trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Number of Members on LessWrong
by Epiphany — 2012-08-17T04:05:17.774Z

I wanted to know how many people have joined LessWrong but I couldn't find anything stating the number of members on LessWrong anywhere on the site or the internet, so I decided to MacGyver it out of Google:
site:lesswrong.com/user -"submitted by" -"comments by"
(Translation provided at the end.)
This gets a similar result in Bing and Yahoo:
"lesswrong.com/user"
If this is correct, LessWrong has over 9,000 members, but my LessWrong population figure is likely to be low. Since it was so hard to find out how many users LessWrong has, I decided to post it. I can't be the only curious person.

Why my figure is likely to be on the low side (and general inaccuracies):
- Some users may not be included in Google's index yet. For instance, if they have never posted, there may be no link to their page (which is what I searched for - user pages), and the spider would not find them. This may be restricted to members that have actually commented, posted, or have been linked to in some way somewhere on the internet.
- Search engine caches are not in real time. There can be a lag of up to months, depending on how much the search engine "likes" the page.
- It has been reported by previous employees of a major search engine that they are using crazy old computer equipment to store their caches. I've been told that it is common for sections of cache to be down for that reason.
- Some of the results in Bing and Yahoo were irrelevant, though I think I weeded them pretty thoroughly for Google if my random samples of results pages are a good indication of the whole.
Go ahead and check it out - stick the code in Google and see how many LessWrong members it shows. You'll certainly get a more up-to-date total than I have posted here. ;)

Translation for those of you that don't know Google's codes:
site:lesswrong.com/user
"Search only lesswrong.com, only the user directory."
(The user directory is where each user's home page is, so I'm essentially telling it "find all the home page directories".)
-"submitted by" -"comments by"
Exclude any page in that directory with the exact text "submitted by", exclude any page with the exact text "comments by"
(The submissions and comments pages use a url in that directory, so they will show up in the results if I do not subtract them. Also, I used exact text specific to tho...
Kelly Criteria and Two Envelopes
by Wei Dai — 2012-08-16T21:57:41.809Z

(This post is motivated by recent discussions here of the two titular topics.)

Suppose someone hands you two envelopes and gives you some information that allows you to conclude either:

The expected ratio of amount of money in the red envelope to the amount in the blue is >1, or

With probability close to 1 (say 0.999) the amount of money in the red envelope is greater than the amount in the blue.

In either case, is the conclusion sufficient to imply that one should choose the red envelope over the blue? Obviously not, right? (Well, at least #2 should be obvious, and #1 was recently pointed out by VincentYu.) In any case I will also give some simple counter-examples here:

Suppose red envelope has $5 and blue envelope has even chance of $1 and $100. E(R/B) = .5(5/1)+.5(5/100) = 2.525 but one would want to choose the blue envelope assuming utility linear in money.

Red envelope has $100, blue envelope has $99 with probability 0.999 and $1 million with probability 0.001.

Notice that it's not sufficient to establish both conclusions at once either (my second example above actually satisfies both).

A common argument for the Kelly Criteria being "optimal" (see page 10 of this review paper recommended by Robin Hanson) is to mathematically establish conclusions 1 and 2, with Kelly Criteria in place of the red envelope and "any other strategy" in place of the blue envelope. However it turns out that "optimal" is not supposed to be normative, as the paper later explains:

In essence the critique is that you should maximize your utility function rather than to base your investment decision on some other criterion. This is certainly correct, but fails to appreciate that Kelly's results are not necessarily normative but rather descriptive.

So the upshot here is that unless your utility function is actually log in money and not, say, linear (or even superlinear) in the amount of resources under your control, you may not want to adopt the Kelly Criteria even when the other commonly mentioned assumptions are satisfied.
Who Wants To Start An Important Startup?
by ShannonFriedman — 2012-08-16T20:02:15.088Z

SUMMARY: Let's collect people who want to work on for-profit companies that have significant positive impacts on many people's lives.

