trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Can We Do Without Bridge Hypotheses?
by Rob Bensinger — 2014-01-25T00:50:24.991Z

Followup to: Building Phenomenological Bridges, Reductionism

Bridge hypotheses are extremely awkward. It's risky to draw permanent artificial lines between categories of hypothesis ('physical' vs. 'bridge'). We might not give the right complexity penalties to one kind of hypothesis relative to the other. Or we might implement a sensible framework for bridge hypotheses in one kind of brain that fails to predict the radically new phenomenology that results from expanding one's visual cortex onto new hardware.

We'd have to hope that it makes sense to talk about 'correct' bridging rules (correctly relating a hypothesis about external stimuli or about transistors composing yourself, to which settings are in fact the ones you call 'green'), even though they're quite different from ordinary physical descriptions of the world. And, since fully general and error-free knowledge of the phenomenologies of possible agents will probably not be available to a seed AGI or to its programmers, we'd have to hope that it's possible to build a self-modifying inductor robust enough that mistaken bridge predictions would just result in a quick Bayesian update towards better ideas. It's definitely a dangling thread.

Why, then, can't we do without them? Maybe they're a handy heuristic for agents with incomplete knowledge — but can they truly never be eliminated?

The notion of an irreducible divide between an AI's subjective sensations and its models of the objective world may sound suspiciously dualistic. If we live in a purely physical world, then why shouldn't a purely physical agent, once it’s come to a complete understanding of itself and the world, be able to dispense with explicit bridges? These are, after all, the agent's beliefs that we're talking about. In the limit, intuitively, accurate beliefs should just look like the world. So shouldn't the agent's phenomenological self-models eventually end up collapsing into its physical world-models — dispensing with a metaphysically basic self/world distinction?1

Yes and no. When humans first began hypothesizing about the relationship between mind and matter, the former domain did not appear to be reducible to the latter. A number of philosophers concluded from this that there was a deep metaphysical divide between the two. But as the sciences of mind began to erode that belief in mind-matter dualism, they...
How Not to Make Money
by diegocaleiro — 2014-01-24T20:36:07.078Z

Sarcastic Practical Advice Series: 1 How Not to Make Money

I'm calling this a series because I would like it to be a series, feel free to write your own post on "how not to do something many people want to do", especially you, future me.

I'm very good at not making money, and maybe this is a skill you have found yourself needing to perfect.

But worry not. Stop rationalizing! I'll teach you some of the craft before you can say all the palindromes in the Finnish language.

(1) Be one of those people who actually turn knowledge, general knowledge, into personally designed actions/policies. The kind of people who, upon learning that driving is more dangerous than being attacked by spiders, and experiencing the first person evolved fear of spiders, understands that he should be as afraid of driving badly as he is of spiders, or much more, and drives accordingly.

(2) Understand that there is no metaphysical Self, only a virtual center of narrative gravity (Read Dennett), whose manner of discounting time is hyperbolic (Read George Ainslie), weirdly self-representative (Read GEB), and basically a mess.

(3) Read Reasons and Persons, by Parfit, and really give up on your Naïve intuitions about personal identity over time. Using (1) act accordingly, i.e. screw future retired you.

(4) Go through a university program in the humanities, so no one tempts you by throwing money at you after you graduate - This has happened to an academically oriented friend of mine who graduated a Medical Doctor, but actually wanted to be in the lab playing with brains. - If you can make into Greek Mythology, or Iranian Literature, good for you, Philosophy is ok, as are social sciences, as long as you do theory and don't get into politics or institutional design later on. If you go to psychology, you are dangerously near Human Resources, so be sure to be doing it for the reasons Pinker would do it, because you want to understand our internal computer, not to treat people.

(5) Have some cash: This seems obvious, but it’s worth reminding if you are a machine discounting hyperbolically, you'd better be safe for the next two months.

(6) Study research on happiness and money: Money doesn't buy happiness, and when it does, it's by buying things to others, regardless of Price. Giving a bike, a Porsche, or...
"A Definition of Subjective Probability" by Anscombe and Aumann
by JonahS — 2014-01-24T20:30:25.950Z

In the course of studying how subjective probabilities can be defined, I read A Definition of Subjective Probability (1963) by Anscombe and Aumann. My notes may be of interest to the Less Wrong community, and have pasted them below.

