trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Benefitial habits/personal rules with very minimal tradeoffs? 
by Slapstick — 2024-05-13T06:06:14.471Z

I'm looking for personal rules one might live by which adhere to a specific criteria outlined below, following an example.

I have a personal rule I've been following which is "No looking at screens in the bed where I sleep" I find this to be an extremely helpful and successful rule despite being someone who struggles to impose rules on myself.

I think one main reason it's successful for me is there aren't really any meaningful tradeoffs I'm making. If I'm feeling a need/compulsion to comfortably self soothe on my phone I can use another piece of furniture.

This rule doesn't ever result in bargaining with myself until I concede to breaking the rule, even at my lowest I'm easily appeased, just so long as it's in a slightly different location (even on the floor next to my bed).

It requires very little of my memory. It's simple enough to remember not to use screens in bed. Doesn't require remembering to actively do something. Doesn't require me to stop doing something I'm in the midst of (at least at this point). If I remember not to leave screens within reach of the bed, that's an added redundancy (but not essential).

I've found this extremely helpful for my sleep as well as for my ease of getting out of bed in the morning.

Basically the rule should have essentially no meaningful tradeoffs, while still being helpful.

Even something like "brushing teeth in the morning" would be pushing it according to these requirements. Willing myself to prioritize a couple minutes of unpleasant sensory experience brushing my teeth in the morning is a tradeoff I'm willing to make, but there's still lots of tradeoffs and requires equipment etc.

I'm looking for things that are easy to convince myself/remember to adhere to even when I'm at my very worst.

Ideally it would be relatively universal but I'd also be interested in habits/rules which are more conditional on other lifestyle choices, impediments, environments, etc.

Anyone feel free to answer.
Retrospective on Mathematical Boundaries Workshop
by miyazono — 2024-05-12T21:58:46.367Z
Link: https://formalizingboundaries.substack.com/p/evans-retrospective-on-mathematical

mostly written by Evan Miyazono

Minimum viable introduction

We ran a workshop on Mathematical Boundaries from April 10-14. This was the successor of the

Conceptual Boundaries Workshop

(retrospective, last update) Feb 10-12

The overlap in participants and approach was fairly low (notably lower than intended, due to availability restricting participation, which in turn led to a natural difference in approach)
Intent:

The first workshop was intended to develop a sense of what one might want to do with boundaries, and explore possible avenues
This event was more focused on making mathematical design decisions that would lead to a more concrete model that was opinionated enough to be useful (the natural question becomes “useful for what”)

You’re probably here because you want to see the outputs, so let’s get to them:

Outputs from the workshop

Here are write-ups started during writing sessions during the workshop:

Manuel Baltieri 1:

Crossing boundaries

Manuel Baltieri 2:

Fighting for boundaries

Kevin Carlson:

Nondeterministic dynamical systems and crossing boundaries

Martin Biehl 1:

Gliders and similar phenomena in (categorical) systems theory

Martin Biehl (developed in conversation with Owen Lynch):

Towards a more general law of requisite variety

Owen Lynch:

Grothendieck lenses for functors into 2Cat

Sophie Libkind:

Ontological commitments for boundaries

Nathaniel Virgo:

Boundaries and Good Regulators

Noting that I’m getting these to you before I’ve read them, so don’t expect me to be able to answer questions about them.

Also worth noting, Nathaniel Virgo and Martin Biehl participated in

this panel discussion at a later workshop

in Kyoto, where we discussed some of the issues that came up at the boundaries workshop

General structure from the workshop

The general daily structure was scheduled to be “a talk and a breakout session before lunch, then a breakout session and a longer-form discussion after lunch,” though we weren’t particularly strict adherents.

We found on Thursday (day 1 of 4) that the group wanted to continue discussing after Martin’s interesting talk and ending up doing more like “A talk and a discussion, followed by breakouts after lunch.” Thursday breakouts were (1) a session on trying to work out a cocategorical formalism for specifying things via wholes in which they particip...
Understanding rationality vs. ideology debates
by Aryeh Englander — 2024-05-12T19:20:53.503Z

[This was originally intended as a Facebook post, but it grew to the point where it felt way too long for that.]

