trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Gandhi, murder pills, and mental illness
by erratio — 2010-10-13T09:16:26.583Z

Gandhi is the perfect pacifist, utterly committed to not bringing about harm to his fellow beings. If a murder pill existed such that it would make murder seem ok without changing any of your other values, Gandhi would refuse to take it on the grounds that he doesn't want his future self to go around doing things that his current self isn't comfortable with. Is there anything you could say to Gandhi that could convince him to take the pill? If a serial killer was hiding under his bed waiting to ambush him, would it be ethical to force him to take it so that he would have a chance to save his own life? If for some convoluted reason he was the only person who could kill the researcher about to complete uFAI, would it be ethical to force him to take the pill so that he'll go and save us all from uFAI?

Charlie is very depressed, utterly certain that life is meaningless and terrible and not going to improve anytime between now and the heat death of the universe. He would kill himself but even that seems pointless. If a magic pill existed that would get rid of depression permanently and without side effects, he would refuse it on the grounds that he doesn't want his future self to go around with a delusion (that everything is fine) which his current self knows to be false. Is there anything you could say to Charlie that could convince him to take it? Would it be ethical to force him to take the pill?

Note: I'm aware of the conventional wisdom for dealing with mental illness, and generally subscribe to it myself. I'm more interested in why people intuitively feel that there's a difference between these two situations, whether there are arguments that could be used to change someone's terminal values, or as a rationale for forcing a change on them.
Beauty in Mathematics
by multifoliaterose — 2010-10-13T09:12:21.578Z

Serious mathematicians are often drawn toward the subject and motivated by a powerful aesthetic response to mathematical stimuli. In his essay on Mathematical Creation, Henri Poincare wrote

It may be surprising to see emotional sensibility invoked à propos of mathematical demonstrations which, it would seem, can interest only the intellect. This would be to forget the feeling of mathematical beauty, of the harmony of numbers and forms, of geometric elegance. This is a true aesthetic feeling that all real mathematicians know, and surely it belongs to emotional sensibility.

The prevalence and extent of the feeling of mathematical beauty among mathematicians is not well known. In this article I'll describe some of the reasons for this and give examples of the phenomenon. I've excised many of the quotations in this article from the extensive collection of quotations compiled by my colleague Laurens Gunnarsen.

There's an inherent difficulty in discussing mathematical beauty which is that as in all artistic endeavors, aesthetic judgments are subjective and vary from person to person. As Robert Langlands said in his recent essay Is there beauty in mathematical theories?

I appreciate, as do many, that there is bad architecture, good architecture and great architecture just as there is bad, good, and great music or bad, good and great literature but neither my education, nor my experience nor, above all, my innate abilities allow me to distinguish with any certainty one from the other. Besides the boundaries are fluid and uncertain. With mathematics, my topic in this lecture, the world at large is less aware of these distinctions and, even among mathematicians, there are widely different perceptions of the merits of this or that achievement, this or that contribution.

Even when they are personally motivated by what they find beautiful, mathematicians tend to deemphasize beauty in professional discourse, preferring to rely on more objective criteria. Without such a practice, the risk of generalizing from one example and confusing one's own immediate aesthetic preferences with what's in the interest of the mathematical community and broader society would be significant. In the same essay Langlands said

Harish-Chandra and Chevalley were certainly not alone in perceiving their goal as the revelation of God’s truths, which we might interpret as beauty, bu

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Help: Which concepts are controversial on LW
by XiXiDu — 2010-10-12T17:46:15.603Z

I'm eager to improve the list References & Resources for LessWrong. I recently introduced a new label with the somewhat playful name Memetic Hazard. It is meant to mark resources that include ideas which might be controversial, bogus or which are works of fiction and therefore shouldn't be taken at face value.

I should explain that the reason that some controversial concepts are listed in the first place is that I felt that I frequently encountered those concepts in some rather fanciful discussions and posts. Those posts and discussions attract attention as they are some of the more exciting and fictional content on LW. I had to look them up myself once and want to give new readers a companion guide to learn about the very concepts and their status within the community.

I might also turn the Key Concepts section into just Concepts with a Controversial subcategory.

The trigger for this discussion post was a recent comment by rwallace:

I thought quantum suicide is not controversial since MWI is obviously correct?

I agree MWI is solid, I'm not suggesting that be flagged. But it does not in any way imply quantum suicide; the latter is somewhere between fringe and crackpot, and a proven memetic hazard with at least one recorded death to its credit.

And the AI section? Well, the list is supposed to reflect the opinions hold in the LW community, especially by EY and the SIAI. I'm trying my best to do so and by that standard, how controversial is AI going FOOM etc.?

