trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Desired articles on AI risk?
by lukeprog — 2012-11-02T05:39:07.817Z

I've once again updated my list of forthcoming and desired articles on AI risk, which currently names 17 forthcoming articles and books about AGI risk, and also names 26 desired articles that I wish researchers were currently writing.

But I'd like to hear your suggestions, too. Which articles not already on the list as "forthcoming" or "desired" would you most like to see written, on the subject of AGI risk?

Book/article titles reproduced below for convenience...

Forthcoming

Superintelligence: Groundwork for a Strategic Analysis by Nick Bostrom

Singularity Hypotheses, edited by Amnon Eden et al.

Singularity Hypotheses, Vol. 2, edited by Vic Callaghan

"General Purpose Intelligence: Arguing the Orthogonality Thesis" by Stuart Armstrong

"Responses to AGI Risk" by Kaj Sotala et al.

"How we're predicting AI... or failing to" by Stuart Armstrong & Kaj Sotala

"A Comparison of Decision Algorithms on Newcomblike Problems" by Alex Altair

"A Representation Theorem for Decisions about Causal Models" by Daniel Dewey

"Reward Function Integrity in Artificially Intelligent Systems" by Roman Yampolskiy

"Bounding the impact of AGI" by Andras Kornai

"Minimizing Risks in Developing Artificial General Intelligence" by Ted Goertzel

"Limitations and Risks of Machine Ethics" by Miles Brundage

"Universal empathy and ethical bias for artificial general intelligence" by Alexey Potapov & Sergey Rodiono

"Could we use untrustworthy human brain emulations to make trustworthy ones?" by Carl Shulman

"Ethics and Impact of Brain Emulations" by Anders Sandberg

"Envisioning The Economy, and Society, of Whole Brain Emulations" by Robin Hanson

"Autonomous Technology and the Greater Human Good" by Steve Omohundro

Desired

"AI Risk Reduction: Key Strategic Questions"

"Predicting Machine Superintelligence"

"Self-Modification and Löb's Theorem"

"Solomonoff Induction and Second-Order Logic"

"The Challenge of Preference Extraction"

"Value Extrapolation"

"Losses in Hardscrabble Hell"

"Will Values Converge?"

"AI Takeoff Scenarios"

"AI Will Be Maleficent by Default"

"Biases in AI Research"

"Catastrophic Risks and Existential Risks"

"Uncertainty and Decision Theories"

"Intelligence Explosion: The Proportionality Thesis"

"Hazards from Large Scale Computation"

"Tool Oracles for Safe AI Development"

"Stable Attractors for Technologically Advanced Civilizations"

"AI Risk: Private Project

...
POLL : Aging research booster
by blogospheroid — 2012-11-02T05:22:12.144Z

I wanted to take a poll among LW folk since this question I had didn't seem to have a straight forward utilitarian answer. Please correct my impression, if wrong.

Situation

A government has a limited budget of USD $10 Billion, which it will award in 10 years with which it plans to encourage aging stoppage/reversal. It plans to do this in a relatively fair manner by announcing a competition in which various therapies will be evaluated.

The methodology is simple. The photographs of people who have undertaken the therapy and a control group are shown to people and they evaluate whether this person looks B years old or B + I years old. Similar checks are done with the blood and various other health checkups. These are evaluated by doctors, who answer the same question. Does this look like the report of one who is B or B+ I years old. All possible blindings are done correctly.

B is the base year against which the therapy will be evaluated and I is the increment of years for which the therapy should work.

For eg. the competition announcement can be. The government will offer the prize of $10 Billion to the team that demonstrates stoppage of aging from the age of 30 to 40. (Here, B is 30 and I is 10)

What do you think are the optimal values of B and I, given the constraints mentioned above (There are actually two variables which I assumed constant for this , the amount of the prize A and the time in which the research has to be done T.)

The reason I thought this wasn't a straight forward question is that there seem to be tradeoffs between whether to increase the work life time (eg. 30 to 45) or should we cease aging at retirement time (eg. 60 to 75), allowing for greater leisure.

Assume that this therapy is tested on women.

[EDIT : Confusion with the poll system. The polls are in the first comment]
Quote on Nate Silver, and how to think about probabilities
by ChrisHallquist — 2012-11-02T04:29:26.247Z

From Ezra Klein:

If Mitt Romney wins on election day, it doesn’t mean Silver’s model was wrong. After all, the model has been fluctuating between giving Romney a 25 percent and 40 percent chance of winning the election. That’s a pretty good chance! If you told me I had a 35 percent chance of winning a million dollars tomorrow, I’d be excited. And if I won the money, I wouldn’t turn around and tell you your information was wrong. I’d still have no evidence I’d ever had anything more than a 35 percent chance.