For a while now I've been trying to wrap my head around what I'll loosely call "rationality vs. ideology" debates. Very roughly, these are debates where at least at first glance one side seems to be saying that ideology is more important than rationality in some way (or that rationality is at least partly defined in ideological terms), and the other side is saying the reverse. I'm particularly interested in debates where there seem to be very thoughtful and well-meaning people on both sides. My personal intuition is strongly towards the "rationality-first" approach, at least for many such debates, so for a long time I've felt confused about trying to understand where the "ideology-first" side is coming from.

The rest of this post is where I've gotten to so far in my attempts to understand this, although it still feels incomplete. Interested to hear what other people think of it.

If we get a bit more fine-grained about this, it seems to me like there are several different types of debates that might be going on. Unfortunately though it's not always clear which type is actually involved in any given debate, and it can easily be several types at the same time.

1) Debates about epistemology

1a) Debates over the nature of truth

Some approaches to truth say that ideology, pragmatic considerations, or the like are at least partially what makes something true or false, while others strongly disagree. Proponents of ideology- or pragmatically-based approaches might argue that all epistemic approaches are inescapably based on "ideology" of one sort or another, so explicitly tying a theory of truth to ideological or pragmatic considerations shouldn't in itself make the theory any less plausible than supposedly evidence-based approaches. (I once wrote a short essay about this in relation to religious beliefs, but I think a lot of that essay applies to other types of beliefs as well - see there for more details.)

1b) Debates over normative belief formation

Some think that even if truth is maybe not technically determined by ideological or pragmatic considerations, it might still be ok or even preferable in some cases to form our beliefs or psychological dispositions based on these kinds of considerations. Basically, it's ok or even preferrable in some cases to get ours...
Partitioned Book Club
by jenn — 2024-05-12T18:38:53.315Z

Partitioned Book Club (working title) is a specific kind of one-off meetup where attendees coordinate to read different chapters of the same book before the meetup. The meetup consists of each read chapter getting briefly summarized by its reader(s), and then a more general discussion of the book. In a traditional book club you read a chapter a week. In a partitioned book club, instead of there being multiple weeks you have multiple guys. You get it.

It only works with a very specific kind of book - namely, non-fiction books where most chapters are relatively self-contained, and you don't lose critical info by not reading a specific chapter.

It also only works with a meetup of a specific size - like, between 6-15 people.

If you have both of those things though, this meetup can be really fun and a great way to "read" a book in a week.

It does work better if the organizer has read the book in its entirety, but this is not necessary.

Obviously, you will get more out of a book if you read the entire thing by yourself. But we're doing the 80/20 thing here.

How to Run An Event

At least one week before the meetup[1], post an announcement post describing the book that you are reading. Give a quick summary of what the book's about, and let everyone know that they'll be reading the introduction[2], and one other chapter.

In the body of the event description, link a google sheet form set to "anyone can edit", with two columns, "Book Chapters" and "Name". Tell people to put their names down besides the book chapter that they want to read and briefly summarize for the group. The intent is for people to not double up on book chapters if there are still blank spots next to some other chapters, and be able to see in real time which chapters are claimed.

The first column should be populated by the organizer, and will be a straightforward list of the book chapters that are relatively self contained, from the book. The second column will be left blank, for your attendees to call dibs on chapters they feel interested in. It's completely ok for some chapters to remain blank and to be not discussed at the meetup.

I like providing PDFs of the book in the group's private spaces (such as a private discord), whenever possible, but this is not necessary.

When it comes to running the actual meetup, I generally split it into two halves. The first half, the chapters get briefly summarized. I've fou...
Inner Optimization Mechanisms in Neural Nets
by ProgramCrafter — 2024-05-12T17:52:52.803Z

I believe that current architecture of neural networks supports mesa-optimization: generally speaking, searching across some vectors in order to select one of them, which will be most useful for producing an answer.

Three inner optimization ways are already possible, and most likely there will be new ones.

Optimization on scaffolding level.

