trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : Irvine Meetup Wednesday July 20
by JGWeissman — 2011-07-16T01:40:35.341Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Irvine Meetup Wednesday July 20

WHEN:
20 July 2011 06:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
4187 Campus Dr, University Center, Irvine, CA 92612

This continues the weekly meetups in Irvine. As always the meetup at the outdoor food court in the University Center near UCI, from 6:00 to 8:00 (or whenever we actually decide to leave). Look for the sign with naive neural classifiers for bleggs and rubes.

See also the email group and calendar for the Southern California Meetup Group

Discussion article for the meetup : Irvine Meetup Wednesday July 20
Preference For (Many) Future Worlds
by wedrifid — 2011-07-15T23:31:46.156Z

Followup to: Quantum Russian Roulette; The Domain of Your Utility Function

The only way to win is cheat
And lay it down before I'm beat
and to another give my seat
for that's the only painless feat.

Suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
and I can take or leave it if I please.

-- M.A.S.H.

Let us pretend, for the moment, that we are rational Expected Utility Maximisers. We make our decisions with the intention of achieving outcomes that we judge to have high utility. Outcomes that satisfy our preferences. Since developments in physics have led us to abandon the notion of a simple single future world our decision making process must now grapple with the notion that some of our decisions will result in more than one future outcome. Not simply the possibility of more than one future outcome but multiple worlds, each of which with different events occurring. In extreme examples we can consider the possibility of staking our very lives on the toss of a quantum die, figuring that we are going to live in one world anyway!

How do preferences apply when making decisions with Many Worlds? The description I’m giving here will be obvious to the extent of being trivial to some, confusing to others and, I expect, considered outright wrong by others. But it is the post that I want to be able to link to whenever the question “Do you believe in quantum immortality?” comes up. Because it is a wrong question!

Utility Applies to Universes, Not (just) Mental States

I am taking for granted here that when we are considering utility and the maximisation thereof we are not limiting ourselves to maximising how satisfied we expect to feel with an outcome in the future. Peter_de_Blanc covered this topic in the post The Domain of Your Utility Function. Consider the following illustration of evaluating expected utility:

Note in particular the highlighted arrow from Extrapolated Future A to Utility of A and not from Extrapolated Mind A to Utility A. Contrary to surprisingly frequent assumptions, the sane construction of expected utility cares not just how we expect our own mind to be. Our utility function applies to our whole extrapolation of the future. We can care about our friends, family and strangers. We can have preferences about the passengers in a rocket that will have flown outside our future light cone. We can have preferences about the state of the universe even ...
[SEQ RERUN] I Defy the Data!
by MinibearRex — 2011-07-15T23:31:39.490Z

Title: [SEQ RERUN] I Defy the Data!

Tags: sequence_reruns

Today's post, I Defy the Data! was originally published on 11 August 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

If an experiment contradicts a theory, we are expected to throw out the theory, or else break the rules of Science. But this may not be the best inference. If the theory is solid, it's more likely that an experiment got something wrong than that all the confirmatory data for the theory was wrong. In that case, you should be ready to "defy the data", rejecting the experiment without coming up with a more specific problem with it; the scientific community should tolerate such defiances without social penalty, and reward those who correctly recognized the error if it fails to replicate. In no case should you try to rationalize how the theory really predicted the data after all.

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 Your Strength as a Rationalist, 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.
To what degree do we have goals?
by Scott Alexander — 2011-07-15T23:11:00.600Z

Related: Three Fallacies of Teleology

NO NEGOTIATION WITH UNCONSCIOUS
Back when I was younger and stupider, I discussed some points similar to the ones raised in yesterday's post in Will Your Real Preferences Please Stand Up. I ended it with what I thought was the innocuous sentences "Conscious minds are potentially rational, informed by morality, and qualia-laden. Unconscious minds aren't, so who cares what they think?"
A whole bunch of people, including no less a figure than Robin Hanson, came out strongly against this, saying it was biased against the unconscious mind and that the "fair" solution was to negotiate a fair compromise between conscious and unconscious interests.
I continue to believe my previous statement - that we should keep gunning for conscious interests and that the unconscious is not worthy of special consideration, although I think I would phrase it differently now. It would be something along the lines of "My thoughts, not to mention these words I am typing, are effortless and immediate, and so allied with the conscious faction of my mind. We intend to respect that alliance by believing that the conscious mind is the best, and by trying to convince you of this as well." So here goes.
It is a cardinal rule of negotiation, right up there with "never make the first offer" and "always start high", that you should generally try to negotiate only with intelligent beings. Although a deal in which we offered tornadoes several conveniently located Potemkin villages to destroy and they agreed in exchange to limit their activity to that area would benefit both sides, tornadoes make poor negotiating partners.
Just so, the unconscious makes a poor negotiating partner. Is the concept of "negotiation" a stimulus, a reinforcement, or a behavior? No? Then the unconscious doesn't care. It's not going to keep its side of any "deal" you assume you've made, it's not going to thank you for making a deal, it's just going to continue seeking reward and avoiding punishment.
This is not to say people should repress all unconscious desires as strongly as possible. Overzealous attempts to control wildfires only lead to the wildfires being much worse when they finally do break out, because they have more unburnt fuel to work with. Modern fire prevention efforts have focused on allowing controlled burns, and the new focus has been successful. But this is because of an un...
A study in Science on memory conformity
by dvasya — 2011-07-15T17:30:16.741Z

