trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Weird Alliances
by sixes_and_sevens — 2014-10-24T12:33:43.547Z

In the recent discussion on supplements, I commented on how weird an alliance health stores are. They cater for clientèle with widely divergent beliefs about how their merchandise works, such as New Agers vs. biohackers. In some cases, they cater for groups with object-level disputes about their merchandise. I imagine vegans are stoked to have somewhere to buy dairy-free facsimiles of everyday foods, but they're entering into an implicit bargain with that body-builder who's walking out of the door with two kilos of whey protein.

In the case of health stores, their clientèle have a common interest which the store is satisfying: either putting esoteric substances into their bodies, or keeping commonplace substances out of their bodies. This need is enough for people to hold their noses as they put their cash down.

(I don't actually know how [my flimsy straw-man model of], say, homoeopathy advocates feel about health stores. For me, it feels like wandering into enemy territory.)

I've been thinking lately about "allies" in the social justice sense of the word: marginalised groups who have unaligned object-level interests but aligned meta-interests. Lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transfolk and [miscellaneous gender-people] may have very different object-level interests, but a very strong common meta-interest relating to the social and legal status of sexual identities. They may also be marginalised along different axes, allowing for some sort of trade I don't have a good piece of terminology for. The LGBT([A-Z]).* community is an alliance. Not being part of this community, I'm hesitant to speculate on how much of a weird alliance it is, but it looks at least a little bit weird.

This has led me to think about Less Wrong as a community, in particular the following two questions:

To what extent is Less Wrong a weird alliance?

On paper, we're all here to help refine the art of human rationality, but in practice, we have a bunch of different object-level interests and common meta-interests in terms of getting things done well (i.e. "winning"). I explicitly dislike PUA, but I'll have a civil and productive discussion about anki decks with someone who has PUA-stuff as an object-level interest.

Is there scope for weird, differently-marginalised trade?

Less Wrong celebrates deviant behaviour, ostensibly as a search process for useful life-enhancing inter...
question: the 40 hour work week vs Silicon Valley?
by Florian_Dietz — 2014-10-24T12:09:05.166Z

Conventional wisdom, and many studies, hold that 40 hours of work per week are the optimum before exhaustion starts dragging your productivity down too much to be worth it. I read elsewhere that the optimum is even lower for creative work, namely 35 hours per week, though the sources I found don't all seem to agree.

In contrast, many tech companies in silicon valley demand (or 'encourage', which is the same thing in practice) much higher work times. 70 or 80 hours per week are sometimes treated as normal.

How can this be?

Are these companies simply wrong and are actually hurting themselves by overextending their human resources? Or does the 40-hour week have exceptions?

How high is the variance in how much time people can work? If only outliers are hired by such companies, that would explain the discrepancy. Another possibility is that this 40 hour limit simply does not apply if you are really into your work and 'in the flow'. However, as far as I understand it, the problem is a question of concentration, not motivation, so that doesn't make sense.

There are many articles on the internet arguing for both sides, but I find it hard to find ones that actually address these questions instead of just parroting the same generalized responses every time: Proponents of the 40 hour week cite studies that do not consider special cases, only averages (at least as far as I could find). Proponents of the 80 hour week claim that low work weeks are only for wage slaves without motivation, which reeks of bias and completely ignores that one's own subjective estimate of one's performance is not necessarily representative of one's actual performance.

Do you know of any studies that address these issues?
Meetup : The Design Process
by Anders_H — 2014-10-24T03:37:24.473Z

Discussion article for the meetup : The Design Process

WHEN:
29 October 2014 07:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
98 Elm Street Somerville MA

Ben Sancetta, a mechanical engineer, will discuss the process of designing a new product, such as when it's appropriate to do testing, get user feedback, or list product requirements. Following this, we'll have a discussion of our own processes for designing new things. Cambridge/Boston-area Less Wrong Wednesday meetups are once a month on the last Wednesday at 7pm at Citadel (98 Elm St Apt 1 Somerville, near Porter Square). All other meetups are on Sundays.
Our default schedule is as follows:
—Phase 1: Arrival, greetings, unstructured conversation. —Phase 2: The headline event. This starts promptly at 7:30pm, and lasts 30-60 minutes. —Phase 3: Further discussion. We'll explore the ideas raised in phase 2, often in smaller groups.

