trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Please Don't Fight the Hypothetical
by TimS — 2012-04-20T14:29:06.247Z

It is a common part of moral reasoning to propose hypothetical scenarios. Whether it is our own Torture v. Specks or the more famous Trolley problem, asking these types of questions helps the participants formalize and understand their moral positions. Yet one common response to hypothetical scenarios is to challenge some axiom of the problem. This article is a request that people stop doing that, and an explanation of why this is an error.

First, a brief digression into law, which is frequently taught using hypothetical questioning. Under the Model Penal Code:

A person acts knowingly with respect to a material element of an offense when:
(i) if the element involves the nature of his conduct or the attendant
circumstances, he is aware that his conduct is of that nature or that such
circumstances exist; and
(ii) if the element involves a result of his conduct, he is aware that it is
practically certain that his conduct will cause such a result.

Hypothetical: If Bob sets fire to a house with Charlie inside, killing Charlie, is Bob guilty of knowing killing of Charlie? Bob genuinely believes throwing salt over one's shoulder when one sets a building on fire protects all the inhabitants and ensures that they will not be harmed - and did throw salt over his shoulder in this instance.

Let us take it as a given that setting someone on fire is practically certain to kill them. Nonetheless, Bob did not knowingly kill Charlie because Bob was not aware of the consequence of his action. Bob had a false belief that prevented him from having the belief required under the MPC to show knowledge.

The obvious response here is that, in practice, the known facts will lead to Bob's conviction of the crime at trial. This is irrelevant. Bob will be convicted at trial because the jury will not believe Bob's asserted belief was true. Unless Bob is insane or mentally deficient, the jury would be right to disbelieve Bob. But that missed the point of the hypothetical.

The purpose of the hypothetical is to distinguish between one type of mental state and a different type of mental state. If you don't understand that Bob is innocent of knowing killing if he truly believed that Charlie was safe, then you don't understand the MPC definition of knowing. Discussion of how mental states are proven at real trials, or whether k...
Curiosity checklist: Looking for feedback
by alexvermeer — 2012-04-20T13:12:04.265Z

I'm helping CMR create a 'rationality checklist'. The basic idea is this:

Answer a series of clear-cut, unambiguous yes/no questions that reflect your current level of rationality; obtain a score.

Test again in the future as a means of measuring progress in your rationality training.

Sample application: before and after a minicamp. Target market: LWers.

I made a checklist for Curiosity (below). Others are in the works. A question like "Am I a curious person?", while it is useful to know, is too vague for this checklist and too susceptible to bias.

Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated. It is easy to answer yes/no? Is anything missing? Anything unclear? Would you find this useful?

Curiosity

Do you have specific habits for getting curious when you notice you're not curious about something important?

Do you, in every situation, endeavour to have an accurate map of the territory?

Do you regularly acknowledge and accept the possible worlds that may exist? E.g. "If the iron is hot, I desire to believe it it hot; if it is cool, I desire to believe it is cool."

Do you regularly ask, “What are the causes of my beliefs? Why do I think this? What’s the source?”

Do you regularly ask, “What would I expect to see differently if x was or was not the case?”

Do you regularly ask, when unexpected things happen, “Why didn’t I expect x to happen?”

When you sit down to think, or to look something up, do you regularly ask, "What am I chasing? Why am I doing this? Am I asking myself questions about this?"

Do you frequently stop to consider what information will be most valuable to achieving your goals?

Do you frequently ask, "What do I most want to accomplish?"

Do you focus your curiosity on the information you need to achieve your goals? E.g. "What do I need to know in order to achieve that thing? What is most likely to help me learn this and figure it out?"

Do you stop reading when a source becomes irrelevant?

Do you actively seek out more useful information? E.g. "What are the best sources? Where is the best information?"

Do you gravitate to inquiries that seem most promising of producing shifts in belief?

Do you gravitate to inquiries that are least like the ones you've tried before?

Do you ever call topics or ideas boring, shallow, crazy, beneath you, or confusing (or other words t

...
[LINK] '3 Secrets of Wise Decision Making'
by Voltairina — 2012-04-20T08:53:48.671Z

Personal Decision Making (textbook about applied decision-making, for the class I'm taking right now)

The reason the book struck me as interesting was the author is employed at the university I'm going to, so if I get stuck its possible I could go and talk to him myself, and that its based in experimental psychology / psychology of decision making research.

The "3 Secrets" the book talks about are various techniques for addressing and recognizing biases, recognizing and overcoming failures of creativity, and developing the courage necessary to make and commit to rational choices. It covers various techniques for dealing with each of these dimensions of decision making, such as forced fit and stimulus variation for creativity.

From his blurb at the uni website:

"Dr. Anderson has been teaching at Portland State University since 1968. He received his B.A. in Psychology from Stanford University in 1957 and his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from The Johns Hopkins University in 1963. His current interests are in applications of decision psychology and decision analysis to personal decision making and public policy decision making."

