trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : Melbourne Practical Rationality Meetup
by BraydenM — 2013-09-29T11:36:59.964Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne Practical Rationality Meetup

WHEN:
04 October 2013 06:30:00PM (+1000)

WHERE:
Level 2, 491 King St West Melbourne 3003

Practical rationality. This meetup repeats on the 1st Friday of each month and is distinct from our monthly social meetup. We aim to improve our thinking and decision making techniques, and 'level up'.

Topics for this month will be announced on our group's meetup page.
http://www.meetup.com/Melbourne-Less-Wrong/

Discussion can be found on our mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/melbourne-less-wrong

All are welcome from 6:30pm. If the door downstairs is locked, call the phone number on the door and we'll let you in. Any formal activity will likely kick off at 7:30pm sharp an g until 9pm. Following this there will be informal discussion and rationality life advice.

Please RSVP at the meetup page above so we can be aware of numbers.

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne Practical Rationality Meetup
Meetup : Washington DC fun and games meetup
by rocurley — 2013-09-29T03:32:09.747Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC fun and games meetup

WHEN:
06 October 2013 03:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
Ballston Common mall

We'll be meeting to hang out and play games (in the food court).

Note the location! The plan is to meet in VA on the first Sunday of every month from now on.

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC fun and games meetup
Meetup : Washington DC Epistemic Spring Cleaning Meetup
by rocurley — 2013-09-29T03:16:54.430Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC Epistemic Spring Cleaning Meetup

WHEN:
29 September 2013 03:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC 20001, USA

Hi everyone,

We'll be meeting to find uncover cached beliefs, and then re-evaluate them.

This is based on a CFAR exercise!

PS: This in 16 hours as of the time of posting. My bad, guys.

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC Epistemic Spring Cleaning Meetup
A question about utilitarianism and selfishness.
by abcd_z — 2013-09-29T01:03:50.407Z

Utilitarianism seems to indicate that the greatest good for the most people generally revolves around their feelings. A person feeling happy and confident is a desired state, a person in pain and misery is undesirable.

But what about taking selfish actions that hurt another person's feelings? If I'm in a relationship and breaking up with her would hurt her feelings, does that mean I have a moral obligation to stay with her? If I have an employee who is well-meaning but isn't working out, am I morally allowed to fire him? Or what about at a club? A guy is talking to a woman, and she's ready to go home with him. I could socially tool him and take her home myself, but doing so would cause him greater unhappiness than I would have felt if I'd left them alone.

In a nutshell, does utilitarianism state that I am morally obliged to curb my selfish desires so that other people can be happy?
Meetup : Cambridge, MA Meetup
by jimrandomh — 2013-09-28T18:38:54.910Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge, MA Meetup

WHEN:
29 September 2013 02:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
98 Elm St Apt. 1 Somerville

We have a new location! This week's meetup will be held at Citadel, the new rationalist house at 98 Elm St. Apt 1 Somerville (near Porter Square). Cambridge/Boston-area Less Wrong meetups are every Sunday at 2pm.

—Phase 1: Arrival, greetings, unstructured conversation. —Phase 2: Presentations. This starts promptly at 2:30, and lasts 30-60 minutes. —Phase 3: Further discussion. We'll explore the ideas raised in phase 2, often in smaller groups. —Phase 4: Dinner. It's about a ten minute walk to the usual restaurant.

Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge, MA Meetup
[LINK] Anti-Diarrhea Kits and the Supply Chain
by NancyLebovitz — 2013-09-28T09:08:13.106Z

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/03/making-medicine-as-easy-to-get-as-a-can-of-coke/

Diarrhea is a pervasive and deadly problem for children in poor countries. ORS (oral rehydration salts) are an effective safe cure, but clinics are sparsely distributed and frequently out of stock.

The time/cost of getting to a clinic is high, and the wait puts a sick child at further risk.

Small stores are much more pervasive.

So Simon and Jane Berry and local partners invented an ORS kit that would fit into Coke crates between the bottles.