Discussion article for the meetup : The Design Process
Is this paper formally modeling human (ir)rational decision making worth understanding?
by rule_and_line — 2014-10-23T22:11:14.071Z

I've found that I learn new topics best by struggling to understand a jargoney paper. This passed through my inbox today and on the surface it appears to hit a lot of high notes.

Since I'm not an expert, I have no idea if this has any depth to it. Hivemind thoughts?

Modeling Human Decision Making using Extended Behavior Networks, Klaus Dorer

(Note: I'm also pushing myself to post to LW instead of lurking. If this kind of post is unwelcome, I'm happy to hear that feedback.)
What supplements do you take, if any?
by NancyLebovitz — 2014-10-23T12:36:44.200Z

Since it turns out that it isn't feasible to include check as many as apply questions in the big survey, I'm asking about supplements here. I've got a bunch of questions, and I don't mind at all if you just answer some of them.

What supplements do you take? At what dosages? Are there other considerations, like with/without food or time of day?

Are there supplements you've stopped using?

How did you decide to take the supplements you're using? How do you decide whether to continue taking them?

Do you have preferred suppliers? How did you choose them?
A quick calculation on exercise
by Elo — 2014-10-23T02:50:13.599Z

The question is - am I doing enough exercise?

I intend to provide a worked example for you to work alongside with your own calculations and decide if you should increase or decrease your exercise.

The benefits of physical activity are various and this calculation can be done for one or all of them; some of them include:

longevity of life

current physical health (ability to enrich your current life with physical activity)

happiness (overall improved mood)

weight loss

feeling like you have more energy

better sleep

better sex

fun while exercising

reduce stress

improve confidence

prevent cognitive decline

alleviate anxiety

sharpen memory

improves oxygen supply to all your cells

I am going to base this reasoning on "longevity of life" and "everything else"

expected life span:

I am a little lazy; and so I am happy to work with 100 years for now. For bonus points you can look up the life expectancy for someone born when you were born in the country that you were born in. If both of those numbers are not good enough make your own prediction of your life expectancy.

amount of exercise needed to produce optimum benefits:

I believe that any exercise above two hours per day will not do much more to improve my longevity that I could not get out of the first two hours. If the benefits of exercise are something like a power law; then the minimum amount required to get the most exercise can be calculated by taking a graph like this; and drawing your own lines on it as I have.

I think the most benefit can be gotten out of exercise between 30 mins and 2 hours per day.

Just how much longevity do I think I will get?

Oh its hard to say really... Some sources say:

3 years for the first 15 minutes a day and a further 4% reduction in mortality for every 15minutes after that

every minute of exercise returns 8 minutes of life

being normal weight and active conveys 7.2 years of extra life expectancy

75mins/week of brisk activity = 1.8years of greater life expectancy with more activity giving upwards to 4.5years of longevity

on top of longevity there is all the other benefits I have not counted very well. For my 100 years; adding an extra 4-7 years is worthwhile to me...

And finally; the disadvantage: opportunity cost

there are 168 hours in a week. With most people spending 1/3 of that asleep (56hrs, 8hrs/nig

...
Robert Wiblin on the Copenhagen Consensus Center
by KatjaGrace — 2014-10-23T01:50:00.000Z

This post summarizes a conversation which was part of the Cause Prioritization Shallow, all parts of which are available here. Previously in this series, conversations with Owen Cotton-Barratt, Paul Christiano, Paul Penley, Gordon Irlam, and Alexander Berger.

Participants

Katja Grace: Research assistant, Machine Intelligence Research Institute

Robert Wiblin: Executive Director, Center for Effective Altruism

Summary

Robert talked extensively with the Copenhagen Consensus Center (CCC) while investigating them as a potential Giving What We Can recommendation for funding[1]. This is Katja’s summary of relevant things Robert learned, from a conversation on the 16th of January 2014, supplemented with facts from the CCC website.

