trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
What are you working on? January 2014
by David_Gerard — 2014-01-01T23:13:21.532Z

Happy new year! This is the supposedly-bimonthly-but-we-keep-skipping 'What are you working On?' thread. Previous threads are here. So here's the question:

What are you working on?

Here are some guidelines:

Focus on projects that you have recently made progress on, not projects that you're thinking about doing but haven't started.

Why this project and not others? Mention reasons why you're doing the project and/or why others should contribute to your project (if applicable).

Talk about your goals for the project.

Any kind of project is fair game: personal improvement, research project, art project, whatever.

Link to your work if it's linkable.
Chapter 102: Caring
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2014-01-01T22:46:28.842Z

June 3rd, 1992.

Professor Quirrell was very sick.

He'd seemed better for a while, after drinking his unicorn's blood in May, but the air of intense power which had surrounded him afterward hadn't lasted even a day. By the Ides of May, Professor Quirrell's hands had been trembling again, though subtly. The Defense Professor's medical regimen had been interrupted too early, it seemed.

Six days ago Professor Quirrell had collapsed at dinnertime.

Madam Pomfrey had tried to forbid Professor Quirrell from teaching classes, and Professor Quirrell had shouted at her in front of everyone. The Defense Professor had shouted that he was dying regardless, and would use his remaining time as he chose.

So Madam Pomfrey, blinking hard, had forbidden the Defense Professor from doing anything except teaching his classes. She'd asked for a volunteer to help her take Professor Quirrell to a room in the Hogwarts infirmary. More than a hundred students had risen to their feet, only half wearing green.

The Defense Professor no longer sat at the Head Table during mealtimes. He didn't cast spells during lessons. The oldest students who had the most Quirrell points helped him to teach, the seventh-years who had already sat their Defense N.E.W.T.s in May. They took turns floating him from his room in the infirmary to his classes, and brought him food at mealtimes. Professor Quirrell proctored his Battle Magic classes from a chair, sitting.

Watching Hermione die had hurt more than this, but that had ended much more quickly.

This is the true Enemy.

Harry had already thought that, after Hermione had died. Being forced to watch Professor Quirrell die, day by day, week by week, had not done much to change his mind.

This is the true Enemy I have to face, Harry thought in Wednesday's Defense class, watching Professor Quirrell leaning far to one side of his chair before that day's seventh-year assistant caught him. Everything else is just shadows and distraction.

Harry had been turning over Trelawney's prophecy in his mind, wondering if maybe the true Dark Lord had nothing to do with Lord Voldemort at all. Born to those who have thrice defied him seemed to strongly invoke the Peverell brothers and the three Deathly Hallows - though Harry didn't exactly see how Death could have marked him as an equal, which seemed to imply some sort of deliberate act...
One Year of Pomodoros
by alexvermeer — 2014-01-01T21:27:01.797Z

(Pomodoros have been talked about a bunch on LW. I, like elharo, first started using the technique after attending a CFAR workshop. Cross-posted from my blog.)

The pomodoro technique is, in short, starting a timer and doing 25 minutes of focused work on a single task without interruption, followed by a five minute break. Choose a new task, restart the timer, and repeat.

Throughout 2013 I used pomodoros to execute on pretty much all of my life projects, organized into the following categories:

work – at MIRI

bizdev – other income-generating projects

growth – personal development projects (e.g. reading books, taking notes, making Anki decks; monthly reviews)

misc – miscellaneous life maintenance projects (e.g. banking stuff, knocking off a bunch of small todo’s, house cleanup)

health – exercise projects (mostly climbing, some running, some misc other stuff)

The Result: 5,008 Pomodoros

The end result was 2,504 hours of recorded work—5,008 pomodoros in total:

Stacked Pomodoros by Week in 2013

A summary, by category (with hours in brackets):

work – 2,457 (1,228.5h) – 47.3 (23.7h) avg/week

bizdev – 700 (350h) – 13.5 (6.7h) avg/week

growth – 996 (498h) – 19.2 (9.6h) avg/week

misc – 448 (224h) – 8.6 (4.3h) avg/week

health – 407 (203.5h) – 7.8 (3.9h) avg/week

Grand Total: 5,008 (2,504h) – 96.3 (48.2h) avg/week

My version of the pomodoro technique

To be clear, I didn’t use the pomodoro technique 100% faithfully. Certain things here, such as most Health (exercise) stuff, I never actually ran a pomodoro timer. But since I had a system for tracking where and how I spent my time, and since “claiming” all that time helped motivate me e.g. to climb regularly, I included them.

Ways I deviate from the “true” pomodoro technique:

I don’t always take breaks. For example, if I do two pomodoros, get in the zone, and work for another two hours straight, I’d still record that as 6 pomodoros (3 hours) total.

