trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : SF Meetup: Projects
by maia — 2016-12-11T20:18:22.488Z

Discussion article for the meetup : SF Meetup: Projects

WHEN:
12 December 2016 06:15:07PM (-0800)

WHERE:
1769 15th St., SF

We’ll be meeting to work on projects!

Near the beginning, we’ll go around and talk about what we’ll be working on, then do a couple of pomodoros quietly. At some point we’ll break into general conversations and socializing.

For help getting into the building, please call (or text, with a likely-somewhat-slower response rate): 301-458-0764.

Format:

We meet and start hanging out at 6:15, but don’t officially start doing the meetup topic until 6:45-7 to accommodate stragglers. Usually there is a food order that goes out before we start the meetup topic.

About these meetups:

The mission of the SF LessWrong meetup is to provide a fun, low-key social space with some structured interaction, where new and non-new community members can mingle and have interesting conversations. Everyone is welcome.

We explicitly encourage people to split off from the main conversation or diverge from the topic if that would be more fun for them (moving side conversations into a separate part of the space if appropriate). Meetup topics are here as a tool to facilitate fun interaction, and we certainly don’t want them to inhibit it.

Discussion article for the meetup : SF Meetup: Projects
Meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup: December
by Maelin — 2016-12-11T11:33:16.527Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup: December

WHEN:
16 December 2016 06:30:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
347 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

The social meetup is back for December!

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1005061959639575/

Social meetups are casual get-togethers held on the third Friday of each month. They are informal events where we sit around and chat over a few drinks and a meal.

Where? The Bull & Bear Tavern, 347 Flinders Lane, Melbourne

When? Friday 16th December, starting from 6:30pm, until late. Feel free to arrive later!

DInner? The B&B serves reasonable pub food, and we will usually share a couple of bowls of wedges or similar. A few of us typically go for a late dinner after we leave the B&B - usually at Father's Office, which offers late night dining at half price.

Contact? Any issues or questions, contact Richard on 0421231789

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup: December
Minimax and dynamic (in)consistency
by Vanessa Kosoy — 2016-12-11T10:42:08.000Z

% operators that are separated from the operand by a space

% operators that require brackets

% operators that require parentheses

% Paper specific

The asymptotic optimality theorem for minimax we proved previously was formulated in terms of the "optimal value" v(x). Compared to the Bayesian case, v(x) has the strange property that its definition depends on rewards other than those received after observing x. This is a direct consequence of the dynamic inconsistency of minimax. In an attempt to get around this, we show that the minimax decision rule is dynamically consistent in a certain special case and demonstrate that this special case can occur often for a natural class of models. However, this doesn't immediately solve the problem: doing so requires replacing the minimax decision rule by a stronger condition that ensures subgame perfection in some sense. The formalization of the latter idea is left for future posts.

Appendix A contains the proofs of all results.

##Notation

Given X a topological space, P(X) will denote the space of Borel probability measures on X. We regard it as a topological space using the weak∗ topology. Given x∈X, δx∈P(X) is defined by δx(A):=[[x∈A]]. Given μ,ν∈P(X), dtv(μ,ν) stands for the total variation distance between μ and ν. We denote PC(X) the set of non-empty convex compact subsets of P(X).

Given X a finite set, X∗ denotes the set of finite strings in alphabet X, i.e. X∗:=⨆n∈NXn. Xω denotes the set of infinite strings in alphabet X. Given x∈X∗⊔Xω, |x|∈N⊔{∞} is the length of string. Given 0≤n<|x|, xn∈X is the n-th symbol in x. Given 0≤n≤|x|, x<n is the prefix of x of length n. Given x,y∈X∗⊔Xω, the notations x⊏y, x⊑y, x⊏/y and x⋢y mean "x is a proper prefix of y", "x is a prefix of y" and their negations. λX∈X∗ is the empty string and X+:=X∗∖λX.