From the book sleeve:

"Barry F. Anderson is professor emeritus of Psychology at Portland State University. He teaches courses on Personal Decision Making,
Decision Psychology, Conflict Resolution, and Ethical Decision Making. He also publishes in the areas of cognitive psychology and judgment and decision making and consults on personal decisions and on public and private policy decisions. In The Three Secrets of Wise Decision Making he uses his many years of varied experience to bring the technology of rational decision making to the lay reader in a manner that is understandable, engaging, and readily applicable to real-life decision making."

from the website:

"As the world has become more complex and information more abundant, decisions have become more difficult. As the pace of change and the range of choice have increased, decisions have to be made more often. Yet most of us still make decisions with no more knowledge about decision processes than our ancestors had in a simpler age, hundreds of years ago.

Mathematicians, economists, psychologists, and practitioners have developed a variety of powerful and easily applied tools for decision making. Evidence is accumulating that better decision processes lead to bet

...
[SEQ RERUN] Decoherence is Pointless
by MinibearRex — 2012-04-20T04:38:17.005Z

Today's post, Decoherence is Pointless was originally published on 29 April 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

There is no exact point at which decoherence suddenly happens. All of quantum mechanics is continuous and differentiable, and decoherent processes are no exception to this.

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 The Conscious Sorites Paradox, 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.
[LINK] Cracked provides a humorous primer on the Singularity
by Eneasz — 2012-04-20T01:28:10.443Z

Cracked, already known for its lay-person-friendly approach to promoting rationality, now has a quick video that roughly explains the Singularity and why we should be worried about it while being funny and interesting to people who normally wouldn't care. Done in their After Hours series.

http://www.cracked.com/video_18400_why-scariest-sci-fi-robot-uprising-has-already-begun.html
What deserves cryocide?
by rlpowell — 2012-04-19T23:24:24.233Z

So being signed up for cryonics shifts my views on life and death, as might be expected.

In particular, it focuses my views of success on the preservation of my brain (everything else too, just in case, but especially the brain). This means, obviously, not just the lump of meat but also the information within it.

If I'm suffering a degenerative disease to that meat or its information, I'm going to want to cryocide to preserve the information (and the idea of living through slow brain death doesn't thrill me regardless).

What I don't know is: given the current state of science, what sorts of things do I need to be worried about?

In particular, I'm wondering about Alzheimer's; does it appear to be damage to the information, or to the retrieval mechanism?

But any other such diseases interest me in this context.

Thanks!

-Robin
A question about Eliezer
by perpetualpeace1 — 2012-04-19T17:27:38.572Z

I blew through all of MoR in about 48 hours, and in an attempt to learn more about the science and philosophy that Harry espouses, I've been reading the sequences and Eliezer's posts on Less Wrong. Eliezer has written extensively about AI, rationality, quantum physics, singularity research, etc. I have a question: how correct has he been? Has his interpretation of quantum physics predicted any subsequently-observed phenomena? Has his understanding of cognitive science and technology allowed him to successfully anticipate the progress of AI research, or has he made any significant advances himself? Is he on the record predicting anything, either right or wrong?

Why is this important: when I read something written by Paul Krugman, I know that he has a Nobel Prize in economics, and I know that he has the best track record of any top pundit in the US in terms of making accurate predictions. Meanwhile, I know that Thomas Friedman is an idiot. Based on this track record, I believe things written by Krugman much more than I believe things written by Friedman. But if I hadn't read Friedman's writing from 2002-2006, then I wouldn't know how terribly wrong he has been, and I would be too credulous about his claims.

Similarly, reading Mike Darwin's predictions about the future of medicine was very enlightening. He was wrong about nearly everything. So now I know to distrust claims that he makes about the pace or extent of subsequent medical research.

Has Eliezer offered anything falsifiable, or put his reputation on the line in any way? "If X and Y don't happen by Z, then I have vastly overestimated the pace of AI research, or I don't understand quantum physics as well as I think I do," etc etc.
Adaptive Logics: the best of both worlds?
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2012-04-19T09:39:37.656Z

Consider the following premises from which we would like to reason:

Abraham Lincoln was born in Michigan.

Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky.

Eliezer Yudkowsky has a beard or he has blond hair.

Eliezer Yudkowsky doesn't have blond hair.

We'd like to be able to conclude that Eliezer Yudkowsky has a beard, but we have a problem doing that. Classical logic can certainly derive that result, but because (1) and (2) contradict each other, by the principle of explosion, classical logic can derive any result - including the fact that Eliezer doesn't have a beard. If we use paraconsistent logics then we're safe from explosion. But because we've been rejecting the disjunctive syllogism in order to avoid explosion, we can't actually put (3) and (4) together in order to get the result we want.