The authors define two types of lotteries:

A "roulette lottery" which is a game of chance with "physical" probabilities attached to outcomes, where each outcome is associated with a prize. The authors are vague about what they mean by "physical" probabilities, but they seem to mean probabilities that it's possible to generate via frequentist inference.

A "horse lottery," which is a game of chance where physical probabilities are unavailable.

The paper's goal is to give a definition of subjective probabilities attached to outcomes in a horse lottery.

Intuitively, the idea seems to be as follows. Suppose that you have an event E, that you desire to happen, and a choice between the following options:

A horse lottery occurs, and event E occurs if and only if the outcome of the horse lottery is O.

A roulette lottery occurs, and event E occurs if and only if the outcome is O', where O' has probability q.

Consider the set T of values of q such that you'd prefer #2 over #1. Then your subjective probability p of the horse lottery having outcome O is defined to be the greatest lower bound of T.

The authors begin by assuming that one has a preference ordering over the prizes awarded in lotteries, with the best prize strictly favored over the worst prize. Here the prizes include tickets to other lotteries.

The authors convert this preference ordering to a utility function u where the best prize is assigned utility 1 and the worst prize is assigned utility 0. The authors assume that the function u has the property that u of a roulette lottery is the expected utility (sum of utilities of the outcomes weighted by the probabilities of the outcomes). The authors also convert a preference ordering over horse lotteries to a utility function u*. We know that u* is 1 for the lottery that gives the best prize with probability 1 and u* is 0 for the horse lottery that gives the worst prize with probability 1. At this point it's not meaningful to say that that u* of a horse lottery is the expected utility, because the probabilities associated with outcomes of the horse lottery have not been defined.

The authors then consider the s...
Gauging Interest: Santa Barbara, CA Meetup
by TylerJay — 2014-01-24T20:22:00.187Z

I live in Santa Barbara. Los Angeles is a bit too far away for me to travel for LW meetups, so I wanted to see if anyone would be interested in a Santa Barbara meetup. I would be happy to arrange it and plan content.

If anyone would be interested in attending *at least one* Santa Barbara meetup provided that it was on a day and time that worked for your schedule, please post a comment or send me a private message.

Thanks!
European Community Weekend in Berlin
by blob — 2014-01-24T17:55:50.501Z

The Berlin Meetup Group is organizing the first European community meetup. We are planning a fun weekend with a focus on bringing the LessWrong community closer together. As a treat, some participants offer rationality exercises and workshops.
If you like your local meetup we hope you will like this too. It is similar, but bigger: You will get to meet and exchange ideas with a diverse set of awesome people from all across Europe. And if you don’t have a meetup nearby or didn’t get around to participating yet, this is a great opportunity to get in touch with the rest of the community.
The community weekend will take place April 11-13, from Friday evening to Sunday early afternoon, in the Odyssee Hostel in Berlin. The cost is 70 € including accommodation and breakfast. A conference room with a projector and wifi will also be available during daytime.
The event is participant driven so you (yes, you) are very welcome to help with the content. Please contact Tristan (wegnertristan - at - googlemail - dot - com) for planning and scheduling.
Friday evening we will welcome everyone around 17:00 and proceed to have dinner together. Sleeping quarters (shared rooms) will already be available from 16:00. The evening can be used for getting to know each other better or exploring the city in small groups. We also made sure that there are plenty of cultural, party and sightseeing offers available throughout the city.
Saturday after breakfast, there will be a semi-structured program in the conference room. Offers will include a workshop for habit implementation, a science based introduction to meditation along with a practice session, and clicker training. We also encourage everyone to take part in lightning talks, where you are invited to give a short 5min presentation on any topic you are passionate about.
Saturday evening can be further used to nerd out, explore the nightlife or participate in an exercise in social comfort zone expansion.
Sunday will have room for additional projects. We will say goodbye in the early afternoon to give us enough time to head home. Of course everyone is free to prolong the stay in the greatest capital of Germany.
By the end of the event we hope that we will have made new friends, exchanged ideas, received valuable feedback and started a joint world optimization project or two.
To sign up, email John (johncryptfrink - at - gmail ...
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2014-01-24T16:45:17.661Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on January 17th. The following week's summary is here.

