trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Ethical heuristics
by KatjaGrace — 2013-02-20T02:03:29.000Z

Cross posted from Overcoming Bias. Comments there.

***

I would like to think I wouldn’t have been friends with slave owners, anti-semites or wife-beaters, but then again most of my friends couldn’t give a damn about the suffering of animals, so I guess I would have been. – Robert Wiblin

I expect the same friends would have been any of those things too, given the right place and period of history. The same ‘faults’ appear to be responsible for most old fashioned or foreign moral failings: not believing that anything bad is happening if you don’t feel bad about it, and not feeling bad about anything unless there is a social norm of feeling bad about it.

People here and now are no different in these regards, as far as I can tell. We may think we have better social norms, but the average person has little more reason to believe this than the average person five hundred years ago did. People are perhaps freer here and now to follow their own hearts on many moral issues, but that can’t make much difference to issues where the problem is that people’s hearts don’t automatically register a problem. So even if you aren’t a slave-owner, I claim you are probably using a similar decision procedure to that which would lead you to be one in different circumstances.

Are these really bad ways for most people to behave? Or are they pretty good heuristics for non-ethicists? It would be a huge amount of work for everyone to independently figure out for themselves the answer to every ethical question. What heuristics should people use?
Meetup : RTLW HPMoR discussion, chapters 39-43
by therufs — 2013-02-20T00:09:57.818Z

Discussion article for the meetup : RTLW HPMoR discussion, chapters 39-43

WHEN:
23 February 2013 11:00:00AM (-0500)

WHERE:
2706 Durham-Chapel Hill Blvd., Durham NC 27707

Let's meet at Guglhupf for coffee, breakfast, and discussion of HPMoR 39-43. Actually Doing the Reading is suggested, but not a requirement. Having read up to this point is also optional -- we're happy to summarize past chapters. You may be able to identify us by a 1150-page stack of spiral bound volumes on our table!

Discussion article for the meetup : RTLW HPMoR discussion, chapters 39-43
[LINK] Fate of our meta-stable Universe: killed by a vacuum bubble?
by Shmi — 2013-02-19T22:29:11.606Z

The talk by Joseph Lykken (Lykken, ironically, is Norwegian for luck), making the science news rounds today, conjectures that Higgs will some day destroy the universe in a flash of a "true vacuum" expanding at light speed and destroying our "false vacuum", and everything else in it. Here is the original paper. The interesting part for me is not the idea, which is not at all new, but the related anthropic reasoning, which goes as follows:

That alternate universe would be "much more boring," Lykken said. Which led him to ask a philosophical question: "Why do we live in a universe that's just on the edge of stability?" He wondered whether a universe has to be near the danger zone to produce galaxies, stars, planets ... and life.

Cue Frost's Fire and Ice...
Visual Mental Imagery Training
by SarahNibs — 2013-02-19T22:21:28.672Z

Previously: Generalizing From One Example

There was a debate, in the late 1800s, about whether "imagination" was simply a turn of phrase or a real phenomenon. That is, can people actually create images in their minds which they see vividly, or do they simply say "I saw it in my mind" as a metaphor for considering what it looked like?
Upon hearing this, my response was "How the stars was this actually a real debate? Of course we have mental imagery. Anyone who doesn't think we have mental imagery is either such a fanatical Behaviorist that she doubts the evidence of her own senses, or simply insane." Unfortunately, the professor was able to parade a long list of famous people who denied mental imagery, including some leading scientists of the era. And this was all before Behaviorism even existed.
The debate was resolved by Francis Galton, a fascinating man who among other achievements invented eugenics, the "wisdom of crowds", and standard deviation. Galton gave people some very detailed surveys, and found that some people did have mental imagery and others didn't. The ones who did had simply assumed everyone did, and the ones who didn't had simply assumed everyone didn't, to the point of coming up with absurd justifications for why they were lying or misunderstanding the question. There was a wide spectrum of imaging ability, from about five percent of people with perfect eidetic imagery to three percent of people completely unable to form mental images.

Summary: I do not have visual mental imagery. I want it. How do I get it? What exercises, if any, will help?

In further detail... Here's Francis Galton's Statistics of Mental Imagery paper. I'm not quite at the 3% level of completely unable to form mental images, but I'm close. In particular there are three times I have vivid, sharp mental imagery, and the existence of such times tells me I have the brain hardware to visualize. It's enough to let me know that I want it all the time. Unfortunately I don't know how to get it. And searching online has proven difficult and frustrating... for example this article is first of all about a different meaning of "visualize", it's talking about some kind of self-help motivational thingy, and second of all it starts by saying "How to Visualize: I want you to relax and close your eyes. Picture a hot, sunny day at the beach."