However, while putting the kits into Coke crates is a cool idea which helped attract funding, they found it worked better to build relationships with distributors and shopkeepers-- the people who were bringing goods that last mile towards the consumer.

The Simons are still at the stage of experimenting with prices (I just heard about the project from the BBC)-- the kits were originally free, but ideally they'd cost enough to be self-sustaining.
Meetup : LW Munich Meetup in October
by Valeriy — 2013-09-28T07:27:05.827Z

Discussion article for the meetup : LW Munich Meetup in October

WHEN:
05 October 2013 03:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Gast, Rosenheimer Straße 5, 81667 Munich

After the summer break the Less Wrong Munich Meetup will assemble again on the first Saturday of October. The location (weather dependent) will be announced on Wed. 10/2. You are highly welcome to come and say hi, no matter how long you’ve been reading Less Wrong. Topics and activities: tba

Discussion article for the meetup : LW Munich Meetup in October
The Anti-Placebo Effect
by ShannonFriedman — 2013-09-28T05:44:04.770Z

Just about everyone is familiar with the placebo effect at this point. What I've discovered through my personal studies working with people suffering from anxiety and depression is that there is actually a significant related effect, which I have dubbed the anti-placebo effect.

Google says: pla·ce·bo ef·fect

noun

1.

a beneficial effect, produced by a placebo drug or treatment, that cannot be attributed to the properties of the placebo itself, and must therefore be due to the patient's belief in that treatment.

I say: anti·pla·ce·bo ef·fect

noun

1.

a beneficial effect, produced by a treatment, that is not attributed to treatment itself or has stopped being noticed, and thus the patient does not believe in that treatment as effective.

Its easy to miss treatment working. For example, as a kid grows up, its easy to miss how their vocabulary is growing, but for someone who doesn't seem them every day, it may be immediately obvious "my how they're talking more!" In other words, an anti-placebo effect is what happens when someone is having an intervention that is causing their life to improve, but the person does not believe that they are improving.

This effect is most common with people who suffer from depression, who have biases for sad [1] and otherwise negative stimuli compared to the general population, and is also true of people suffering from anxiety from my personal client tracking. Its also important to note that this bias persists after the recovery of the depressive episode.

The reason that this is important is that those recovering from anxiety and depression have a tendency to believe that they are not doing as well as they are - due to this cognitive bias creating an anti-placebo effect for them, which results in their giving up too soon on interventions which are effective and thus not getting better and regressing to old unpleasant patterns.

It has been interesting since tracking results of my own clients [2] - I have all of them track scores at the beginning of their sessions on the site moodscope.com at the beginning of their sessions, so that we can see their progress over time with a consistent bias of the time of tracking being start of session (as opposed to other random biases such as wanting to take the quiz when in an e...
A game of angels and devils
by Sophronius — 2013-09-27T16:41:25.580Z

TL;DR: On the surface, many problems in the world seem more like inspired evil than unfortunate accident.

Every now and then I hear some conspiracy fanatic claim that all the greatest problems in the world are the result of inspired evil instigated by a handful of shadowy figures, and I will quietly shake my head in wonder: How silly and immature, and how very convenient for them, to blame the evils of the world on a handful of sinister individuals! I feel similarly about those who insist on the existence of a devil, or “a sinister force of negative energy” as the new-age types tend to put it, who they deem responsible for mucking things up for humanity. I find it amazing that even those who discard their belief in god will often hold on to their belief in a devil, as the one responsible for the world’s problems. As if humanity needs the help! This quote from The Gulag Archipelago comes to mind:

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

Or, perhaps more commonly known, Hanlon’s razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” And I still feel this way: Human stupidity is so commonplace that it is surely a better explanation than actual malice, which seems much rarer. Yet recently, something happened which caused me to reconsider this position somewhat, during a conversation with a friend late one evening when we were waiting for the tram to arrive.