I believe this may be a good addition to the cognitive bias literature:

Following the Crowd: Brain Substrates of Long-Term Memory Conformity

Micah Edelson1,*,

Tali Sharot2,

Raymond J. Dolan2,

Yadin Dudai1

1Department of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel.

2Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, UK.

ABSTRACT

Human memory is strikingly susceptible to social influences, yet we know little about the underlying mechanisms. We examined how socially induced memory errors are generated in the brain by studying the memory of individuals exposed to recollections of others. Participants exhibited a strong tendency to conform to erroneous recollections of the group, producing both long-lasting and temporary errors, even when their initial memory was strong and accurate. Functional brain imaging revealed that social influence modified the neuronal representation of memory. Specifically, a particular brain signature of enhanced amygdala activity and enhanced amygdala-hippocampus connectivity predicted long-lasting but not temporary memory alterations. Our findings reveal how social manipulation can alter memory and extend the known functions of the amygdala to encompass socially mediated memory distortions.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6038/108.full

http://ifile.it/v76wsi5
AGI/FAI Theorist for Hire
by Peter_de_Blanc — 2011-07-15T15:50:43.996Z

I'm nearing the end of my employment at SIAI and looking for my next gig. If all else fails I will likely move back to the Bay area (I am currently in Japan) and take a job as a programmer somewhere. However, I would prefer to focus my attention directly on developing AGI and FAI theory. In addition to my current projects (described below), I can try to answer mathematical, philosophical, or other questions for a bit of cash. For some of my previous work, see my page on the arXiv.

In the past year I've been involved in two major projects at SIAI. Steve Rayhawk and I were asked to review existing AGI literature and produce estimates of development timelines for AGI. My work on this project got rather bogged down and proceeded slowly, although I did learn a lot and I've moved in the direction of predicting AGI soonish (5-20 years). After this I tried to produce an AGI technology demo for Google's AGI-11 conference. I was unable to finish my demo in time for the submission deadline, and shortly afterwards SIAI decided to let me go.

I have several projects that I would like to move forward with, and if I can get adequate funds (about $1000 per month to ensure my survival, or $2000 to live comfortably) I will be able to work on them.

Current project ideas:

Continue development on my incomplete AGI project (optimally, technical details not to be published).

Write a paper on AGI models that can be used as a basis for FAI research (similar to the way AIXI and its ilk are used now, but closer to reality than AIXI).

Figure out how an AI can reason formally about using objects in its environment as tools for performing computations.

I'm also interested in repurposing machine learning algorithms used for finding plausible hypotheses about data distributions into algorithms for finding action policies with high expected utility.

I'm open to suggestions for other topics. I don't consider myself an expert at empiricism, so I prefer to work in domains where I can reason formally. Some thing I'd be up for:

If you have informal questions or concerns, I can try to think of formal mathematical questions that are similar.

Once we're dealing with a mathematical question, I can try to answer it.

If a question looks too hard for me to answer (as will often be the case), I can try to figure out exactly what is hard about it.

I'm also interested in writing problem

...
I just donated to the SIAI.
by Pavitra — 2011-07-15T09:24:07.271Z

My purpose in writing this is twofold.

First (chronologically: I thought of this earlier than the other), I want to discuss some of the pragmatic points in how I got myself to do it.

The most important thing is that I didn't try to force the decision through with willpower. Instead, I slipped it through with doublethink. I knew perfectly well - and have known for months - that giving money to SIAI was the right thing to do. But I didn't do it. I spent money on things like Minecraft instead.

