trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Recovery Manual for Civilization
by RyanCarey — 2014-10-31T09:36:20.755Z

I was wondering how seriously we've considered storing useful information to improve the chance of rebounding from a global catastrophe. I'm sure this has been discussed previously, but not in sufficient depth that I could find it on a short search of the site. If we value future civilisation, then, it may be worth going to significant length to reduce existential risks.

Some interventions will target specific risky tech, like AI and synthetic biology. However, just as many of today's risks could not have been identified a century ago, we should expect some emerging risks of the coming decades to also catch us by surprise. As argued by Karim Jebari, even if risks are not identifiable, we can take general-purpose methods to reduce them, by analogy to the principles of robustness and safety factors in engineering. One such idea is, to create a store of the kind of items one would want to recover from catastrophe. This idea varies based on which items are chosen and where they are stored.

Nick Beckstead has investigated bunkers, and he basically rejected bunker-improvement because the strength of a bunker would not improve our resilience to known risks like AI, nuclear weapons or biowarfare. However, his analysis was fairly limited in scope. He focused largely on where to put people, food and walls, in order to manage known risks. It would be useful for further analysis to consider where you can put other items, like books, batteries or 3D printers, in an analysis of a range of scenarios that could arise from known or unknown risks. Though we can't currently identify many plausible risks that would leave us without 99% of civilisation, that's still a plausible situation that it's good to equip ourselves to recover from. What information would we store?

The Knowledge, How to Rebuild Civilisation From Scratch would be a good candidate based on its title alone, and a quick skim over i09's review. One could bury Wikipedia, the Internet Archive, or a bunch of other items suggested by The Long Now Foundation. A computer with a battery perhaps? Perhaps all of the above, to ward against the possibility that we miscalculate. Where would we store it? Again, the principle of resilience would seem to dictate that we should store these in a variety of sites. They could be underground and overground, marked and unmarked at busy and deserted sites of v...
[Link]"Neural Turing Machines"
by Prankster — 2014-10-31T08:54:43.151Z

The paper.

Discusses the technical aspects of one of Googles AI projects. According to a pcworld the system "apes human memory and programming skills" (this article seems pretty solid, also contains link to the paper).

The abstract:

We extend the capabilities of neural networks by coupling them to external memory resources, which they can interact with by attentional processes. The combined system is analogous to a Turing Machine or Von Neumann architecture but is differentiable end-to-end, allowing it to be efficiently trained with gradient descent. Preliminary results demonstrate that Neural Turing Machines can infer simple algorithms such as copying, sorting, and associative recall from input and output examples.

(First post here, feedback on the appropriateness of the post appreciated)
Meetup : Michigan Meetup 11/9
by Scott Alexander — 2014-10-31T00:42:32.498Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Michigan Meetup 11/9

WHEN:
09 November 2014 03:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
19334 Angling Street, Livonia, MI

Our more-or-less bimonthly Ann Arbor + Detroit area meetup. Myself and Ozy will be hosting.

No particular topic, but bring games and discussion topics as they interest you.

Discussion article for the meetup : Michigan Meetup 11/9
Maybe you want to maximise paperclips too
by dougclow — 2014-10-30T21:40:37.232Z

As most LWers will know, Clippy the Paperclip Maximiser is a superintelligence who wants to tile the universe with paperclips. The LessWrong wiki entry for Paperclip Maximizer says that:

The goal of maximizing paperclips is chosen for illustrative purposes because it is very unlikely to be implemented

I think that a massively powerful star-faring entity - whether a Friendly AI, a far-future human civilisation, aliens, or whatever - might indeed end up essentially converting huge swathes of matter in to paperclips. Whether a massively powerful star-faring entity is likely to arise is, of course, a separate question. But if it does arise, it could well want to tile the universe with paperclips.

Let me explain.