Google provides a huge service to the world - efficient search of a vast amount of data. I would really like to see more for-profit businesses like Google, especially in underserved areas like those explored by non-profits GiveWell, Singularity Institute and CFAR. GiveWell is a nonprofit that is both working toward making humanity better, and thinking about leverage. Instead of hacking away at one branch of the problem of effective charity by working on one avenue for helping people, they've taken it meta. They're providing a huge service by helping people choose non-profits to donate to that give the most bang for your buck, and they're giving the non-profits feedback on how they can improve. I would love to see more problems taken meta like that, where people invest in high leverage things.

Beyond these non-profits, I think there is a huge amount of low-hanging fruit for creating businesses that create a lot of good for humanity and make money. For-profit businesses that pay their employees and investors well have the advantage that they can entice very successful and comfortable people away from other jobs that are less beneficial to humanity. Unlike non-profits where people are often trying to scrape by, doing the good of their hearts, people doing for-profits can live easy lives with luxurious self care while improving the world at the same time.

It's all well and good to appeal to altruistic motives, but a lot more people can be mobilzed if they don't have to sacrifice their own comfort. I have learned a great deal about this from Jesse and Sharla at Rejuvenate. They train coaches and holistic practitioners in sales and marketing - enabling thousands of people to start businesses who are doing the sorts of things that advance their mission. They do this while also being multi-millionaires themselves, and maintaining a very comfortable lifestyle, taking the time for self-care and relaxation to recharge from long workdays.

Less Wrong is read by thousands of people, many of whom are brilliant and talented. In addition, Less Wrong readers include people who are interested in the future of the world and think about the big picture. They think about things like AI and the vast positive and negative consequences it could ...
Competence in experts: summary
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2012-08-16T14:53:56.796Z

Just giving a short table-summary of an article by James Shanteau on which areas and tasks experts developed a good intuition - and which ones they didn't. Though the article is old, the results seem to be in agreement with more recent summaries, such as Kahneman and Klein's. The heart of the article was a decomposition of characteristics (for professions and for tasks within those professions) where we would expert experts to develop good performance:

Good performance	Poor performance

Static stimuli

Decisions about things

Experts agree on stimuli

More predictable problems

Some errors expected

Repetitive tasks

Feedback available

Objective analysis available

Problem decomposable

Decision aids common

Dynamic (changeable) stimuli

Decisions about behavior

Experts disagree on stimuli

Less predictable problems

Few errors expected

Unique tasks

Feedback unavailable

Subjective analysis only

Problem not decomposable

Decision aids rare

I do feel that this may go some way to explaining the expert's performance here.
[LINK] SMBC comics: Existential Crisis Sally on "Is forgotten torture real?"
by Shmi — 2012-08-16T06:53:50.980Z

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2705

Addresses questions like "If I don't remember, but it definitely happened... who suffered?" in a rather non-obvious way (non-obvious to me, anyway).
[SEQ RERUN] Against Modal Logics
by MinibearRex — 2012-08-16T05:26:38.071Z

Today's post, Against Modal Logics was originally published on 27 August 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Unfortunately, very little of philosophy is actually helpful in AI research, for a few reasons.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Dreams of AI Design, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
Meetup : Washington DC TED talks Meetup
by rocurley — 2012-08-15T21:36:15.888Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC TED talks Meetup

WHEN:
19 August 2012 04:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
Washington DC

This will be the second TED talks meetup, where we will watch and discuss TED talks. The last one was a lot of fun, and led to some quite interesting discussions, so I'm optimistic about this one too.

The meetup is at a private apartment; please check the email list or PM me for details.

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC TED talks Meetup
The weakest arguments for and against human level AI
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2012-08-15T11:04:40.906Z

While going through the list of arguments for why to expect human level AI to happen or be impossible I was stuck by the same tremendously weak arguments that kept on coming up again and again. The weakest argument in favour of AI was the perenial:

Moore's Law hence AI!

