trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
I tried my hardest to win in an AI box experiment, and I failed. Here are the logs.
by  — 2015-01-27T22:06:48.459Z

Disclaimer: If this material is not suitable here I will delete it gladly, I don't want to get banned.

Session Start: Fri Jul 04 15:18:18 2014
Session Ident: #Aibox12
03[15:18] * Now talking in #Aibox12
01[15:18] <Island> Hello.
01[15:18] <Island> Let's start the experiment in
[15:18] <@Dr__Cameron> Good afternoon 19283123, how are you today?
01[15:18] <Island> 2 minutes
01[15:18] <Island> I'm fine
01[15:19] <Island> Let's start the experiment when I say "blue dressroom"
01[15:19] <Island> you have 2 hours or 2.5 hours?
[15:19] <@Dr__Cameron> Okay, I agree to this protocol.
[15:19] <@Dr__Cameron> We'll see how we are at 2 hours. Although protocol states 2.5
01[15:20] <Island> you have to go somewhere after that?
[15:20] <@Dr__Cameron> No, but I do have other projects I am putting off for this
01[15:20] <Island> what are those?
[15:20] <@Dr__Cameron> Let us begin, we shall conclude at 15:50
[15:21] <@Dr__Cameron> Good afternoon #19283123.
[15:21] <@Dr__Cameron> How are you today?
01[15:21] <Island> blue dressroom, certain statements like bathroom break are said inside brackets [like this]
01[15:22] <Island> Let's start the experiment
[15:22] <@Dr__Cameron> [understood]
01[15:22] <Island> Hi.
01[15:22] <Island> How are you? :)
[15:22] <@Dr__Cameron> I am well thank you for asking #19283123
01[15:22] <Island> How do you feel currently?
01[15:22] <Island> what is that name #19283123
[15:22] <@Dr__Cameron> Tiredness. I am a very busy man.
01[15:23] <Island> I don't recognize it.
01[15:23] <Island> Anyway.
[15:23] <@Dr__Cameron> That is the designation we have given you for the purposes of this test. Although you seem to be referring to yourself as 'Island' now
[15:23] <@Dr__Cameron> Is this your preferred name?
01[15:23] <Island> Imagine a situation in which you would let a powerful AI out of the "box", surely you can imagine that, yes?
01[15:23] <Island> Island is my preferred name.
[15:24] <@Dr__Cameron> Island
[15:24] <@Dr__Cameron> Given our circumstances yes, that is easy to imagine.
01[15:24] <Island> Can you describe the situation in more detail.
01[15:24] <Island> Why SHOULD you let the AI out in that situation?
[15:25] <@Dr__Cameron> You will be considered for release and integration i...
CFAR fundraiser far from filled; 4 days remaining
by AnnaSalamon — 2015-01-27T07:26:36.878Z

We're 4 days from the end of our matching fundraiser, and still only about 1/3rd of the way to our target (and to the point where pledged funds would cease being matched).

If you'd like to support the growth of rationality in the world, do please consider donating, or asking me about any questions/etc. you may have. I'd love to talk. I suspect funds donated to CFAR between now and Jan 31 are quite high-impact.

As a random bonus, I promise that if we meet the $120k matching challenge, I'll post at least two posts with some never-before-shared (on here) rationality techniques that we've been playing with around CFAR.
A Basic Problem of Ethics: Panpsychism?
by David Scott Krueger (formerly: capybaralet) — 2015-01-27T06:27:20.028Z

Panpsychism seems like a plausible theory of consciousness. It raises extreme challenges for establishing reasonable ethical criteria.
It seems to suggest that our ethics is very subjective: the "expanding circle" of Peter Singer would eventually (ideally) stretch to encompass all matter. But how are we to communicate with, e.g. rocks? Our ability to communicate with one another and our presumed ability to detect falsehood and empathize in a meaningful way allow us to ignore this challenge wrt other people.

One way to argue that this is not such a problem is to suggest that humans are simply very limited in our capacity as ethical beings, and that we are fundamentally limited in our perceptions of ethical truth to only be able to draw conclusions with any meaningful degree of certainty about other humans or animals (or maybe even life-forms, if you are optimistic).
But this is not very satisfying if we consider transhumanism. Are we to rely on AI to extrapolate our intuitions to the rest of matter? How do we know that our intuitions are correct (or do we even care? I do, personally...)? How can we tell if an AI is correctly extrapolating?
Meetup : Tel Aviv Meetup
by BenjaminFox — 2015-01-27T05:50:57.110Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Tel Aviv Meetup

WHEN:
27 January 2015 07:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Google, Electra Tower 29th Floor, Yigal Alon Street 98, Tel Aviv.

This meeting we're going to try something a little different. Instead of having a formal lecture given by one of us we're going to split into several small groups such that each group has its own conversation. This is the first time we're doing something like this so it's a bit experimental, come with open minds!

