trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : Logical Counterfactuals, Tel Aviv
by JoshuaFox — 2015-07-27T04:39:16.628Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Logical Counterfactuals, Tel Aviv

WHEN:
05 August 2015 03:00:00AM (+0300)

WHERE:
98 Yigal Alon Street, Tel Aviv

Vladimir Slepnev, who is visiting Tel Aviv, will be giving a talk on logical counterfactuals.
We'll meet at 19.00 on Tuesday, August 4 Google, 98 Yigal Alon Street, Tel Aviv, 29th floor (not the Google Campus Floor). We will then move to another room.
Vladimir has done advanced research, together with MIRI, on reflective decision theory and related topics. You can read some of his work at cousin_it on LessWrong and under his own name at Intelligent Agent Foundations.
If you have Facebook, please confirm at the FB Event so we can get a sense of the number of attendees https://www.facebook.com/events/108233322857656/

Discussion article for the meetup : Logical Counterfactuals, Tel Aviv
Meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Projects
by rocurley — 2015-07-27T04:26:15.390Z

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Projects

WHEN:
27 July 2015 06:15:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
1061 Market St #4, San Francisco, CA 94103

We'll be meeting up to work on/help each other out with projects! Examples include:

Programming

Writing

Applying to jobs

Practicing a skill

Arranging social events

You can call me at 301-458-0764 to be let in. As always, feel free to show up late.

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Projects
A problem with resource-bounded Solomonoff induction and unpredictable environments
by jessicata — 2015-07-27T03:03:25.000Z

Summary: we examine a game involving hash functions and show that an algorithm based on resource-bounded Solomonoff induction is outperformed by a simple strategy. This game has some parallels to Vingean reflection.

Betting environments

Consider the following family of environments (which we might call "betting environments"):

For iteration i=0,1,...:

Draw hidden state (s1,s2)∈S from unknown distribution ps(i).

Output first observation s1

The agent chooses some action a∈A.

Output second observation s2.

The agent observes and receives reward r(s1,s2,a), where r is an unknown function that always returns a number between 0 and 1.

The idea of these environments is that the agent's action affects nothing except reward, so acting well in these environments only requires predicting the next reward correctly given the agent's action. The second observation has no apparent effect on what the agent's strategy should be, but we'll see later why it is included. First, we will see how one general approach to problems like this fails.

A resource-bounded algorithm for betting environments

Consider the following resource-bounded variant of Solomonoff induction. Each hypothesis is represented as a program q that takes as input a bit string and returns a probability (interpreted as the probability that the next bit will be 1). As in ordinary Solomonoff induction, the prior probability for a hypothesis q is 2−length(q). The probability that hypothesis q assigns to observation history b1b2...bn is ∏ni=1(if bi=1 then q(b1:i−1) else 1−q(b1:i−1)), i.e. the product of the conditional probabilities for each bit given previous bits. We restrict attention to q values that run in O(n2), where n is the length of the input.

Using this variant of Solomonoff induction, we can develop an AIXI-like algorithm for acting in betting environments. Specifically, when choosing an action, this algorithm does the following:

Use resource-bounded Solomonoff induction to predict the distribution of future observations and rewards, given each action.

Most of the time, pick the action that maximizes the expected next reward; otherwise pick a random action

The purpose of the random action is to learn the correct distribution for each counterfactual reward r(s1,s2,a) in the long run. For example, when choosing action i we could pick a random with probability 1/(i+1).

...
Group rationality diary for July 12th - August 1st 2015
by Gunnar_Zarncke — 2015-07-26T23:31:05.196Z

This is the public group rationality diary for July 12th - August 1st, 2015. It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:

Established a useful new habit

Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief

Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations

Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior

Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something

Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life

Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you

Tried doing any of the above and failed

Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.

Archive of previous rationality diaries

Note to future posters: no one is in charge of posting these threads. If it's time for a new thread, and you want a new thread, just create it. It should run for about two weeks, finish on a Saturday, and have the 'group_rationality_diary' tag.
3 classifications of thinking, and a problem.
by Elo — 2015-07-26T15:33:56.952Z

I propose 3 areas of defining thinking "past", "future", "present". followed by a hard question.

Past

This can be classified as any system of review, any overview of past progress, and any learning from the past broadly including history, past opportunities or challenges, shelved projects, known problems and previous progress. Where a fraction of your time should be spent in the process of review in order to influence your plan for the future.

Future

Any planning-thinking tasks, or strategic intention about plotting a course forward towards a purposeful goal. This can overlap with past-strategising by the nature of using the past to plan for the future.

Present

These actions include tasks that get done now, This is where stuff really happens; (technically both past-thinking and future-thinking classify as something you can do in the present, and take up time in the present, but I want to keep them apart for now) This is the living-breathing getting things done time. the bricks-and mortar of actually building something; creating and generating progress towards a designated future goal.