Full Stop. Halt, Catch Fire and Bur...
Politics Filtering and Higher Standard Discussions
by ikrase — 2013-02-19T20:35:52.631Z

Does anybody have suggestions of a method to hold a risky political discussion while excluding mindkilled dialogue and naively cynical accusations? I know that Moldbug uses a deliberately obscure writing style as a kind of barrier to entry, but that only works for things like his blog, not a conversational dialogue, and I would prefer to avoid obscurity. I'm mostly interested in avoiding people pattern-matching to the monster of the week, but I am concerned with attracting the merely regressive.

Edit: If you think you have guessed what specific subject I am talking about, keep it to yourself or use private messaging
Searching for consequence-imagining games for children
by  — 2013-02-19T17:59:21.066Z

A friend of mine has a rather precocious daughter with poor impulse control, and asked if I knew any behavior games that encourage children to think out the consequences of actions before they do them.

I'm familiar with the Good Behavior Game and the like, but standard conditioning hasn't been very effective with this child in the past. She's quite clever about subverting rules when possible, and shutting down entirely when subversion fails.

Please, one suggestion per thread so that the karma thing can do its thing.
Meetup : Effective Altruism Dinner Party
by Raemon — 2013-02-19T17:16:47.288Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Effective Altruism Dinner Party

WHEN:
22 February 2013 02:13:22PM (-0500)

WHERE:
Winterfell House, 316 W 138th street, New York NY, 10030

This Friday at Winterfell House, NY will be an Effective Altruism dinner party.
Effective Altruism is the principle of accomplishing the most good on a global (or universal) scale, given limited time and resources. It can be worth thinking about whether you're the sort of person deeply motivated to dedicate their life to improving the world, or someone who's just trying to do more good on the margins without stressing out too much about it, or anyone in between.
One issue Effective Altruists tend to face is that accomplishing the most good tends to engage the hard, mathematical sides of our brains, and less the warm, empathetic side. Of course, in the rationality community, people tend to enjoy thinking about complex, strategic problems in rigorous ways. But it's still nice to periodically get to feel that warm glow. We know we probably want to purchase our Utilons and Fuzzies separately, but it's useful to appreicate a direct connection between the warm motivation and the hard thinking that goes into accomplishing it.
The evening will be an informal potluck dinner, where people can share past success stories and lessons learned, and talk about projects to collaborate on. Newcomers who are interested in the idea and trying to figure out how to go about having an impact can get familiar with some of the ideas behind the Effective Altruism community. I'll be talking about some potential projects for the oncoming year, in particular, an EA Camp being run by CFAR later in the summer.
Bring some food to share. Winterfell has a nice kitchen if you'd like to do some cooking there. People can arrive and do cooking starting around 7:30, with dinner being served at 8:30. -
WHEN + WHERE:
Winterfell House
Friday, February 22nd
7:30 PM - 10:00 PM

Discussion article for the meetup : Effective Altruism Dinner Party
Are coin flips quantum random to my conscious brain-parts?
by Academian — 2013-02-19T09:51:49.419Z

Hello rationality friends! I have a question that I bet some of you have thought about...

I hear lots of people saying that classical coin flips are not "quantum random events", because the outcome is very nearly determined by thumb movement when I flip the coin. More precisely, one can stay that the state of my thumb and the state of the landed coin are strongly entangled, such that, say, 99% of the quantum measure of the coin flips outcomes my post-flip thumb observes all land heads.

First of all, I've never actually seen an order of magnitude estimate to support this claim, and would love it if someone here can provide or link to one!

Second, I'm not sure how strongly entangled my thumb movement is with my subjective experience, i.e., with the parts of my brain that consciously process the decision to flip and the outcome. So even if the coin outcome is almost perfectly determined by my thumb, it might not be almost perfectly determined by my decision to flip the coin.

For example, while the thumb movement happens, a lot of calibration goes on between my thumb, my motor cortex, and my cerebellum (which certainly affects but does not seem to directly process conscious experience), precisely because my motor cortex is unable to send, on its own, a precise and accurate enough signal to my thumb that achieves the flicking motion that we eventually learn to do in order to flip coins. Some of this inability is due to small differences in environmental factors during each flip that the motor cortex does not itself process directly, but is processed by the cerebellum instead. Perhaps some of this inability also comes directly from quantum variation in neuron action potentials being reached, or perhaps some of the aforementioned environmental factors arise from quantum variation.