##Factorization

We recall the result of the previous post regarding subagents of minimax agents:

#Proposition 0

π∗2∈argmaxπ2:T→P(S2)minμ∈Φ(Eπ∗1×μ[u1]+μ(A)Et∼α∗π∗1[Eπ2(t)×μ∣A[u2(t)]])

In general, π∗2 is not a minimax policy for any natural model i.e. the minimax decision rule is not "dynamically consistent". However, if we assume a certain factorization condition, it is. Specifically, assume E1,E2 are compact Polish, f:E1×E2→E is Borel measurable, ¯u1:S1×E1→R and ¯u2:S2×T×E2→R are continuous s.t.

u1(s1,f(e1,e2))=¯u1(s1,e1)

u2(s2,t,f(e1,e2))=¯u1(s2,t,e2)

Further

...
2016: a year in review in science
by Elo — 2016-12-11T05:01:33.633Z

As another year comes around, and our solstice plans come to a head I want to review this year's great progress in science to follow on from last year's great review.

The general criteria is: World changing science, not politics. That means a lot of space discoveries, a lot of technology, some groundbreaking biology, and sometimes new chemical materials. There really are too many to list briefly.

With that in mind, below is the list:

Things that spring to mind when you ask people:

T3d printing organs and skin tissue http://www.bbc.com/news/health-35581454

Baby born with 3 parents. link

AlphaGo VS Lee Sedol

Cryopreservation of a rabbit brain - Link

Majorana fermions discovered (possibly quantum computing applications)

SpaceX landed Falcon 9 at sea - Link

Gravitational waves deteced by LIGO

Quantum logic gate with 99% accuracy at Oxford

TensorFlow has been out just over a year now. An open source neural net project.

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_in_science

Note: the whole thing is worth reading - I cherry picked a few really cool ones.

Astronomers identify IDCS 1426 as the most distant massive galaxy cluster yet discovered, at 10 billion light years from Earth.[4]

Mathematicians, as part of the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, report the discovery of a new prime number: "274,207,281 − 1"

The world's first 13 TB solid state drive (SSD) is announced, doubling the previous record for a commercially available SSD. link

A successful head transplant on a monkey by scientists in China is reported.

The University of New South Wales announces that it will begin human trials of the Phoenix99, a fully implantable bionic eye. Link

Scientists in the United Kingdom are given the go-ahead by regulators to genetically modify human embryos by using CRISPR-Cas9 and related techniques. Link

Scientists announce Breakthrough Starshot, a Breakthrough Initiatives program, to develop a proof-of-concept fleet of small centimeter-sized light sail spacecraft, named StarChip, capable of making the journey to Alpha Centauri, the nearest extrasolar star system, at speeds of 20% and 15% of the speed of light, taking between 20 and 30 years to reach the star system, respectively, and about 4 years to notify Earth of a successful arrival. Link

A new paper in Astr

...
Meetup : Sydney Solstice
by Elo — 2016-12-10T22:16:45.230Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Solstice

WHEN:
11 December 2016 05:30:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
new beach rd, Darling Point, nsw

Map link:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/33%C2%B052'05.7%22S+151%C2%B014'06.2%22E/@-33.868255,151.2339687,18z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d-33.868255!4d151.235063?hl=en

Eternal apologies, the event is on today. Advertised on meetup.com https://www.meetup.com/lesswrong-Sydney0/events/235718003/

Managed to accidentally forget to post it on lesswrong.

In celebration of the holiday season in a way that only scientists can do; I proudly present our 3rd annual secular solstice celebrations!

Iit's the silly season so we get to party too. Bring a dish! Something tasty... Try to aim for something inclusive of vegetarian/vegan, at the very least - know what is in your dish for when people ask.

Agenda: (in no particular hurry)

• Eat food; be merry!

• Our year in review (as a local community, as a country, as humanity)

• Talk about goals for the past year, share successes and failures (as individuals)

• Lachlan - how to make resolutions for the new year effectively

• Taryn - songs

• Over the next year: plans for ourselves

• Over the next year: predictions about the state of the future of the world

Bonus mini-game: prepare for the Candles VS wind game, and this time bring a solution with you that you can share with others.

Post the dish you plan to bring so we don't get duplicates...

See you there!

p.s. It's a little early for the solstice; we are planning around a few overseas holidays... The actual solstice is far too close to Christmas so we are hosting early.