To travel across the stars and achieve whatever noble goals you might have (assuming they scale up), you are going to want energy. A lot of energy. Where do you get it? Well, at interstellar scales, your only options are nuclear fusion or maybe fission.

Iron has the strongest binding energy of any nucleus. If you have elements lighter than iron, you can release energy through nuclear fusion - sticking atoms together to make bigger ones. If you have elements heavier than iron, you can release energy through nuclear fission - splitting atoms apart to make smaller ones. We can do this now for a handful of elements (mostly selected isotopes of uranium, plutonium and hydrogen) but we don’t know how to do this for most of the others - yet. But it looks thermodynamically possible. So if you are a massively powerful and massively clever galaxy-hopping agent, you can extract maximum energy for your purposes by taking up all the non-ferrous matter you can find and turning it in to iron, getting energy through fusion or fission as appropriate.

You leave behind you a cold, dark trail of iron.

That seems a little grim. If you have any aesthetic sense, you might want to make it prettier, to leave an enduring sign of values beyond mere energy acquisition. With careful engineering, it would take only a tiny, tiny amount of extra effort to leave the iron arranged in to beautiful shapes. Curves are nice. What do you call a lump of iron arranged in to an artfully-twisted shape? I think we could reasonably call it a paperclip.

Over time, the amount of space that you’ve visited and harvested for energy will increase, and the amount of space a...
Academic papers
by Capla — 2014-10-30T16:53:55.295Z

In line with my continuing self eduction...

What are the most important or personally influential academic papers you've ever read? Which ones are essential (or just good) for an informed person to have read?

Is there any body of research of which you found the original papers much more valuable than than the popularizations or secondary sources (Wikipedia articles, textbook write ups, ect.), for any reason? What was that reason? Does anyone have a good heuristic for when it is important to "go to the source" and when someone else's summation will do? I have theoretical preference for reading the original research, since if I need to evaluate an idea's merit, reading what others in that field read (instead of the simplified versions) seems like a good idea, but it has the downside of being harder and more time-consuming.

I have wondered if the only reason to bother with technical sounding papers that are hard to understand is that you have to read them (or pretend to read them) in order to cite them.
Meetup : Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games
by RobinZ — 2014-10-30T15:50:29.781Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games

WHEN:
02 November 2014 04:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
National Portrait Gallery

Note: Nov. 2nd is the end of Daylight Saving Time in the United States; the meetup will be at 3:00 p.m. EST.

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 hang out, play games, and engage in fun conversation. As usual, attendees are permitted and encouraged to bring any game they would like played.

In addition, plans are afoot to offer chess instruction starting at 3:30 p.m. to anyone who is interested. David Steinberg (USCF & FIDE ratings ~2050) and Robin Zimmermann (USCF & FIDE ratings ... much less than that) have volunteered to help teach. Our present intention is to begin with a lesson catered to the desires of the student or students: we will be prepared to offer anything from an introduction to basic chess rules and strategy to commentary on famous historical chess games (or both). After the lesson, we will be available to give chess advice to people playing their own games.

Each of us intends to bring at least one chess set (board & pieces), but additional sets would be greatly appreciated.

Upcoming Meetups:

Nov. 9: Anime & Manga Discussion (freeform topical discussion)

Nov. 16: To-Do List Hacking (tricks and tips for improving results)

Nov. 23: TBA (to be summarized)

(Note: The frequency of Mini Talks meetups is being reduced in response to a lack of engagement.)