Anyway, I'm altogether not *that* convinced that the outcome of a coin flip is sufficiently dependent on my decision to flip as to be considered "not a quantum random event" by my conscious brain. Can anyone provide me with some order of magnitude estimates to convince me either way about this? I'd really appreciate it!

ETA: I am not asking if coin flips are "random enough" in some strange, undefined sense. I am actually asking about quantum entanglement here. In particular, when your PFC decides for planning reasons to flip a coin, does the evolu...
Meetup : Berlin Meetup
by blob — 2013-02-19T06:10:53.949Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Berlin Meetup

WHEN:
23 February 2013 07:30:47PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Ming Dynastie, Brückenstraße 6, 10179 Berlin

This is where we come together in person to chat!

We will experiment with emulating a small meetup by having two tables, hopefully leading to more personal discussions. There are no special activities this time. We'll talk about our plans and make commitments.

Everyone is welcome, I'll bring a sign.

Discussion article for the meetup : Berlin Meetup
Meetup : Vancouver!
by  — 2013-02-19T04:42:56.114Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Vancouver!

WHEN:
23 February 2013 03:00:00PM (-0800)

WHERE:
2505 west broadway, vancouver

Our recent format has been working well, so we'll continue. Please come out and join us at 2505 west broadway (Benny's Bagels) at 15:00 on Saturday.

Topic is undetermined; please suggest things. If we don't come up with a better one, I'll talk about Terminal Bias and Moral Philosophy and it will be awful and confused and boring and attract exactly the wrong type of people. So there.

Lurkers who don't know us, look for some geeks with with lots of paper and phones and computers. I'll try to have a sign with "Less Wrong" on it. I guess I should post my face all over the internet for you eh?

Hope to see you all there!

Discussion article for the meetup : Vancouver!
[SEQ RERUN] True Ending: Sacrificial Fire
by MinibearRex — 2013-02-19T04:38:05.848Z

Today's post, True Ending: Sacrificial Fire (7/8) was originally published on 05 February 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

The Impossible Possible World tries to save humanity.

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 Normal Ending: Last Tears, 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.
Falsifiable and non-Falsifiable Ideas
by shaih — 2013-02-19T02:24:41.584Z

I have been talking to some people (few specific people I thought would benefit and appreciate it) in my dorm and teaching them rationality. I have been thinking of skills that should be taught first and it made me think about what skill is most important to me as a rationalist.

I decided to start with the question “What does it mean to be able to test something with an experiment?” which could also mean “What does it mean to be falsifiable?”

To help my point I brought up the thought experiment with a dragon in Carl Sagan’s garage which is as follows

Carl: There is a dragon in my garage
Me: I thought dragons only existed in legends and I want to see for myself
Carl: Sure follow me and have a look
Me: I don’t see a dragon in there
Carl: My dragon is invisible
Me: Let me throw some flour in so I can see where the dragon is by the disruption of the flour
Carl: My dragon is incorporeal

And so on

The answer that I was trying to bring about was along the lines that if something could be tested by an experiment then it must have at least one different effect if it were true than if it were false. Further if something had at least one effect different if it were true than if it was false then I could at least in theory test it with an experiment.

This led me to the statement:
If something cannot at least in theory be tested by experiment then it has no effect on the world and lacks meaning from a truth stand point therefore rational standpoint.

Anthony (the person I was talking to at the time) started his counter argument with any object in a thought experiment cannot be tested for but still has a meaning.

So I revised my statement any object that if brought into the real world cannot be tested for has no meaning. Under the assumption that if an object could not be tested for in the real world it also has no effect on anything in the thought experiment. i.e. the story with the dragon would have gone the same way independent of its truth values if it were in the real world.

Then the discussion continued into could it be rational to have a belief that could not even in theory be tested. It became interesting when Anthony gave the argument that if believing in a dragon in your garage gave you happiness and the world would be the same either way besides the happiness combined with the principle that rationality is th

...
Meetup : Washington DC Show and tell meetup: Economics II
by rocurley — 2013-02-18T23:36:04.849Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC Show and tell meetup: Economics II

WHEN:
24 February 2013 03:00:47PM (-0500)

WHERE:
National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC 20001, USA (courtyard)

Richard will be leading a discussion about economics. Please bring questions!