Informally, what we'd want to do is something like "use classical logic wherever there's no contradictions, but restrict to paraconsistent logic whenever there are". Adaptive logics attempt to implement this idea. The presentation in this post will be even more informal than usual, as the ideas of adaptive logics are more useful than the specific implementation I've seen.

Between sky and earth, between classical and relevance

Adaptive logics make use of two logical systems: an upper limit logic ULL (generally take to be classical logic) and a weaker lower limit logic LLL (we will be using a relevance logic for this). Adaptive logics will then start with a collection of premises (that may include contradictions), and reason from there.

The basic rules are that proofs using the LLL are always valid (since it is a weaker logic, they are also valid for the ULL). Proofs using the ULL are valid if they did not use a contradiction in their reasoning. In the example above, we would freely apply classical logic when using premises (3) and (4), but would restrict to relevance logic when using premises (1) and (2).

This might be enough for UDT; we would label the antecedent A()==a in the (A()==a → U()==u) statement as (potentially) contradictory, and only allow relevance logic to use it as a premise, while hitting everything else that moves with classical logic.

Dynamic proofs

However, it's also possible that the contradiction might not be so clear to see beforehand; possibly other contradictions may lurk deep within the premises of the algorithm. In that case, adaptive logics have a m...
Meetup : Philadelphia Meetup: Against Rationalization
by DasAllFolks — 2012-04-19T04:35:23.519Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Philadelphia Meetup: Against Rationalization

WHEN: 26 April 2012 07:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE: 1301 Chestnut Street Philadelphia, PA 191073521

We'll be having our next meetup on Thursday, April 26th at 7 P.M. at the Starbucks in Macy's Center City (same location as for our immediate past meetup on macroeconomics).

Topic of discussion will be the Against Rationalization subsequence of the critical How to Actually Change Your Mind sequence of Less Wrong.

Those interested in attending the meetup are kindly requested to please complete the following three tasks in advance of the 26th:

Read the articles (if you haven't already)!

Bring at least one question concerning the articles to discuss with the group (i.e maybe something which confused you, or which you think would make for thought-provoking discussion).

Bring in a real-world example/case study which illustrates a concept from the articles, or else why you find said concepts important (or not important!). Your example/case study can be from your own life, someone else's life, world news, or pretty much whatever other field suits your needs best.

The Starbucks closes at 9 P.M. that night, so we should have a good 2 hours to get through all the material the above three tasks should (hopefully) fuel in the conversation.

Looking forward to seeing many of you again soon!

Discussion article for the meetup : Philadelphia Meetup: Against Rationalization
[SEQ RERUN] The Conscious Sorites Paradox
by MinibearRex — 2012-04-19T04:26:37.310Z

Today's post, The Conscious Sorites Paradox was originally published on 28 April 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Decoherence is implicit in quantum physics, not an extra law on top of it. Asking exactly when "one world" splits into "two worlds" may be like asking when, if you keep removing grains of sand from a pile, it stops being a "heap". Even if you're inside the world, there may not be a definite answer. This puzzle does not arise only in quantum physics; the Ebborians could face it in a classical universe, or we could build sentient flat computers that split down their thickness. Is this really a physicist's problem?

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 On Being Decoherent, 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.
Partial Transcript of the Hanson-Yudkowsky June 2011 Debate
by ChrisHallquist — 2012-04-19T03:43:58.810Z

So I'm currently trying to write an article on the nature of intelligence and the AI FOOM issue. I listened to the live debate between Eliezer Yudkowsky and Robin Hanson they did in June 2011, and thought taken together Eliezer's comments in that debate make for a really good concise statement of his position. However, videos and audios have the disadvantage that when you're trying to make sure you remember or understand something correctly, it's can be inconvenient to find the part and re-listen to it (because of inability to skim, and to an extent because I read faster than most people talk). I finally decided to transcribe substantial chunks of Eliezer's comments for my own use, and I think my transcript would be useful to the Less Wrong community in general.

This is not a word for word transcript; I've eliminated verbal filler and false starts (where Eliezer stopped mid-sentence and decided to say something a different way.) If people want to transcribe parts I left out, including Robin's remarks, they can put them in the comments and I'll edit them in to the main post along with attribution. Corrections and suggested tweaks to what I've transcribed so far are also welcome.

EDIT: Partial credit for this post goes to kalla724, not because she contributed directly, but because I'm not sure I would have been able to do this without having read this post. It instantly increased my ability to avoid distractions while getting work done, sending my productivity through the roof. I hope the effects are permanent.