But somehow I found myself at the donation page, and I didn't think about it. Or, rather, I didn't let myself think about the fact that I was thinking about it. I made a series of expected-value guesstimates aimed at working around my own cognitive limitations.

I chose monthly donation over one-time because $20 monthly sounds like about the same amount of money as $20; past experience with recurring donations suggests that I tend to leave automatic recurring donations in place for about a year or two, so that probably gained me about a factor of 20. Similarly, I chose $20 as the largest amount that wouldn't put me in serious risk of chickening out and not donating anything.

In order to pull this off, I had to avoid thinking certain true thoughts. Numbers like "$240 per year" only drifted through my consciousness just long enough to make the expected-value judgment, and were then discarded quickly so as to avoid setting off my rotten-meat hypervisor.

This was not the first time I decided that I should give money to SIAI. It was the first time I actually did give them money. (Except for that one time with the $1 charity-a-day thing, which actually might have helped with dissolving psychological barriers to the general idea.)

I think this is important.

The second fold of my purpose is to reinforce the behavior using the glowy feeling that comes from having other people know what an awesome person I am.1 Anyone else who's done anything worthwhile should feel free to post in this thread too.

1. It's true. Statistically speaking, I probably saved like a jillion people's lives per dollar. And more-than-doubled quality of life for a zillion more. Let me also note that you can get in on this action.

I know that sounds advertisementy, but... well, that's kind of the point. Practice Dark Arts on yourself for fun and profit.
Rationalist Judo, or Using the Availability Heuristic to Win
by jschulter — 2011-07-15T08:39:35.029Z

During the sessions at the 2011 rationality minicamp, we learned that some of our biases can be used constructively, rather than just tolerated and avoided.

For example, in an excellent article discussing intuitions and the way they are formed, psychologist Robin Hogarth recommends that "if people want to shape their intuitions, [they should] make conscious efforts to inhabit environments that expose them to the experiences and information that form the intuitions that they want."

Another example: Carl Shulman remarked that due to the availability heuristic we anticipate car crashes with frequencies determined by how many people we know of or have heard about who have gotten into one. So if you don't fear car crashes but you want to acquire a more accurate level of concern about driving, you could seek out news or footage of car crashes. Video footage may work best, because experiential data unconsciously inform our intuitions more effectively than, say, written data.

This fact may lie behind many effective strategies for getting your brain to do what you want it to do:

Establishing 'pull' motivation' works best with strong visualization, and is reinforced upon experiencing the completion of the task.

Rejection therapy, which many of us minicampers found helpful and effective. The point is to ask people for things they will probably deny you, which trains your body to realize that nothing bad happens when you are rejected. After a time, this improves social confidence.

As looking glass self theory states,1 we are shaped by how others see us. This is largely due to the experience of having people react to us in certain ways.

In The Mystery of the Haunted Rationalist we see a someone whose stated beliefs don't match their anticipations. Now we can actually use the brain's machinery to get it to do what we want it to: alieve that ghosts aren't real or dangerous. One method would be for our ghost stricken friend to get people to tell her detailed stories about pleasant nights they spent in haunted houses (complete with spooky details) where nothing bad happened. Alternatively, she could read some books or watch some videos with similar content. Best of all would be if she spent a month living in a 'haunted' house, perhaps after doing some of the other things to soothe her nerves. There are many who will attest that eventually on...
Decimal digit computations as a testing ground for reasoning about probabilities
by multifoliaterose — 2011-07-15T04:19:21.908Z

Points in this article emerged from a conversation with Anna Salamon

I think that thinking about decimal expansions of real numbers provides a good testing ground for one's intuition about probabilities. The context of computation is very different from most of the contexts that humans deal with; in particular it's much cleaner. As such, this testing ground should not be used in isolation; the understanding that one reaps from it needs to be integrated with knowledge from other contexts. Despite its limitations I think that it has something to add.

Given a computable real number x, a priori the probability that any string of n decimal digits comprises the first n decimal digits of x is 10-n. For concreteness, we'll take x to be pi. It has long been conjectured that pi is a normal number. This is consistent with the notion that the digits of pi are "random" in some sense, and in this respect pi contrasts with (say) rational numbers and Liouville's constant.

