trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Four Focus Areas of Effective Altruism
by lukeprog — 2013-07-09T00:59:40.963Z

It was a pleasure to see all major strands of the effective altruism movement gathered in one place at last week's Effective Altruism Summit.

Representatives from GiveWell, The Life You Can Save, 80,000 Hours, Giving What We Can, Effective Animal Altruism, Leverage Research, the Center for Applied Rationality, and the Machine Intelligence Research Institute either attended or gave presentations. My thanks to Leverage Research for organizing and hosting the event!

What do all these groups have in common? As Peter Singer said in his TED talk, effective altruism "combines both the heart and the head." The heart motivates us to be empathic and altruistic toward others, while the head can "make sure that what [we] do is effective and well-directed," so that altruists can do not just some good but as much good as possible.

Effective altruists (EAs) tend to:

Be globally altruistic: EAs care about people equally, regardless of location. Typically, the most cost-effective altruistic cause won't happen to be in one's home country.

Value consequences: EAs tend to value causes according to their consequences, whether those consequences are happiness, health, justice, fairness and/or other values.

Try to do as much good as possible: EAs don't just want to do some good; they want to do (roughly) as much good as possible. As such, they hope to devote their altruistic resources (time, money, energy, attention) to unusually cost-effective causes. (This doesn't necessarily mean that EAs think "explicit" cost effectiveness calculations are the best method for figuring out which causes are likely to do the most good.)

Think scientifically and quantitatively: EAs tend to be analytic, scientific, and quantitative when trying to figure out which causes actually do the most good.

Be willing to make significant life changes to be more effectively altruistic: As a result of their efforts to be more effective in their altruism, EAs often (1) change which charities they support financially, (2) change careers, (3) spend significant chunks of time investigating which causes are most cost-effective according to their values, or (4) make other significant life changes.

Despite these similarities, EAs are a diverse bunch, and they focus their efforts on a variety of causes.

Below are four popular focus areas of effective altruism, ordered rou...
Strategic Bestseller: Taking the Blog Path (4HS002)
by Neotenic — 2013-07-08T21:44:42.052Z

"The scariest moment is just before you start"

"I think timid writers like the passive voice for the same reason timid lovers like passive
partners. The passive voice is safe."

- Stephen King

Follow-up to: How can I strategically write a complex bestseller?

2:27 PM, Mexico City, 08 July 2013

The Blog Path and the Time Dimension

Robin Hanson recently said that writing a book feels lonelier than writing blog posts. Blog posts have many features that books will never have. Not only the obvious ones such as instantaneous gratification, being able to complete a chunk of work in one sitting, and being able to show you are actually doing something, not just claiming you are. Blogs also partition time in a way that makes a primate brain comfortable, both from the reader's and the writer's perspective. But in my case the most important feature of blogs is that generate and test and trial and error are easy to do. So after my first post here, and weeks solving many of the surrounding problems that could impede me from moving forward, I decided to go through the beaten track and blog my way into a bestseller.

The Challenges Theme

The theme of the blog is self challenges, and it envisions the public that enjoys Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, with a side of A J Jacobs. It begins by the #50: Stop Learning, Start Doing.

This is the first post, so let’s cut to the chase: In this blog we’ll be going through a series of 50 challenges. Whatever you want to do, let’s do this together. You like A. J. Jacobs and Tim Ferriss? That’s a good start. You want to deal with your big picture question too? On top of that you like Science and Philosophy? You’ve come to the right place, but don’t take a seat yet, this is not a place to rest your gaze and get your warm fuzzy feeling inside by making a comment. This is a place to do.

All you’ll need prior to reading this blog is linked below:

You want to be one of the few Self-Actualizers out there? This won’t be any easy, and though we’ll make the journey together, no one besides you can do it for you.

But before we start, there are Six things you need to know, and they’re gonna hurt like few things you (... and it continues from here)

Previous LW Post Comments (ordered by upvotes):

Omid said that if writing is like music, being a bestseller is mostly about luc...
Meetup : Zagreb LW meetup
by mikko — 2013-07-08T16:22:57.508Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Zagreb LW meetup

WHEN:
13 July 2013 03:00:00PM (+0300)

WHERE:
CAFFE BAR KOLDING, Ulica Petra Berislavića 8, 10000, Zagreb, Kroatia

I’m visiting Zagreb, and I would really enjoy meeting any LWers there. There are definitely some Croatian readers here, so let’s have a meetup and see how many show up!

I’m going to spend at least two hours sitting in Kolding waiting for you. To find me, look for a sign that says "LW". You’re completely welcome regardless of how long you’ve been reading Less Wrong. If enough people show up, we can plan more meetups and I can tell you inspiring tales of Finnish meetups!