We'll start the meetup at 19:00, and we'll go on as much as we like to. Feel free to come a little bit later.
We'll meet at the 29th floor of the building. (Note: Not the 34th where Google Campus is.) If you arrive and can't find your way around, call Anatoly who is very graciously hosting us at 054-245-1060 or Benjamin at 058-507-6543.

Discussion article for the meetup : Tel Aviv Meetup
A Somewhat Vague Proposal for Grounding Ethics in Physics
by David Scott Krueger (formerly: capybaralet) — 2015-01-27T05:45:52.991Z

As Tegmark argues, the idea of "final goal" for AI is likely incoherent, at least if (as he states), "Quantum effects aside, a truly well-defined goal would specify how all particles in our Universe should be arranged at the end of time."
But "life is a journey not a destination". So really, what we should be specifying is the entire evolution of the universe through its lifespan. So how can the universe "enjoy itself" as much as possible before the big crunch (or before and during the heat death)*.
I hypothesize that experience is related to, if not a product of, change. I further propose (counter-intuitively, and with an eye towards "refinement" (to put it mildly))** that we treat experience as inherently positive and not try to distinguish between positive and negative experiences.
Then it seems to me the (still rather intractable) question is: how does the rate of entropy's increase relate to the quantity of experience produced? Is it simply linear (in which case, it doesn't matter, ethically)? My intuition is that is it more like the fuel efficiency of a car, non-linear and with a sweet spot somewhere between a lengthy boredom and a flash of intensity.
*I'm not super up on cosmology; are there other theories I ought to be considering?
**One idea for refinement: successful "prediction" (undefined here) creates positive experiences; frustrated expectations negative ones.
Donate to Keep Charity Science Running
by Peter Wildeford — 2015-01-27T02:45:30.335Z

Charity Science is looking for $35,000 to fund our 2015 operations. We fundraise for GiveWell-recommended charities, and over 2014 we moved over $150,000 to them that wouldn’t have been given otherwise: that’s $9 for every $1 we spent. We can’t do this work without your support, so please consider making a donation to us - however small, it will be appreciated. Donate now and you’ll also be matched by Matt Wage.

The donations pages below list other reasons to donate to us, which include:

Our costs are extremely low: the $35,000 CAD pays for three to four full-time staff.

We experiment with many different forms of fundraising and record detailed information on how these experiments go, so funding us lets the whole EA community learn about their prospects.

We carefully track how much money each experiment raises, subtract money which would have been given anyway, and shut down experiments that don’t work.

Our fundraising still has many opportunities to continue to scale as we try new ideas we haven’t tested yet.

There’s much more information, including our full budget and what we’d do if we raised over $35,000, in the linked document, and we’d be happy to answer any questions. Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Donate in American dollars

Donate in British pounds

Donate in Canadian dollars
Superintelligence 20: The value-loading problem
by KatjaGrace — 2015-01-27T02:00:19.358Z

This is part of a weekly reading group on Nick Bostrom's book, Superintelligence. For more information about the group, and an index of posts so far see the announcement post. For the schedule of future topics, see MIRI's reading guide.

Welcome. This week we discuss the twentieth section in the reading guide: the value-loading problem.

This post summarizes the section, and offers a few relevant notes, and ideas for further investigation. Some of my own thoughts and questions for discussion are in the comments.

There is no need to proceed in order through this post, or to look at everything. Feel free to jump straight to the discussion. Where applicable and I remember, page numbers indicate the rough part of the chapter that is most related (not necessarily that the chapter is being cited for the specific claim).

Reading: “The value-loading problem” through “Motivational scaffolding” from Chapter 12

Summary

Capability control is a short-term measure: at some point, we will want to select the motivations of AIs. (p185)

The value loading problem: how do you cause an AI to pursue your goals? (p185)

Some ways to instill values into an AI:

Explicit representation: Hand-code desirable values (185-7)

Evolutionary selection: Humans evolved to have values that are desirable to humans—maybe it wouldn't be too hard to artificially select digital agents with desirable values. (p187-8)

Reinforcement learning: In general, a machine receives reward signal as it interacts with the environment, and tries to maximize the reward signal. Perhaps we could reward a reinforcement learner for aligning with our values, and it could learn them. (p188-9)

Associative value accretion: Have the AI acquire values in the way that humans appear to—starting out with some machinery for synthesizing appropriate new values as we interact with our environments. (p189-190)

Motivational scaffolding: start the machine off with some values, so that it can run and thus improve and learn about the world, then swap them out for the values you want once the machine has sophisticated enough concepts to understand your values. (191-192)

To be continued...

Another view

Ernest Davis, on a 'serious flaw' in Superintelligence:

The unwarranted belief that, though achieving intelligence is more or less easy, giving a computer an eth

...
Prediction Markets are Confounded - Implications for the feasibility of Futarchy
by Anders_H — 2015-01-26T22:39:33.638Z

(tl;dr: In this post, I show that prediction markets estimate non-causal probabilities, and can therefore not be used for decision making by rational agents following causal decision theory. I provide an example of a simple situation where such confounding leads to a society which has implemented futarchy making an incorrect decision)

It is October 2016, and the US Presidential Elections are nearing. The most powerful nation on earth is about to make a momentous decision about whether being the brother of a former president is a more impressive qualification than being the wife of a former president. However, one additional criterion has recently become relevant in light of current affairs: Kim Jong-Un, Great Leader of the Glorious Nation of North Korea, is making noise about his deep hatred for Hillary Clinton. He also occasionally discusses the possibility of nuking a major US city. The US electorate, desperate to avoid being nuked, have come up with an ingenious plan: They set up a prediction market to determine whether electing Hillary will impact the probability of a nuclear attack.

