trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Only say 'rational' when you can't eliminate the word
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2012-05-31T06:56:44.278Z

Almost all instances of the word "true" can be eliminated from the sentences in which they appear by applying Tarski's formula. For example, if you say, "I believe the sky is blue, and that's true!" then this can be rephrased as the statement, "I believe the sky is blue, and the sky is blue." For every "The sentence 'X' is true" you can just say X and convey the same information about what you believe - just talk about the territory the map allegedly corresponds to, instead of talking about the map.

When can't you eliminate the word "true"? When you're generalizing over map-territory correspondences, e.g., "True theories are more likely to make correct experimental predictions." There's no way to take the word 'true' out of that sentence because it's talking about a feature of map-territory correspondences in general.

Similarly, you can eliminate the sentence 'rational' from almost any sentence in which it appears. "It's rational to believe the sky is blue", "It's true that the sky is blue", and "The sky is blue", all convey exactly the same information about what color you think the sky is - no more, no less.

When can't you eliminate the word "rational" from a sentence?

When you're generalizing over cognitive algorithms for producing map-territory correspondences (epistemic rationality) or steering the future where you want it to go (instrumental rationality). So while you can eliminate the word 'rational' from "It's rational to believe the sky is blue", you can't eliminate the concept 'rational' from the sentence "It's epistemically rational to increase belief in hypotheses that make successful experimental predictions." You can Taboo the word, of course, but then the sentence just becomes, "To increase map-territory correspondences, follow the cognitive algorithm of increasing belief in hypotheses that make successful experimental predictions." You can eliminate the word, but you can't eliminate the concept without changing the meaning of the sentence, because the primary subject of discussion is, in fact, general cognitive algorithms with the property of producing map-territory correspondences.

The word 'rational' should never be used on any occasion except when it is necessary, i.e., when we are discussing cognitive algorithms as algorithms.

If you want to talk about how to buy...
A scene I once saw
by KatjaGrace — 2012-05-31T05:29:54.000Z

(inaccurately recounted)

Ms. Knox: When any of you feels ready, you can move in to the center of the circle, hold the stone, and tell us all about your feelings about what we are doing. Listen to the trees moving, encouraging you.

…

Sarah: I feel really proud. Young people are so passionate about the environment. Everyone will have to believe in us when they see how much we care.

Amanda: Excited! I feel like we are going to be part of a really positive change, across the world. It’s so great to be here now, when this is happening.

Marie: I’m just really glad to be here with so many likeminded people. When nobody around you sees what’s possible, it can be really disillusioning, but here I feel like everyone cares so much.

Linda: I feel really inspired by what the others are saying!

Becky: I’m so hopeful when I see all this engagement. I believe we can all stay passionate and keep the movement going until we are old, and inspire the new youth!

Odette: Irritated! I have so many things I would enjoy doing more than saving the environment, both this weekend and for the rest of my life. Preventing ecological catastrophe is very important, but I’d obviously much much prefer that someone else had done it already, or that it never needed doing. It’s extremely disappointing that after this many generations nobody’s got around to the most obvious solutions like taxing the big externalities. These things are not even interesting to think about. In a perfect world it would be nice to play video games most of the time, but I’m at least as frustrated that I won’t even get to work on the interesting altruistic endeavors.

***

Why is this so rare?
[SEQ RERUN] Against Devil's Advocacy
by MinibearRex — 2012-05-31T01:11:36.774Z

Today's post, Against Devil's Advocacy was originally published on 09 June 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Playing Devil's Advocate is occasionally helpful, but much less so than it appears. Ultimately, you should only be able to create plausible arguments for things that are actually plausible.

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 Timeless Control, 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.
Short Primers on Crucial Topics
by lukeprog — 2012-05-31T00:46:19.709Z

Series: How to Purchase AI Risk Reduction

Here's another way we might purchase existential risk reduction: the production of short primers on crucial topics.

Resources like The Sequences and NickBostrom.com have been incredibly effective at gathering and creating a community engaged in x-risk reduction (either through direct action or, perhaps more importantly, through donations), but most people who could make a difference probably won't take the time to read The Sequences or academic papers.

One solution? Short primers on crucial topics.

Facing the Singularity is one example. I'm waiting for some work from remote researchers before I write the last chapter, but once it's complete we'll produce a PDF version and a Kindle version. Already, several people (including Jaan Tallinn) use it as a standard introduction they send to AI risk newbies.