I don’t always use a timer. Sometimes I just start working, remembering to take small intermittent breaks, and record the total time in pomodoros (4h of work = 8 pomodoros).

I don’t record interruptions. You’re supposed to track all internal and external interruptions, but I don&rsq

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What if Strong AI is just not possible?
by listic — 2014-01-01T17:51:55.373Z

If Strong AI turns out to not be possible, what are our best expectations today as to why?

I'm thinking of trying myself at writing a sci-fi story, do you think exploring this idea has positive utility? I'm not sure myself: it looks like the idea that intelligence explosion is a possibility could use more public exposure, as it is.

I wanted to include a popular meme image macro here, but decided against it. I can't help it: every time I think "what if", I think of this guy.
January 2014 Media Thread
by ArisKatsaris — 2014-01-01T15:19:28.150Z

This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.

If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.

Please use the comment trees for genres. There is a meta thread for comments about future threads.

If you think there should be a thread for a particular genre of media, please post it to the Other Media thread for now, and add a poll to the Meta thread asking if it should be a thread every month.
Meetup : Sydney Meetup: January
by taryneast — 2014-01-01T05:15:46.990Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Meetup: January

WHEN:
22 January 2014 06:30:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
Caffe Tiamo, 374 Pitt St, Sydney

Full details TBD. We're going to try to have some discussion, a rationality exercise and a game. Details of which we're still nutting out on the Sydney-LW facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/219526434802422/

It should run from roughly 6:30pm to 9:30pm. We'll start with some socialising while people are still arriving, then begin at around 7PM

Caffe Tiamo is a new venue for me - so I'm not sure where we''ll be meeting yet.

I suspect I'll put up a sheet of paper with "LessWrong" and a picture of a paperclip so you can find us. I'll also tell the staff - so ask them to point out the "less wrong meetup" if you can't find me.

You can also message me if you need more info - though I can't guarantee I'll respond in a timely manner. I recommend contacting the facebook group (above) first.

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Meetup: January
Critiquing Gary Taubes, Part 4: What Causes Obesity?
by ChrisHallquist — 2013-12-31T22:04:47.781Z

Previously: Mainstream Nutrition Science on Obesity, Atkins Redux, Did the US Government Give Us Absurd Advice About Sugar?

In this post, I'm going to deal with an issue that's central to Gary Taubes' critique of mainstream nutrition science: what causes obesity?

This is a post a post I found exceptionally difficult to write. You see, while his 2002 New York Times article portrays mainstream nutrition science as promoting a simplistic mirror-image of the Atkins diet, his books do manage to talk about the mainstream view that if you consume more calories than you burn you'll gain weight... sort of. As I looked closely at the relevant chapters of those books, it became less and less clear what view he's attributing to mainstream experts, or what his alternative is supposed to be.

Because this discussion may get confusing, I want to start by repeating what I said in my first post: the mainstream view is that people gain weight when they consume more calories than they burn, but both calorie intake and calorie expenditure are regulated by complicated mechanisms we don't fully understand yet.

Yet Taubes goes on at great length about how obesity has other causes beyond simple calorie math as if this were somehow a refutation of mainstream nutrition science. So I'm going to provide a series of quotes from relevant sources to show that the experts are perfectly aware of that fact. All of the following sources are ones Taubes cites as examples of how absurd the views of mainstream nutrition experts supposedly are:

The etiology of obesity is multifactorial and includes genetic, neurohormonal, endocrine, metabolic and life-style-associated factors. Generally, obesity is a result of excess energy resulting from disturbances in the energy intake/expenditure equilibrium.

Report From FDA's Sugars Task Force. 1986. p. S14.

The causes of obesity are incompletely understood, so that effective treatment is difficult. Obesity is the net result of an excess of energy consumption over expenditure. Factors that must be considered as contributing to causation are: (1) heredity, (2) primary overeating, (3) altered metabolism of adipose tissue, (4) defective or decreased thermogenesis (the process by which calories are converted into heat), (5) decreased physical activity without an appropriate reduction in food intake, and (6) certain prescribed medications. These

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Cognito Mentoring: An advising service for intellectually curious students
by JonahS — 2013-12-31T22:03:05.365Z

My name is Jonah Sinick, and I'm posting to announce a new advising service for intellectually curious students: Cognito Mentoring. I'm working on this in collaboration with Vipul Naik.

We have very broad intellectual interests, cutting across topics such as rationality, economics, pure math, psychology, humanitarian issues and classical music. I have a PhD in pure math, have been an active participant on Less Wrong, worked at GiveWell for a year, and have done research for Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) on how effectively can we plan for future decades and on how well policy-makers will handle AGI. Vipul has a PhD in pure math, and started Open Borders, a website devoted to discussing immigration liberalization.