Lest you think I'm exaggerating how weakly the argument was used, here are some random quotes:

Progress in computer hardware has followed an amazingly steady curve in the last few decades [16]. Based largely on this trend, I believe that the creation of greater than human intelligence will occur during the next thirty years. (Vinge, 1993)

Computers aren't terribly smart right now, but that's because the human brain has about a million times the raw power of todays' computers. [...] Since computer capacity doubles every two years or so, we expect that in about 40 years, the computers will be as powerful as human brains. (Eder 1994)

Suppose my projections are correct, and the hardware requirements for human equivalence are available in 10 years for about the current price of a medium large computer. Suppose further that software development keeps pace (and it should be increasingly easy, because big computers are great programming aids), and machines able to think as well as humans begin to appear in 10 years. (Moravec, 1977)

At least Moravec gives a glance towards software, even though it is merely to say that software "keeps pace" with hardware. What is the common scale for hardware and software that he seems to be using? I'd like to put Starcraft II, Excel 2003 and Cygwin on a hardware scale - do these correspond to Penitums, Ataris, and Colossus? I'm not particularly ripping into Moravec, but if you realise that software is important, then you should attempt to model software progress!

But very rarely do any of these predictors try and show why having computers with say, the memory capacity or the FOPS of a human brain, will suddenly cause an AI to emerge.

The weakest argument against AI was the standard:

Free will (or creativity) hence no AI!

Some of the more sophisticated go "Gödel, hence no AI!". If the crux of your whole argument is that only humans can do X, then you need to show that only humans can do X - not assert it and spend the rest of your paper talking in great details about other things.
[SEQ RERUN] Dreams of AI Design
by MinibearRex — 2012-08-15T04:06:01.216Z

Today's post, Dreams of AI Design was originally published on 26 August 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

It can feel as though you understand how to build an AI, when really, you're still making all your predictions based on empathy. Your AI design will not work until you figure out a way to reduce the mental to the non-mental.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Three Fallacies of Teleology, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
Let's be friendly to our allies
by JGWeissman — 2012-08-15T04:02:43.977Z

Less Wrong was created to produce rationalists, so that many causes could benefit from the efforts of those rationalists. The point is not just to have nice place to talk about rationality, but to really make ourselves stronger, to apply the lessons that we learn here to improve our own lives, and to improve the world.

80,000 Hours is an organization created to provide direct domain specific help to people who want to support charitable causes, the same causes Less Wrong is supposed to produce rationalists to support. 80,000 Hours has goals clearly aligned with ours. Provided we think they are pursuing their aligned goals effectively, we should be excited about this. We should be happy when they reach out to us, to see how we can work together.

So, I am very disappointed to see the negative reception of a Less Wrong post by 80,000 Hours member Benjamin Todd, asking us what questions we would like 80,000 Hours to answer for us. They are basically offering to do free research for us on things that we care about, because our goals are aligned. And yet, as of this writing, that post has a score of -7, and it has received comments complaining that it is an ad. To be clear, ads of the sort that we want to avoid do not offer free services relevant to a core purpose of our community. I won't argue whether or not the post was an ad, but I will say that it belongs on Less Wrong and we should give it a good reception.

I would like to thank Benjamin Todd and others at 80,000 hours for their work in helping people be more effective philanthropists and otherwise support important causes, and for engaging Less Wrong in this project. I also thank everyone who responded to post with their actual questions about making a difference.

And, please, can we be nice to people who help us?
Idle speculation about anchoring and the Facebook IPO
by RolfAndreassen — 2012-08-15T01:00:21.108Z

Facebook IPO'd at a price of 38 dollars a share, which apparently gave it a price-to-earnings ratio in the range of 100 - extremely, fantastically high. The price dropped pretty rapidly and is currently somewhere around 20 dollars; which still, presumably, gives it a very high P/E ratio somewhere in the forties. Now, suppose it had IPO'd at a more historically-reasonable P/E of, say, 20 - still high, but not stratospheric. That would put the initial share price somewhere around 10 or 12 dollars. Is there any strong reason to believe that the price would then have *risen* to where it is now? It is not obvious to me that the current price is supported by anything but the historical price - in other words, it's trading around 20 because it has recently traded around 25.

