trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : Moscow: game theory, test for solving mind-body problem, brainstorm on rationality exercises
by Slava Matyukhin — 2015-05-13T19:54:12.391Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow: game theory, test for solving mind-body problem, brainstorm on rationality exercises

WHEN:
17 May 2015 02:00:00PM (+0300)

WHERE:
Russia, Moscow, L'va Tolstogo 16

We're meeting at Extropolis conference hall at Yandex, again.

Please fill this form if you're planning to visit.

We'll have two talks by guest speakers, and also one brainstorm:

Vitaliy Dolgorukov will talk about game theory pragmatics.

Viktor Argonov will talk about a test for mind-body problem.

Alexander230 will conduct a brainstorm session, searching for problem cases for training practical rationality
Details on the talks are in the hackpad.

Location details and info for the newcomers:

We meet outside of the Yandex office, near the archway and bike parking place. Here is a guide how to get to Yandex: http://company.yandex.ru/contacts/redrose/.

Here is the street view of the entrance you need. Security wants me to meet each member personally, so if you're late, please call me (Slava) at +7(926)313-96-42. Though I'll very appreciate it if you're not late.

Expected duration of the meetup is 4-6 hours, depending on whether you'd like to stand for the afterparty activities. If you're not the member of our Moscow community yet, you might want to check out https://lesswrong-ru.hackpad.com/ , there's a lot of content about what's been going on for the last two years.

Also, please subscribe to our mailing list: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/rationality-in-moscow

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow: game theory, test for solving mind-body problem, brainstorm on rationality exercises
Team New York City
by Zvi — 2015-05-13T18:57:28.000Z

I have decided that I will not be working with Channel-Fireball: The Pantheon for Pro Tour: Magic Origins. The logistics involved in going to a team house for a week, and leaving my family for a week and a half, are too expensive for me to bear four times a year. Given that no sets will rotate out this time, it seems like if I have to pick an event to not make the trip, this would be the right event to choose.

Instead, I will be testing with a combination of Magic Online, Cockatrice and in-person testing and drafting in New York City. If I find good teammates and partners, the bulk of my constructed matches will be on Cockatrice, with some in person, and Magic Online will be used mostly for limited practice. If I cannot find enough good partners, I will use Magic Online more aggressively.

If you would like to test with me on what I am for now calling Team New York City, let me know and I will ask the questions I need to and do my best to let you know where you stand as quickly as possible. Decisions will be based on those who I believe I would enjoy working with, who I feel could contribute, and who are logistically good fits, which means some combination of being frequently available on Cockatrice (especially during work hours) and either living in New York City or being willing to travel here for at least a week before the Pro Tour, preferably both. If you’re not qualified, but I know you and you would like to help out, let me know that too.

This is going to be a fun one, and I’m curious who I will be taking the journey with. It’s time to find out.
Mistakes I’ve made, part 1: greedy altruism
by KatjaGrace — 2015-05-13T18:14:40.000Z

I have made many mistakes. Unfortunately, for some of my older, larger mistakes, it becomes hard to remember or imagine why I would have made them. The alternative position comes to seem literally inconceivable. At the same time, I forget that I ever conceived of it. This is tragic, because for anything realized some way into my life, there are surely many people who don’t (yet?) share my view. Also because any insight into why I might have believed inconceivable things in the past might prevent me from believing such in the future.

So it seems a valuable exercise to recall and dissect some of my errors before they evaporate from my memory. Here’s one:

For almost all of my teenage years, I believed that small amounts of money could be used to save lives in the developing world (an error, but one for another time), but consequently collected small amounts of money where possible, rather than optimizing for long-run ability to earn money (which would also not necessarily be the best thing, but is obviously superior to greedily earning small sums). e.g. I would do chores for money instead of practicing useful skills.

Why?

One obvious possibility is that it didn’t occur to me. That would seem surprising, and I don’t think it’s true, but it might be. Also something intermediate seems plausible—like, I was not fully and abstractly aware of a trade-off between greedily accruing small amounts of money and investing in better opportunities, though it did occur to me that I could practice math instead of doing a chore and that this might help.