Discussion article for the meetup : Zagreb LW meetup
Responses to Catastrophic AGI Risk: A Survey
by lukeprog — 2013-07-08T14:33:50.800Z

A great many Less Wrongers gave feedback on earlier drafts of "Responses to Catastrophic AGI Risk: A Survey," which has now been released. This is the preferred discussion page for the paper.

The report, co-authored by past MIRI researcher Kaj Sotala and University of Louisville’s Roman Yampolskiy, is a summary of the extant literature (250+ references) on AGI risk, and can serve either as a guide for researchers or as an introduction for the uninitiated.

Here is the abstract:

Many researchers have argued that humanity will create artificial general intelligence (AGI) within the next twenty to one hundred years. It has been suggested that AGI may pose a catastrophic risk to humanity. After summarizing the arguments for why AGI may pose such a risk, we survey the field’s proposed responses to AGI risk. We consider societal proposals, proposals for external constraints on AGI behaviors, and proposals for creating AGIs that are safe due to their internal design.
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 23, chapter 94 
by elharo — 2013-07-08T12:04:37.740Z

This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 94. The previous thread has passed 200 comments.

There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)

The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22.

Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.
Meetup : [Moscow] Weekday meet up
by Yuu — 2013-07-08T08:44:17.283Z

Discussion article for the meetup : [Moscow] Weekday meet up

WHEN:
11 July 2013 07:00:00PM (+0400)

WHERE:
Russia, Moscow, naberezhnaya Luzhnetskaya 2/4 строение 17

This is another meet up on weekdays. If you are going for the first time, please fill this one minute form (in Russian), to register for the gathering.

You need metal door with number 17 (building number) near it. Enter and follow white labels “Neúron” or “Applied rationality” until you will get to office 444. You can also wait near this door, we will check it several times. We will start at 19:00, so please come in advance. Meetup will take 2-2.5 hours.

Main topics:

Applied rationality exercises.

Prediction markets.

You can also use personal messages here, or drop a message at lw@lesswrong.ru to contact me for any reason.

Reports from previous sessions can be found here, in Russian, now with more photos.

Discussion article for the meetup : [Moscow] Weekday meet up
Evidential Decision Theory, Selection Bias, and Reference Classes
by Qiaochu_Yuan — 2013-07-08T05:16:48.460Z

See also: Does Evidential Decision Theory really fail Solomon's Problem?, What's Wrong with Evidential Decision Theory?

It seems to me that the examples usually given of decision problems where EDT makes the wrong decisions are really examples of performing Bayesian updates incorrectly. The basic problem seems to be that naive EDT ignores a selection bias when it assumes that an agent that has just performed an action should be treated as a random sample from the population of all agents who have performed that action. Said another way, naive EDT agents make some unjustified assumptions about what reference classes they should put themselves into when considering counterfactuals. A more sophisticated Bayesian agent should make neither of these mistakes, and correcting them should not in principle require moving beyond EDT but just becoming less naive in applying it.

Elaboration

Recall that an EDT agent attempts to maximize conditional expected utility. The main criticism of EDT is that naively computing conditional probabilities leads to the conclusion that you should perform actions which are good news upon learning that they happened, as opposed to actions which cause good outcomes (what CDT attempts to do instead). For a concrete example of the difference, let's take the smoking lesion problem:

Smoking is strongly correlated with lung cancer, but in the world of the Smoker's Lesion this correlation is understood to be the result of a common cause: a genetic lesion that tends to cause both smoking and cancer. Once we fix the presence or absence of the lesion, there is no additional correlation between smoking and cancer.

Suppose you prefer smoking without cancer to not smoking without cancer, and prefer smoking with cancer to not smoking with cancer. Should you smoke?

In the smoking lesion problem, smoking is bad news, but it doesn't cause a bad outcome: learning that someone smokes, in the absence of further information, increases your posterior probability that they have the lesion and therefore cancer, but choosing to smoke cannot in fact alter whether you have the lesion / cancer or not. Naive EDT recommends not smoking, but naive CDT recommends smoking, and in this case it seems that naive CDT's recommendation is correct and naive EDT's recommendation is not.

The naive EDT agent's reasoning process involves consider...
Estimating the kolmogorov complexity of the known laws of physics?
by Strilanc — 2013-07-08T04:30:31.764Z

In the post Complexity and Intelligence, Eliezer says that the Kolmogorov Complexity (length of shortest equivalent computer program) of the laws of physics is about 500 bits:

Suppose you ran a Turing machine with unlimited tape, so that, starting from our laws of physics, it simulated our whole universe - not just the region of space we see around us, but all regions of space and all quantum branches. [...]