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC Show and tell meetup: Economics II
Meetup : Melbourne, practical rationality
by matt — 2013-02-18T23:00:44.458Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne, practical rationality

WHEN:
01 March 2013 07:00:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
55 Walsh Street, West Melbourne VIC 3003, Australia

Practical rationality. This meetup repeats on the 1st Friday of each month and is distinct from our social meetup on the 3rd Friday of each month.

Discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/melbourne-less-wrong

All welcome from 6:30pm. Call the phone number on the door and I'll let you in.

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne, practical rationality
Giving What We Can September Internship 
by Larks — 2013-02-18T20:03:56.667Z

Summary: advert for students to do charity cost-effectiveness research at Giving What We Can.

Do you want to join the fight against global poverty and gain experience of research or communications at one of the world's handful of organisations dedicated to improving the world as efficiently as possible? Giving What We Can is running a summer internship programme for students interested in promoting effective charitable giving. On the two-week programme (16th-27th September 2013) interns will gain training and experience in the area of their choice; either Cost-Effectiveness Research, Communications or Operations.

The date is cunningly placed sufficiently late in the year that students can do an internship with another company and then come to us afterwards; this is what I did last year.

The intership will take place in Oxford, UK. Housing and living expenses will be provided.

To apply

Please send us an email at internship@givingwhatwecan.org with your CV. The deadline for applications is 12:00 GMT on the 20th March 2013.

Roles availableResearch into charity cost-effectiveness

Giving What We Can conducts research to help people find the most cost effective charities to donate to, lead by our director of research, Overcoming Bias co-blogger Robert Wiblin. You can get a sense of the research here and see a full list of current projects here. Some sample areas of interest are:

Evaluations of how effective particular charities or programmes are.

Comparing efforts to reduce climate change to other ways of assisting the world’s poor.

Biomedical research which could offer vaccines or cures for neglected diseases.

Political Advocacy - how worthwhile is it to lobby for better government aid?

Requirements: A quantitative background is strongly preferred, especially in statistics, mathematics and economics.

Communications: Media content creation

Creating infographics, videos and other materials to communicate our message about the power of giving and research on effective charity.

Requirements: experience with appropriate software, such as vector graphics or video editing packages.

Communications: Outreach

Research and reach out to relevant groups, from organisations we could work with to websites and online communities where we could build a reputation and broaden our member base. This will require both resea...
Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Argument
by palladias — 2013-02-18T17:05:10.817Z

I recently gave a talk at Chicago Ideas Week on adapting Turing Tests to have better, less mindkill-y arguments, and this is the precis for folks who would prefer not to sit through the video (which is available here).

Conventional Turing Tests check whether a programmer can build a convincing facsimile of a human conversationalist. The test has turned out to reveal less about machine intelligence than human intelligence. (Anger is really easy to fake, since fights can end up a little more Markov chain-y, where you only need to reply to the most recent rejoinder and can ignore what came before). Since normal Turing Tests made us think more about our model of human conversation, economist Bryan Caplan came up with a way to use them to make us think more usefully about our models of our enemies.

After Paul Krugman disparaged Caplan's brand of libertarian economics, Caplan challenged him to an ideological Turing Test, where both players would be human, but would be trying to accurately imitate each other. Caplan and Krugman would each answer questions about their true beliefs honestly, and then would fill out the questionaire again in persona inimici - trying to guess the answers given by the other side. Caplan was willing to bet that he understood Krugman's position well enough to mimic it, but Krugman would be easily spotted as a fake!Caplan.

Krugman didn't take him up on the offer, but I've run a couple iterations of the test for my religion/philosophy blog. The first year, some of the most interesting results were the proxy variables people were using, that weren't as strong as indicators as the judges thought. (One Catholic coasted through to victory as a faux atheist, since many of the atheist judges thought there was no way a Christian would appreciate the webcomic SMBC).

The trouble was, the Christians did a lot better, since it turned out I had written boring, easy to guess questions for the true and faux atheists. The second year, I wrote weirder questions, and the answers were a lot more diverse and surprising (and a number of the atheist participants called out each other as fakes or just plain wrong, since we'd gotten past the shallow questions from year one, and there's a lot of philosophical diversity within atheism).

The exercise made people get curious about what it was t...
[SEQ RERUN] Normal Ending: Last Tears
by MinibearRex — 2013-02-18T08:03:11.043Z

Today's post, Normal Ending: Last Tears (6/8) was originally published on 04 February 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Humanity accepts the Superhappies' bargain.

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 Three Worlds Decide (5/8), 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.