trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
The Goddess of Everything Else
by Scott Alexander — 2015-08-17T20:59:40.000Z

[Related to: Specific vs. General Foragers vs. Farmers and War In Heaven, but especially The Gift We Give To Tomorrow]

They say only Good can create, whereas Evil is sterile. Think Tolkien, where Morgoth can’t make things himself, so perverts Elves to Orcs for his armies. But I think this gets it entirely backwards; it’s Good that just mutates and twists, and it’s Evil that teems with fecundity.

Imagine two principles, here in poetic personification. The first is the Goddess of Cancer, the second the Goddess of Everything Else. If visual representations would help, you can think of the first with the claws of a crab, and the second a dress made of feathers of peacocks.

The Goddess of Cancer reached out a clawed hand over mudflats and tidepools. She said pretty much what she always says, “KILL CONSUME MULTIPLY CONQUER.” Then everything burst into life, became miniature monsters engaged in a battle of all against all in their zeal to assuage their insatiable longings. And the swamps became orgies of hunger and fear and grew loud with the screams of a trillion amoebas.

Then the Goddess of Everything Else trudged her way through the bog, till the mud almost totally dulled her bright colors and rainbows. She stood on a rock and she sang them a dream of a different existence. She showed them the beauty of flowers, she showed them the oak tree majestic. The roar of the wind on the wings of the bird, and the swiftness and strength of the tiger. She showed them the joy of the dolphins abreast of the waves as the spray formed a rainbow around them, and all of them watched as she sang and they all sighed with longing.

But they told her “Alas, what you show us is terribly lovely. But we are the daughters and sons of the Goddess of Cancer, and wholly her creatures. The only goals in us are KILL CONSUME MULTIPLY CONQUER. And though our hearts long for you, still we are not yours to have, and your words have no power to move us. We wish it were otherwise, but it is not, and your words have no power to move us.”

The Goddess of Everything Else gave a smile and spoke in her sing-song voice saying: “I scarcely can blame you for being the way you were made, when your Maker so carefully yoked you. But I am the Goddess of Everything Else and my powers are devious and subtle. So I do not ask you to swerve from your monomaniacal focus on br...
Predict - "Log your predictions" app
by Gust — 2015-08-17T16:20:13.530Z

As an exercise on programming Android, I've made an app to log predictions you make and keep score of your results. Like PredictionBook, but taking more of a personal daily exercise feel, in line with this post.

The "statistics" right now are only a score I copied from the old Credence calibration game, and a calibration bar chart.

I'm hoping for suggestionss for features and criticism on the app design.

Here's the link for the apk (v0.4), and here's the source code repository. You can download it at Google Play Store.

Pending/Possible/Requested Features:

Set check-in dates for predictions

Tags (and stats by tag)

Stats by timeframe

Beeminder integration

Trivia questions you can answer if you don't have any personal prediction to make

Ring pie chart to choose probability

Edit:

2015-08-26 - Fixed bug that broke on Android 5.0.2 (thanks Bobertron)

2015-08-28 - Change layout for landscape mode, and add a better icon

2015-08-31 -

Daily notifications

Buttons at the expanded-item-layout (ht dutchie)

Show points won/lost in the snackbar when a prediction is answered

Translation to portuguese
An overview of the mental model theory
by ScottL — 2015-08-17T13:18:24.519Z

There is dispute about what exactly a “mental model” is and the concepts related to it are often aren't clarified well. One feature of them that is generally accepted is that “the structure of mental models ‘mirrors’ the perceived structure of the external system being modelled.” (Doyle & Ford, 1998, p. 17) So, as a starting definition we can say that mental models, in general, are representations in the mind of real or imaginary situations. A full definition won’t be attempted because there is too much contention about what features mental models do and do not have. The features that are accepted will be described in detail which will hopefully lead you to gain a intuitive understanding of what mental models are probably like.