Then the "Kolmogorov complexity" of that entire universe [...] would be 500 bits, or whatever the size of the true laws of physics when written out as equations on a sheet of paper.

Where did this 500 come from?

I googled around for estimates on the Kolmogorov Complexity of the laws of physics, but didn't find anything. Certainly nothing as concrete as 500.

I asked about it on the physics stack exchange, but haven't received any answers as of yet.

I considered estimating it myself, but doing that well involves significant time investment. I'd need to learn the standard model well enough to write a computer program that simulated it (however inefficiently or intractably, it's the program length that matters not it's time or memory performance).

Based on my experience programming, I'm sure it wouldn't take a million bits. Probably less than ten thousand. The demo scene does some pretty amazing things with 4096 bits. But 500 sounds like a teeny tiny amount to mention off hand for fitting the constants, the forces, the particles, and the mathematical framework for doing things like differential equations. The fundamental constants alone are going to consume ~20-30 bits each.

Does anyone have a reference, or even a more worked-through example of an estimate?
Home Economics
by Ritalin — 2013-07-07T21:30:34.459Z

As I inventoried my personal library and classified it using the Universal Decimal System, I found out about lots of fields of knowledge I was only dimly aware of or didn't even know existed1, and one of those that piqued my curiosity was home economics, domestic science and housekeeping (field 64). I was kinda bluffed, actually; I always thought of home economics as that thing that shows up in American high school sitcoms, that elective "for girls" where people get to cook stuff on campus. Now I find that it fully occupies one of The Tens of the UDC! I finally realized it; this is Serious Business!

I thought of the permanently shoddy state of my bank account, of all the money I had spent in books (no less than 215 physical books, and then there's Kindle!), fancy gadgets (were those Marshall headphones really necessary? What about that sandwich-maker?), fancy food (even though I always seem to end up "cooking" the same boring, unbalanced crap), unnecessary or excessive heating and air conditioning, and so on and so forth.

I've come to realize how much I had underestimated this field, the duty towards oneself of taking care of one's house, and the advantages of so doing. I want to catch up in terms of planning my budget and my cleaning and my cooking and my buying furniture and appliances and so on and so for. I suppose I could figure it out by myself, but why reinvent the wheel?

So I thought to myself: asking your mates at LW has had awesome results when it came to getting your library in order, why don't you ask them about Home Economics? They probably actually went to those courses in High School, or have otherwise taken an interest just to optimize their homes! I mean, their literal livelihoods and well-beings are at stake, so why wouldn't they2?

So, yeah, if you guys know which reference books to start with, or have any practical recommendations in terms of resources or bibliography, and the handling thereof, I'd love to hear it. Who knows, maybe a good top level post may come of it?

1This triggered my imagination on a completely unrelated topic: a gamified education system in the style of an RPG skill tree.

2My Inner Critic obligingly suggested "Arkasia and, given the demographic, a compounded disdain for manual labor, pedestrian and materialistic concerns, and girly stuff. Why else didn't you?" I told it to step aside and go h...
A Gamification Of Education: a modest proposal based on the Universal Decimal Classification  and RPG skill trees
by Ritalin — 2013-07-07T18:27:39.809Z

While making the inventory of my personal library and applying the Universal Decimal System to its classification, I found myself discovering a systematized classification of fields of knowledge, nested and organized and intricate, many of which I didn't even know existed. I couldn't help but compare how information was therein classified, and how it was imparted to me in engineering school. I also thought about how, often, software engineers and computer scientists were mostly self-thought, with even college mostly consisting of "here's a problem: go forth and figure out a way to solve it". This made me wonder whether another way of certified and certifiable education couldn't be achieved, and a couple of ideas sort of came to me.

It's pretty nebulous in my mind so far, but the crux of the concept would be a modular structure of education, where the academic institution essentially established what information precisely you need from each module, and lets you get on with the activity of learning, with periodic exams that you can sign up for, which will certify your level and area of proficiency in each module.

A recommended tree of learning can be established, but it should be possible to not take every intermediate test, if passing the final test proves that you've passed all the others behind it (this would allow people coming from different academic systems to certify their knowledge quickly and easily, thus avoiding the classic "Doctor in Physics from Former Soviet Union, current Taxi Driver in New York" scenario).

Thus, a universal standard of how much you have proven to know about what topics can be established.

Employers would then be free to request profiles in the format of such a tree. It need not be a binary "you need to have done all these courses and only these courses to work for us", they could be free to write their utility function for this or that job however they would see fit, with whichever weights and restrictions they would need.