[7:30] When we try to visualize how all this is likely to go down, we tend to visualize a scenario that someone else once termed a “brain in a box in a basement.” And I love that phrase, so I stole it. In other words, we tend to visualize that there’s this AI programming team a lot like the wannabe AI programming teams you see nowadays trying to create artificial general intelligence like the a

...
How can we get more and better LW contrarians?
by Wei Dai — 2012-04-18T22:01:12.772Z

I'm worried that LW doesn't have enough good contrarians and skeptics, people who disagree with us or like to find fault in every idea they see, but do so in a way that is often right and can change our minds when they are. I fear that when contrarians/skeptics join us but aren't "good enough", we tend to drive them away instead of improving them.

For example, I know a couple of people who occasionally had interesting ideas that were contrary to the local LW consensus, but were (or appeared to be) too confident in their ideas, both good and bad. Both people ended up being repeatedly downvoted and left our community a few months after they arrived. This must have happened more often than I have noticed (partly evidenced by the large number of comments/posts now marked as written by [deleted], sometimes with whole threads written entirely by deleted accounts). I feel that this is a waste that we should try to prevent (or at least think about how we might). So here are some ideas:

Try to "fix" them by telling them that they are overconfident and give them hints about how to get LW to take their ideas seriously. Unfortunately, from their perspective such advice must appear to come from someone who is themselves overconfident and wrong, so they're not likely to be very inclined to accept the advice.

Create a separate section with different social norms, where people are not expected to maintain the "proper" level of confidence and niceness (on pain of being downvoted), and direct overconfident newcomers to it. Perhaps through no-holds-barred debate we can convince them that we're not as crazy and wrong as they thought, and then give them the above-mentioned advice and move them to the main sections.

Give newcomers some sort of honeymoon period (marked by color-coding of their usernames or something like that), where we ignore their overconfidence and associated social transgressions (or just be extra nice and tolerant towards them), and take their ideas on their own merits. Maybe if they see us take their ideas seriously, that will cause them to reciprocate and take us more seriously when we point out that they may be wrong or overconfident.

I guess these ideas sounded better in my head than written down, but maybe they'll inspire other people to think of better ones. And it might help a bit just to keep this issue in the back

...
The Quick Bayes Table
by farsan — 2012-04-18T18:00:46.067Z

This is an effort to make Bayes' Theorem available to people without heavy math skills. It is possible that this has already been invented, because it is just a direct result of expanding something I read at Yudkowsky’s Intuitive Explanation of Bayes Theorem. In that case, excuse me for reinventing the wheel. Also, English is my second language.

When I read Yudkowsky’s Intuitive Explanation of Bayes Theorem, the notion of using decibels to measure the likelihood ratio of additional evidence struck me as extremely intuitive. But in the article, the notion was just a little footnote, and I wanted to check if this could be used to simplify the theorem.
It is harder to use logarithms than just using the Bayes Theorem the normal way, but I remembered that before modern calculators were made, mathematics carried around small tables of base 10 logarithms that saved them work in laborious multiplications and divisions, and I wondered if we could use the same in order to get quick approximations to Bayes' Theorem.
I calculated some numbers and produced this table in order to test my idea:

Decibels

Probability

Odds

-30

0.1%

1:1000

-24

0.4%

1:251

-20

1%

1:100

-18

1,5%

1:63

-15

3%

1:32

-12

6%

1:16

-11

7%

1:12.6

-10

9%

1:10

-9

11%

1:7.9

-8

14%

1:6.3

-7

17%

1:5

-6

20%

1:4

-5

24%

1:3.2

-4

28%

1:2.5

-3

33%

1:2

-2

38%

1:1.6

-1

44%

1:1.3

0

50%

1:1

+1

56%

1.3:1

+2

62%

1.6:1

+3

67%

2:1

+4

72%

2.5:1

+5

76%

3.2:1

+6

80%

4:1

+7

83%

5:1

+8

86%

6.3:1

+9

89%

7.9:1

+10

91%

10:1

+11

93%

12.6:1

+12

94%

16:1

+15

97%

32:1

+18

98.5%

63:1

+20

99%

100:1

+24

99.6%

251:1

+30

99.9%

1000:1

This table's values are approximate for easier use. The odds approximately double every 3 dB (The real odds are 1.995:1 in 3 dB) and are multiplied by 10 every 10 dB exactly.

In order to use this table, you must add the decibels results from the prior probability (Using the probability column) and the likelihood ratio (Using the ratio column) in order to get the approximated answer (Probability column of the decibel result). In case of doubt between two rows, choose the closest to 0.
For example, let's...
[link]Mass replication of Psychology articles planed.
by beoShaffer — 2012-04-18T16:13:27.029Z

http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/is-psychology-about-to-come-undone/29045

The plan is to replicate or fail to replicate all 2008 articles from three major Psychology journals.

ETA: http://openscienceframework.org/ is the homepage of the group behind this. It's still in Beta, but will eventually include some nifty looking science toolkits in addition to the reproducibility project.