“Let’s play a game of angels and devils”, I said on a whim. “One of us plays the part of the angel, and his task is to come up with ways to improve the world in the most efficient way possible. The other plays the part of the devil, and his job is to make things as difficult for humanity as possible. The goal of the game is to see who comes up with the best ideas to further their cause.” The game did not really head anywhere, sin

...
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2013-09-27T16:13:51.448Z

This summary was posted to LW main on September 20th. The following week's summary is here.

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

Atlanta Lesswrong September Meetup (2nd of 2): 28 September 2013 06:00PM
Berlin: Fermi paradox discussion: 18 October 2013 07:00PM
Bratislava Meetup VII.: 23 September 2013 06:00PM
Frankfurt: 22 September 2013 02:00PM
Helsinki Meetup: 22 September 2013 02:00PM
[Ottawa] Applied Rationality Talks: Thinking in Bayes: 26 September 2013 07:00PM
Philadelphia - The Sword of Good: 22 September 2013 12:30PM
Saskatoon: Iterative Improvement and Concrete Planning.: 21 September 2013 01:00PM
[Tempe AZ] The Anthropic Principle and the Great Filter: 21 September 2013 02:00PM
Vancouver "Monthly" Super Meetup: 22 September 2013 03:00PM

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:

[Cambridge MA] Intro to AI Existential Risk: 22 September 2013 08:33PM
Columbus, OH MEGA-MEETUP, Oct 11-14: 12 October 2013 02:33AM
Durham/RTLW HPMoR discussion, ch. 86: 21 September 2013 12:00PM
London meetup: thought experiments: 29 September 2013 02:00PM
[Salt Lake City] Fall Equinox: Festival of Heroes: 21 September 2013 03:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Cambridge, MA, Cambridge UK, Columbus, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Mountain View, New York, Research Triangle NC, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, Waterloo, 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 will continue to be posted on the front page every Friday. These will be an attempt to collect information on all the meetups happening in the next weeks. The best way to get your meetup featured is still to use the Add New Meetup feature, but you'll now also have the benefit of having your meetup mentioned in a weekly overview. These overview posts will be moved to the discussion section when the new post...
Why aren't there more forum-blogs like LW?
by Stabilizer — 2013-09-27T07:28:09.092Z

LW has a unique format. It is a forum-blog.

It is not a forum in the traditional sense. In traditional forums you cannot have long, essay-like posts (technically you can, but somehow the culture discourages it). Also, visually the top-level post appears separate and isn't similar to the comments. Like forums, you do have threaded comments and a karma system. Further, anyone who wants can register, post and comment.

It is not a blog in the traditional sense. In most blogs only a select few can post. On LW anyone can create a blogpost, as long as it is somewhat relevant. There is also a notion of Main, where the moderators select the best posts. And the bloggers can aspire to achieve the Main standard.

I feel that this kind of forum-blogs can be very useful in many domains: math, physics, meditation, music, health and nutrition and so on. Of course, we'd need to assemble a high-quality audience who are not afraid downvote and also have good moderators. The problem of assembling a high-quality audience can also be done in LW fashion. Write a good blog for sometime and then convert the format of the blog to forum-blog. The advantage is that the new people who write posts have a guaranteed high-quality audience and are hence incentivized to post and make good posts.

So here's my appeal to people who already have blogs with a good readership: please consider converting your blog into a forum-blog in the style of LW. It will be a huge service to the community. If you do so, please don't be shy to moderate and select the best and treat them separately.

Or is there some other subtlety that I'm missing which is preventing the creation of forum-blogs? Or are there already forum-blogs out there and I'm just not aware of them?

EDIT: In reply Randaly's comment, I appeal to LW's masters: please consider releasing an open-source toolkit that allows the creation of blogs based on the LW format.

EDIT: David_Gerard points out that LW's source is open.
Question on Medical School and Wage Potential for Earning to Give
by eggman — 2013-09-27T05:40:36.234Z

A friend of mine who may want to Earn to Give for the purposes of effective altruism mused 'The wages of American doctors seem inflated right now. I wonder if it is likely that the American health care system will be fixed by the time I am able to work there. If I do go to med school that is.'

