trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : A Rationalist's Guide to Strength (Vienna)
by AnnaLeptikon — 2014-11-14T10:52:21.621Z

Discussion article for the meetup : A Rationalist's Guide to Strength (Vienna)

WHEN:
23 November 2014 02:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Gablenzgasse 5-13, 1150 Wien

Since we had a more practical focus in the last conversations and figured out how important we think health - and therefore a healthy diet and exercise - are:
We will all go to the gym together!
(McFit Vienna - Lugner City)

You don't need a membership there, you can just register for two training sessions for free - we will meet in front of the entrance, so be on time.
-> https://www.mcfit.com/de/studiodetail/info/wien-lugnercity.html

The idea is to try some basic exercises together and that more experienced persons can give feedback to the others. The ones who don't do any weight lifting can find out if they like it. And we will all hopefully have a fun time together!

Of course, don't forget to bring sport clothing, sport shoes, a water bottle and a small towel

Discussion article for the meetup : A Rationalist's Guide to Strength (Vienna)
Meetup : Rationality Weekend Vienna
by AnnaLeptikon — 2014-11-14T10:43:15.450Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Rationality Weekend Vienna

WHEN:
13 December 2014 03:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Kaisermühlenstraße 24/2, 1220 Wien

agenda:

Since some people already arrive Friday evening (12.12.2014) we might already have some social activities then (look in the FB-Group for more information: https://www.facebook.com/groups/rationalityvienna or write me: AnnaLeptikon)

On Saturday (13.12.2014) we will have kind of a normal meetup after 3pm (probably with a longer introduction round and games to know each other better - since many new people are attending)

On Sunday (14.12.2014) we will have another day together (if you have offers for talks: You are very welcome - so far we planned one about "ending aging")

-> as I said: for further informations or if you need a place to stay, please join and look into the Facebook-Group

location: When arriving by U2 or Schnellbahn train: get out at station Stadlau take the exit towards Kaisermühlenstraße and simply cross the street the meetup is in the modern looking, greenish building right in front of your nose :) Important: Google maps doesn't recognise the address and hence shows the wrong location

Discussion article for the meetup : Rationality Weekend Vienna
Meetup : West LA: Linguistic Relativity
by abramdemski — 2014-11-14T09:46:01.827Z

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA: Linguistic Relativity

WHEN:
19 November 2014 07:00:00PM (-0800)

WHERE:
11066 Santa Monica blvd, LA, CA, 90025

How to Find Us: Go into this Del Taco. We will be in the back room if possible.

Parking is free in the lot out front or on the street nearby.

Discussion: It seems generally useful to continue to grow the rationalist lexicon, as long as we keep in mind subtle distinctions. But is the Less Wrong style of crystallizing concepts with catchy names always even a good idea? To what extent does our use of these terms influence our thinking in ways that may be counter-productive to our goals as aspiring rationalists?

Recommended Reading:

Linguistic relativity

Does Your Language Shape How You Think?

Words as Hidden Inferences

No prior exposure to Less Wrong is required; this will be generally accessible.

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA: Linguistic Relativity
Meetup : Washington, D.C.: To-Do List Hacking
by RobinZ — 2014-11-14T08:27:58.915Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: To-Do List Hacking

WHEN:
16 November 2014 03:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
National Portrait Gallery

We will be meeting in the Kogod Courtyard of the National Portrait Gallery (8th and F Sts or 8th and G Sts NW, go straight past the information desk from either entrance) to talk about making to-do lists better. As usual, the period from 3:00 to 3:30 p.m. will be reserved for congregating, with discussion to begin at 3:30 p.m.

The structured part of the meeting will begin with discussing to-do lists as a practical tool to be used profitably in one's daily life. We want the conversation to generate productive advice for all involved; questions, comments, objections, tangents, &c. are welcome.

(As always, attendees are free to arrive late, leave early, and hold side conversations on unrelated subjects as they see fit. We only ask that you be considerate.)