Well, AI go FOOM etc is again somewhere in the area between fringe and crackpot, as judged by people who actually know about the subject. If the list were specifically supposed to represent the opinions of the SIAI, then it would belong on the SIAI website, not on LW.

So my question, are AI going FOOM and Quantum suicide considered controversial concepts in this community? And should any other content on the list potentially be marked controversial?

Thank you!
Of the Qran and its stylistic resources: deconstructing the persuasiveness Draft
by Raw_Power — 2010-10-12T17:04:25.670Z

(It's my first time posting an article, so please go easy on me.)

I wonder if anyone ever fully analysed the Qran and all the resources it uses to tug at the feelings of the reader? It is a remarkably persuasive (if not at all convincing) book, even if I say so myself as an ex Muslim. I've started recognizing some patterns since I started reading this site, but I'd like to know if there is a full-blown, complete, exhaustive deconstruction of that book, that is not dripped in islamophobia, ethnocentrism, and other common failures I have seen in Western theologians when applied to Islam. Not a book about "How the Qran is evil" or "How the Qran is Wrong" or "How IT'S A FAAAKE" but "How, precisely, it manipulates you". Can anyone here point me towards such a work?

And where is the markup help in this blog? I can't seem to find it and it frustrates the hell out of me when I'm commenting usual posts.
In which I fantasize about drugs
by cousin_it — 2010-10-12T16:19:15.521Z

We operate like this: the "overseer process" tells the brain, using blunt instruments like chemicals, that we need to find something to eat, somewhere to sleep or someone to mate with. Then the brain follows orders. Unfortunately the orders we receive from the "overseer" are often wrong, even though they were right in the ancestral environment. It seems the easiest way to improve humans isn't to augment their brains - it's to send them better orders, e.g. using drugs. Here's a list of fantasy brain-affecting drugs that I would find useful, even though they don't seem to do anything complicated except affecting "overseer" chemistry:

1) A drug against unrequited love, aka "infatuation" or 'limerence".

2) A drug that makes you become restless and want to exercise.

3) A drug that puts you in the state of random creativity that you normally experience just before falling asleep.

4) A drug that puts you in the optimal PUA "state".

5) A drug that boosts your feeling of curiosity. Must be great for doing math or science.

Anything else?
Before you start solving a problem
by xamdam — 2010-10-12T15:46:32.585Z

(While this is a general discussion, I have "doing well on interview questions" as an instrumental goal; the discussion below is somewhat skewed due to that).

I noticed one of the common failures to solving problems (especially under time constraints) is trying to solve the problem prematurely. There are multiple causes for this; awareness of some of them might reduce the chance of falling into failure mode, others (at least one) I do not have a solution to, and a procedural solution might not exist other than the magic of experience.

Here is my list of the first kind (awareness-helps group):

Jumping into the problem before completely understanding it: this could be due to perceived time pressure (e.g. test, interview). This *could* be rational, depending on the "test score" function, but could be a serious failure mode if done due to stress.

Using a cached solution instead of trying to solve the problem. The statement of the problem can trigger "cached thoughts" despite (possibly intentionally, in interview) being more subtly more difficult than a well known problem. In one instance I actually misread the statement of the problem because it sounded like one I knew of before.

Another problem with a cached solution, even if it is the correct one for the problem at hand, is that you might believe that you know it without actually doing the "retrieve from disk"; consequences might be looking bad when asked follow-up questions on an interview or inability to build on the problem if it's a part of a greater structure.

Besides cognitive mechanics, there might be a desire to blurt out a cached solution because it makes you look knowledgeable. A status claim might be instrumentally useful ("this looks like a min-spanning tree algorithm!"), as long as you properly calibrate your level of confidence and don't fall for the trap.

This brings me to the last failure mode which I do not have a solution for (which is why I am posting ;). If I avoid the traps above, I should have a pretty good understanding of the problem. I think this is a kind of crucial point, as I by definition, do not know what to do next. This uncertainty is scary and might push me into trying to immediately solve it, very similar to 1 above. While you might be able to avoid acting on this by being emotionally reflective (which has the instrumental side effect of appearing more confident) I still do n...
Swords and Armor: A Game Theory Thought Experiment
by nick012000 — 2010-10-12T08:51:28.673Z

Note: this image does not belong to me; I found it on 4chan. It presents an interesting exercise, though, so I'm posting it here for the enjoyment of the Less Wrong community.

For the sake of this thought experiment, assume that all characters have the same amount of HP, which is sufficiently large that random effects can be treated as being equal to their expected values. There are no NPC monsters, critical hits, or other mechanics; gameplay consists of two PCs getting into a duel, and fighting until one or the other loses. The winner is fully healed afterwards.