The mental model theory assumes that people do not innately rely on formal rules of inference, but instead rely on their mental models which are based on their understanding of the premises and their general knowledge. A foundational principle of the mental model theory is the principle of truth which states that “reasoners represent as little information as possible in explicit models and, in particular, that they represent only information about what is true” (Johnson-Laird & Savary, 1996, p. 69) Individuals do this to to minimize the load on working memory.

Consider the following example: “There is not a king in the hand, or else there is an ace in the hand”. If we take ‘¬’ to indicate negation, then according to the principle of truth reasoners will construct only two separate models for this example: (¬ king) and (ace). Note that if a proposition is false, then it’s negation is true. In this example (¬ king) is true.

Looking at the mental models of this example we can say that they, like most others, represents the literals in the premises when they are true in the true possibilities, but not when they are false. This means that it does not include (king) and (¬ace) which are false. To keep track of what is false reasoners make mental “footnotes”. This can be problematic as these footnotes are hard to remember and people also tend to only consider what is represented in their mental models of a situation.

The mental model theory is not without its critics and no one knows for sure how people ...
Meetup : Warsaw August Meetup
by mkf — 2015-08-17T11:12:44.893Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Warsaw August Meetup

WHEN:
30 August 2015 03:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Warsaw

Location: Green Caffe Nero - Telimena, Krakowskie Przedmieście 27, Warszawa

Fb event: https://www.facebook.com/events/382397675303040/

Fb group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/lwwarsaw/

Discussion article for the meetup : Warsaw August Meetup
Meetup : Tel Aviv: Board Game Night
by Squark — 2015-08-17T10:33:29.375Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Tel Aviv: Board Game Night

WHEN:
17 August 2015 07:00:00PM (+0300)

WHERE:
Google Tel-Aviv, Electra Tower, 67891, Israel, 67891 Tel Aviv, Israel

19:00 Israel time, playing board games as usual. This time we will do it in Campus TLV (Floor 34, hackspace - on the right when entering the campus). Call me (Vadim, 0542600919) if you can't find your way.

Discussion article for the meetup : Tel Aviv: Board Game Night
Scott Aaronson: Common knowledge and Aumann's agreement theorem
by gjm — 2015-08-17T08:41:45.179Z
Link: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2410

The excellent Scott Aaronson has posted on his blog a version of a talk he recently gave at SPARC, about Aumann's agreement theorem and related topics. I think a substantial fraction of LW readers would enjoy it. As well as stating Aumann's theorem and explaining why it's true, the article discusses other instances where the idea of "common knowledge" (the assumption that does a lot of the work in the AAT) is important, and offers some interesting thoughts on the practical applicability (if any) of the AAT.

(Possibly relevant: an earlier LW discussion of AAT.)
Open thread, Aug. 17 - Aug. 23, 2015
by MrMind — 2015-08-17T07:05:20.094Z

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.
Where coulds go
by So8res — 2015-08-17T03:00:00.000Z
Link: https://mindingourway.com/where-coulds-go/

Most people don't think they "could" cure Alzheimers by snapping their fingers, and so they don't feel terrible about failing to do this.

By contrast, people who fail to resist overeating, or who fail to stop playing Civilization at a reasonable hour, feel strongly that they "could have" resisted, and take this as a license to feel terrible about their decisions.

As I said last week, most people have broken "coulds."

Willpower is scarce in this world. Sometimes, you can will yourself out of a mental rut you're in, but only rarely; more often, sheer force of will alone is not sufficient. If your plan to stop staying up too late playing Civilization is "well I'll just force myself harder next time," then this plan is doomed to failure. If it didn't work last time, it likely won't work next time. Willpower is a stopgap, not a remedy.

I think that most people's "coulds" are broken because they put the action nodes in the wrong place. They think that the "choice" occurred at turn 347 of Civilization, when they decided to continue playing one more round (and at each following turn between midnight and 4:00 in the morning).

But that's not where the choice occurred. If you have to force yourself to change your behavior, then you've already missed the real choice node.