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games
Meetup : Rationality Meetup Vienna
by AnnaLeptikon — 2014-10-30T10:08:33.520Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Rationality Meetup Vienna

WHEN:
22 November 2014 03:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Kaisermühlenstraße 24/2, 1220 Wien

agenda:
- maybe go on with the goal setting and planning for the future
- It's time for another open mic session - so please think about 30 minutes topics to offer :)

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...
!Important Notice!
Since our usual room on the ground floor has already been booked by someone else, we will have our meetup in the room on the fourth floor (the same room we moved to last time after complications arose).
Meetup : Bath, UK: Agreement, practical meetups, and report from last meetup
by KnaveOfAllTrades — 2014-10-30T09:24:13.980Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Bath, UK: Agreement, practical meetups, and report from last meetup

WHEN:
02 November 2014 02:00:00PM (+0000)

WHERE:
5-10 James St W, Avon, Bath BA1 2BX

Bath, UK will be having its second meetup this Sunday 2nd November at 14:00 in the King of Wessex, which is a Wetherspoons pub in the city. I shall wait at least ninety minutes (i.e. until 15:30) for the first arrivals.

I'll put a sheet featuring a paperclip and saying 'Less Wrong' on the table so you know you've found us. Make sure you venture into the pub, since there's no guarantee our table will be near the door.

In case you need to contact me (e.g. if the venue is unexpectedly busy and we have to move elsewhere and you can't find us), my mobile number is the product 3 x 3 x 23 x 97 x 375127, preceded by a zero (so eleven digits total).

We have a Facebook group.

At the start we'll chat for a bit, then move onto an agreement exercise: Unlike last meetup, where we made predictions for our own PredictionBook accounts somewhat independently without necessarily sharing all our information, this time we shall try to reach consensus in our probabilities and then see how our consensus is calibrated, by means of a single PredictionBook account for the meetup group.

After that, we shall discuss ideas for future meetups and activities. In particular, we shall discuss how we can move forward with practical meetups and instrumental rationality, and how to balance this with discussion and 'abstract' or epistemic stuff.

====Previous meetup (2014-10-19 Sunday)====

It went well. There was me, someone who tagged along with me, someone from Bristol, and someone from Bradford-on-Avon. I think everyone had arrived by 14:30, and we probably stayed until 17:30 or 18:00. (We stayed long enough that we all got something to eat in the pub.)

We got to know each other a bit then did 15 predictions. The previous night, I had prepared a list of prompts for things to make predictions about, ranging from things where I thought we might have very high (or low) confidences, to things where I expected that most of the attendees would be basically indifferent (e.g. whether an even or odd number of elements have been observed, whether the density of water is above or below 1kg per liter, etc.).

We skipped some of the ambiguous prompts,

...
Meetup : Atlanta Beginning of November Meetup - Rationality
by Adele_L — 2014-10-30T03:53:21.114Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Atlanta Beginning of November Meetup - Rationality

WHEN:
01 November 2014 07:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
2388 Lawrenceville Hwy. Unit L

It's easy to care about "The Truth." In fact, very many people do, despite disagreeing drastically on what exactly "The Truth" is. That's why it is important to not only care about truth, but algorithms which can reliably increase the correspondence between the map and the territory.

Recommended reading: <http://lesswrong.com/lw/eta/rationality_appreciating_cognitive_algorithms/>

We will have snacks and games!

Note: please park in spots marked 'Visitor'. There are plenty by the beginning of the complex. Also there will be cats present.

Hope to see you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : Atlanta Beginning of November Meetup - Rationality
Wikipedia articles from the future
by snarles — 2014-10-29T12:49:39.507Z

Speculation is important for forecasting; it's also fun. Speculation is usually conveyed in two forms: in the form of an argument, or encapsulated in fiction; each has their advantages, but both tend to be time-consuming. Presenting speculation in the form of an argument involves researching relevant background and formulating logical arguments. Presenting speculation in the form of fiction requires world-building and storytelling skills, but it can quickly give the reader an impression of the "big picture" implications of the speculation; this can be more effective at establishing the "emotional plausibility" of the speculation.