If you have trouble - call me on 0438481143

facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/335237400185094/

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Solstice
Be secretly wrong
by Benquo — 2016-12-10T07:06:30.264Z

"I feel like I'm not the sort of person who's allowed to have opinions about the important issues like AI risk."

"What's the bad thing that might happen if you expressed your opinion?"

"It would be wrong in some way I hadn't foreseen, and people would think less of me."

"Do you think less of other people who have wrong opinions?"

"Not if they change their minds when confronted with the evidence."

"Would you do that?"

"Yeah."

"Do you think other people think less of those who do that?"

"No."

"Well, if it's alright for other people to make mistakes, what makes YOU so special?"

A lot of my otherwise very smart and thoughtful friends seem to have a mental block around thinking on certain topics, because they're the sort of topics Important People have Important Opinions around. There seem to be two very different reasons for this sort of block:

Being wrong feels bad.

They might lose the respect of others.

Be wrong

If you don't have an opinion, you can hold onto the fantasy that someday, once you figure the thing out, you'll end up having a right opinion. But if you put yourself out there with an opinion that's unmistakably your own, you don't have that excuse anymore.

This is related to the desire to pass tests. The smart kids go through school and are taught - explicitly or tacitly - that as long as they get good grades they're doing OK, and if they try at all they can get good grades. So when they bump up against a problem that might actually be hard, there's a strong impulse to look away, to redirect to something else. So they do.

You have to understand that this system is not real, it's just a game. In real life you have to be straight-up wrong sometimes. So you may as well get it over with.

If you expect to be wrong when you guess, then you're already wrong, and paying the price for it. As Eugene Gendlin said:

What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away. And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with. Anything untrue isn't there to be lived. People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it.

What you would be mistaken about, you're already mistaken about. Owning up to it doesn't make you any more mistaken. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away.

"You're already "wrong" in the sense that your anticipations aren't perfectly aligned with reality. You just hav...
Traditions and Rationality.
by NatashaRostova — 2016-12-10T05:08:09.506Z

A couple months ago I read a post on facebook about how perhaps more young female virgins should sell their virginity, if they receive a lot of money. It was based on this article about a young women selling her virginity for 120k.

What bugs me is these cases are often lazy in assuming there aren't incredibly complex systems lurking behind these simple calculations.

If you wanted to be rational about this, you could map your perception of this story to dollars, take the situation as well specified, and estimate what a women ought to do (or at least seriously consider) given those circumstances. For the sake of argument let's assume that the news story is totally accurate, and it's a real decision that is available to all young women. Given this, would this analysis robust?

[Edit: Daniel_Burfoot makes a fair point that I shouldn't cite facebook posts as they are supposed to have a semblance of privacy. Since my argument doesn't rely on the specific post made by EY, I abstracted it away. This is why his name is in the comments.]

About 53 years ago Karl Popper wrote about the hostility between tradition and rationality in an essay in Conjectures and Refutations. In a passage that could have come from Less Wrong he wrote “There is a traditional hostility between rationalism and traditionalism. Rationalists are inclined to adopt the attitude: 'I am not interested in tradition. I want to judge everything on its own merits; I want to find out its merits and demerits, and I want to do this quite independently of any tradition. I want to judge it with my own brain, and not with the brains of other people who lived long ago.'”

That's kinda the tone set by some rationalists. Actually, I think more often than not it's the right way to study certain problems in rationality. Does it always work though? I'm skeptical.

Popper framed this problem as rationalists vs. traditionalists. He didn't claim to know the answer or take a side, but did argue that rationalists were sometimes too dismissive of traditional without at least critically examining it. What even is tradition though? Well, about 31 years after Popper's article a Computer Scientist, R. G. Reynolds, wrote a paper on culture as an algorithm. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's an accepted model for the crowd reading this argument. Based on my own casual observations of cult...
Suggested solution to The Naturalized Induction Problem
by  — 2016-12-10T00:21:50.613Z