If we suppose I was at least somewhat aware of this option, I think I probably didn’t see how any alternative activities would genuinely improve my prospects. Especially at the five minute level. If I didn’t do this chore, it didn’t seem like I would really find something else to do, right here and now, that would cause me to earn twenty cents in the long run.

I suspect one mistake was failing to add these five minutes up, and say that if I always didn’t do chores, I would have a fair bit more time, and even if the first twenty increments weren’t that great, given the options in my house, it should be possible to look further afield and find ways to make a difference.

In my past self’s defense, I can’t remember what I actually did with my free time, and I doubt it ...
[Link] Promoting rationality in higher education media channels
by Gleb_Tsipursky — 2015-05-13T16:51:40.358Z

Glad to share an op-ed piece I published in one of the most premier higher education media channels on how I as a professor used rationality-informed strategies to deal with mental illness in the classroom. This is part of my broader project to promote rationality to a broad audience and thus raise the sanity waterline, so good news on that front. I'd also be glad to hear your advice about other strategies to promote rationality broadly, and also any collaboration you may be interested in doing together around such public outreach.
Meetup : Warsaw: Newcomb's Problem & Decision Theories
by mkf — 2015-05-13T13:52:59.107Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Warsaw: Newcomb's Problem & Decision Theories

WHEN:
30 May 2015 06:30:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Warsaw

Time: 30 May (Saturday) at 18:30
Place: Cafe Kulturalna, Plac Defilad 1, PKiN, 00-901 Warsaw, Poland

Topic: Newcomb's Problem & Decision Theories

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/756624637783363/
Facebook group for Warsaw LW readers: https://www.facebook.com/groups/lwwarsaw/

Discussion article for the meetup : Warsaw: Newcomb's Problem & Decision Theories
LW should go into mainstream academia ?
by Marlon — 2015-05-13T13:23:07.656Z

I feel that a lot of what's in LW (written by Eliezer or others) should be in mainstream academia. Not necessarily the most controversial views (the insistence on the MW hypothesis, cryonics, the FAI ...), but a lot of the work on overcoming biases should be there, be criticized there and be improved there.

For example, a few debiasing methods and a more formal explanation of LW's peculiar solution to free will (and more, these are only examples).

I don't really get why LW's content isn't in mainstream academia to be honest.

I get that peer review is not the best (far from it, although it's still the best we have, and post-publication peer-review is also improving, see PubPeer), that some would too readily dismiss LW's content, but not all. Lots would play by the rules and provide genuine criticisms during peer-review (which will lead to the alteration of the content of course), along with criticisms post publication. This is in my opinion something that has to happen.

LW, Eliezer, etc, can't stay on the "crank" level, not playing by the rules, publishing books and no papers. Blogs are indeed faster and reach a bigger amount of people, but I'm not arguing for only publishing in academia. Blogs can (and should) continue.

Tell me what you think, as I seem to have missed something with this topic.
PA+100 cannot always predict modal UDT
by jessicata — 2015-05-12T20:26:53.000Z

Summary: we might expect PA+m to be able to predict the behavior of an escalating modal UDT agent using PA+n for n<m. However, this is not the case. Furthermore, in environments where PA+m predicts the agent, escalating modal UDT can be outperformed by a constant agent.

For a given logic X, we can define X+1=X+Con(X) (i.e. X+1 has all the axioms of X plus the axiom that X is consistent). We can iteratively get X+2=(X+1)+1 and so on.

Now consider PA+100. In some sense, it is "more powerful" than PA: it contains additional correct axioms.
Therefore, we might find it plausible that PA+100 can always correctly predict the behavior of a modal UDT agent using PA.

Ordinary modal UDT can run into issues on some environments due to later stages not be able to use the assumption that logics used in previous stages are consistent. Therefore, define escalating modal UDT to be the same as modal UDT except that the nth proof search uses PA+n instead of PA. Benja might write a post explaining this system better.

