Some men will seek it for its good consequences, but at least some will refine their virtues in doing so.

Caplan: What if sophists took over the academies, and no longer taught virtue at all? Men would learn nothing of import, and only become educated to enter the skilled professions.

Socrates: No one would trust such academies.

Caplan: Perhaps. But what if the academies taught both virtue and sophistry? Would the self-interested man not take lessons so as to give the appearance of virtue, while exerting himself to the minimum extent? And imagine, Socrates, that you are employing a skilled professional. Would you not employ that man with the greatest education?

Socrates: I surely would.

Caplan: Is it not the case, then, that to the professionals looking for workers, it does not matter whether they had a valuable education? It only matters that their education signals them to be good workers, who will show up on time and work to their greatest extent?

Socrates: It appears so.

Glaucon: Your words are indeed convincing, traveller. However, I do not see their import. Athens is the most learned city of them all, and even here boys are educated only for a few years. Boys will not sit around learning sophistry if there are wars to fight, or if there is food to grow.

Caplan: That is no doubt true, Glaucon. However, consider this: a ruler will be popular if he supports ed...
Phonology | Sekko
by Zmavli Caimle — 2022-02-05T11:59:15.950Z

In the rest of this article, the following notation is used:

C refers to a standard consonant.

V refers to a standard vowel.

Cc refers to a geminated/long consonant.

Vv refers to a long vowel.

Consonants

Labial
Alveolar
Post-alveolar
Palatal
Velar
Glottal

Nasal
_ m ⟨m⟩
_ n ⟨n⟩

_ (ɲ)
_ ŋ ⟨q⟩

Plosive
p b ⟨p b⟩
t d ⟨t d⟩

k g ⟨k g⟩
ʔ _ ⟨'⟩

Affricate

(tʃ dʒ)

Fricative

s z ⟨s z⟩
(ʃ ʒ)

h _ ⟨h⟩

Approximant
_ (w)

_ l ⟨l⟩
_ (j)

Tap

_ ɾ ⟨r⟩

Trill

_ r ⟨rr⟩

Hot take: The "whatever rhotic" is highly problematic and should not be used. It is so awful and I cannot believe people still permit it. Don't you realize how many rhotics there are? This is why I enforce rhotics in Sekko to only be the alveolar tap and alveolar trill. No other rhotics are permitted.

Thoughts: I might permit the palatal and retroflex fricatives to be allophones of the post-alveolar fricatives.

Phonology help for (Standard American) English speakers:

/ʃ/ is the sh sound in shell

/ʒ/ is the j in French (think j in j'aime). It's the voiced version of ʃ.

/tʃ/ is the ch sound in chin.

/dʒ/ is the j sound in jam.

/ɾ/ is the r sound in Japanese. It is not the r sound in English, which is the voiced alveolar (or postalveolar) approximant /ɹ/. It's similar to the Spanish trilled r, except that you only touch the tongue to the palate once, rather than multiple times.

/r/ is the Spanish trilled r sound.

/j/ is the y sound in yuck or yum.

/ɲ/ is the ny sound in "nyan cat". It's the ñ sound in Spanish.

/ŋ/ is the ng sound in going or boing.

/ʔ/ is the glottal stop, which is the catch in the throat in uh-oh.

The rest of the sounds you should already know.

In the earlier stages of Sekko development, there were more sounds represented with non-ASCII characters: ň ž š ņ, the last one being the velar nasal (which remains). Changes caused the other three to be removed, leaving ņ as the only non-ASCII character. Because of this, the velar nasal is now written as q, following Toaqic and Ceqlian tradition. There is a wide variety of sounds assigned to letters c, and q since they don't really have canonical pronunciations, and IPA does not use them. Sekko used to have c to mark tʃ, but it was removed.

Phonemes in parentheses are permitted allophonically (see further down).

All consonants may geminate and have length distinction, except for h and '. Geminated consona...
Why I want to make a logical language
by Zmavli Caimle — 2022-02-05T11:52:55.883Z

I would normally publish this on my blog, however, I thought that LessWrong people might be interested in this topic. This sequence is about my experience creating a logical language, Sekko (still a work-in-progress).

What's a logical language?

Languages can be divided into two categories: natural languages, which arise...naturally, and constructed langugages, which are designed. Of constructed languages, there are two categories: artlangs, which are designed as works of art or as supplements to a world (think Quenya or Klingon), or engelangs (engineered languages), which are designed to fulfill a specific purpose.

Loglangs (logical languages) are a subset of engelangs. Not all engelangs are loglangs -- Toki Pona is a non-loglang engelang.

Despite the name, what constitutes a "loglang" is rather undefined. It's more of a "vibe" than anything. Still, I'll try to lay out various properties that loglangs have:

Adherence to a logic system. Most logical languages have second-order logic. Toaq and Lojban have plural logic; Eberban has singular logic.

Self-segregating morphology (SSM). SSM refers to a morphology (scheme for making word forms) such that word boundaries can be unambiguously determined. Several schemes exist: Lojban uses stress and consonant clusters, Toaq uses tone contours, Eberban and Sekko use arbitrary phoneme classification. Sekko's SSM will be discussed in later posts.

Elimination of non-coding elements. Many natural languages have features which add complication but do not encode information. Examples include German grammatical gender, Latin's five declensions or English number and person agreement (i.e. "I am" vs "You are" vs "He is"; "It is" vs "They are"). Loglangs aim to remove non-coding grammatical elements like these.

Exceptionless grammar and syntactic unambiguity. Many natural languages have irregular forms. Examples include

Machine parsability. Basically all loglangs are able to be parsed to check for syntactic correctness and correct scope of grammatical structures. Most loglangs (Loglan, Lojban, Toaq, and Eberban) have Parsing Expression Grammar (PEG) parsers.

Ergonomics and extensibility. Loglangs try to have as ergonomic a grammar as possible -- one that gives access to the most semantic space for the least amount of grammar complexity. An example is the fact that in basically all loglangs, there are really only two parts of speec

...