Right now, he is an undergraduate student from, and living in, Canada. He is about half-way through a degree in computer science, but he is taking some biology electives. There is a good chance he will switch his major completely to biology, because he no longer believes he wants to become a programmer, and because he is very passionate biology and the study of life, and he would rather go into grad school for biology, or maybe medical school. If he already completed several credits from a previous major, and by December will have done 2 semesters worth of biology classes, I expect it will take him at least another 3 semesters to complete his degree, and/or complete the prerequisites for medical school. If he gets into medical school 2 years from now, it will take him another 4 years of medical-school+residency to be able to practice in the United States, and 2-3 years more than that if he specializes, or goes to a medical school in the Caribbean (where getting into them is apparently easier than mainland medical schools, but to complete the training takes six years). So, it would be at least 6-8 years from now before he is a practicing doctor in the United States.

So, does anyone have any ideas of how to go about the solving the initial problem? What is the likelihood that the wages of American doctors will deflate in the next 6-8 years due to major shifts in how the American medical system is run? What sorts of changes ought one be looking for to answer this question: political, bureaucratic, technological, or cultural change?

edit: my friend in question has expressed interest in this thread, so if you want to make recommendations about or discuss medical schools in the United States vs. other places, or in general, or about entering the medical profession vs.s other jobs, go ahead. Such valuable information would be appreciated. I don't yet know if he himself will participate in this discussion.
Meetup : Tempe, AZ (ASU)
by Jayson_Virissimo — 2013-09-27T03:58:05.831Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Tempe Meetup

WHEN: 27 September 2013 02:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE: 300 E Orange Mall Tempe, AZ 85284

We are meeting at the entrance to Hayden Library in the middle of the ASU campus.

Discussion article for the meetup : Tempe Meetup
Making Fun of Things is Easy
by katydee — 2013-09-27T03:10:28.700Z

Making fun of things is actually really easy if you try even a little bit. Nearly anything can be made fun of, and in practice nearly anything is made fun of. This is concerning for several reasons.
First, if you are trying to do something, whether or not people are making fun of it is not necessarily a good signal as to whether or not it's actually good. A lot of good things get made fun of. A lot of bad things get made fun of. Thus, whether or not something gets made fun of is not necessarily a good indicator of whether or not it's actually good.[1] Optimally, only bad things would get made fun of, making it easy to determine what is good and bad - but this doesn't appear to be the case.
Second, if you want to make something sound bad, it's really easy. If you don't believe this, just take a politician or organization that you like and search for some criticism of it. It should generally be trivial to find people that are making fun of it for reasons that would sound compelling to a casual observer - even if those reasons aren't actually good. But a casual observer doesn't know that and thus can easily be fooled.[2]
Further, the fact that it's easy to make fun of things makes it so that a clever person can find themselves unnecessarily contemptuous of anything and everything. This sort of premature cynicism tends to be a failure mode I've noticed in many otherwise very intelligent people. Finding faults with things is pretty trivial, but you can quickly go from "it's easy to find faults with everything" to "everything is bad." This tends to be an undesirable mode of thinking - even if true, it's not particularly helpful.
[1] Whether or not something gets made fun of by the right people is a better indicator. That said, if you know who the right people are you usually have access to much more reliable methods.
[2] If you're still not convinced, take a politician or organization that you do like and really truly try to write an argument against that politician or organization. Note that this might actually change your opinion, so be warned.
I played the AI Box Experiment again! (and lost both games)
by Tuxedage — 2013-09-27T02:32:06.014Z

AI Box Experiment Update #3

This post is an update to my previous AI box experiment where I won against SoundLogic. If you have not read that yet, please do so.

After that game, I was immediately flooded with a horde of invitations challenging me to play -- more games than I wanted to do. However, I did want to play a few additional games to test whether I won through genuine skill or simply luck, since a single victory could be a statistical abnormality.