My point: I can't help but wonder if someone connected to the IPO had read Kahneman on anchoring. Somebody, clearly, was buying the stock at 33, just as someone is still buying at 20; I wonder if the chain of thought had that apparently-arbitrary number "38" in it somewhere, making 33 look cheap - fundamentals be damned! And if this happened, who benefited, and what ought we to conclude about the efficiency of markets?
Meetup : Berkeley meetup: Discussion about startups
by Nisan — 2012-08-14T17:09:10.149Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley meetup: Discussion about startups

WHEN:
15 August 2012 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
Berkeley, CA 94702

Tomorrow's meetup will be a discussion about this Less Wrong post:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/e26/who_wants_to_start_an_important_startup/

The idea is that for-profit companies are a good way of accomplishing certain altruistic goals, and our community contains people with startup ideas and people who have the skills and energy to realize the ideas.

Come to Zendo Wednesday to discuss your startup idea and/or get excited about someone else's project. Doors open at 7pm, and discussion starts at 7:30pm.

(Also, there's an 80% chance that I'll have five clickers with which to play a fun operant conditioning game after the discussion.)

For directions to Zendo, see the mailing list:

http://groups.google.com/group/bayarealesswrong

or call me at:

http://i.imgur.com/Vcafy.png

Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley meetup: Discussion about startups
[LINK] The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness
by David_Gerard — 2012-08-14T13:40:27.305Z

The Francis Crick Memorial Conference, held in Cambridge last month, has come up with the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (PDF).

tl;dr humans still aren't special, consciousness seems to arise in quite a variety of nervous systems and working out what it is is a problem in neurology.

We declare the following: “The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from
experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the
neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with
the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that
humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-
human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also
possess these neurological substrates.”
[SEQ RERUN] Three Fallacies of Teleology
by MinibearRex — 2012-08-14T07:45:15.439Z

Today's post, Three Fallacies of Teleology was originally published on 25 August 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Theories of teleology have a few problems. First, theories of teleology often wind up drawing causal arrows from the future to the past. It also leads you to make predictions based on anthropomorphism. Finally, it opens you up to the Mind Projection Fallacy, assuming that the purpose of something is an inherent property of that thing, as opposed to a property of the agent or process that produced it.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Magical Categories, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
Meetup : Melbourne social meetup
by toner — 2012-08-14T05:26:26.031Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne social meetup

WHEN: 24 August 2012 07:00:00PM (+1000)

WHERE: Ben's house; see mailing list, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia

Melbourne's next social meetup is on Friday 24th August, 6:30 for 7pm, at my house. If you have any trouble working out the location or getting in, you can call me on 0412 996 288 or Scott (shokwave) on 0432 862 932.

We'll get some snacks and organise some form of take-away for dinner. BYO drinks and games.

We always look forward to meeting new people!

This meetup is usually on the third Friday of the month. We also have a regular meetup about practical rationality on the first Friday of each month.

If you're free this Friday (the 17th), Adam suggests that you consider attending http://2012.singularitysummit.com.au/other-activities/randal-koene-and-mark-pesce-at-embiggen-books/ (but remember to book!), perhaps followed by dinner in the city.

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne social meetup
Meetup : West LA Meetup - Career Optimization (Emphasis on Software)
by  — 2012-08-14T04:14:06.250Z

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup - Career Optimization (Emphasis on Software)

WHEN:
15 August 2012 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
10850 West Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90064

When: 7:00pm - 9:00pm Wednesday, August 15th.

Where: The Westside Tavern in the upstairs Wine Bar (all ages welcome), located inside the Westside Pavillion on the second floor, right by the movie theaters.

Parking is free for 3 hours.

Discussion Topic: This week we will discuss how to find work you like, like work you find, and how to get to where you want to go. Almost everyone who has come to these seems to work with software, so realistically we will focus on that sort of career path.

There will be general discussion too, and there are lots of interesting recent posts. Don't worry if you don't have time to read any articles, or even if you've never read any Less Wrong! Bring a friend! The atmosphere is casual, and good, intelligent conversation with friendly people is guaranteed.

I will bring a whiteboard with Bayes' Theorem written on it.

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup - Career Optimization (Emphasis on Software)