New meetups (or meetups with a hiatus of more than a year) are happening in:

Sydney Meetup: January: 22 January 2014 06:30PM

Other irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

Bratislava Meetup IX.: 20 January 2014 06:00PM
Tel Aviv: Uses of Cryptography: 30 January 2014 08:00PM

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:

Austin, TX: 18 January 2020 01:30PM
Boston - Connection Theory: 19 January 2014 02:00PM
Brussels: Morality - also cake: 08 February 2014 01:00PM
London - The Schelling Point Strategy Game (plus socials): 19 January 2014 02:00AM
Vienna: 18 January 2014 03:00PM
Washington DC: Potatoes: 19 January 2014 03:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Berlin, Brussels, Cambridge, MA, Cambridge UK, Columbus, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Mountain View, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, Waterloo, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers.

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 discussion section when the new post goes up.

Please note that for your meetup to appear in the weekly meetups feature, you need to post your meetup before the Friday before your meetup!

If you check Less Wrong irregularly, consider subscribing to one or more city-specific mailing list in order to be notified when an irregular meetup is happening: Atlanta, Berlin, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Marin CA, Ottawa, Pittsburgh, Portland, Southern Californ...
Meetup : Community Weekend in Berlin
by blob — 2014-01-24T15:53:23.664Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Community Weekend in Berlin

WHEN:
11 April 2014 04:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Grünberger Str. 23, 10243 Berlin

We usually don't announce individual meetups here, but this is an exception! Check the full announcement for details on how to sign up.

Please join our mailing list if you're interested in our regular meetups.

Discussion article for the meetup : Community Weekend in Berlin
What should superrational players do in asymmetric games?
by badger — 2014-01-24T07:42:05.108Z

Rereading Hofstadter's essays on superrationality prompted me to wonder what strategies superrational agents would want to commit to in asymmetric games. In symmetric games, everyone can agree on outcome they'd like to jointly achieve, leaving the decision-theoretic question of whether the players can commit or not. In asymmetric games, life becomes murkier. There are typically many Pareto-efficient outcomes, and we enter the wilds of cooperative game theory and bargaining solutions trying to identify the right one. While, say, the Nash bargaining solution is appealing on many levels, I have a hard time connecting the logic of superrationality to any particular solution. Recently though, I found some insight in "Cooperation in Strategic Games Revisited" by Adam Kalai and Ehud Kalai (working paper version and three-page summary version) for the special case of two-player games with side transfers.

Just to make sure everyone's on common ground, the prototypical game examined in the argument for superrationality is the prisoners' dilemma:

Alice / Bob
Cooperate
Defect

Cooperate
10 / 10
0 / 12

Defect
12 / 0
4 / 4

The unique dominant-strategy equilibrium is (Defect, Defect). However, Hofstadter argues that "superrational" players would recognize the symmetry in reasoning processes between each other and thus conclude that cooperating is in their interest. The argument is not in favor of unconditional cooperation. Instead, the reasoning is closer to "I cooperate if and only I expect you to cooperate if and only if I cooperate". Many bits have been devoted to formalizing this reasoning in timeless decision theory and other variants.

The symmetry in the prisoners' dilemma makes it easy to pick out (Cooperate, Cooperate) as the action profile each player ideally wants to see happen. Consider instead the following skewed prisoners' dilemma:

Alice/Bob
Cooperate
Defect

Cooperate
2 / 18
0 / 12

Defect
12 / 0
4 / 4

The (Cooperate, Cooperate) outcome still has the highest total benefit, but (Defect, Defect) is also Pareto-efficient. With this asymmetry, it seems reasonable for Alice to Defect, even as someone who would cooperate in the original prisoners' dilemma. Suppose however players can also agree to transfer utility between themselves on a 1-to-1 basi...
Meetup : Berkeley: Talk on communication
by Nisan — 2014-01-24T03:57:50.244Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley: Talk on communication

WHEN:
29 January 2014 07:00:00PM (-0800)

WHERE:
2030 Addison, 3rd floor, Berkeley

Next week's meetup will feature a presentation by M. about communication, with a computer science / cognitive science approach.

Please arrive between 7pm and 7:30pm on Wednesday. At 7:30pm we'll review our weekly goals and record goals for the coming week. That should take about 15 minutes, and immediately after Mike will give his talk. You're welcome to stay after and discuss.

The CFAR office is at 2030 Addison, 3rd floor, Berkeley, near the Downtown Berkeley BART. If you find yourself locked out, text me at

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

Even though this takes place at CFAR, it's not a CFAR-sponsored event.

Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley: Talk on communication
Find a study partner
by Mati_Roy — 2014-01-24T02:27:38.851Z

For reasons mentioned in So8res article as well as for other reasons: studying with a partner can be very good. In November, Adele_L had posted an article for people wanting to find a study partner. It got 17 comments, but only 1 since November 16th. So I thought we (I) should make a monthly thread on this instead of constantly going back to an old article which people might (seem to) forget about. If people seem to agree with that, I will make a post about it every month.