We both have experience working with intellectually curious young people. I worked for three summers at MathPath (a summer camp for middle school students who are interested in math), taught at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (an academic magnet high school), and currently teach for Art of Problem Solving (an online school for high performing math students). Vipul has trained students for mathematical olympiads, and taught calculus and linear algebra at University of Chicago for years.

We spent several months researching the educational resources that are available to high performing students, college selection and college admissions, psychological findings on intellectual giftedness, and the experiences of past and current members of the population that we're serving, and we’re ready to help. We're currently offering free personalized advising on these things by email, Skype, or phone. You can connect with us here. If you're interested, we look forward to hearing from you.
LWers living in Boulder/Denver area: any interest in an AI-philosophy reading group?
by fowlertm — 2013-12-31T17:06:56.060Z

I'd like to put together an AI-philosophy reading group. Ideally we would dig right in to the technical and philosophical topics, not glossing over the details (meaning we might read technical reports, textbook chapters, theses, etc.), and meeting as often as convenient. It'd be best to keep the group as small as possible, and I'm willing to take a leadership role in organizing and presenting (though by no means do I insist on being the main voice).

Potential discussion topics: machine ethics, theory of superintelligence, friendliness in artificial agents, philosophy of logic, really anything related to the building of a mind.
What is the Main/Discussion distinction, and what should it be?
by ChrisHallquist — 2013-12-30T05:09:54.547Z

Near the beginning of this year Wei Dai asked why certain people don't post to LessWrong more often, and Yvain replied that:

Less Wrong requires no politics / minimal humor / definitely unambiguously rationality-relevant / careful referencing / airtight reasoning (as opposed to a sketch of something which isn't exactly true but points to the truth.) This makes writing for Less Wrong a chore as opposed to an enjoyable pastime.

But Kaj disagreed that this was the actual standard:

I agree with the "no politics" bit, but I don't think the rest are correct. I've certainly had "sketch of something that isn't quite true but points in the right direction" posts with no references and unclear connections to rationality promoted before (example), as well as ones plastered with unnecessary jokes (example).

This raises two questions: what is the real standard, and what should the standard be?

Because on the one hand, it's not clear Yvain is right, but on the other hand if he is right on the factual question, that standard seems way too high to me. It would suggest that, as John Maxwell says in the same thread, "The overwhelming LW moderation focus seems to be on stifling bad content. There's very little in place to encourage good content."

The wiki sort-of answers the factual question:

These traditionally go in Discussion:

a link with minimal commentary

a question or brainstorming opportunity for the Less Wrong community

Beyond that, here are some factors that suggest you should post in Main:

Your post discusses core Less Wrong topics.

The material in your post seems especially important or useful.

You put a lot of thought or effort into your post. (Citing studies, making diagrams, and agonizing over wording are good indicators of this.)

Your post is long or deals with difficult concepts. (If a post is in Main, readers know that it may take some effort to understand.)

You've searched the Less Wrong archives, and you're pretty sure that you're saying something new and non-obvious.

But this isn't an entirely unambiguous answer: how many of the five "factors" does a post need to be in Main? Furthermore, it often seems that the "real" rules are significantly different than what the wiki says. Yvain's perception may be incorrect, but I think there were reasons why he (and presumably the people who upvoted his comment) had ...
Worse than Worthless
by katydee — 2013-12-30T01:47:09.202Z

There are things that are worthless-- that provide no value. There are also things that are worse than worthless-- things that provide negative value. I have found that people sometimes confuse the latter for the former, which can carry potentially dire consequences.

One simple example of this is in fencing. I once fenced with an opponent who put a bit of an unnecessary twirl on his blade when recovering from each parry. After our bout, one of the spectators pointed out that there wasn't any point to the twirls and that my opponent would improve by simply not doing them anymore. My opponent claimed that, even if the twirls were unnecessary, at worst they were merely an aesthetic preference that was useless but not actually harmful.

However, the observer explained that any unnecessary movement is harmful in fencing, because it spends time and energy that could be put to better use-- even if that use is just recovering a split second faster! [1]

During our bout, I indeed scored at least one touch because my opponent's twirling recovery was slower than a less flashy standard movement. That touch could well be the difference between victory and defeat; in a real sword fight, it could be the difference between life and death.

This isn't, of course, to say that everything unnecessary is damaging. There are many things that we can simply be indifferent towards. If I am about to go and fence a bout, the color of the shirt that I wear under my jacket is of no concern to me-- but if I had spent significant time before the bout debating over what shirt to wear instead of training, it would become a damaging detail rather than a meaningless one.