The hard question

I am stuck on finding a heuristic or estimate for how long should be spent in each area of being/doing. I reached a point where I uncovered a great deal of neglect for both past events and making future purposeful plans.

Where if 100% of time is spent on the past, nothing will ever get done, other than a clear understanding of your mistakes;

Similarly 100% on the future will lead to a lot of dreaming and no progress towards the future.

Equally if all your time is spent running very fast in the present-doing-state you might be going very fast; but by the nature of not knowing where you are going in the future; you might be in a state of not-even-wrong, and not know.

10/10/80? 20/20/60? 25/25/50? 10/20/70?

I am looking for suggestions as to an estimate of how to spend each 168 hour week that might prove a fruitful division of time, or a method or reason for a certain division (at least before I go all empirical trial-and-error on this puzzle).

I would be happy with recommended reading on the topic if that can be provided.

Have you ever personally tackled the buckets? Did you come up with a strategy for how to decide between them?

Thanks for the considerations.
Meetup : August Rationality Dojo: Decision Making
by MelbourneLW — 2015-07-26T08:35:11.413Z

Discussion article for the meetup : August Rationality Dojo: Decision Making

WHEN:
02 August 2015 03:00:00PM (+0800)

WHERE:
Jenny Florence Room, Level 3, Ross House, 247 Flinders Lane, Melbourne

[3:30pm arrival, 4:00pm start of scheduled activities.]

The Less Wrong Sunday Rationality Dojos are self-improvement sessions for those committed to the art of rationality and personal growth, on the first Sunday of each month.

We've been revamping the format recently, for greater awesomeness. This dojo:

1) "Decision Making" Patrick Robotham will provide an overview of the mathematics of decision making, How cognitive biases affect our decisions, and a glimpse into cutting edge research performed by MIRI (an AI research organization.)

2) Debug your problems. Get help troubleshooting your goals.

3) Our support lottery! One person drawn from a hat (or beanie) gets to call on our collective resources to help them win at life over the next month. To get a ticket in the lottery, you need to have helped last month's winner. This is an experiment in building a culture of cooperation and support.

4) Lightning talks: Learnt something cool? Gained an insight from one of the Less Wrong sequences? Share it with Melbourne LW! Speakers are limited to 5 minutes including questions. If you have something you would like to present a lightning talk on, please let one of the organisers know, either beforehand or on the day.

The Dojo is likely to run until about 6:30pm, after which some of us will get dinner together.

If you have any trouble finding the venue or getting in, text or call Nick on 0452276425.

If you would like to present at a future Dojo or suggest a topic, please fill it in on the Rationality Dojo Roster: http://is.gd/dojoroster

To organise similar events, please send an email to melbournelw@gmail.com

Discussion article for the meetup : August Rationality Dojo: Decision Making
Astronomy, Astrobiology, & The Fermi Paradox I: Introductions, and Space & Time
by  — 2015-07-26T07:38:53.498Z

This is the first in a series of posts I am putting together on a personal blog I just started two days ago as a collection of my musings on astrobiology ("The Great A'Tuin" - sorry, I couldn't help it), and will be reposting here. Much has been written here about the Fermi paradox and the 'great filter'. It seems to me that going back to a somewhat more basic level of astronomy and astrobiology is extremely informative to these questions, and so this is what I will be doing. The bloggery is intended for a slightly more general audience than this site (hence much of the content of the introduction) but I think it will be of interest. Many of the points I will be making are ones I have touched on in previous comments here, but hope to explore in more detail.

This post references my first two posts - an introduction, and a discussion of our apparent position in space and time in the universe. The blog posts may be found at:
http://thegreatatuin.blogspot.com/2015/07/whats-all-this-about.html
http://thegreatatuin.blogspot.com/2015/07/space-and-time.htm
Be a new homunculus
by So8res — 2015-07-26T03:00:00.000Z
Link: https://mindingourway.com/be-a-new-homunculus/

Here's a mental technique that I find useful for addressing many dour feelings, guilt among them:

When you're feeling guilty, it is sometimes helpful to close your eyes for a moment, re-open them, and pretend that you're a new homunculus.

A "homunculus" is a tiny representation of a human, and one classic fallacy when reasoning about how brains work is the homunculus fallacy, in which people imagine that "they" are a little homonculus inside their head looking at an image generated by their eyes.

It's an easy fiction to buy into, that you're a little person in your head that can move your hands and shape your mouth and that decides where to steer the body and so on. There is, of course, no homunculus inside your head (for if you are steered by a homunculus, then how is the homunculus steered?), but it can be quite fun to pretend that you are a homunculus sometimes, mostly because this allows you to occasionally pretend you're a new homunculus, fresh off the factory lines, and newly installed into this particular person.