This post is an answer to: http://intelligence.org/files/RealisticWorldModels.pdf
> In Solomonoff’s induction problem, the agent and its environment are fundamentally separate processes, connected only by an observation channel. In reality, agents are embedded within their environment; the universe consists of some ontologically continuous substrate (atoms, quantum fields) and the “agent” is just a part of the universe in which we have a particular interest. What, then, is the analogous prediction problem for agents embedded within (and computed by) their environment?
> This is the naturalized induction problem , and it is not yet well understood. A good formalization of this problem, on par with Solomonoff’s formalization of the computable sequence induction problem, would represent a significant advance in the theory of general reasoning.
In Solomonoff’s induction, an algorithm learns about the world (modeled as a Turing machine) from observations (modeled as output from that Turing machine). Solomonoff’s induction is uncomputable, however there are computable approximations.
1) Suggestion of agent design
Consider an agent fully embedded in an environment. Every turn, the agent receves one bit of observation and can preform one bit of action. The design we propose for this agent comes in two steps, learning and deciding.
1.1) Learning:
The agent models the entire wrold, including the agent it self, as one unknown, output only Turing machine. Both observations and the agents own actions, are seen as world outputs. The agent calculate the probability distribution over hypotheses for the entire world, using Solomonoff’s induction (computable approximation).
This suggestion completely removes any boundary between the agent and the rest of the world, in the agents wold model.
1.2) Deciding
The agent must also have a decision proses for choosing what action to take. Because the agent model its own actions as deterministic outputs from a complete wold model, we can not use the decision procedure used by Hutter’s AXIX. This is not just a problem of counterfactuals. Our agents internal world model has no input channel.
Instead we suggest the flowing: For each available action, the agent calculate the expected utility, conditional on observing itself preform that action. The agent chooses the action that gives the hig...
Reframing Average Utilitarianism
by Halfwitz — 2016-12-09T18:45:17.177Z

World A has a million people with an average utility of 10; world B has 100 people with an average utility of 11. Average utilitarianism says world B is preferable to world A. This seems counterintuitive as it has less total utility, but what if we reframe the question?

Imagine you are behind a veil of ignorance and you have to choose which world you will be instantiated into, becoming one citizen randomly selected from the population. From this perspective, world B is the obvious choice: even though it has far less total utility than word A, you personally get more utility by being instantiated into world B. This remains true even if world B only has 1 citizen, though most people, presumably, have "access to good company" in their utility function.

This reframing seems to invert my intuitions. Though this may just mean I am more selfish than most.
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2016-12-09T18:11:12.016Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on December 9th. The following week's summary is here.

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

[Amsterdam] Meetup #8 - Reversed stupidity is not intelligence: 11 December 2016 03:11PM
Munich: 10 December 2016 04:00PM
[Zurich] December Rationality meetup featuring Double Crux: 10 December 2016 05:00PM

The remaining meetups take place in cities with regular scheduling, but involve a change in time or location, special meeting content, or simply a helpful reminder about the meetup:

Baltimore Area / UMBC Weekly Meetup: 11 December 2016 08:00PM
Bay Area Winter Solstice 2016: 17 December 2016 07:00PM
[Berlin] AI safety Berlin: 07 January 2017 04:00PM
Boston Secular Solstice: 09 December 2016 08:00PM
Canberra Secular Solstice: 18 December 2016 05:00PM
Moscow: pedagogy goals, willpower research, community growth: 11 December 2016 02:00PM
NY Solstice 2016 - The Story of Smallpox: 17 December 2016 06:00PM
[NYC] Solstice Day-After Megameetup: 18 December 2016 01:00AM
Seattle Secular Solstice: 10 December 2016 04:00PM
Vienna Meetup: 17 December 2016 03:00PM
Washington, D.C.: Statistics: 11 December 2016 03:30PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Baltimore, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buffalo, Canberra, Columbus, Denver, Kraków, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Moscow, New Hampshire, New York, Philadelphia, Prague, Research Triangle NC, San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, St. Petersburg, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers and a Slack channel for daily discussion and online meetups on Sunday night US time.

If you'd like to talk with other LW-ers face to face, and there is no meetup in your area, consider starting your own meetup; it's easy (more resources here). Check one out, stretch your rationality skills, build community, and have fun!