I suggest a storytelling medium which can combine attributes of both arguments and fiction, but requires less work than either. That is the "wikipedia article from the future." Fiction written by inexperienced sci-fi writers tends to generate into a speculative encyclopedia anyways--why not just admit that you want to write an encyclopedia in the first place? Post your "Wikipedia articles from the future" below.
Meetup : Canberra: Econ 101 and its Discontents
by DanielFilan — 2014-10-29T12:11:42.638Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Canberra: Econ 101 and its Discontents

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

WHERE:
108 North Road, Acton, ACT

Nick will explain one of the most basic concepts in economics, the demand and supply curves, and how they interact to determine the price and quantity of goods produced. Then he will present a post-Keynesian critique of the demand and supply curve model that argues that demand curves can be any shape and that the supply curve can't be determined. The meta lesson will be in practicing reacting to new evidence against pre-existing beliefs, and comparing different models of reality. 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: Econ 101 and its Discontents
Meetup : Columbus Rationality
by Gleb_Tsipursky — 2014-10-29T04:33:05.214Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Columbus Rationality

WHEN:
03 November 2014 08:30:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
1550 Old Henderson Road Room 131, Columbus, OH

We meet every 1st and 3rd Monday at 7:30.

http://www.meetup.com/HumanistOhio/events/208105842/

Discussion article for the meetup : Columbus Rationality
A discussion of heroic responsibility
by Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg)  — 2014-10-29T04:22:04.426Z

[Originally posted to my personal blog, reposted here with edits.]

Introduction

You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe,” Harry Potter said. “Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it’s always your fault. Even if you tell Professor McGonagall, she’s not responsible for what happens, you are. Following the school rules isn’t an excuse, someone else being in charge isn’t an excuse, even trying your best isn’t an excuse. There just aren’t any excuses, you’ve got to get the job done no matter what.” Harry’s face tightened. “That’s why I say you’re not thinking responsibly, Hermione. Thinking that your job is done when you tell Professor McGonagall—that isn’t heroine thinking. Like Hannah being beat up is okay then, because it isn’t your fault anymore. Being a heroine means your job isn’t finished until you’ve done whatever it takes to protect the other girls, permanently.” In Harry’s voice was a touch of the steel he had acquired since the day Fawkes had been on his shoulder. “You can’t think as if just following the rules means you’ve done your duty. –HPMOR, chapter 75.

I like this concept. It counters a particular, common, harmful failure mode, and that it’s an amazingly useful thing for a lot of people to hear. I even think it was a useful thing for me to hear a year ago.

But... I’m not sure about this yet, and my thoughts about it are probably confused, but I think that there's a version of Heroic Responsibility that you can get from reading this description, that's maybe even the default outcome of reading this description, that's also a harmful failure mode.

Something Impossible

A wrong way to think about heroic responsibility

I dealt with a situation at work a while back–May 2014 according to my journal. I had a patient for five consecutive days, and each day his condition was a little bit worse. Every day, I registered with the staff doctor my feeling that the current treatment was Not Working, and that maybe we ought to try something else. There were lots of complicated medical reasons why his decisions were constrained, and why ‘let’s wait and see’ was maybe the best decision, statistically speaking–that i

...
Meetup : Sydney Rationality Dojo - Focused-grit and TAPs
by luminosity — 2014-10-28T23:56:28.189Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Rationality Dojo - Focused-grit and TAPs

WHEN:
02 November 2014 04:00:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
Humanist House, 10 Shepherd St Chippendale

The next dojo will be run by our new CFAR alumnus Taryn, who will be talking about focused grit and trigger action planning. Now is a great time to come if you have been considered coming before but haven't yet made it!

Afterwards (6pm) there will be an optional group dinner for those who are interested.

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Rationality Dojo - Focused-grit and TAPs
Meetup : Urbana-Champaign: Fun and Games
by Manfred — 2014-10-28T20:00:20.917Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Urbana-Champaign: Fun and Games

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

WHERE:
206 S. Cedar St, Urbana IL

Come for the fun and games, stay for practicing meditation. Also: halloween-candy-based elocution exercises.