Close your eyes, and pretend you're arriving in this body for the very first time. Open them and do some original seeing on this person you now are. Rub your hands together, look around, and take stock of your surroundings. Do some internal checks to figure out what this body values, to figure out what it is you're fighting for. Check the catalog of plans and upcoming actions. Check the backlog of memories and obligations.

There will probably be some housecleaning to do: homunculi are known to get a little careless as they age, and the old homunculus that you replaced probably let a bunch of useless tasks accumulate without realizing it. As a new homunculus you have the privilege of pruning the things that obviously need pruning. Maybe you'll look and say "Ah, yes, we're going to cancel lunch with that person; this body was secretly dreading it. I also see that this body is currently spending a lot of cycles feeling guilty about a date that went poorly last week; we can dismiss that, it's no longer useful for this homunculus. And also, "exercise" doesn't seem to be on today's schedule at all! How strange. This body definitely intended to exercise today; somehow it fell off the list. I'll put it back on."

It can be quite liberating to be a new homunculus, without any obligation to propagate the errors of the old one.

This is, in fact, a common techni...
Catastrophe Engines: A possible resolution to the Fermi Paradox
by snarles — 2015-07-25T19:00:10.199Z

The Fermi Paradox leads us to conclude that either A) intelligent life is extremely improbable, B) intelligent life very rarely grows to a higher-level civilization, or C) that higher-level civilizations are common, but are not easy to spot. But each of these explanations are hard to believe. It is hard to believe that intelligent life is rare, given that hominids evolved intelligence so quickly. It is hard to believe that intelligence is inherently self-destructive, since as soon as an intelligent species gains the ability to colonize distant planets, it becomes increasingly unlikely that the entire species could be wiped out; meanwhile, it appears that our own species is on the verge of attaining this potential. It is hard to believe C, since natural selection favors expansionism, so if even a tiny fraction of higher-level civilizations value expansion, then that civilization becomes extremely visible to observers due to its exponential rate of expansion. Not to mention that our own system should have already been colonized by now.

Here I present a new explanation on why higher-level civilizations might be common, and yet still undetected. The key assumption is the existence of a type of Matrioshka brain which I call a "Catastrophe Engine." I cannot even speculate on the exotic physics which might give rise to such a design. However, the defining characteristics of a Catastrophe Engine are as follows:

The Catastrophe Engine is orders or magnitude more computationally powerful than any Matrioshka Brain possible by conventional physics.

The Catastrophe Engine has a fixed probability 1-e-λt of "meltdown" in any interval of t seconds. In other words, the lifetime of a Catastrophe Engine is an exponentially distributed random variable with a mean lifetime of 1/λ seconds.

When the Catastrophe Engine suffers a meltdown, it has a destructive effect of radius r, which, among other things, results in the destruction of all other Catastrophe Engines within the radius, and furthermore renders it permanently impossible to rebuild Engines within the radius.

A civilization using Catastrophe Engines would be incentivized to construct the Engines far apart from each other, hence explaining why such we have never detected such a civilization. Some simple math shows why this would

...
Meetup : LessWrong Meetup August: Correctness Heuristics
by jasticE — 2015-07-25T17:48:54.965Z

Discussion article for the meetup : LessWrong Meetup August: Correctness Heuristics

WHEN:
15 August 2015 07:48:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich

Our next Mostly Monthly Munich Meetup is on August 15.

Please see the announcement on Meetup for details and RSVP

Discussion article for the meetup : LessWrong Meetup August: Correctness Heuristics
MIRI Fundraiser: Why now matters
by So8res — 2015-07-24T22:38:06.131Z

Our summer fundraiser is ongoing. In the meantime, we're writing a number of blog posts to explain what we're doing and why, and to answer a number of common questions. Previous posts in the series are listed at the above link.

I'm often asked whether donations to MIRI now are more important than donations later. Allow me to deliver an emphatic yes: I currently expect that donations to MIRI today are worth much more than donations to MIRI in five years. As things stand, I would very likely take $10M today over $20M in five years.

That's a bold statement, and there are a few different reasons for this. First and foremost, there is a decent chance that some very big funders will start entering the AI alignment field over the course of the next five years. It looks like the NSF may start to fund AI safety research, and Stuart Russell has already received some money from DARPA to work on value alignment. It's quite possible that in a few years' time significant public funding will be flowing into this field.

(It's also quite possible that it won't, or that the funding will go to all the wrong places, as was the case with funding for nanotechnology. But if I had to bet, I would bet that it's going to be much easier to find funding for AI alignment research in five years' time).

In other words, the funding bottleneck is loosening — but it isn't loose yet.