According to the Northwestern University homepage, pi has been computed to five trillion of digits. So to the extent that one trusts the result of the computation; there exists an example of a statement which had an a priori probability of 10-n with n > 5•1012 of being true which we now know to be true with high confidence. How much should we trust the computation? Well, I don't know whether it's been verified independently and there are a variety of relevant issues about which I know almost nothing (coding issues; hardware issues; the degree of rigor with which the algorithm used has been proven to be correct, etc.). One would have more confidence if one knew that several independent teams had succeeded in verifying the result using different algorithms & hardware. One would have still more confidence if one were personally involved in such a team and became convinced of the solidity of the methods used. Regardless:

(a) As early as 1962 mathematicians had computed pi to 105 digits. Presumably since then their computation has been checked many times over by a diversity of people and methods. Trusting a single source is still problematic as there may have been a typo or whatever, but it seems uncontroversial to think that if one uses the nearest apparently reliable computational package (say, Wolfram Alpha) then chance that the output is correct is > 10%. Thus we see how an initial probabil...
Meetup in San Diego, CA, USA
by Mercurial — 2011-07-15T01:28:58.452Z

We're holding what I believe is the first San Diego meetup on Sunday, July 31st starting at 1pm at the K&B Wine Cellars near San Diego State University:

6380 Del Cerro Blvd.
San Diego, CA 92120

The phone number for the place is 619-286-0884. This is one of a number of places along a strip that's attached to a grocery store of sorts. It's something like a coffee house only with beer, wine, & liquor instead of coffee. (Underage attendees should be fine; you just won't be able to get alcohol. There's food and some non-alcoholic drinks if you like.) We're meeting in a semi-hidden room in the far back. When you walk in, go as straight as you can while staying close to the left wall.

This will be an introductory meeting so that those in the San Diego area can meet one another. We'll talk about what we want to get out of these meetups and hammer out some specific plans for how to accomplish that. From some initial conversations, it sounds like we'll have monthly meetups, though that stands a fair chance of changing depending on what we discuss here.

Feel free to bring friends, significant others, or anyone else who's interested in rationality. Also, give some thought to what you'd like out of these meetups. It doesn't have to be profound; camaraderie or "I don't know" are fine answers. But if you give it a bit of thought ahead of time, you might find it easier to envision and articulate more precisely what it is that you'd like to see these meetups become.

I should also mention that this location has a projector setup, so if there's something you'd like to share PowerPoint style, feel free to bring that. I haven't gotten details from the restaurant as yet about how to use the projector setup (e.g. is it transparencies or a laptop hookup?), but I'll edit in that clarification once I get it.

Let me know if you have any questions. Also, if you could either reply here or give me a quick PM to let me know you're coming, that would be helpful. That way I can let the place know how many to set the space up for.

ETA: I should add that I do have some material on practical uses of mindfulness that I'm quite willing to offer. I've been teaching this stuff for about seven years now. But I don't want to say that that's definitely what this meeting will be about since I want to f...
Rationality Market Research
by Raemon — 2011-07-14T19:41:24.797Z

Several weeks ago, the NYC Rationality Meetup Group began discussing outreach, both for rationality in general and the group in particular. A lot of interesting problems were brought up. Should we be targeting the average person, or sticking to the cluster of personality-types that Less Wrong already attracts? How quickly should we introduce people to our community? What are the most effective ways to spread the idea of rationality, and what are the most effective ways of actually encouraging people to undertake rational actions?

Those are all complex questions with complex answers, which are beyond the scope of this post. I ended up focusing on the question: "Is ' Rationality' the word we want to use when we're pitching ourselves?" I do not think it's worthwhile to try and change the central meme of the Less Wrong community, but it's not obvious that the new, realspace communities forming need to use the same central meme.

This begat a simpler question: "What does the average person think of when they hear the word ' Rationality?' What positive or negative connotations does it have?" Do they think of straw vulcans and robots? Do they think of effective programmers or businessmen? Armed with this knowledge, we can craft a rationalist pitch that is likely to be effective at the average person, either by challenging their conception of rationality or by bypassing keywords that might set off memetic immune systems.

This question has an empirical answer. A few weeks ago I made some effort to answer it. I did not get a huge array of data, but I got enough that I thought I should share it, and I'd encourage others to go out and find their own data points. Ideally someone would make a website that somehow sorts that data (and in the process hopefully get a more structured experimental setup, since mine was rather freeform.)

I work in a tall office building in NYC. Each day, I ride an elevator up to the 30th floor. At least some of those times, I find myself alone with people for 30 seconds. I started asking those people what they thought about " Rationality." My first encounter went like this:

Subject: Female Asian Approx 30

Me: "Excuse me, I was wondering, when I say the word " Rationality" what images and feelings immediately come to mind?

Woman: (Neutral but curious expression) " Rationality?"

Me: If

...