Activities and impact

At a high level, CCC’s main activity is prioritizing a broad variety of altruistic interventions based on cost-effectiveness. They do this by commissioning top economists to research and write about good spending opportunities, using a cost-benefit analysis framework. They do secondary research, assembling existing academic evidence into actionable priorities for governments and philanthropists. An important feature of this work is that they squeeze the analysis of a wide range of topics into the same framework, so one can make reasonable comparisons, given a lot of assumptions.

CCC also devotes substantial efforts to encouraging people to use this decision-support, and in general to prioritize based on good data analysis. In the Millenium Development Goals project for instance, money is probably divided between one third on research and two thirds on dissemination of that research.

CCC usually has around one main project at a time, and as one finishes they dovetail into another. They have around 4-5 core staff, and bring in extra contractors for a lot of the work. The annual budget is $1-2M, and the cost of core staff is probably only around a couple of hundred thousand dollars annually.

The value from CCC’s work does not usually come from finding unsuspected good interventions. It is rather from linking together evidence to make a strong cases for activities that are already believed to be good among experts, but which aren’t widely supported. CCC has for instance highlighted the high value of health interventions relating to nutrition and contagious disease. The notion that these are very good interventions is not...
Meetup : Washington, D.C.: Create and Complete
by RobinZ — 2014-10-22T22:54:18.279Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Create and Complete

WHEN:
26 October 2014 03:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
National Portrait Gallery

We will be meeting in the Luce Foundation Center of the National Portrait Gallery (from lobby at 8th and F St entrance - across the courtyard from the 8th and G St entrance - take circular staircase or elevators to the third floor, turn right, proceed to end of hall) to work on personal projects and offer each other assistance and moral support as we do so.

Anyone who has a planned or incomplete project that they want to spend time working on is encouraged to bring any materials or equipment they would need for it to the meetup. Bear in mind that power outlets are in limited supply.

Gathering time will be from 3:00 to 3:30, as usual. From 3:30 to 4:00 (plus or minus), anyone may take a turn to describe what they brought to work on and/or ways that other attendees can help them finish (e.g. "an excuse to do this instead of Minecraft", "people to keep me company", "explaining quantum chromodynamics"). The rest of the meetup will be set aside for working, helping, and quiet side conversations.

While no-one is required to work on their own projects or anyone else's, and those who do are not required to finish any projects at the meetup, please remember that this is a time set aside for Getting Things Done and be considerate of your fellow attendees. If you have unanticipated issues, let us know.

Upcoming Meetups:

Nov. 2: Fun & Games (bring games, play games, converse, socialize, or any combination thereof)

Nov. 9: Anime & Manga Discussion (freeform topical discussion)

Nov. 16: Mini Talks (short lectures by attendees on random subjects)

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Create and Complete
Meetup : East Coast Solstice Megameetup
by Raemon — 2014-10-22T19:01:14.351Z

Discussion article for the meetup : East Coast Solstice Megameetup

WHEN:
20 December 2014 03:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
851 Park Place, Brooklyn NY 11216

The weekend of December 20th will be the East Coast Solstice Megameetup. Rationalists and EA folk are invited to visit our group-house, Highgarden. We can provide crash space Friday night through Sunday night, although you're encouraged to fill out this form so we know how many people to expect:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1QRjjZwklXtPEFNZrSPKjvb2_n8_ytOy5N6ry_lGedro/viewform

Official activities begin at 2:00pm on Saturday, with an unconference running for 2 hours. At 7:00pm there'll be the Solstice concert. Tickets are still available on the kickstarter (ending 4:00pm on Sunday), here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/244974495/secular-solstice-2014

Discussion article for the meetup : East Coast Solstice Megameetup
Meetup : Saint Petersburg meetup - "the lonely one"
by efim — 2014-10-22T18:20:35.328Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Saint Petersburg meetup - "the lonely one"

WHEN:
31 October 2014 08:00:00PM (+0400)

WHERE:
Россия, Санкт-Петербург, Московский пр. 65,

We are resuming our bi-weekly schedule, even if I'm sitting at the meetups all by myself reading math papers!