Okay, technically, winning the money would be very weak Bayesian evidence that the initial probability estimate was wrong. Still a very good quote.
The Emergence of Math
by AnotherIdiot — 2012-11-02T01:08:20.318Z

In his latest post, Logical Pinpointing, Eliezer talks about the nature of math. I have my own views on the subject, but when writing about them, it became too long for a comment, so I'm posting it here in discussion.

I think it's important to clarify that I am not posting this under the guise that I am correct. I'm just posting my current view of things, which may or may not be correct, and which has not been assessed by others yet. So though I have pushed myself to write in a confident (and clear) tone, I am not actually confident in my views ... well, okay, I'm lying. I am confident in my views, but I know I shouldn't be, so I'm trying to pretend to myself that I'm posting this to have my mind changed, when in reality I'm posting it with the stupid expectation that you'll all magically be convinced. Thankfully, despite all that, I don't have a tendency to cling to beliefs which I have seen proven wrong, so I will change my mind when someone kicks my belief's ass. I won't go down without a fight, but once I'm dead, I'm dead.

Before I can share my views, I need to clarify a few concepts, and then I'll go about showing what I believe and why.

Abstractions

Abstract models are models in which some information is ignored. Take, for example, the abstract concept of the ball. I don't care if the ball is made of rubber or steel, nor do I care if it has a radius of 6.7cm or a metre, a ball is a ball. I couldn't care less about the underlying configuration of quarks in the ball, as long as it's a sphere.

Numbers are also abstractions. If I've got some apples, when I abstract this into a number, I don't care that they are apples. All I care about is how many there are. I can conveniently forget about the fact that it's apples, and about the concept of time, and the hole in my bag through which the apples might fall.

Axiomatic Systems (for example, Peano Arithmetic)

Edit: clarified this paragraph a bit.

I don't have much to say about these for now, except that they can all be reduced to physics. Given that mathematicians store axiomatic systems in their minds, and use them to prove things, they cannot help but be reducible to physical things, unless the mind itself is not physical. I think most LessWrongers, being reductionists, believe this, so I won't go into much more detail. I'll just say that this will be important later on.

I Can Prove Things About Numbers Using Apples

Le...
Meetup : Champaign, IL meetup
by aspera — 2012-11-01T23:57:07.894Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Champaign, IL meetup

WHEN:
06 November 2012 09:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
Paradiso Cafe, Nevada Street, Champaign, IL

Hi all,
We're meeting at Paradiso Cafe at 8pm. I'll try to have a little sign. We'd like to talk about
1) How to get the word out and expand the group
2) What kind of structure we'd like to see for the meetings
3) What topics we want to cover in detail
4) When we should regularly meet.

See you then.

Brad

Discussion article for the meetup : Champaign, IL meetup
Meetup : Cambridge UK Weekly Meetup
by Sohum — 2012-11-01T19:47:50.632Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge UK Weekly Meetup

WHEN:
03 November 2012 07:47:31PM (+0000)

WHERE:
JCR, Trinity College, Cambridge, CB2 1TQ, UK

See: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Less_Wrong_meetup_groups#Cambridge.2C_UK
(It is 11 am, by the local time)

Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge UK Weekly Meetup
[LINK] Temporal Binding
by twanvl — 2012-11-01T13:45:42.687Z

I just read an article on Steven Novella's NeurologicaBlog on temporal binding, a cognitive bias I hadn't seen before:

Temporal binding is a phenomenon that reinforces that assumption of cause and effect once we have linked two events causally in our minds. The effect biases our memory so that we remember the apparent cause and effect occurring closer together in time. In experiments we tend to remember the cause as happening later and the effect happening earlier.

Temporal binding is like the reverse of "post hoc ergo propter hoc", and you could perhaps perhaps also call it "propter hoc ergo post hoc".
[SEQ RERUN] The Weak Inside View
by MinibearRex — 2012-11-01T04:18:52.272Z

Today's post, The Weak Inside View was originally published on 18 November 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

On cases where the causal factors creating a circumstance are changing, the outside view may be misleading. In that case, the best you can do may just be to take the inside view, but not try to assign predictions that were too precise.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Failure By Affective Analogy, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
[POLL] AI-FOOM Debate in Sequence Reruns?
by MinibearRex — 2012-11-01T04:12:51.457Z

We're now at the point in the sequences when the AI-FOOM Debate took place between Eliezer Yudkowsky and Robin Hanson. Do people want me to include them in the sequence rerun posts, and if so, how? Should I make one post a day? Should I post all of the posts that were made in one day back in 2008, so that we would possibly get one Yudkowsky and one Hanson post in a single day of reruns? If I'm rerunning two posts a day, should I make one rerun post or two? When rerunning a Hanson post, how should the standard rerun template be adjusted?