We don't presently have the funding to grow as fast as we could over the coming months, or to run all the important research programs we have planned. At our current funding level, the research team can grow at a steady pace — but we could get much more done over the course of the next few years if we had the money to grow as fast as is healthy.

Which brings me to the second reason why funding now is probably much more important than funding later: because growth now is much more valuable than growth later.

There's an idea picking up traction in the field of AI: instead of focusing only on increasing the capabilities of intelligent systems, it is important to also ensure that we know how to build beneficial intelligent systems. Support is growing for a new paradigm within AI that seriously considers the long-term effects of research programs, rather than just the immediate effects. Years down the line, these ideas may seem obvious, and the AI community's response to these challenges may be in full swing. R...
Meetup : Moscow LW lecture centre meetup
by Alexander230 — 2015-07-24T19:46:39.412Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow LW lecture centre meetup

WHEN:
09 August 2015 03:00:00PM (+0300)

WHERE:
Москва, ул.Свободы, 37

Welcome to the next lecture centre meetup!

Our plan:

A talk about cognitive biases.

Fallacymania game ( https://lesswrong-ru.hackpad.com/Fallacymania--neGfMe9MFjH ).

Excercise game "Counting Bayes formula quickly".

Zendo game ( https://geektimes.ru/post/253340/ ).

Meetup schedule is in hackpad: https://lw-msk-lect.hackpad.com/-9--zfPJw8b9u21

Come to DK Salyut, ul.Svobody, 37. Nearest metro station is Skhodnenskaya. Map and directions are here: http://www.dksalut.ru/index.php?id=10 . If you are lost, call Sasha at +7-905-527-30-82. Meetup begins at 15:00, the length is 3 hours.

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow LW lecture centre meetup
Test Driven Thinking
by Adam Zerner — 2015-07-24T18:38:46.991Z

Programmers do something called Test Driven Development. Basically, they write tests that say "I expect my code to do this", then write more code, and if the subsequent code they write breaks a test they wrote, they'll be notified.

Wouldn't it be cool if there was Test Driven Thinking?

Write tests: "I expect that this is true."

Think: "I claim that A is true. I claim that B is true."

If A or B causes any of your tests to fail, you'd be notified.

I don't know where to run with this though. Maybe someone else will be able to take this idea further. My thoughts:

It'd be awesome if you could apply TDT and be notified when your tests fail, but this seems very difficult to implement.

I'm not sure what a lesser but still useful version would look like.

Maybe this idea could serve as some sort of intuition pump for intellectual hygiene ("What do you think you know, and why do you think you know it?"). Ie. having understood the idea of TDT, maybe it'd motivate/help people apply intellectual hygiene. Which is sort of like a manual version of TDT, where you're the one constantly running the tests.
New LW Meetups: Indianapolis, Kyiv
by FrankAdamek — 2015-07-24T15:27:02.947Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on July 17th. The following week's summary is here.

New meetups (or meetups with a hiatus of more than a year) are happening in:

[Indianapolis] Gen Con: Applied Game Theory: 01 August 2015 02:00PM
Kyiv, Ukraine: 24 July 2015 06:30PM

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

Hamburg : 17 July 2015 06:30PM
Oslo Meetup at Bitraf.: 18 July 2015 04:00PM
Warsaw: GO playing: 18 July 2015 02:00PM
Warsaw integration: Barbecue on the beach: 31 July 2015 06:30PM

The remaining meetups take place in cities with regular scheduling, but involve a change in time or location, special meeting content, or simply a helpful reminder about the meetup:

Austin, TX - Caffe Medici: 18 July 2015 01:30PM
Canberra: The Efficient Market Hypothesis: 24 July 2015 06:00PM
[Moscow] Regular Moscow meetup: Löb's theorem, ways of mind improvement, DEL group, Zendo: 19 July 2015 02:00PM
Moscow experimental LW group meetup: 25 July 2015 01:00PM
Sydney Meetup - July: 22 July 2015 06:30PM
Sydney Meetup - August: 26 August 2015 06:30PM
Sydney Meetup - September: 23 September 2015 06:30PM
Vienna: 18 July 2015 03:00PM
Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games: 19 July 2015 03:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buffalo, Cambridge UK, Canberra, Columbus, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Moscow, Mountain View, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, Seattle, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers.

If you'd like to talk with other LW-ers face to face, and there is no meetup in your area, consider starting your own meetup; it's easy (more resources here). Check one out, stretch your rationality skills, build community, and have fun!

In addition to the handy sidebar of upcoming meetups, a meetup overview is posted on the front page every Friday. These are an attempt to collect information on all the meetups happening in upcoming weeks. The best way to get your meetup featured is still to use the Add New Meetup feature, but you'll also have the benefit of having your meetup mentioned in a weekly overview. These overview posts are moved to the discussion section when the new post goes up.

Please note that for your meetup to appear in the weekly meetu...