Similar documents (say, 10 pages in length) could be produced for topics like Existential Risk, AI Risk, Friendly AI, Optimal Philanthropy, and Rationality. These would be concise, fun to read, and emotionally engaging, while also being accurate and thoroughly hyperlinked/referenced to fuller explanations of each section and major idea (on LessWrong, in academic papers, etc.).

These could even be printed and left lying around wherever we think is most important: say, at the top math, computer science, and formal philosophy departments in the English-speaking world.

The major difficulty in executing such a project would be in finding good writers with the relevant knowledge. Eliezer, Yvain, and myself might qualify, but right now the three of us are otherwise occupied. The time investment of the primary author(s) could be minimized by outsourcing as much of the work as possible to SI's team of remote researchers, writers, and editors.

Estimated cost per primer:

80 hours from primary author. (Well, if it's me. I've put about 60 hours into the writing of Facing the Singularity so far, which is of similar length to the proposed primers but I'm adding some padding to the estimate.)

$4,000 on remote research. (Tracking down statistics and references, etc.)

$1000 on book design, Kindle version production, etc.

Translations to other languages could also be produced, for an estimated cost of $2,000 per translation (this includes checks and improvements by multiple translators).
Rational Toothpaste: A Case Study
by badger — 2012-05-31T00:31:57.865Z

Inspired by Konkvistador's comment

Posts titled "Rational ___-ing" or "A Rational Approach to ____" induce groans among a sizeable contingent here, myself included. However, inflationary use of "rational" and its transformation into an applause light is only one part of the problem. These posts tend to revolve around specific answers, rather than the process of how to find answers. I claim a post on "rational toothpaste buying" could be on-topic and useful, if correctly written to illustrate determining goals, assessing tradeoffs, and implementing the final conclusions. A post detailing the pros and cons of various toothpaste brands is for a dentistry or personal hygiene forum; a post about algorithms for how to determine the best brands or whether to do so at all is for a rationality forum. This post is my shot at showing what this would look like.

At one point or another, we've all asked ourselves, "what is the most rational toothpaste?" After all, despite the length of the sequences, I've yet to see Eliezer's endorsed personal hygiene products. What is an aspiring rationalist to do?

Step one is to throw out the question entirely. The most rational toothpaste does not exist, nor does the best toothpaste nor the optimal toothpaste. These adjectives are only applicable relative to particular goals, constraints, and contexts. Avoid the mistake of assuming optimality is a trait inherent to toothpaste, rather than a joint function of the toothpaste and who is using it. Similarly, the best programming language, the best footwear, the best way to write, and the best job are all under-specified.

Even before determining what you are looking for in toothpaste, take one more step back. Is optimizing your toothpaste worth the time and attention? First, there is the issue of whether improved dental care is worth it, and then, whether better toothpaste is the best means of improving your teeth.

While recognizing "optimal" varies across individuals, goals might be aligned closely enough that something can be identified as approximately optimal. The search costs of finding the perfect solution could outweigh going with an approximate solution. Toothpaste seems like a product where users have essentially the same needs or fall into a small number of categories, unlike the best place to reside, which depends on a large number of individual factors. As a result, too...
One possible issue with radically increased lifespan
by Spectral_Dragon — 2012-05-30T22:24:38.149Z

I might need a better title (It has now been updated), but here goes, anyway:

I've been considering this for a while now. Suppose we reach a point where we can live for centuries, maybe even millenia, then how do we balance? Even assuming we're as efficient as possible, there's a limit for how much resources we can have, meaning an artificial limit at the amount of people that could exist at any given moment even if we explore what we can of the galaxy and use any avaliable resource. There would have to be roughly the same rate of births and deaths in a stable population.

How would this be achieved? Somehow limiting lifespan, or children, assuming it's available to a majority? Or would this lead to a genespliced, technologically augmented and essentially immortal elite that the poor, unaugmented ones would have no chance of measuring up to? I'm sorry if this has already been considered, I'm very uneducated on the topic. If it has, could someone maybe link an analysis of the topic of lifespans and the like?
List of underrated risks?
by yttrium — 2012-05-30T20:59:06.788Z

As everyone here knows, it would be a stupid idea to switch from airplanes to cars out of safety/terrorism concerns: Cars are a much more risky means of transportation than airplanes. But what other major risks are there that many people systematically undervalue or are not even consciously aware of?