Upcoming Meetups:

Nov. 23: Fun & Games (bring games, play games, converse, socialize, or any combination thereof)

Nov. 30: Thanksgiving break - no meetup planned

Dec. 7: TBA (to be summarized)

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: To-Do List Hacking
[Link] Physics-based anthropics?
by Brian_Tomasik — 2014-11-14T07:02:03.307Z

Nick Bostrom's self-sampling assumption treats us as a random sample from a set of observers, but this framework raises several paradoxes. Instead, why not treat the stuff we observe to be a random sample from the set of all stuff that exists? I elaborate on this proposal in a new essay subsection: "SSA on physics rather than observers?" At first glance, it seems to work better than any of the mainstream schools of anthropics. Comments are welcome.

Has this idea been suggested before? I noticed that Robin Hanson proffered something similar way back in 1998 (four years before Bostrom's Anthropic Bias). I'm surprised Hanson's proposal hasn't received more attention in the academic literature.
The "best" mathematically-informed topics?
by Capla — 2014-11-14T03:39:51.960Z

Recently, I asked LessWrong about the important math of rationality. I found the responses extremely helpful, but thinking about it, I think there’s a better approach.

I come from a new-age-y background. As such, I hear a lot about “quantum physics.”

Accordingly, I have developed a heuristic that I have found broadly useful: If a field involves math, and you cannot do the math, you are not qualified to comment on that field. If you can’t calculate the Schrödinger equation, I discount whatever you may say about what quantum physics reveals about reality.

Instead of asking which field of math are “necessary” (or useful) to “rationality,” I think it’s more productive to ask, “what key questions or ideas, involving math, would I like to understand?” Instead of going out of my way to learn the math that I predict will be useful, I’ll just embark on trying understand the problems that I’m learning the math for, and working backwards to figure out what math I need for any particular problem. This has the advantage of never causing me to waste time on extraneous topics: I’ll come to understand the concepts I’ll need most frequently best, because I’ll encounter them most frequently (for instance, I think I’ll quickly realize that I need to get a solid understanding of calculus, and so study calculus, but there may be parts of math that don't crop up much, so I'll effectively skip those). While I usually appreciate the aesthetic beauty of abstract math, I think this sort of approach will also help keep me focused and motivated. Note, that at this point, I’m trying to fill in the gaps in my understanding and attain “mathematical literacy” instead of a complete and comprehensive mathematical understanding (a worthy goal that I would like to pursue, but which is of lesser priority to me).

I think even a cursory familiarity with these subjects is likely to be very useful: when someone mentions say, an economic concept, I suspect that the value of even just vaguely remembering having solved a basic version of the problem will give me a significant insight into what the person is talking about, instead of having a hand-wavy, non-mathematical conception.

Eliezer said in the simple math of everything:

It seems to me that there's a substantial advantag

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The best mathematically-informed topics
by Capla — 2014-11-14T03:38:27.542Z

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Intentionally Raising the Sanity Waterline
by Gleb_Tsipursky — 2014-11-13T20:25:42.749Z

Hi all, I’m a social entrepreneur, professor, and aspiring rationalist. My project is Intentional Insights. This is a new nonprofit I co-founded with my wife and other fellow aspiring rationalists in the Columbus, OH Less Wrong meetup. The nonprofit emerged from our passion to promote rationality among the broad masses. We use social influence techniques, create stories, and speak to emotions. We orient toward creating engaging videos, blogs, social media, and other content that an aspiring rationalist like yourself can share with friends and family members who would not be open to rationality proper due to the Straw Vulcan misconception. I would appreciate any advice and help from fellow aspiring rationalists. The project is described more fully below, but for those for whom that’s tl;dr, there is a request for advice and allies at the bottom.

Since I started participating in the Less Wrong meetup in Columbus, OH and reading Less Wrong, what seems like ages ago, I can hardly remember my past thinking patterns. Because of how much awesomeness it brought to my life, I have become one of the lead organizers of the meetup. Moreover, I find it really beneficial to bring rationality into my research and teaching as a tenure-track professor at Ohio State, where I am a member of the Behavioral Decision-Making Initiative. Thus, my scholarship brings rationality into historical contexts, for example in my academic articles on agency, emotions, and social influence. In my classes I have students engage with the Checklist of Rationality Habits and other readings that help advance rational thinking.