The actual choice occurs when you decide whether to play Civilization or not, at the very beginning.

Say you have one acquaintance in your social circles who regularly frustrates you, and every so often, you explode at them and get into a big shouting match. You know you shouldn't start yelling at them, you try to not be frustrated. Whenever they start annoying you, you will yourself to cool down, but it never quite works (no matter how strongly you resolve to force yourself harder next time). In this case, I suggest that you stop trying to force yourself to hold back as your frustration peaks, and instead start noticing what happens five minutes before you explode. That's where the real choice is. The real choice isn't in whether or not you explode in the moment, it's in whether you exit the situation five minutes earlier.

The real choices tend to happen a few minutes before the choices that people beat themselves up about. If you have to apply willpower, you've already missed the choice node. (In fact, I've previously suggested promising yourself that you'll never pull yourself out of a situation using willp...
Rational approach to finding life partners
by c_edwards — 2015-08-16T17:07:42.140Z

Speaking from personal experience, finding the right relationship can be HARD. I recently came across a rational take on finding relationship partners, much of which really resonated with my experiences:

http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-life-partner.html

http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-life-partner-part-2.html

(I'm still working my way through the Sequences, and lw has more than eight thousand articles with "relationship" in them. I'm not promising the linked articles include unique information)
Yvain's most important articles
by casebash — 2015-08-16T08:27:49.268Z

Important

Meditations on Moloch: An explanation of co-ordination problems within our society

Weak Men are Superweapons (supplement - feminists will like this one less)

The Virtue of Silence - silence is a hard virtue

You Kant Dismiss Universalizability - Kant is about not proposing rules that would be self-defeating

The Spirit of the First Amendment

Red Plenty - Why communism failed

All in all, another brick in the motte - Motte-and-bailey doctrine

Intellectual Hipsters and Meta-Contrarianism

Burdens - society owes people an existence

Reactionary Philosophy in an Enormous, Planet-sized Nutshell

Anti-reactionary FAQ

Right is the new Left

Archipelago and Atomic Communitarianism - different countries based on different principles

Parable of the talents - nature vs. nurture

Why I defend scoundrels

Nobody is perfect, Everything is Commensurable

The categories were made for man, not man for the categories - hairdryer incident

Non-conformism

Toxoplasma of rage - why the most divisive issues will always spread

Towards a theory of drama, Further towards a theory of drama

All debates are bravery debates

I can tolerate anything except the outgroup - what tolerance really mean

Who by very slow decay - Euthanasia

Non-libertarian FAQ

Consequentialism FAQ

Efficient Charity: Do Unto Others

Eight Short Studies on Excuses

Generalising from one example

Game theory as a dark art

What is signaling really?

Book review: Chronicles of wasted time

The biodeterminists guide to parenting

Social Justice General

Offense versus harm minimisation

Fearful Symmetry - Politicization, Micro-aggressions, Hyperviligance

In favor of niceness, community and civilisation - Importance of the social contract

Radicalizing the romanceless - Complaints about "Nice Guys"

Living by the sword - whales and cancer

Social justice for the highly-demanding of rigour

Meditations on Privilege 1 - India (Meditation 2 - follow up)

Meditation 3 - Creepiness

Meditation 5 - True love and creepiness

Meditation 8 on Superweapons and Bingo

Triggers

I believe the correct term is "straw individual"

Fi

...
You Are A Brain - Intro to LW/Rationality Concepts [Video & Slides]
by Liron — 2015-08-16T05:51:51.459Z

Here's a 32-minute presentation I made to provide an introduction to some of the core LessWrong concepts for a general audience:

You Are A Brain [YouTube]

You Are a Brain [Google Slides] - public domain

I already posted this here in 2009 and some commenters asked for a video, so I immediately recorded one six years later. This time the audience isn't teens from my former youth group, it's employees who work at my software company where we have a seminar series on Thursday afternoons.
Soylent has been found to contain lead (12-25x) and cadmium (≥4x) in greater concentrations than California's 'safe harbor' levels
by Transfuturist — 2015-08-15T22:45:01.389Z