Iterative diffusion models (e.g. Stable Diffusion) are very close to this, modifying intermediate pseudo-image each pass.
LLMs with scratchpad can write down some amount of text - including plans, for instance - then compare them to calculate output.

Custom "neuron" functions embedded into the neural network, which would perform search (for instance, generate arbitrary incoming data to subnetwork, infer output and select the best). To my knowledge, this way is not currently used in any public models (but name "Q*" is pretty suspicious, reminding of "A*" - path searching algorithm in graph).
Option selection based on nonlinear activation functions - mostly, ReLU.
If subnetwork has inputs A and B, it's pretty easy to output max(A;B). Additional information can be selected either by squeezing it into input numbers, or by building a slightly bigger subnetwork.

Actual subnetwork design for point #3

Let's suppose the neural network consists of layers, as common now - composition of matrix multiplication and activation function - and activation function ReLU(x)=max(0;x).

A, B - inputs (A≥0,B≥0);
C=max(0;A∗1+B∗−1), D=max(0;A∗0+B∗1)
E=max(0;C∗1+D∗1)

A<B⟶C=0,D=B⟶E=B=max(A;B)

A≥B⟶C=A−B,D=B⟶E=A=max(A;B)

This construction can be extended to select maximum out of 2k/2 options in k layers; possibly, even 2k−1 options.

Conclusion

I believe that inner optimization might exist in current neural networks, and that it can be used as evidence to approximate what future AIs can do at what levels of capability.
Building intuition with spaced repetition systems
by Jacob G-W — 2024-05-12T15:49:04.860Z
Link: https://jacobgw.com/blog/tft/2024/05/12/srs-intuit.html

Do you ever go to a lecture, follow it thinking it makes total sense, then look back at your notes later and realize it makes no sense? This used to happen to me, but I’ve learned how to use spaced repetition to fully avoid this if I want. I’m going to try to convey this method in this post.

Much of my understanding of how to create flashcards comes from “Using spaced repetition systems to see through a piece of mathematics” by Michael Nielsen and “How to write good prompts: using spaced repetition to create understanding” by Andy Matuschak, but I think my method falls in between both, in terms of abstraction. Finally, I want to credit Quantum Country for being an amazing example of flashcards created to develop intuition in users.

My method is more abstract than Michael Nielsen’s approach, since it does not only apply to mathematics, but to any subject. Yet it is less abstract than Andy Matuschak’s approach because I specifically use it for ‘academic subjects’ that require deep intuition of (causal or other) relationships between concepts. Many of Matuschak’s principles in his essay apply here (I want to make sure to give him credit), but I’m looking at it through the ‘how can we develop deep intuition in an academic subject in the fastest possible time?’ lens.

Minimize Inferential Distance on Flashcards

A method that I like to repeat to myself while making flashcards that I haven’t seen in other places is that each flashcard should only have one inferential step on it. I’m using ‘inferential step’ here to mean a step such as remembering a fact, making a logical deduction, visualizing something, or anything that requires thinking. It’s necessary that a flashcard only have a single inferential step on it. Anki trains the mind to do these steps. If you learn all the inferential steps, you will be able to fully re-create any mathematical deduction, historical story, or scientific argument. Knowing (and continually remembering) the full story with spaced repetition builds intuition.

I’m going to illustrate this point by sharing some flashcards that I made while trying to understand how Transformers (GPT-2) worked. I made these flashcards while implementing a transformer based on Neel Nanda’s tutorials and these two blog posts.

Understanding Attention

The first step in my method is to learn or read enough so that you have part of the whole loaded into your head. For me...
Beware unfinished bridges
by Adam Zerner — 2024-05-12T09:29:07.808Z

This guy don't wanna battle, he's shook
'Cause ain't no such things as halfway crooks

- 8 Mile

There is a commonly cited typology of cyclists where cyclists are divided into four groups:

Strong & Fearless (will ride in car lanes)
Enthused & Confident (will ride in unprotected bike lanes)
Interested but Concerned (will ride in protected bike lanes)
No Way No How (will only ride in paths away from cars)

I came across this typology because I've been learning about urban design recently, and it's got me thinking. There's all sorts of push amongst urban designers for adding more and more bike lanes. But is doing so a good idea?