The same can be asked for chances.
Learning with Audiobooks
by Jabberslythe — 2012-05-30T20:41:00.167Z

I use Audiobooks, recorded lectures and podcasts to learn to a massive extent and I find them extremely useful. I haven’t heard them discussed on here much, so I thought I would broach the subject. Here on lesswrong in terms on scholarship textbooks are widely favored and textbooks on math are especially encouraged. I’ve listened to some textbooks that worked well in audio and even if you can’t learn math very well with them, there are plenty of other useful things to learn as well.

One barrier to using audiobooks that a lot of people have described to me is that they can read much faster than they can get through audiobooks. It’s pretty easy to find applications that speed up audio, though, so this doesn't seem like a great reason. Another barrier is that it is harder to find audio sources of things, again, clever use of the internet can still find you most things.

The two main benefits that I would expect most people to receiving when listening to audio rather than reading are:

(1) That you can accomplish some other manual task while listening to an audiobook.

I work at a manual job so I have more time available to listen than the average person, but I think that most people underestimate the amount of time that they could spend at activities that you can listen to audiobooks while doing. Some examples are commuting, cleaning, making things, sports, shopping, shaving and falling asleep. Doubling you productivity is just not something that can be overlooked.

(2) That listening to audiobooks is less effortful than reading.

This has definitely been my experience and I would be interested in hearing what other people’s experiences are to see if I really am typical in this respect. I love reading, but it’s the sort of activity that I have to take breaks from and whereas with audiobooks I can actually just happily listen to them with all of my waking hours. I remember being read to as a kid and it’s just like that.
Avoid inflationary use of terms
by lsparrish — 2012-05-30T20:31:41.775Z

Inflationary terms! You see them everywhere. And for those who actually know and care about the subject matter they can be very frustrating. These terms are notorious for being used in contexts where:

They are only loosely applicable at best.

There exists a better word that is more specific.

The topic has a far bias.

Some examples:

Rational

Evolution

Singularity

Emergent

Nanotech

Cryogenics

Faith

The problem is not that these words are meaningless in their original form, nor that you shouldn't ever use them. The problem is that they often get used in stupid ways that make them much less meaningful. By that I mean, less useful for keeping a focus on the topic and understanding what the person is really talking about.

For example, terms like Nanotech (or worse, "Nanobot") do apply in a certain loose sense to several kinds of chemistry and biological innovations that are currently in vogue. Nonetheless, each time the term is used to refer to these things it makes it much harder to know if you are referring to Drexlerian Mechanosynthesis. Hint: If you get your grant money by convincing someone you are working on one thing whereas you are really working on something completely different, that's fraud.

Similarly, Cryogenics is the science of keeping things really cold. And of course Cryonics is a form of that. But saying "Cryogenics" when you really mean exactly Cryonics is an incredibly harmful practice which actual Cryonicists generally avoid. Most people who work in Cryogenics have nothing to do with Cryonics, and this kind of confusion in popular culture has apparently engendered animosity towards Cryonics among Cryogenics specialists.

Recently I fell prey to something like this with respect to the term "Rational". I wanted to know in general terms what the best programming language for a newbie would be and why. I wanted some in depth analysis, from a group I trust to do so. (And I wasn't disappointed -- we have some very knowledgeable programmers whose opinions were most helpful to me.) However the reaction of some lesswrongers to the title I initially chose for the post was distinctly negative. The title was "Most rational programming language?"

After thinking about it for a while I realized what the problem was: This way of using the term, despite being more or less valid, makes the term less meaningful in the long run. And I don't want to be the person wh...
[Link] A superintelligent solution to the Fermi paradox
by Will_Newsome — 2012-05-30T20:08:18.333Z

Here.

Long story short, it's an attempt to justify the planetarium hypothesis as a solution to the Fermi paradox. The first half is a discussion of how it and things like it are relevant to the intended purview of the blog, and the second half is the meat of the post. You'll probably want to just eat the meat, which I think is relevant to the interests of many LessWrong folk.

The blog is Computational Theology. It's new. I'll be the primary poster, but others are sought. I'll likely introduce the blog and more completely describe it in its own discussion post when more posts are up, hopefully including a few from people besides me, and when the archive will give a more informative indication of what to expect from the blog. Despite theism's suspect reputation here at LessWrong I suspect many of the future posts will be of interest to this audience anyway, especially for those of you who take interest in discussion of the singularity. The blog will even occasionally touch on rationality proper. So you might want to store the fact of the blog's existence somewhere deep in the back of your head. A link to the blog's main page can be found on my LessWrong user page if you forget the url.