In other words, the real damage is dealt when something is not only unnecessary, but consumes resources that could instead be used for productive tasks. We see this relatively easily when it comes to matters of money, but when it comes to wastes of time and effort, many fail to make the inductive leap.

[1] Miyamoto Musashi agrees:

The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy's cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him. More than a

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Critiquing Gary Taubes, Part 3: Did the US Government Give Us Absurd Advice About Sugar?
by ChrisHallquist — 2013-12-30T00:58:31.461Z

Previously: Mainstream Nutrition Science on Obesity, Atkins Redux

Here's where I start talking about the thing that initially drove me to write this post series: Taubes' repeated misrepresentation of the views of the mainstream nutrition authorities he attacks. I'll start by going back to Taubes' 2002 article. Immediately after the discussion of Atkins, it contains another set of claims that stood out to me as a huge red flag:

Thirty years later, America has become weirdly polarized on the subject of weight. On the one hand, we've been told with almost religious certainty by everyone from the surgeon general on down, and we have come to believe with almost religious certainty, that obesity is caused by the excessive consumption of fat, and that if we eat less fat we will lose weight and live longer. On the other, we have the ever-resilient message of Atkins and decades' worth of best-selling diet books, including ''The Zone,'' ''Sugar Busters'' and ''Protein Power'' to name a few. All push some variation of what scientists would call the alternative hypothesis: it's not the fat that makes us fat, but the carbohydrates, and if we eat less carbohydrates we will lose weight and live longer.

The perversity of this alternative hypothesis is that it identifies the cause of obesity as precisely those refined carbohydrates at the base of the famous Food Guide Pyramid -- the pasta, rice and bread -- that we are told should be the staple of our healthy low-fat diet, and then on the sugar or corn syrup in the soft drinks, fruit juices and sports drinks that we have taken to consuming in quantity if for no other reason than that they are fat free and so appear intrinsically healthy. While the low-fat-is-good-health dogma represents reality as we have come to know it, and the government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in research trying to prove its worth, the low-carbohydrate message has been relegated to the realm of unscientific fantasy.

I'll start with the obvious: We thought sugary soft drinks were intrinsically healthy? To quote an old joke, who do you mean we, kemosabe? Given widespread scientific illiteracy, I wouldn't be surprised if some people have believed that low-fat is a sufficient condition for being healthy, but if so, they didn't get this idea from mainstream nutrition science.

Taubes makes it sound the mainstream view and the view Atkins...
Critiquing Gary Taubes, Part 2: Atkins Redux
by ChrisHallquist — 2013-12-30T00:58:23.884Z

Previously: Mainstream Nutrition Science on Obesity

Edit: In retrospect, I think it maybe should have combined this post with part 3. Unfortunately, the problem of what to do with existing comments makes that hard to fix now.

Taubes first made a name for himself as a low-carb advocate in 2002 with a New York Times article titled "What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?" When I first read this article, I was getting extremely suspicious by the second paragraph (emphasis added):

If the members of the American medical establishment were to have a collective find-yourself-standing-naked-in-Times-Square-type nightmare, this might be it. They spend 30 years ridiculing Robert Atkins, author of the phenomenally-best-selling ''Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution'' and ''Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution,'' accusing the Manhattan doctor of quackery and fraud, only to discover that the unrepentant Atkins was right all along. Or maybe it's this: they find that their very own dietary recommendations -- eat less fat and more carbohydrates -- are the cause of the rampaging epidemic of obesity in America. Or, just possibly this: they find out both of the above are true.

When Atkins first published his ''Diet Revolution'' in 1972, Americans were just coming to terms with the proposition that fat -- particularly the saturated fat of meat and dairy products -- was the primary nutritional evil in the American diet. Atkins managed to sell millions of copies of a book promising that we would lose weight eating steak, eggs and butter to our heart's desire, because it was the carbohydrates, the pasta, rice, bagels and sugar, that caused obesity and even heart disease. Fat, he said, was harmless.

Atkins allowed his readers to eat ''truly luxurious foods without limit,'' as he put it, ''lobster with butter sauce, steak with béarnaise sauce . . . bacon cheeseburgers,'' but allowed no starches or refined carbohydrates, which means no sugars or anything made from flour. Atkins banned even fruit juices, and permitted only a modicum of vegetables, although the latter were negotiable as the diet progressed.

It's one thing to claim that, all else equal, low-carb diets have advantages over low-fat diets. It's another thing to claim you can eat unlimited amounts of fatty foods without gaining weight.

I'd heard of Atkins before but didn't know much about him. I got curious to know more about the m...