Maybe. There are a lot factors to consider. But I think that a very important thing to keep in mind are thresholds.

It will take me some time to explain what I mean by that. Let me begin with a concrete example.

I live in northwest Portland. There is a beautiful, protected bike lane alongside Naito Parkway that is pretty close to my apartment.

It basically runs along the west side of the Willamette River.

Which is pretty awesome. I think of it as a "bike highway".

But I have a problem: like the majority of people, I fall into the "Interested but Concerned" group and am only comfortable riding my bike in protected bike lanes. However, there aren't any protected bike lanes that will get me from my apartment to Naito Parkway. And there often aren't any protected bike lanes that will get me from Naito Parkway to my end destination.

In practice I am somewhat flexible and will find ways to get to and from Naito Parkway (sidewalk, riding in the street, streetcar, bus), but for the sake of argument, let's just assume that there is no flexibility. Let's assume that as a type III "Interested but Concerned" bicyclist I have zero willingness to be flexible. During a bike trip, I will not mix modes of transportation, and I will never ride my bike in a car lane or in an unprotected bike lane. With this assumption, the beautiful bike lane alongside Naito Parkway provides me with zero value.[1]

Why zero? Isn't that a bit extreme? Shouldn't we avoid black and white thinking? Surely it provides some value, right? No, no, and no.

In our hypothetical situation where I am inflexible, the Naito Parkway bike lane provides me with zero value.

I don't have a way of biking from my apartment to Naito Parkway.
I don't have a way of biking from Naito Parkway to most of my destin

...
What comes after Roam's renaissance?
by Itay Dreyfus — 2024-05-12T08:51:23.245Z
Link: https://productidentity.co/p/4-roam-research-what-comes-after

A new year has come. It's 2024 and note-taking isn’t cool anymore. The once-blooming space has had its moment. Moreover, the almighty

Roam Research

isn’t the only king anymore.

The hype is officially over.

At this time of year, when many are busy reflecting on the past year while excitingly looking into the future, I realized it's a good opportunity to look back at Roam’s madness timeline. The company that took Twitterverse and Silicon Valley

by storm

is now long after its breakthrough.

Roam was one of those phenomena that happen every other few years. Its appearance in our lives not only made the “tools for thought” niche fashionable. It marked a new era in the land of note-taking apps. In conjunction with a flourishing movement of internet intellectuals[1], it sparked a tsunami of new tools.

Followed by a cult of believers, Roam's growth was meteoric. It quickly joined the exclusive million ARR club and raised money from notable investors while reaching a soaring valuation. It was living the dream.

In the post-mortem of the note-taking mania, Roam’s hype was replaced by dramas, scandals, and rants questioning its future. Although Roam is still very much alive and kicking, its legacy can already be seen.

The Roam effect

2020 is best known for the breakout of a historic pandemic. In the parallel tech universe, it was also the year when note-taking apps went off the charts, and not only by user surging. The buzz of Roam ignited a fresh discourse among productivity enthusiasts.

In the prehistoric era before Roam, the green giant elephant of Evernote had long dominated the somewhat sleepy note-taking space. The awakening moment came shortly after Notion entered the world, capturing the attention of an industry.

After we’ve learned how to build a second brain[2] in Notion, it was time to move forward to more advanced concepts. The rise of Roam popularized quirky terms like

Memex

, and

Zettelkasten

to a broader audience.

Apart from Roam’s rapid growth, it was the beginning of a golden age for PKM fanatics. A rise of internet intellectuals brought topics like

Evergreen Notes

, and

Digital Gardens

to the forefront.

The small niche soon turned into a vibrant community. At one point it seemed everyone had become zealous note-takers. Roam, the community's beloved, sparked dual engagement, leading to its discovery and reshaping the note-taking space.