Let m be a number higher than the number of proof searches escalating modal UDT makes. Patrick made the conjecture that if U is a simple function of A() (the agent's output) and PA+m⊢A()=a (for each action a, whether the predictor predicts the agent takes action a), where A() is escalating modal UDT, then:

The predictor is correct (if A()=a then PA+m⊢A()=a)

The agent picks the best action conditioned on the predictor being correct (i.e. the action a that maximizes utility when A()=a and PA+m⊢A()=a)

Both parts of the conjecture turn out to be false. First, consider the following environment:

def U():

if A()=α

if PA+100⊢A()=β

return 10

else

return 0

else

return 5

First, the agent will determine PA⊢A()=α→U()=10. For this to be the case PA would have to prove □PA+100┌A()=β┐. But if PA proves this, then in fact A()=α, so this would require PA+100 to be unsound. Therefore this proof search fails.

Next, the agent will determine PA+1⊢A()=β→U()=10. This obviously fails.

Next, the agent will determine PA+2⊢A()=α→U()=5. This obviously fails.

Next, the agent will determine PA+3⊢A()=β→U()=5. This obviously succeeds, and the agent takes action β.

Now consider whether PA+100⊢A()=β. Consider a model M of PA+100 in which
M⊨PA+100
M⊨¬Con(PA+100)

Now:
M⊨□PA┌¬Con(PA+100)┐
M⊨□PA┌□PA+100┌A()=β┌┐
M⊨□PA┌A()=α→U()=10┐
M⊨A()=α

Since M⊨PA+100, we ha

...
What is stupid?
by Zvi — 2015-05-12T15:05:40.000Z

In a post that I mostly agreed with, but am also mostly not that interested in, Scott Sumner concludes with the following note:

But I also understand that the part of my brain that tells me that the conventional narrative is stupid, is itself unreliable.

Indeed it’s more than unreliable, it’s a logical contradiction. The conventional narrative can never, ever be stupid, as ‘stupidity’ is defined as reasoning that falls short of the conventional wisdom.

This is a noble and humble thing to say, but to what extent is it true? My instinctual assertion would be that this statement is almost entirely false, but I am not sure and it could be important. The corollaries of the assertion that the conventional wisdom can be stupid frequently get me into trouble. People very much do not like being told that they, their opinions or their actions are stupid, especially when they are plausibly average or better in context. One could also think of this as ‘having high standards,’ and in at least some contexts my standards are ludicrously high because I find keeping them that high to be useful.

The standard of ‘relative to the conventional wisdom’ is itself high if you take the conventional wisdom to be the wisdom of a relatively small convention. The majority of Americans don’t believe in evolution, or in a market price for water, and legislation regularly goes squarely against both, but it would be reasonable to claim that the conventional wisdom favors both. Scott’s statement need not be a contradiction with the majority of humans being stupid and the majority of them having mostly stupid opinions. In fact, given which opinions count as opinions, Scott’s standard all but guarantees it! Conventional wisdom is necessarily much less stupid than a random person’s opinion, on average, due to the wisdom of crowds.

Certainly, relative stupidity is a thing. One can say “X is stupider than Y, but less stupid than Z,” where X, Y and Z can be proposed courses of action, scientific theories or even people, and have that statement be a not-obviously-stupid way of delivering the desired informational payload. It also does not mean the same thing as “X is not as smart as Y, but is smarter than Z” because reversed stupidity is not intelligence, so the phrasing is necessary. It is not even a contradiction to say “...
Wild Moral Dilemmas
by sixes_and_sevens — 2015-05-12T12:56:25.217Z

[CW: This post talks about personal experience of moral dilemmas. I can see how some people might be distressed by thinking about this.]

Have you ever had to decide between pushing a fat person onto some train tracks or letting five other people get hit by a train? Maybe you have a more exciting commute than I do, but for me it's just never come up.

In spite of this, I'm unusually prepared for a trolley problem, in a way I'm not prepared for, say, being offered a high-paying job at an unquantifiably-evil company. Similarly, if a friend asked me to lie to another friend about something important to them, I probably wouldn't carry out a utilitarian cost-benefit analysis. It seems that I'm happy to adopt consequentialist policy, but when it comes to personal quandaries where I have to decide for myself, I start asking myself about what sort of person this decision makes me. What's more, I'm not sure this is necessarily a bad heuristic in a social context.