Discussion article for the meetup : Urbana-Champaign: Fun and Games
Things to consider when optimizing: Sleep
by  — 2014-10-28T17:26:19.775Z

I'd like to have a series of discussion posts, where each post is of the form "Let's brainstorm things you might consider when optimizing X", where X is something like sleep, exercise, commuting, studying, etc. Think of it like a specialized repository.
In the spirit of try more things, the direct benefit is to provide insights like "Oh, I never realized that BLAH is a knob I can fiddle. This gives me an idea of how I might change BLAH given my particular circumstances. I will try this and see what happens!"
The indirect benefit is to practice instrumental rationality using the "toy problem" provided by a general prompt.
Accordingly, participation could be in many forms:
* Pointers to scientific research
* General directions to consider
* Personal experience
* Boring advice
* Intersections with other community ideas, biases
* Cost-benefit, value-of-information analysis
* Related questions
* Other musings, thoughts, speculation, links, theories, etc.
This post is on sleep and circadian rhythms.
Cross-temporal dependency, value bounds and superintelligence
by joaolkf — 2014-10-28T15:26:50.424Z

In this short post I will attempt to put forth some potential concerns that should be relevant when developing superintelligences, if certain meta-ethical effects exist. I do not claim they exist, only that it might be worth looking for them since their existence would mean some currently irrelevant concerns are, in fact, relevant.

These meta-ethical effects would be a certain kind of cross-temporal dependency on moral value. First, let me explain what I mean by cross-temporal dependency. If value is cross-temporal dependent it means that value at t2 could be affected by t1, independently of any causal role t1 has on t2. The same event X at t2 could have more or less moral value depending on whether Z or Y happened at t1. For instance, this could be the case on matters of survival. If we kill someone and replace her with a slightly more valuable person some would argue there was a loss rather than a gain of moral value; whereas if a new person with moral value equal to the difference of the previous two is created where there was none, most would consider an absolute gain. Furthermore, some might consider small, gradual and continual improvements are better than abrupt and big ones. For example, a person that forms an intention and a careful detailed plan to become better, and forceful self-wrought to be better could acquire more value than a person that simply happens to take a pill and instantly becomes a better person - even if they become that exact same person. This is not because effort is intrinsically valuable, but because of personal continuity. There are more intentions, deliberations and desires connecting the two time-slices of the person who changed through effort than there are connecting the two time-slices of the person who changed by taking a pill. Even though both persons become equally morally valuable in isolated terms, they do so from different paths that differently affects their final value.

More examples. You live now in t1. If suddenly in t2 you were replaced by an alien individual with the same amount of value as you would otherwise have in t2, then t2 may not have the exact same amount of value as it would otherwise have, simply by virtue of the fact that in t1 you were alive and the alien's previous time slice was not. 365 individuals with a 1 day life do not amount to the same value as a single individual l...
Donation Discussion - alternatives to the Against Malaria Foundation
by ancientcampus — 2014-10-28T03:00:38.494Z

About a year and a half ago, I made a donation to the Against Malaria Foundation. This was during jkaufman's generous matching offer.

That was 20 months ago, and my money is still in the "underwriting" phase - funding projects that are still, of yet, just plans and no nets.

Now, the AMF has had a reasonable reason it was taking longer than expected:

"A provisional, large distribution in a province of the [Democratic Republic of the Congo] will not proceed as the distribution agent was unable to agree to the process requested by AMF during the timeframe needed by our co-funding partner."

So they've hit a snag, the earlier project fell through, and they are only now allocating my money to a new project. Don't get me wrong, I am very glad they are telling me where my money is going, and especially glad it didn't just end up in someone's pocket instead. With that said, though, I still must come to this conclusion:

The AMF seems to have more money than they can use, right now.

So, LW, I have the following questions:

Is this a problem? Should one give their funds to another charity for the time being?

Regardless of your answer to the above, are there any recommendations for other transparent, efficient charities? [other than MIRI]