So if you're looking for a study partner for an online course or reading a manual (whether it's in the MIRI course list or not) tell others in the comment section.
Meetup : Sydney Meetup: February
by taryneast — 2014-01-24T00:02:31.864Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Meetup: February

WHEN:
26 February 2014 06:30:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
City of Sydney RSL, 565 George St, Sydney NSW

Our last meetup was a great success, so we're doing it all again :)

Please note: there are many levels of the RSL club.

I've booked an ordinary long table under the name "less wrong" for 15 starting from 6:30 (which is when I should be able to get there). If we want to retire somewhere else afterwards, we can do that later.

So we will be on whichever level the restaurant is located (but not level 4) under the booking "less wrong".

I will verify the location within the next couple of weeks and update this meetup notification.

I'll put up a sheet of paper with "LessWrong" and a picture of a paperclip so you can find us. I'll also tell the staff - so ask them to point out the "less wrong meetup" if you can't find me.

The meetup will run from roughly 6:30pm to 9:30pm. We'll start with some socialising while people are still arriving, then begin with discussions at around 7PM while we eat dinner - then proceed with some kind of rationality exercise.

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Meetup: February
[Link] YCombinator-Backed Non-Profit Startup Attempting HIV/AIDS Vaccine
by Gavin — 2014-01-23T18:58:09.717Z

The short story is that animal trials of a vaccine have been completed and they're looking for funding to go further.

https://pledge.immunityproject.org/the-free-hiv-aids-vaccine

Discussion on Hacker News here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7108684

A few personal notes:

My first thought on seeing this was "I want to donate, but only if it's actually going to pan out. Otherwise it'll be a waste of my money." But that's exactly the wrong way to think about science. You fund it because it has a worthwhile probability of success. Even if the attempt fails, I can still believe that I've made a "correct" decision.

I've basically outsourced my vetting of the worthiness of the endeavor to Paul Graham, Sam Altman, and the rest of the YCombinator team. They have the time and the resources to examine and consider this more thoroughly than I could possibly do.

Another reason that I donated to this was to encourage the general idea of crowdfunded science.
Meetup : Moscow, Another Meet up
by Yuu — 2014-01-23T18:23:12.555Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow, Another Meet up

WHEN:
26 January 2014 04:00:00PM (+0400)

WHERE:
Russia, Moscow, ulitsa L'va Tolstogo 16

We will gather at the same second entrance, but we will go to the new room at 16:00. So please do not be late.

Main topics and activities:

Confounding, short presentation

Discussions

If you are going for the first time:

We gather in the Yandex office, you need the second revolving door with the sign “Яндекс”, here is the photo of the entrance you need. You need to pass the first entrance and the bicycle parking on you way. Here is additional guide how to get there: link.
You can fill this one minute form (in Russian), to share your contact information.

We start at 16:00 and sometimes finish at night. Please pay attention that we only gather near the second entrance and then move to the new room.

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow, Another Meet up
Plan while your ugh field is down
by XFrequentist — 2014-01-23T17:42:51.726Z

Here's an example of a mental manoeuvre I accidentally found, and thought might be generally useful (typical caveats apply).

I've had a manageable-but-important Problem for a few months now (financial in kind, details neither relevant nor interesting), of moderate complexity and relatively minor importance unless I leave it unsolved just a little longer.

Unfortunately, this seems to be the precise combination of things that triggers one of my ugh fields, which manifests subjectively as a fuzzy blank inability to maintain focus. Several times last week, it occurred to me that I should really Solve The Problem, but I wasn't able to get myself to spend any time thinking about it. Like, at all.

On Saturday, the Problem found itself top of mind once again. How irritating that I couldn't solve the Problem because it was the weekend, and when it wasn't the weekend, maybe Tuesday when work wasn't busy and the Bureau was open, I should really email Dr. Somebody and call Mrs. Administrator for the ...

*blink*

I had a solution, and a plan. What the what?

My working theory is that when there's no chance of actually Doing Something, this particular ugh field deactivates.

To me, this suggests a strategy (of uncertain generalizability): when an ugh field is preventing thought about something important, find a time when action is impossible and use it to generate a plan.

I would feel better about this advice if it had a deep theoretical backer. Anybody?