Students and other learners would be free to advance in whichever tree they required, depending on what kind of profile they want to end up with at what age or point in time. One would determine what to learn based on statistical studies of what elements are, by and large, most desired by employers of/predictors of professional success in a certain field you want to work in.

One would find, for example, that master...
On-line conference for LW readers and meet up members
by Yuu — 2013-07-07T09:53:38.749Z

I would like to consolidate LW members in a new way. I believe we can organize an on-line gathering in some form, for example as a set of chat rooms to discuss different topics in the real time. This event can be announced in advance to help everyone to arrange plans. I hope the discussion can be more intense and productive than in chats that open for prolonged periods of time. And comparing to the lesswrong.com this event should give some feeling of a real conversation, which I can not get while posting articles and comments here.

If you have any additions, ideas and proposals please let me know.
Meetup : Helsinki LW meetup
by mikko — 2013-07-07T08:08:40.580Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Helsinki LW meetup

WHEN:
20 July 2013 02:00:00PM (+0300)

WHERE:
Hakasalmenpuisto

We’re having a meetup! Thanks to Kaj and Cat for organizing the previous meetup, where we had more than a dozen people. This time we’ll have a less formal meetup to get to know each other better, and to plan future meetups. We’ll also have a good chance to practice applied rationality, as one LWer has volunteered to let us help in deciding the direction of his studies.

To find us, look for someone wearing a pink elephant hat. We’ll be sitting in the park between the Opera house and Finlandia hall. If it rains, we’ll meet in Kaisla. You can also join our Facebook group.

Discussion article for the meetup : Helsinki LW meetup
Optimizing Workouts for Intellectual Performance
by Ritalin — 2013-07-06T19:56:54.641Z

So this year I've stopped working out, and my grades have improved drastically, but at the cost of losing muscle mass and gaining fat, and becoming physically slower and lazier just as I became faster and more active intellectually. One effect I especially noticed was the disappearance of that perpetual state of happiness/satisfaction that comes from frequent physical exertion, which I think had a tendency to get in the way of a feeling of urgency regarding studies; why bother with tiresome and frustrating intellectual exercise when physical exercise yielded results and pleasure/satisfaction much more easily and reliably?

Anyway, this got me thinking: "I need to figure out a training that is optimized for intellectual performance. Aspects that might be interesting to work on would be:

getting as much blood (oxygen, nutrients) as possible to the brain, whenever needed.

minimizing the amount of other tissue (including muscle in excess of what is strictly needed for a comfortable daily life, and digestive organs in excess of what is needed to get the nutrients from the food).

optimizing the diet in order to feed the brain according to its needs while avoiding dietetical imbalances that would result in damage of some sort or another (too much sugar can damage the pancreas, too much protein and the kidneys can suffer, etc.)

something that is easy and quick to implement and follow, relatively inexpensive and straightforward; the idea is to save as much time, resources and energy as possible for the needs of studying/working.

These ideas I'm throwing around from a position of extreme ignorance. I've tried hiring nutritionists, but their diets were optimized for bodybuilding, not for intellectual efficacy, and were incredibly troublesome to follow. These involved about five to eight meals a day, large amounts of meat or meat substitutes, which is expensive to sustain, and me in a perpetual state of either hunger or digestive lethargy, plus permanent muscular soreness from the training regime that goes with it... and then there's the supplements.

So, yeah, I'm no gwern, but I'd love to figure out a diet that allows me to work at maximum efficacy. Other concerns, such as feeling strong or looking attractive or even dancing well, are quite far behind in priority. How should I go about this? How about you lads and ladies? What's your experience with dieting/working-out?...
Prioritizing Happiness
by jefftk — 2013-07-06T16:01:20.723Z

When the limiting resource is money it's quite clear that we should prioritize the uses where it goes the farthest. If there are three organizations that can distribute antimalarial nets for $5/each, $50/each, and $500/each we should just give to the first one. Similarly, if I have $5 I could use it to have my electricity be generated by wind or I could use it to fund distribution of an additional antimalarial net. I can't spend that $5 on both, so I have to choose, and I choose based on which I think will do more good with the money.

When the limiting resource is happiness, however, prioritization comes less naturally. I could stop taking warm showers, take the bus instead of driving, spend less to donate more, go vegan, donate a kidney, not run fans in summer, or do any of a very large number of things to make the world better at some cost to me. The more I do, the better, but the less happy I am. If I chose options without looking at how they trade off my happiness against benefit to others it would be like choosing what clothes to buy based on how much I would enjoy wearing them and not considering how much they cost.

I also posted this on my blog