Which sword and armor combination do you choose, and why?
Vanity and Ambition in Mathematics
by multifoliaterose — 2010-10-12T05:49:15.498Z

In my time in the mathematical community I've formed the subjective impression that it's noticeably less common for mathematicians of the highest caliber to engage in status games than members of the general population do. This impression is consistent with the modesty that comes across in the writings of such mathematicians. I record some relevant quotations below and then discuss interpretations of the situation.

Acknowledgment - I learned of the Hironaka interview quoted below from my colleague Laurens Gunnarsen.

Edited 10/12/10 to remove the first portion of the Hironaka quote which didn't capture the phenomenon that I'm trying to get at here.

In a 2005 Interview for the Notices of the AMS, one of the reasons that Fields Medalist Heisuke Hironaka says

By the way, Mori is a genius. I am not. So that is a big difference! Mori was a student when I was a visiting professor at Kyoto University. I gave lectures in Kyoto, and Mori wrote notes, which were published in a book. He was really amazing. My lectures were terrible, but when I looked at his notes, it was all there! Mori is a discoverer. He finds new things that people never imagined.

(I'll note in passing that the sense of the "genius" that Hironaka is using here is probably different than the sense of "genius" that Gowers uses in Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction.)

In his review of Haruzo Hida’s p-adic automorphic forms on Shimura varieties the originator of the Langlands program Robert Langlands wrote

So ill-equipped as I am in many ways – although not in all – my first, indeed my major task was to take bearings. The second is, bearings taken, doubtful or not, to communicate them at least to an experienced reader and, in so far as this is possible, even to an inexperienced one. For lack of time and competence I accomplished neither task satisfactorily. So, although I have made a real effort, this review is not the brief, limpid yet comprehensive, account of the subject, revealing its manifold possibilities, that I would have liked to write and that it deserves. The review is imbalanced and there is too much that I had to leave obscure, too many possibly premature intimations. A reviewer with greater competence, who saw the domain whole and, in addition, had a command of the detail would have done much better.

For context, it's worthwhile to note that Langlands' own work is used ...
Morality and relativistic vertigo
by Academian — 2010-10-12T02:00:43.474Z

tl;dr: Relativism bottoms-out in realism by objectifying relations between subjective notions. This should be communicated using concrete examples that show its practical importance. It implies in particular that morality should think about science, and science should think about morality.

Sam Harris attacks moral uber-relativism when he asserts that "Science can answer moral questions". Countering the counterargument that morality is too imprecise to be treated by science, he makes an excellent comparison: "healthy" is not a precisely defined concept, but no one is crazy enough to utter that medicine cannot answer questions of health.

What needs adding to his presentation (which is worth seeing, though I don't entirely agree with it) is what I consider the strongest concise argument in favor of science's moral relevance: that morality is relative simply means that the task of science is to examine absolute relations between morals. For example, suppose you uphold the following two moral claims:

"Teachers should be allowed to physically punish their students."

"Children should be raised not to commit violence against others."

First of all, note that questions of causality are significantly more accessible to science than people before 2000 thought was possible. Now suppose a cleverly designed, non-invasive causal analysis found that physically punishing children, frequently or infrequently, causes them to be more likely to commit criminal violence as adults. Would you find this discovery irrelevant to your adherence to these morals? Absolutely not. You would reflect and realize that you needed to prioritize them in some way. Most would prioritize the second one, but in any case, science will have made a valid impact.

So although either of the two morals is purely subjective on its own, how these morals interrelate is a question of objective fact. Though perhaps obvious, this idea has some seriously persuasive consequences and is not be taken lightly. Why?

First of all, you might change your morals in response to them not relating to each other in the way you expected. Ideas parse differently when they relate differently. "Teachers should be allowed to physically punish their students" might never feel the same to you after you find out it causes adult violence. Even if it originally felt like a terminal (fundamental) value, your prioritization ...
Draft: Reasons to Use Informal Probabilities
by jimrandomh — 2010-10-11T22:50:35.892Z

If I roll 15 fair 6-sided dice, take the ones that rolled 4 or higher, roll them again, and sum up all the die rolls... what is the probability that I drop at least one die on the floor?

There are two different ways of using probability. When we think of probability, we normally think of neat statistics problems where you start with numbers, do some math, and end with a number. After all, if we don't have any numbers to start with, we can't use a proven formula from a textbook; and if we don't use a proven formula from a textbook, our answer can't be right, can it? But there's another way of using probability that's more general: a probability is just an estimate, produced by the best means available, even if that's a guess produced by mere intuition. To distinguish these two types, let's call the former kind *formal probabilities*, and the latter kind *informal probabilities*.