I titled this as a poll, but that's not really what I want to do, since I'm not sure I have come up with all of the relevant options. I've got my own thoughts on all of the questions I just asked, but I'm going to hold off on mentioning them, in the interests of sparking discussion. Whatever I do, I will need to decide fairly quickly (as in, next three days at the latest).

I'm sorry that this is short term; I've been busy and wasn't really looking that far ahead.

How should I do this?
My experience with dieting and exercise
by Apprentice — 2012-10-31T23:36:28.873Z

Tomorrow I will start on a diet plan to bring my weight down. I'm aiming for a reduction by 5 kg in 6 weeks. Many plans like this fail but I am confident (let's say 80% confident) that this one will succeed. Why? Because I've done this several times before and succeeded. I seem to be reasonably good at dieting.
The obvious problem is that I start regaining weight once a diet is over, necessitating another diet down the line. Now, some people say that cycles of weight-gain and dieting are a horrible thing where each gaining period brings the weight higher than before and each dieting period is harder than before and makes you lose muscle and screw up your body. I haven't personally experienced this. I am 183 cm tall and during my adulthood, my body weight has fluctuated between 80 and 100 kg. I don't have extensive records but I was about 85-88 kg at age 18. At age 21 I was about 83 kg. On my wedding day (age 24) I was 100 kg but that was exceptional and fairly quickly went down again. A couple of years ago I was 80 kg. Now (age 32) I am 90 kg. You get the idea.
After a successful diet I think to myself: "Well, if I can lose weight with amount X of willpower and organizational skills I ought to be able to maintain my weight with amount Y where Y << X. Since I am capable of exerting X for weeks at a time, I should be capable of exerting Y indefinitely." Clearly, this fails to work for me and I think the reason is that Y << X just isn't true. The organizational effort to eat a maintenance diet is not substantially less than the effort to eat a weight-loss diet. And the willpower side of thing doesn't look too good either. It's a bit easier to resist tasty treats when I'm not really hungry - but it's not that much easier. Also, losing weight is a very motivating goal and I get to see positive results as things progress. Maintaining weight is a boring goal which I find it hard to get worked up about.
Now, upon reaching this conclusion I've thought things like: "Maybe effort X is necessary to maintain my weight. But I can't spend effort X on this stuff all the time! I'm not a health nut, I can't obsess over my body year in year out." Well, now I've decided that maybe I can bite this bullet and make it work for me. I'm going to try to keep the effort high on an ongoing basis. But maintaining weight is still a super-boring goal so I need to spice things up ...
[LINK] Rhonda Cornum: How to Create a Strong Army and Society
by loup-vaillant — 2012-10-31T20:29:26.156Z

On fora.tv.

This discussion is about methods to overcome adverse events and challenges so that (1) you don't panic when they hit you, and (2) you're not traumatized afterwards.

There's little explanation about how to do it, but it was enough for me to pattern-match it with "rationality sub-skill". It looks like a training for not losing your rationalist powers when you most need them. Or at least remember to "stick them with the pointy end".

That said, maybe CFAR already teaches some of that?
Meetup : Washington DC Social Meetup
by rocurley — 2012-10-31T19:25:07.964Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC Social Meetup

WHEN: 04 November 2012 03:00:00PM (-0400)

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

Not too many people showed up last meetup (shockingly, hurricanes reduce attendance), so we didn't discuses what to do this meetup. Given that, I think a sensible default is games; I'll bring Zendo, if others bring other things than we'll have more to do.

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC Social Meetup
Meetup : Durham LW: Technical explanation, meta
by evand — 2012-10-31T18:19:46.577Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Durham LW: Technical explanation, meta

WHEN:
08 November 2012 08:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
Francesca's, 706 9th Street, Durham, NC 27705

We will meet to Discuss Technical Explanation and meta topics.

Optional reading: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/technical (Evan will summarize for those that haven't read it)

Meta topics will be things like how to keep meetups interesting, what to cover in future meetups, organizational roles, etc. Suggested reading: http://lesswrong.com/lw/crs/how_to_run_a_successful_less_wrong_meetup/

If you're only going to read one of these, I suggest reading the meetup guide. If you don't want to bother reading all 33 pages, David suggests the following sections:

How To Build Your Team of Heroes
Long-term Meetup Group Maintenance
Meetup Content: Discussions and Presentations

Discussion article for the meetup : Durham LW: Technical explanation, meta
Meetup : Durham HPMoR discussion, ch 12-14
by evand — 2012-10-31T18:13:57.163Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Durham HPMoR discussion, ch 12-14

WHEN:
03 November 2012 11:00:00AM (-0400)

WHERE:
Guglhupf: 2706 Durham-Chapel Hill Boulevard, Durham NC

We will be discussing Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, chapters 12-14.