Now very nice free venue is available thanks to its owner. It's a sports club, directions in the vk group (https://vk.com/c9h13no3ru).
Please notify my if it's unavailable for someone without registration.

The plan is to try exercises on lonely dissent (from hpmor) if there is enough people (>=5).

Otherwise - unstructured talk/self-education on topics that are of interest for everyone.

It will last for at least 2 - 2,5 hours. You can reach me by phone - +7-(911)-843-56-44 or mail: efim.wool@gmail.com or vk: vk.com/timetravel.

Efim.

P.S. I will now give meetup different names in advance just for fun.

Discussion article for the meetup : Saint Petersburg meetup - "the lonely one"
Blackmail, continued: communal blackmail, uncoordinated responses
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2014-10-22T17:53:01.245Z

The heuristic that one should always resist blackmail seems a good one (no matter how tricky blackmail is to define). And one should be public about this, too; then, one is very unlikely to be blackmailed. Even if one speaks like an emperor.

But there's a subtlety: what if the blackmail is being used against a whole group, not just against one person? The US justice system is often seen to function like this: prosecutors pile on ridiculous numbers charges, threatening uncounted millennia in jail, in order to get the accused to settle for a lesser charge and avoid the expenses of a trial.

But for this to work, they need to occasionally find someone who rejects the offer, put them on trial, and slap them with a ridiculous sentence. Therefore by standing up to them (or proclaiming in advance that you will reject such offers), you are not actually making yourself immune to their threats. Your setting yourself up to be the sacrificial one made an example of.

Of course, if everyone were a UDT agent, the correct decision would be for everyone to reject the threat. That would ensure that the threats are never made in the first place. But - and apologies if this shocks you - not everyone in the world is a perfect UDT agent. So the threats will get made, and those resisting them will get slammed to the maximum.

Of course, if everyone could read everyone's mind and was perfectly rational, then they would realise that making examples of UDT agents wouldn't affect the behaviour of non-UDT agents. In that case, UDT agents should resist the threats, and the perfectly rational prosecutor wouldn't bother threatening UDT agents. However - and sorry to shock your views of reality three times in one post - not everyone is perfectly rational. And not everyone can read everyone's minds.

So even a perfect UDT agent must, it seems, sometimes succumb to blackmail.
Power and difficulty
by undermind — 2014-10-22T05:22:10.040Z

A specific bias that Lesswrongers may often get from fiction[1] is the idea that power is proportional to difficulty. The more power something gives you, the harder it should be to get, right?

A mediocre student becomes a powerful mage through her terrible self-sacrifice and years of studying obscure scrolls. Even within the spells she can cast, the truly world-altering ones are those that demand the most laborious preparation, the most precise gestures, and the longest and most incomprehensible stream of syllables. A monk makes an arduous journey to ancient temples and learns secret techniques of spiritual oneness and/or martial asskickery, which require great dedication and self-knowledge. Otherwise, it would be cheating. The whole process of leveling up, of adding ever-increasing modifiers to die rolls, is based on the premise that power comes to those who do difficult things. And it's failsafe - no matter what you put your skill points in, you become better at something. It's a training montage, or a Hero's journey. As with other fictional evidence, these are not "just stories" -- they are powerful cultural narratives. This kind of narrative shapes moral choices[2] and identity. So where do we see this reflected in less obviously fictional contexts?

There's the rags-to-riches story -- the immigrant who came with nothing, but by dint of hard work, now owns a business. University engineering programs are notoriously tough, because you are gaining the ability to do a lot of things (and for signalling reasons). A writer got to where she is today because she wrote and revised and submitted and revised draft after draft after draft.