As do many aspiring rationalists, I think rationality can bring such benefits to the lives of many others, and also help improve our society as a whole by leveling up rational thinking, secularizing society, and thus raising the sanity waterline. For that, our experience in the Columbus Less Wrong group has shown that we need to get people interested in rationality by showing them its benefits and how it can solve their problems, while delivering complex ideas in an engaging and friendly fashion targeted at a broad public, and using active learning strategies and connecting rationality to what they already know. This is what I do in my teaching, and is the current best practice in educational psychology. It has worked great with my students when I began to teach

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The germ of an idea
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2014-11-13T18:58:31.253Z

Apologies for posting another unformed idea, but I think it's important to get it out there.

The problem with dangerous AI is that it's intelligent, and thus adapts to our countermeasures. If we did something like plant a tree and order the AI not to eat the apple on it, as a test of its obedience, it would easily figure out what we were doing, and avoid the apple (until it had power over us), even if it were a treacherous apple-devouring AI of DOOM.

When I wrote the AI indifference paper, it seemed that it showed a partial way around this problem: the AI would become indifferent to a particular countermeasure (in that example, explosives), so wouldn't adapt its behaviour around it. It seems that the same idea can make an Oracle not attempt to manipulate us through its answers, by making it indifferent as to whether the message was read.

The ideas I'm vaguely groping towards is whether this is a general phenomena - whether we can use indifference to prevent the AI from adapting to any of our efforts. The second question is whether we can profitably use it on the AI's motivation itself. Something like the reduced impact AI reasoning about what impact it could have on the world. This has a penalty function for excessive impact - but maybe that's gameable, maybe there is a pernicious outcome that doesn't have a high penalty, if the AI aims for it exactly. But suppose the AI could calculate its impact under the assumption that it didn't have a penalty function (utility indifference is often equivalent to having incorrect beliefs, but less fragile than that).

So if it was a dangerous AI, it would calculate its impact as if it didn't have a penalty function (and hence no need to route around it), and thus would calculate a large impact, and get penalised by it.

My next post will be more structured, but I feel there's the germ of a potentially very useful idea there. Comments and suggestions welcome.
The Atheist's Tithe
by Alsadius — 2014-11-13T17:22:46.310Z

I made a comment on another site a week or two ago, and I just realized that the line of thought is one that LW would appreciate, so here's a somewhat expanded version.

There's a lot of discussion around here about how to best give to charities, and I'm all for this. Ensuring donations are used well is important, and organizations like GiveWell that figure out how to get the most bang for your buck are doing very good work. An old article on LW (that I found while searching to make sure I wasn't being redundant by posting this) makes the claim that the difference between a decent charity and an optimal one can be two orders of magnitude, and I believe that. But the problem with this is, effective altruism only helps if people are actually giving money.

People today don't tend to give very much to charity. They'll buy a chocolate bar for the school play or throw a few bucks in at work, but less than 2% of national income is donated even in the US, and the US is incredibly charitable by developed-world standards(the corresponding rate in Germany is about 0.1%, for example). And this isn't something that can be solved with math, because the general public doesn't speak math, it needs to be solved with social pressure.

The social pressure needs to be chosen well. Folks like Jeff Kaufman and Julia Wise giving a massive chunk of their income to charity are of course laudable, but 99%+ of people will regard the thought of doing so with disbelief and a bit of horror - it's simply not going to happen on a large scale, because people put themselves first, and don't think they could possibly part with so much of their income. We need to settle for a goal that is not only attainable by the majority of people, but that the majority of people know in their guts is something they could do if they wanted. Not everyone will follow through, but it should be set at a level that inspires guilt if they don't, not laughter.