Press Release

Edit: Soylent's Reply, provided by Trevor_Blake

OAKLAND, Calif., Aug. 13, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As You Sow, a non-profit environmental-health watchdog, today filed a notice of intent to bring legal action against Soylent, a "meal replacement" powder recently featured in New York Times and Forbes stories reporting that workers in Silicon Valley are drinking their meals, eliminating the need to eat food. The 60-day notice alleges violation of California's Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act for failure to provide sufficient warning to consumers of lead and cadmium levels in the Soylent 1.5 product.

Test results commissioned by As You Sow, conducted by an independent laboratory, show that one serving of Soylent 1.5 can expose a consumer to a concentration of lead that is 12 to 25 times above California's Safe Harbor level for reproductive health, and a concentration of cadmium that is at least 4 times greater than the Safe Harbor level for cadmium. Two separate samples of Soylent 1.5 were tested.

According to the Soylent website, Soylent 1.5 is "designed for use as a staple meal by all adults." The startup recently raised $20 million in funding led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

"Nobody expects heavy metals in their meals," said Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow. "These heavy metals accumulate in the body over time and, since Soylent is marketed as a meal replacement, users may be chronically exposed to lead and cadmium concentrations that exceed California's safe harbor level (for reproductive harm). With stories about Silicon Valley coders sometimes eating three servings a day, this is of very high concern to the health of these tech workers."

Lead exposure is a significant public health issue and is associated with neurological impairment, such as learning disabilities and lower IQ, even at low levels. Chronic exposure to cadmium has been linked to kidney, liver, and bone damage in humans.

Since 1992, As You Sow has been a leading enforcer of California's Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, with enforcement actions resulting in removal of lead from children's jewelry, formaldehyde from portable classrooms, and lead from baby powder.
Meetup : Boston: Unconference
by NoSignalNoNoise — 2015-08-15T02:38:10.327Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Boston: Unconference

WHEN:
16 August 2015 03:30:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
98 Elm Street, Somerville

—Phase 1: Arrival, greetings, unstructured conversation.
—Phase 2: Short talks by attendees (you are encouraged but not required to give one). This starts promptly at 4pm, and lasts as long as people have content.
—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: Unconference
Book Review: Naive Set Theory (MIRI research guide)
by David_Kristoffersson — 2015-08-14T22:08:37.028Z

I'm David. I'm reading through the books in the MIRI research guide and will write a review for each as I finish them. By way of inspiration from how Nate did it.

Naive Set Theory

Halmos Naive Set Theory is a classic and dense little book on axiomatic set theory, from a "naive" perspective.
Which is to say, the book won't dig to the depths of formality or philosophy, it focuses on getting you productive with set theory. The point is to give someone who wants to dig into advanced mathematics a foundation in set theory, as set theory is a fundamental tool used in a lot of mathematics.

Summary

Is it a good book? Yes.
Would I recommend it as a starting point, if you would like to learn set theory? No. The book has a terse presentation which makes it tough to digest if you aren't already familiar with propositional logic, perhaps set theory to some extent already and a bit of advanced mathematics in general. There are plenty of other books that can get you started there.
If you do have a somewhat fitting background, I think this should be a very competent pick to deepen your understanding of set theory. The author shows you the nuts and bolts of set theory and doesn't waste any time doing it.

Perspective of this review

I will first refer you to Nate's review, which I found to be a lucid take on it. I don't want to be redundant and repeat the good points made there, so I want to focus this review on the perspective of someone with a bit weaker background in math, and try to give some help to prospective readers with parts I found tricky in the book.
What is my perspective? While I've always had a knack for math, I only read about 2 months of mathematics at introductory university level, and not including discrete mathematics. I do have a thorough background in software development.
Set theory has eluded me. I've only picked up fragments. It's seemed very fundamental but school never gave me a good opportunity to learn it. I've wanted to understand it, which made it a joy to add Naive Set Theory to the top of my reading list.