In every case, there is assumed to be a direct causal link between difficulty and power. Here, these are loosely defined. Roughly, "power" means "ability to have your way", and "difficulty" is "amount of work & sacrifice required." These can be translated into units of social influence - a.k.a money -- and investment, a.k.a. time, or money. In many cases, power is set by supply and demand -- nobody needs a wizard if they can all cast their own spells, and a doctor can command much higher prices i

...
Meetup : Israel Less Wrong Meetup: Brains and Biology
by Anatoly_Vorobey — 2014-10-21T21:33:24.745Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Israel Less Wrong Meetup: Brains and Biology

WHEN:
23 October 2014 07:00:00PM (+0300)

WHERE:
Google Tel-Aviv

We're going to have a meetup on Thursday, October 23rd at Google Israel's offices, Electra Tower, 98 Yigal Alon st., Tel Aviv.

We will have a two-part talk on brains and biology.

In the first part, Dan will talk about the biology behind brain plasticity.
In the second part, Liran will follow up with existing brain-machine interfaces.

And then there's free discussion. The audience takes it away to wherever they (we) like.

We'll meet at the 29th floor of the building at 19:00. If you arrive and can't find your way around, call Anatoly who's hosting us at 054-245-1060. Email at avorobey@gmail.com also works.

See you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : Israel Less Wrong Meetup: Brains and Biology
In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war continued by other means
by Eneasz — 2014-10-21T19:39:28.783Z

(cross-posted from my blog)

I. PvE vs PvP

Ever since it’s advent in Doom, PvP (Player vs Player) has been an integral part of almost every major video game. This is annoying to PvE (Player vs Environment) fans like myself, especially when PvE mechanics are altered (read: simplified and degraded) for the purpose of accommodating the PvP game play. Even in games which are ostensibly about the story & world, rather than direct player-on-player competition.

The reason for this comes down to simple math. PvE content is expensive to make. An hour of game play can take many dozens, or nowadays even hundreds, of man-hours of labor to produce. And once you’ve completed a PvE game, you’re done with it. There’s nothing else, you’ve reached “The End”, congrats. You can replay it a few times if you really loved it, like re-reading a book, but the content is the same. MMORGs recycle content by forcing you to grind bosses many times before you can move on to the next one, but that’s as fun as the word “grind” makes it sound. At that point people are there more for the social aspect and the occasional high than the core gameplay itself.

PvP “content”, OTOH, generates itself. Other humans keep learning and getting better and improvising new tactics. Every encounter has the potential to be new and exciting, and they always come with the rush of triumphing over another person (or the crush of losing to the same).

But much more to the point – In PvE potentially everyone can make it into the halls of “Finished The Game;” and if everyone is special, no one is. PvP has a very small elite – there can only be one #1 player, and people are always scrabbling for that position, or defending it. PvP harnesses our status-seeking instinct to get us to provide challenges for each other rather than forcing the game developers to develop new challenges for us. It’s far more cost effective, and a single man-hour of labor can produce hundreds or thousands of hours of game play. StarCraft continued to be played at a massive level for 12 years after its release, until it was replaced with StarCraft II.

So if you want to keep people occupied for a looooong time without running out of game-world, focus on PvP

II. Science as PvE

In the distant past (in internet ti...
Meetup : Moscow meetup: Quantum physics is fun
by Alexander230 — 2014-10-21T18:18:28.982Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow meetup: Quantum physics is fun

WHEN:
26 October 2014 03:00:00PM (+0400)

WHERE:
Russia, Moscow, ulitsa L'va Tolstogo 16

Here's our plan:

Calibration excercise announce.

Temporal symmetry in quantum theory and/or philosophical problems of the modern quantum physics.

Structuring excercise in pairs/microgroups.

A talk about Chomsky and/or Pinker.

Details and schedule:

https://lesswrong-ru.hackpad.com/-26--ljrbZz2bAxa

Yudcoins, positive reinforcement and pizza will all be present. If you've been to our meetups, you know what I'm talking about, and if you didn't, the best way to find out is to come and see for yourself.

Info for newcomers: We gather in the Yandex office, you need the first revolving door under the archway. Here is a guide how to get there:

http://company.yandex.ru/contacts/redrose/

Try to come in time, we will allow latecomers to enter every 15 minutes. Call Slava or send him SMS at +7(926)313-96-42 if you're late. We start at 14:00 and stay until at least 19-20. Please pay attention that we only gather near the entrance and then come inside.

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow meetup: Quantum physics is fun