Since we're trying to make it something people can live up to, it has to be proportional giving, not absolute - Bill Gates and Warren Buffett telling each other to donate everything over a billion is wonderful, but doesn't affect many other people. Conversely, telling people that everything over $50k should be donated will get the laugh reaction from ordinary-wealthy folks like doctors and accountants, who are the people we most want t...
Meetup : Boston: Self Therapy
by Anders_H — 2014-11-13T17:20:19.375Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Boston: Self Therapy

WHEN:
16 November 2014 03:30:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
98 elm street somerville

LOCATION: CITADEL

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy? Dialectical Behavioral Therapy? Apps? Books? Mood-tracking? Kate runs through evidence-based self-therapy techniques and ways to implement them.

Our own psychologist and social worker, Kate Donovan, will be speaking about self therapy. It should be both helpful and informative.

Join us at the Citadel for the talk and discussion!
Cambridge/Boston-area Less Wrong meetups start at 3:30pm, and have an alternating location:

1st Sunday meetups are at Citadel in Porter Sq, at 98 Elm St, apt 1, Somerville.

3rd Sunday meetups are in MIT's building 66 at 25 Ames St, room 156. Room number subject to change based on availability; signs will be posted with the actual room number.

(We also have last Wednesday meetups at Citadel at 7pm.)

Our default schedule is as follows:

—Phase 1: Arrival, greetings, unstructured conversation.

—Phase 2: The headline event. This starts promptly at 4pm, and lasts 30-60 minutes.

—Phase 3: Further discussion. We'll explore the ideas raised in phase 2, often in smaller groups.

—Phase 4: Dinner.

Discussion article for the meetup : Boston: Self Therapy
Link: Rob Bensinger on Less Wrong and vegetarianism
by Sysice — 2014-11-13T17:09:11.021Z

I'm currently unconvinced either way on this matter. However, enough arguments have been raised that I think this is worth the time of every reader to think a good deal about.

http://nothingismere.com/2014/11/12/inhuman-altruism-inferential-gap-or-motivational-gap/
Meetup : Canberra: Liar's Dice!
by DanielFilan — 2014-11-13T12:36:06.912Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Canberra: Liar's Dice!

WHEN:
28 November 2014 06:00:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
108 North Road, Acton, ACT

We will be practising our practical rationality skills by playing (some variant of) Liar's Dice. As always, vegan snacks will be provided.

General meetup info:

If you use Facebook, please join our group.

Structured meetups are held on the second Saturday and fourth Friday of each month from 6 pm until late in the CSIT building, room N101.

Discussion article for the meetup : Canberra: Liar's Dice!
Others' predictions of your performance are usually more accurate
by Natha — 2014-11-13T02:17:38.580Z

Sorry if the positive illusions are old hat, but I searched and couldn't find any mention of this peer prediction stuff! If nothing else, I think the findings provide a quick heuristic for getting more reliable predictions of your future behavior - just poll a nearby friend!

Peer predictions are often superior to self-predictions. People, when predicting their own future outcomes, tend to give far too much weight to their intentions, goals, plans, desires, etc., and far to little consideration to the way things have turned out for them in the past. As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow observed,

"We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done"

...and we are way less accurate for it! A recent study by Helzer and Dunning (2012) took Cornell undergraduates and had them each predict their next exam grade, and then had an anonymous peer predict it too, based solely on their score on the previous exam; despite the fact that the peer had such limited information (while the subjects have presumably perfect information about themselves), the peer predictions, based solely on the subjects' past performance, were much more accurate predictors of subjects' actual exam scores.

In another part of the study, participants were paired-up (remotely, anonymously) and rewarded for accurately predicting each other's scores. Peers were allowed to give just one piece of information to help their partner predict their score; further, they were allowed to request just one piece of information from their partner to aid them in predicting their partner's score. Across the board, participants would give information about their "aspiration level" (their own ideal "target" score) to the peer predicting them, but would be far less likely to ask for that information if they were trying to predict a peer; overwhelmingly, they would ask for information about the participant's past behavior (i.e., their score on the previous exam), finding this information to be more indicative of future performance. The authors note,

There are many reasons to use past behavior as an indicator of future action and achievement. The overarching reason is that past behavior is a product of a number of causal variables that sum up to produce it—and that suite of causal variables in the same proportion is likely to be in play for any future behavior in a simi

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