Outlining the outline

Taking...
The Natural Selection of Bad Vibes 
(Part 1)
by Kevin Dorst — 2024-05-12T08:28:20.203Z
Link: https://kevindorst.substack.com/p/the-natural-selection-of-bad-vibes

TLDR: Things seem bad. But chart-wielding optimists keep telling us that things are better than they’ve ever been. What gives? Hypothesis: the point of conversation is to solve problems, so public discourse will focus on the problems—making us all think that things are worse than they are. A computational model predicts both this dynamic, and that social media makes it worse.

Are things bad? Most people think so.

Over the last 25 years, satisfaction with how things are going in the US has tanked, while economic sentiment is as bad as it’s been since the Great Recession:

Meanwhile, majorities or pluralities in the US are pessimistic about the state of social norms, education, racial disparities, etc. And when asked about the wider world—even in the heady days of 2015—a only 6% of US respondents agreed that the world was “getting better”; 94% said “neutral” or “worse”.

So: the vibes are bad.

Well, are the vibes right? It’s unclear. There’s a chorus of chart-wielding optimists who repeatedly tell us they’re not. Instead, they say that on most of the ways we can measure, things are better than they’ve ever been. Here’s Barack Obama:

“If you had to choose one moment in history in which to be born, and you didn't know in advance whether you were going to be male or female, which country you were going to be from, what your status was, you'd choose right now.”

The easiest way to make this case is with worldwide trends. Over the last 40 years (not to mention the last 200), global rates of extreme poverty, child mortality, maternal mortality, and child labor (and I could go on) have all fallen:

Meanwhile, life expectancy and GDP have risen:

Okay. But what about things in the US?

The chart-wielding optimists point out that—despite the recent “vibesession”—(inflation-adjusted) median wages are up, income inequality is down, and we seem to have achieved a “soft landing”.

Indeed, the chart-wielding optimists have charts that directly address the gap between the vibes and (their measures of) reality. They cite an “optimism gap”: for decades, people have tended to say that things are going well for them personally, even as they become increasingly pessimistic about their nation and the world.

For example, if we overlay the above chart showing people’s satisfaction with how things are going in the US as a whole against how things are going for them personally, we see that 4 times (78% ...
Geometric Utilitarianism (And Why It Matters)
by StrivingForLegibility — 2024-05-12T03:41:21.342Z

Do you like using numbers to represent uncertainty and preference, but also care about things like fairness and consent? Are you an altruist on a budget, looking to do the most good with some of your resources, but want to pursue other goals too? Are you looking for a way to align systems to the interests of many people? Geometric Utilitarianism might be right for you!

Classic Utilitarianism

The Harsanyi utilitarian theorem is an amazing result in social choice theory, which states that if a social choice function F:Rn→R is both

VNM-rational, and
Pareto monotone (Pareto improvements never make F lower)

then for any joint utility u∈Rn, F(u) must be equal to a weighted average of individual utilities that looks like H(u,ϕ)=u⋅ϕ=∑ni=1uiϕi, where ⋅ is the dot product and ϕ∈[0,1]n are weights given to each agent's utility that sum up to 1.

As Diffractor puts it here in their excellent Unifying Bargaining sequence:

Basically, if you want to aggregate utility functions, the only sane way to do so is to give everyone importance weights, and do a weighted sum of everyone's individual utility functions.

Diffractor is using sane as a shorthand for VNM-rational here, which is extremely reasonable given the success of expected utility maximization as a model of rational decision-making. However, I have recently been radicalized by reading Scott Garrabrant's very compelling Geometric Rationality sequence, which has significantly updated my thinking on many topics in rationality, including how to sensibly combine utilities. And I wanted to see if I could prove some results about what happens if we use a geometric weighted average of utilities that looks like G(u,ψ)=∏ni=1uψii when the weights ψi∈[0,1]n sum to 1 and utilities are shifted to be non-negative. (Which I'll be assuming throughout this post.)

Results About Geometric Utilitarianism

What might it mean for a group to be rational? Well at the very least, that group had better be doing something Pareto optimal. Otherwise we can shuffle around their behavior and get strictly more value for that group. And it turns out Pareto optimality is enough to let us parameterize all rational group behavior as maximizing some geometric weighted average of individual utilities.

This geometric utilitarian theorem for group rationality is analogous to the VNM the...