An informal probability summarizes your state of knowledge, no matter how much or how little knowledge that is. You can make an informal probability in a second, based on your present level of confidence, or spend time making it more precise by looking for details, anchors, reference classes. It is perfectly valid to assign probabilities to things you don't have numbers for, to things you're completely ignorant about, to things that are too complex for you to model, and to things that are poorly defined or underspecified. Giving a probability estimate does not require *any* minimum amount of thought, evidence, or calculation. Giving an informal probability is not a claim that any relevant mathematical calculation has been done, nor that any calculation is even possible.

I present here the case for assigning informal probabilities, as often as is practical. If any statement crosses your mind that seems especially important, you should put a number on it. Routinely putting probabilities on things has significant benefits, even if they aren't very accurate, even if you don't use them in calculations, and even if you don't share them. The process of assigning probabilities to things tends to prompt useful observations and clarify thinking; it eases the transition into formal calculation when you discover you need it, and provides a sanity check on formal probabilities; having used probabilities makes it easier to diagnose mistakes later; and using probabilities lets you quantify, no...
Poker Playing
by gwern — 2010-10-11T21:48:00.240Z

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/01/AR2010100105833_pf.html (one page link; original: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/01/AR2010100105833.html) is a recent Washington Post article on young poker player Steven Silverman. It's interesting.

Even more interesting are his comments and other poker players' comments on Hacker News: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1777385

Some selected comments:

It doesn't matter one jot how well you play at your best, what matters is how well you play when you're stressed and upset and ill and exhausted and it's 2am and the fish whose money you need to take is calling your mother a whore. That's the real job of playing professional poker - you're on a tightrope where an hour of perfect poker earns you $80 but an hour on tilt can lose you $800. The skills that allow you to turn pro are learned as an amateur, but there's a whole other set of skills required to stick it out without losing your mind. I had the former, but not the latter. I walked away from poker because I am absolutely certain it would have killed me.

-- jdietrich, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1778364

Losing streaks are like nothing you can understand until you've been a professional poker player. Imagine if you went to work, performed flawlessly, far better than all of your coworkers, and instead of getting paid your bank account got debited and your boss told you "you really sucked today". Then that happens every day for a month.

Humans (and especially poker players, who study probabilistic decision making as a hobby) are conditioned through life to believe outcomes are a direct result of actions. Do a good job at something and work hard at it, you succeed. Do a bad job at something and slack off, you fail.

While this is true in poker in the long run, the long run can be a long time. I broke even for a year at one point, and that's at cash games. Meanwhile donkeys without the slightest clue what they were doing were lucking ass backward into multimillion-dollar tournament prizes.

You can't even fathom what this does to you emotionally until you've lived through it. It engenders self-doubt, which gets you off your game, which probably makes you play worse, which you know you're doing but aren't sure exactly how, or what to do about it, which in turn prolongs the losin

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Great Mathematicians on the Value of Intuition in Mathematics
by multifoliaterose — 2010-10-11T14:58:40.358Z

There is a widespread misconception among educated laypeople that mathematics is primarily about logic and proof. No serious mathematician would deny that logical rigor has played an essential role in the development of mathematics. But the essential role that intuition plays in mathematical progress is little known. The asymmetry between the high level of awareness of the importance of logical rigor and the low level of awareness of the importance of intuition has led to educated laypeople to have a heavily distorted view of mathematics. Below I've collected some quotes from great mathematicians about the value of intuition in mathematics. I welcome any references to counterbalancing quotes from people of similar caliber

In Why Johnny Can't Add, mathematician and historian Morris Kline quotes Felix Klein saying

You can often hear from non‐mathematicians, especially from philosophers, that mathematics consists exclusively in drawing conclusions from clearly stated premises; and that, in this process, it makes no difference what these premises signify, whether they are true or false, provided only that they do not contradict one another. But a person who has done productive mathematical work will talk quite differently. In fact those persons are thinking only of the crystallized form into which finished mathematical theories are finally cast. The investigator himself, however, in mathematics, as in every other science, does not work in this rigorous deductive fashion. On the contrary, he makes essential use of his fantasy and proceeds inductively, aided by heuristic expedients. One can give numerous examples of mathematicians who have discovered theorems of the greatest importance which they were unable to prove. Should one, then, refuse to recognize this as a great accomplishment and, in deference to the above definition, insist that this is not mathematics, and that only the successors who supply polished proofs are doing real mathematics? After all, it is an arbitrary thing how the word is to be used, but no judgment of value can deny that the inductive work of the person who first announces the theorem is at least as valuable as the deductive work of the one who first proves it. For both are equally necessary, and the discovery is the presupposition of the later conclusion.

According to an obituary by Robert Langlands, mathematician Harish-Chandra said

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