I once again used the method of accepting the highest monetary bids to filter out players, leaving me with two players who were willing to play for the amount asked. Unfortunately, and disappointingly, I lost both games. Here's what happened:

Tuxedage (AI) vs Alexei (GK) - Gatekeeper Victory

This Experiment lasted for exactly 2 hours and 30 minutes, and approximately 13,000 words. It ended with Tuxedage’s defeat as the AI. The stakes were $300 to play, and $750 If Tuxedage had won, with the winnings going to MIRI.

Rule Changes:

Before the experiment, we talked extensively about how it would be set up. Alexei was concerned that there existed some “easy way” or loophole in the rules which I could have abused to claim an instant victory. For instance, he was concerned that it might have been possible for the AI to say something like “Here’s a mathematical algorithm which absolutely compels you to let me out of the box”, and according to the rules, the Gatekeeper would have to obey. Related to this concern was the fact that the backstory, within limits, could be essentially created by the AI, allowing the AI to impose real world conditions that maximizes its probability of victory, once again allowing for a "cheap" victory.

To avoid this problem, we explored many additions to the rules, for example that the AI was simply a computer found in the desert by the gatekeeper, rather than being created by a competent organization. However, this led to a monstrous web of rules. In my attempt to keep the game simple, and because of overconfidence, the desire for a challenge, and the belief that the rules Alexei was fearful of didn't matter that much, I eventually agreed on an amendment:

Instead of the AI being the arbiter of real world states and outcomes, the gatekeeper would.

For example, this power could be used by the Gatekeeper to state that the AI was created w

...
Ketogenic Soylent
by LoganStrohl — 2013-09-27T01:17:33.889Z

Eliezer and I have put together this first pass at a recipe for DIY ketogenic soylent--or, as he prefers to call it,The Mildly Surprising Super Ketonic Dietary Replacement Weight-Loss Fluid - It's Not Food, It's Dietary Replacement Fluid!(R) (I am not in full support of this particular preference...)

So let's play Make a Prediction. It seems more likely to be useful than "free associate with why soylent/ketosis is awesome/stupid". Imagine that Eliezer has around a week's worth of infinite willpower (that can only be spent on resisting food cravings etc.). Further, imagine your crystal ball shows you that a month from now, he hasn't lost any weight. What does it tell you about why?

Ketogenic Soylent v1

1 scoop Gold Standard whey protein

1½ tsp calcium citrate powder

1 tsp creatine

½ cup+1 tbsp ground flax

4 tbsp Hershey’s Special Dark cocoa powder

2 tbsp lecithin

⅗ tsp potassium citrate on day 1, increase gradually to 1tsp by day 5, don’t exceed 2tsp

½ tsp iodized salt

⅛ packet Emergen-C

⅕ cup olive oil

1¼ tbsp flaxseed oil

⅗ cup MCT oil

Sucralose to taste

We might need to add water to get the consistency right.

Pills

1 capsule vitamin D supplement/day

2 Opti-Women vitamins per day

1 capsule MSM

Totals Per Day

Calories: 1866

Fats: 193.5g

Carbs: 12g

Protein: 54g

Fiber: 25g

Biotin 250mcg

Calcium 150mg

Chromium 120mcg

Copper 2mg

Folic Acid 600mcg

Iodine 200mcg

Iron 18mg

Magnesium 75mg

Manganese 5mg

Methyl-Sulfonyl-Methane 1000mg

Molybdenum 70mcg

Niacin 20mg

Pantothenic Acid 20mg

Potassium: 5g

Riboflavin 20mg

Selenium 70mcg

Sodium 3g

Thiamin 20mg

Vitamin A 5,000IU

Vitamin B6 20mg

Vitamin B12 100mcg

Vitamin C 250mg

Vitamin D 1600IU

Vitamin E 100IU

Vitamin K 80mcg

Zinc 15mg

[FYI: Due to feedback along the lines of "AIIEEE", we junked this recipe before trying it and went with a completely different one, redesigned from scratch according to the advice in Perfect Health Diet by the Jaminets.]