We encourage you to do some or all of the reading, but will be summarizing the chapters as we go for the benefit of those who haven't done the reading or haven't done it recently.

Please feel free to come even if you haven't read any of the chapters!

Discussion article for the meetup : Durham HPMoR discussion, ch 12-14
[Optimal Philanthropy] Laptops without instructions
by Raemon — 2012-10-31T16:36:49.726Z

Just read this article, which describes a splashy, interesting narrative which jives nicely with my worldview. Which makes me suspicious.

http://dvice.com/archives/2012/10/ethiopian-kids.php

The One Laptop Per Child project started as a way of delivering technology and resources to schools in countries with little or no education infrastructure, using inexpensive computers to improve traditional curricula. What the OLPC Project has realized over the last five or six years, though, is that teaching kids stuff is really not that valuable. Yes, knowing all your state capitols how to spell "neighborhood" properly and whatnot isn't a bad thing, but memorizing facts and procedures isn't going to inspire kids to go out and learn by teaching themselves, which is the key to a good education. Instead, OLPC is trying to figure out a way to teach kids to learn, which is what this experiment is all about.

Rather than give out laptops (they're actually Motorola Zoom tablets plus solar chargers running custom software) to kids in schools with teachers, the OLPC Project decided to try something completely different: it delivered some boxes of tablets to two villages in Ethiopia, taped shut, with no instructions whatsoever. Just like, "hey kids, here's this box, you can open it if you want, see ya!"

Just to give you a sense of what these villages in Ethiopia are like, the kids (and most of the adults) there have never seen a word. No books, no newspapers, no street signs, no labels on packaged foods or goods. Nothing. And these villages aren't unique in that respect; there are many of them in Africa where the literacy rate is close to zero. So you might think that if you're going to give out fancy tablet computers, it would be helpful to have someone along to show these people how to use them, right?

But that's not what OLPC did. They just left the boxes there, sealed up, containing one tablet for every kid in each of the villages (nearly a thousand tablets in total), pre-loaded with a custom English-language operating system and SD cards with tracking software on them to record how the tablets were used. Here's how it went down, as related by OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte at MIT Technology Review's EmTech conference last week:

"We left the boxes in the village. Closed. Taped shut. No instruction, no human being. I thought, the kids will play wit

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Meetup : 18/11  London Meetup
by Tenoke — 2012-10-31T16:24:41.431Z

Discussion article for the meetup : 18/11 London Meetup

WHEN:
18 November 2012 02:00:00PM (+0000)

WHERE:
London

A meetup at 2 pm on the 18th of November at the Shakespeares's head pub by holborn tube station. Everyone is welcome to attend.

Discussion article for the meetup : 18/11 London Meetup
[Link] Which results from cognitive psychology are robust & real?
by  — 2012-10-31T15:49:43.656Z

Link.

A paper on the psychology of religious belief, Paranormal and Religious Believers Are More Prone to Illusory Face Perception than Skeptics and Non-believers, came onto my radar recently. I used to talk a lot about the theory of religious cognitive psychology years ago, but the interest kind of faded when it seemed that empirical results were relatively thin in relation to the system building (Ara Norenzayan’s work being an exception to this generality). The theory is rather straightforward: religious belief is a naturally evoked consequence of the general architecture of our minds. For example, gods are simply extensions of persons, and make natural sense in light of our tendency to anthromorphize the world around us (this may have had evolutionary benefit, in that false positives for detection of other agents was far less costly than false negatives; think an ambush by a rival clan).*

But enough theory. Are religious people cognitively different from those who are atheists? I suspect so. I speak as someone who never ever really believed in God, despite being inculcated in religious ideas from childhood. By the time I was seven years of age I realized that I was an atheist, and that my prior “beliefs” about God were basically analogous to Spinozan Deism. I had simply never believed in a personal God, but for many of earliest years it was less a matter of disbelief, than that did not even comprehend or cogently in my mind elaborate the idea of this entity, which others took for granted as self-evidently obvious. From talking to many other atheists I have come to the conclusion that Atheism is a mental deviance. This does not mean that mental peculiarities are necessary or sufficient for atheism, but they increase the odds.

And yet after reading the above paper my confidence in that theory is reduced. The authors used ~50 individuals, and attempted to correct demographic confounds. Additionally, the results were statistically significant. But to me the above theory should make powerful predictions in terms of effect size. The differences between non-believers, the religious, and those who accepted the paranormal, were just not striking enough for me.

Because of theoretical commitments my prejudiced impulse was to accept these findings. But looking deeply within they just aren’t persuasive in light of my prior expectations

...