It's also noteworthy (to me, at least) that I rarely experience moral dilemmas. They just don't happen all that often. I like to think I have a reasonably coherent moral framework, but do I really need one? Do I just lead a very morally-inert life? Or have abstruse thought experiments in moral philosophy equipped me with broader principles under which would-be moral dilemmas are resolved before they reach my conscious deliberation?

To make sure I'm not giving too much weight to my own experiences, I thought I'd put a few questions to a wider audience:

- What kind of moral dilemmas do you actually encounter?

- Do you have any thoughts on how much moral judgement you have to exercise in your daily life? Do you think this is a typical amount?

- Do you have any examples of pedestrian moral dilemmas to which you've applied abstract moral reasoning? How did that work out?

- Do you have any examples of personal moral dilemmas on a Trolley Problem scale that nonetheless happened?

The Username/password anonymous account is, as always, available.
Thoughts on minimizing designer baby drama
by John_Maxwell — 2015-05-12T11:22:26.604Z

I previously wrote a post hypothesizing that inter-group conflict is more common when most humans belong to readily identifiable, discrete factions.

This seems relevant to the recent human gene editing advance. Full human gene editing capability probably won't come soon, but this got me thinking anyway. Consider the following two scenarios:

1. Designer babies become socially acceptable and widespread some time in the near future. Because our knowledge of the human genome is still maturing, they initially aren't that much different than regular humans. As our knowledge matures, they get better and better. Fortunately, there's a large population of "semi-enhanced" humans from the early days of designer babies to keep the peace between the "fully enhanced" and "not at all enhanced" factions.

2. Designer babies are considered socially unacceptable in many parts of the world. Meanwhile, the technology needed to produce them continues to advance. At a certain point people start having them anyway. By this point the technology has advanced to the point where designer babies clearly outclass regular babies at everything, and there's a schism between "fully enhanced" and "not at all enhanced" humans.

Of course, there's another scenario where designer babies just never become widespread. But that seems like an unstable equilibrium given the 100+ sovereign countries in the world, each with their own set of laws, and the desire of parents everywhere to give birth to the best kids possible.

We already see tons of drama related to the current inequalities between individuals, especially inequality that's allegedly genetic in origin. Designer babies might shape up to be the greatest internet flame war of this century. This flame war could spill over in to real world violence. But since one of the parties has not arrived to the flame war yet, maybe we can prepare.

One way to prepare might be differential technological development. In particular, maybe it's possible to decrease the cost of gene editing/selection technologies while retarding advances in our knowledge of which genes contribute to intelligence. This could allow designer baby technology to become socially acceptable and widespread before "fully enhanced" humans were possible. Just as with emulations, a slow societal transition s...
A heuristic for predicting minor depression in others and myself, and related things
by  — 2015-05-12T08:24:39.337Z

Summary

Look at how you or other people walk. Then going a bit meta.

Disclaimer

This post is probably not high quality enough to deserve to be top level purely on its qualitative merits. However I think the sheer importance of the issue for human well-being makes it so. Please consider importance / potential utility of the whole discussion and not just the post, and not only quality when voting.

The problem

Minor depression is not really an accurately defined, easily recognizable thing. First of all there are people with hard, boring or otherwise unsatisfactory life who are unhappy about it, how can one tell this normal, justifiable unhappiness from minor depression? Especially that therapists often say having good reasons to be depressed still counts as one, so at that point you don't really know whether to focus on fixing your mind or fixing your life. Then a lot of things that don't even register as direct sadness or unhappiness are considered part of or related to depression, such as lethargy/low energy/low motivation, irritability/aggressiveness, eating disorders, and so on. How could you tell if you are just a bad tempered lazy glutton or depressed? And finally, don't cultural expectations play a role, such as how Americans tend to be optimistic and expect a happy, pursue-shiny-things life, while e.g. Finns not really?