I'd appreciate it if comments about the substance of the post were made on the blog post itself, but if you want to discuss the content here on LessWrong then that's okay too. Any meta-level comments about presentation, typos, or the post's relevance to LessWrong, should probably be put as comments on this discussion post. Thanks all!
When None Dare Urge Restraint, pt. 2
by Jay_Schweikert — 2012-05-30T15:28:27.801Z

In the original When None Dare Urge Restraint post, Eliezer discusses the dangers of the "spiral of hate" that can develop when saying negative things about the Hated Enemy trumps saying accurate things. Specifically, he uses the example of how the 9/11 hijackers were widely criticized as "cowards," even though this vice in particular was surely not on their list. Over this past Memorial Day weekend, however, it seems like the exact mirror-image problem played out in nearly textbook form.

The trouble began when MSNBC host Chris Hayes noted* that he was uncomfortable with how people use the word "hero" to describe those who die in war -- in particular, because he thinks this sort of automatic valor attributed to the war dead makes it easier to justify future wars. And as you might expect, people went crazy in response, calling Hayes's comments "reprehensible and disgusting," something that "commie grad students would say," and that old chestnut, apparently offered without a hint of irony, "unAmerican." If you watch the video, you can tell that Hayes himself is really struggling to make the point, and by the end he definitely knew he was going to get in trouble, as he started backpedaling with a "but maybe I'm wrong about that." And of course, he apologized the very next day, basically stating that it was improper to have "opine[d] about the people who fight our wars, having never dodged a bullet or guarded a post or walked a mile in their boots."

This whole episode struck me as particularly frightening, mostly because Hayes wasn't even offering a criticism. Soldiers in the American military are, of course, an untouchable target, and I would hardly expect any attack on soldiers to be well received, no matter how grounded. But what genuinely surprised me in this case was that Hayes was merely saying "let's not automatically apply the single most valorizing word we have, because that might cause future wars, and thus future war deaths." But apparently anything less than maximum praise was not only incorrect, but offensive.

Of course, there's no shortage of rationality failures in political discourse, and I'm obviously not intending this post as a political statement about any particular war, policy, candidate, etc. But I think this example is worth mentioning, for two main reasons. First, it's just such a textbook example of the exact sort of problem discussed...
[Link] Reason: the God that fails, but we keep socially promoting….
by  — 2012-05-30T10:59:43.437Z

An interesting blog post by Razib Khan, who many here probably know from his Gene Expression blog, the old gnxp site or perhaps from his BHTV debate with Eliezer.

One point which I’ve made on this weblog several times is that on a whole range of issues and behaviors people simply follow the consensus of their self-identified group. This group conformity probably has deep evolutionary origins. It is often much cognitively “cheaper” to simply utilize a heuristic “do what my peers do” than reason from first principles. The “wisdom of the crowds” and “irrational herds” both arise from this dynamic, positive and negative manifestations. The interesting point is that from a proximate (game-theoretic rational actor) and ultimate (evolutionary fitness) perspective ditching reason is often quite reasonable (in fact, it may be the only feasible option if you want to “understand,” for example, celestial mechanics).

If you’re faced with a complex environment or set of issues “re-inventing the wheel” is often both laborious and impossible. Laborious because our individual general intelligence is simply not that sharp. Impossible because most of us are too stupid to do something like invent calculus. Many people can learn the rules for obtaining derivatives and integrals, but far fewer can come up with the fundamental theorem of calculus. Similarly, in the 18th century engineers who utilized Newtonian mechanics for practical purposes were not capable of coming up with Newtonian mechanics themselves. I’m using these two examples because calculus and mechanics are generally consider “high level” cognitive tasks, but even they at the root illustrate the principle of collective wisdom and group conformity. Calculus and mechanics is included in the curriculum not because all of the individuals who decide the curriculum understand these two topics in detail, but because individuals whom they trust and believe are worthy of emulation and deference, as well as past empirical history, tell them that this is the “reasonable” way to go. (science and engineering have the neat property is that you don’t just trust people, you trust concrete results!)

This sort of behavior is even more evident in political and social viewpoints. Recently there have been signs of shift

...
[SEQ RERUN] Timeless Control
by MinibearRex — 2012-05-30T02:31:35.817Z

Today's post, Timeless Control was originally published on 07 June 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

We throw away "time" but retain causality, and with it, the concepts "control" and "decide". To talk of something as having been "always determined" is mixing up a timeless and a timeful conclusion, with paradoxical results. When you take a perspective outside time, you have to be careful not to let your old, timeful intuitions run wild in the absence of their subject matter.

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 Thou Art Physics, 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.