In addition to the handy sidebar of upcoming meetups, a meetup overview is posted on the front page every Friday. These are an attempt to collect information on all the meetups happening in upcoming weeks. The best way to get your meetup featured is still to use the Add New Meetup feature, but you'll also have the benefit of having your meetup mentioned in a weekly overview. These overview posts are moved to the discussio...
Is Caviar a Risk Factor For Being a Millionaire?
by Anders_H — 2016-12-09T16:27:14.760Z

Today, my paper "Is caviar a risk factor for being a millionaire?" was published in the Christmas Edition of the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal). The paper is available at http://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i6536 but it is unfortunately behind a paywall. I am hoping to upload an open access version to a preprint server but this needs to be confirmed with the journal first.

In this paper, I argue that the term "risk factor" is ambiguous, and that this ambiguity causes pervasive methodological confusion in the epidemiological literature. I argue that many epidemiological papers essentially use an audio recorder to determine whether a tree falling in the forest makes a sound, without being clear about which definition of "sound" they are considering.

Even worse, I argue that epidemiologists often try to avoid claiming that their results say anything about causality, by hiding behind "prediction models". When they do this. they often still control extensively for "confounding", a term which only has a meaning in causal models. I argue that this is analogous to stating that you are interested in whether trees falling in the forest causes any human to perceive the qualia of hearing, and then spending your methods section discussing whether the audio recorder was working properly.

Due to space constraints and other considerations, I am unable to state these analogies explicitly in the paper, but it does include a call for a taboo on the word risk factor, and a reference to Rationality: AI to Zombies. To my knowledge, this is the first reference to the book in the medical literature.

I will give a short talk about this paper at the Less Wrong meetup at the MIRI/CFAR office in Berkeley at 6:30pm tonight.

(I apologize for this short, rushed announcement, I was planning to post a full writeup but I was not expecting this paper to be published for another week)
Meetup : Canberra Secular Solstice
by Calien — 2016-12-09T13:10:35.999Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Canberra Secular Solstice

WHEN:
18 December 2016 05:00:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
Nara Peace Park, Canberra

Canberra’s first secular solstice celebration! Of course picnicking is an excellent way to celebrate, bring a dish! Preferably vegetarian/vegan/reducetarian, and if you get it sorted ahead of time post what you’re bringing to avoid clashes.

Also:
* Light candles and try to keep them going against the probable wind
* Talk about and list all the things that have gone well this year. It’s the perfect symbolic time to celebrate all the good things that have happened in the world, more locally, personally, this year.
* Discuss plans for the next year
* Make predictions about next year

If it rains, we’ll retreat to one of the covered areas in the park.

If you’re having trouble, message me on 0424477339. See you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : Canberra Secular Solstice
Meetup : Baltimore Area / UMBC Weekly Meetup
by iarwain1 — 2016-12-09T12:14:19.472Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Baltimore Area / UMBC Weekly Meetup

WHEN:
11 December 2016 08:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
Performing Arts and Humanities Bldg Room 456, 1000 Hilltop Cir, Baltimore, MD 21250

Meeting is on 4th floor of the Performing Arts and Humanities Building. Permit parking designations do not apply on weekends, so park pretty much wherever you want.

Discussion article for the meetup : Baltimore Area / UMBC Weekly Meetup
Meetup : December Meetup in Munich
by Valeriy — 2016-12-09T10:41:59.834Z

Discussion article for the meetup : December Meetup in Munich

WHEN:
10 December 2016 04:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Elsenheimerstr. 47a, 80687 Munich

The meetup will take place in the JetBrains Event Space. We will talk about Double Crux -- a CFAR exercise for resolving disagreements. We also do some practical exercises using double crux. There will be another round of the science-or-fiction game.

As last times, after the meetup we are going for some food and drinks in a restaurant/bar nearby and talk and/or play zendo depending on the mood.

Please read the post about Double Crux on LessWrong http://lesswrong.com/lw/o6p/double_crux_a_strategy_for_resolving_disagreement/ and think of one controversial belief that you would like use to practice the disagreement resolving strategy.

Discussion article for the meetup : December Meetup in Munich