Of course there are clinical diagnosis methods, but people will ask a therapist for a diagnosis only when they already suspect something is wrong. They must think "Jolly gee, I really should feel better than I do now, it is not really normal to feel so, better ask a shrink!" But often it is not so. Often it is like "My mind is normal. It is life that sucks." So by what heuristic could you tell whether there is something wrong with yourself or other people?

Basis

This is heuristic I built mainly on observational correlations plus some psychological parallels. Has nothing to do with accepted medical science or experts opinion. My goal isn't as much as to convince you this is a good heuristic, but to open an open-ended discussion, asking you if it seems to be a good one, and also trigger a discussion where you propose other methods.

How I think non-depressed men walk

"Having a spring in the step." This old saying is IMHO surprisingly apt. I like this drawing - NOT because I think depression is based on T levels, but I...
Optimal and Causal Counterfactual Worlds
by Scott Garrabrant — 2015-05-12T03:16:30.000Z

Let L denote the language of Peano arithmetic. A (counterfactual) world W is any subset of L. These worlds need not be consistent. Let W denote the set of all worlds. The actual world WN∈W is the world consisting of all sentences that are true about N.

Consider the function C:L→W which sends the sentence ϕ to the world we get by "correctly" counterfactually assuming ϕ. The function C is not formally defined, because we do not yet have a satisfactory theory of logical counterfactuals.

Hopefully we all agree that ϕ∈C(ϕ) and
ϕ∈WN⇒C(ϕ)=WN.

Given an (infinite) directed acyclic graph G, and a map v from sentences to vertices of G, we say that C is consistent with G and v if C(ϕ)=C(ψ) for all v(ϕ)=v(ψ), and whenever WN and C(ϕ) disagree on a sentence ψ there must exist some causal chain ψ1,…ψn such that:

v(ψ1)=v(ϕ),

ψn=ψ,

WN and C(ϕ) disagree on every ψi, and

v(ψi) is a parent of v(ψi+1).

These conditions give a kind of causal structure such that changes from WN and C(ϕ) must propagate through the graph G.

Given a function f:W→R, we say that C optimizes f if for all ϕ∈W and W≠C(ϕ) we have f(C(ϕ))>f(W).

Many approaches to logical counterfactuals can be described either as choosing the optimal world (under some function) in which ϕ is true or observing the causal consequences of setting ϕ to be true. The purpose of this post is to prove that these frameworks are actually equivalent, and to provide a strategy for possibly showing that no attempt at logical counterfactuals which could be described within either framework could ever be what we mean by "correct" logical counterfactuals.

A nontrivial cycle in C is a list of sentences ϕ1,…,ϕn, such that ϕi∈C(ϕi+1), ϕn∈C(ϕ1), and the worlds C(ϕi) are not all the same for all i.

Given a partial order ≻ , we say that C optimizes ≻ if for all ϕ∈W and W≠C(ϕ) we have C(ϕ)≻W.

Our main result is that the following are equivalent:

C optimizes f for some function f.

C is consistent with G and v for some DAG G and map v.

C has no nontrivial cycles.

C optimizes ≻ for some partial order ≻.

Proof:

1 ⇒ 2: Construct the graph G with a vertex for every world in the image of C. The map v sends ϕ to the vertex associated with C(ϕ). Insert an edge to WN from every other vertex. Insert an edge from the vertex associated with W1≠WN to the vertex associated with W2≠WN whenever f(W1)<f(W2). Clearly C(ϕ)=C(ψ) for all v(ϕ)=v(ψ

...
Meetup : Rationality Meetup Vienna
by AnnaLeptikon — 2015-05-11T18:26:44.821Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Rationality Meetup Vienna

WHEN:
20 June 2015 03:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Kaisermühlenstraße 24/2

What google maps says here about the address is a lie!
-> Location: http://web.student.tuwien.ac.at/~e0326238/rationality_meetup/directions.html

FB-Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/864498406939296/
(You can see it if you are member of Rationality Vienna)

Discussion article for the meetup : Rationality Meetup Vienna