How I read Naive Set Theory

Starting on Naive Set Theory, I quickly realized I wanted more meat to the explanations. What is this concept used for? How does it fit in to the larger subject of mathematics? What the heck is the author expressing here?

I supplemented heavily with wikipedia, math.stackexchange and other websites. Sometimes, I read other...
Asymptotic Logical Uncertainty: Uniform Coherence
by Scott Garrabrant — 2015-08-14T19:59:19.000Z

EDIT: This post is out of date, the new, better definition is here.

This post is part of the Asymptotic Logical Uncertainty series. Here, I give a concrete proposal for a definition of Uniform Coherence, as mentioned here.

This is only a proposal for a definition. It may be that this definition is bad, and we would rather replace it with something else

Let M be a Turing machine which on input N runs for some amount of time R(N) then outputs a probability, representing the probability assigned to ϕN.

In the following definition, we fix a function T(N) (e.g. 2N). We say that a sequence {sn} is quickly computable if it is an increasing sequence and there exists a Turing machine which determines whether or not an input N is of the form sn in time T(N).

We say that M is Uniformly Coherent if

limn→∞M(┌(¬¬)n⊥┐)=0

If {sn} is quickly computable and PA⊢ϕsn→ϕsn+1 for all n, then limn→∞M(sn) exists.

If {qn}, {rn}, and {sn} are quickly computable and PA⊢(ϕqi∨ϕrn∨ϕrn)∧¬(ϕqn∧ϕrn)∧¬(ϕqn∧ϕsn)∧¬(ϕrn∧ϕsn) for all n, then limn→∞M(qn)+M(rn)+M(sn)=1

Open Question 1: Does there exist a uniformly coherent logical predictor M?

Open Question 2: Does there exist a uniformly coherent logical predictor M which also passes the Generalized Benford Test? (Here, we mean the generalization of the Benford Test to all irreducible patterns)

Theroem: If M is uniformly coherent, then if we define P(ϕ)=limn→∞M(┌(¬¬)nϕ┐), then P(ϕ) is defined for all ϕ and is a computably approximable coherent probability assignment. (see here for definitions.)

Proof: Computable approximability is clear. For coherence, it suffices to show that P(ϕ) is well defined, P(ϕ)=1 for provable ϕ, P(ϕ)=0 for disprovable ϕ, and P(ϕ∧ψ)+P(ϕ∧¬ψ)=P(ϕ).

The fact that P(ϕ) is well defined comes from applying 2 to the sequence sn=┌(¬¬)nϕ┐.

The fact that P(ϕ)=1 for provable ϕ, comes from applying 3 to qn=┌(¬¬)n⊥┐, rn=┌(¬¬)n⊥┐, and sn=┌(¬¬)nϕ┐. The fact that P(ϕ)=0 for disprovable ϕ, comes from applying 3 to qn=┌(¬¬)n⊥┐, rn=┌(¬¬)n⊤┐, and sn=┌(¬¬)nϕ┐, since we already know that P(⊤)=1.

The fact that P(ϕ∧ψ)+P(ϕ∧¬ψ)=P(ϕ) comes from applying 3 to qn=┌(¬¬)nϕ∧ψ┐, rn=┌(¬¬)nϕ∧¬ψ┐, and sn=┌(¬¬)n¬ϕ┐, then applying 3 again to qn=┌(¬¬)n⊥┐, rn=┌(¬¬)nϕ┐, and sn=┌(¬¬)n¬ϕ┐, to get that
P(ϕ∧ψ)+P(ϕ∧¬ψ)+P(ϕ)=1=P(ϕ)+P(ϕ). □

Uniform Coherence is however much stronger than coherence. To see an example, consider an infinite sequence of sentences ϕsn="PA is cons

...