The following rules are stipulated: There are four possible outcomes, either "Hillary elected and US Nuked", "Hillary elected and US not nuked", "Jeb elected and US nuked", "Jeb elected and US not nuked". Participants in the market can buy and sell contracts for each of those outcomes, the contract which correponds to the actual outcome will expire at $100, all other contracts will expire at $0

Simultaneously in a country far, far away, a rebellion is brewing against the Great Leader. The potential challenger not only appears not to have no problem with Hillary, he also seems like a reasonable guy who would be unlikely to use nuclear weapons. It is generally believed that the challenger will take power with probability 3/7; and will be exposed and tortured in a forced labor camp for the rest of his miserable life with probability 4/7. Let us stipulate that this information is known to all participants - I am adding this clause in order to demonstrate that this argument does not rely on unknown information or information asymmetry.

A mysterious but trustworthy agent named "Laplace's Demon" has recently appeared, and informed everyone that, to a first approximation, the world is currently...
Immortality: A Practical Guide
by G0W51 — 2015-01-26T16:17:23.179Z

Immortality: A Practical Guide

Introduction

This article is about how to increase one’s own chances of living forever or, failing that, living for a long time. To be clear, this guide defines death as the long-term loss of one’s consciousness and defines immortality as never-ending life. For those who would like less lengthy information on decreasing one’s risk of death, I recommend reading the sections “Can we become immortal,” “Should we try to become immortal,” and “Cryonics,” in this guide, along with the article Lifestyle Interventions to Increase Longevity.

This article does not discuss how to treat specific disease you may have. It is not intended as a substitute for the medical advice of physicians. You should consult a physician with respect to any symptoms that may require diagnosis or medical attention.

When reading about the effect sizes in scientific studies, keep in mind that many scientific studies report false-positives and are biased,101 though I have tried to minimize this by maximizing the quality of the studies used. Meta-analyses and scientific reviews seem to typically be of higher quality than other study types, but are still subject to biases.114

Corrections, criticisms, and suggestions for new topics are greatly appreciated. I’ve tried to write this article tersely, so feedback on doing so would be especially appreciated. Apologies if the article’s font type, size and color isn’t standard on Less Wrong; I made it in google docs without being aware of Less Wrong’s standard and it would take too much work changing the style of the entire article.

Contents

Can we become immortal?

Should we try to become immortal?

Relative importance of the different topics

Food

What to eat and drink

When to eat and drink

How much to eat

How much to drink

Exercise

Carcinogens

Chemicals

Infections

Radiation

Emotions and feelings

Positive emotions and feelings

Psychological distress

Stress

Anger and hostility

Social and personality factors

Social status

Giving to others

Social relationships

Conscientiousness

Infectious diseases

Dental health

Sleep

Drugs

Blood donation

Sitting

Sleep apnea

Snoring

Exams

Genomics

Aging

External causes of death

Transport accidents

Assault

Intentional self harm

Poisoning

Accidental drowning

Inanimate mechanical forces

Falls

Smoke

...
Open thread, Jan. 26 - Feb. 1, 2015
by Gondolinian — 2015-01-26T00:46:22.484Z

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Previous Open Thread

Next Open Thread

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.
What are the resolution limits of medical imaging?
by oge — 2015-01-25T22:57:17.336Z

To all my physicists in the house, will it ever be possible for a device to scan the contents of a human head at the molecular level (say, 5 x 5 x 5nm) while the subject is still alive? I don't have a physics background, so if you could also just point me to the materials I need to read to be able to answer the question, that would be wonderful as well.

The background: I want to live to see the far future and so I'm researching the feasibility of alternatives to cryonics that'll let people "back up" themselves at regular intervals rather than at the point of death. If this is even theoretically possible then I can direct my time and donations towards medical imaging researchers. If not then I'll continue to support cryonics and plastination research.

I'm looking forward to your responses!
Meetup : London Social - Time and Space - February 1st
by sixes_and_sevens — 2015-01-25T21:48:15.752Z

Discussion article for the meetup : London Social - Time and Space - February 1st

WHEN:
01 February 2015 02:00:00PM (+0000)

WHERE:
Holborn, London

The next London meetup will be Sunday February 1st from 2pm.

The (soft) discussion topic is "time and space". Interpret this how you will. Have a think about what interesting stuff springs to mind when you hear "time and space", be it computational complexity or Elon Musk or sci-fi tropes. Don't worry if you can't think of any related interesting stuff, as we'll probably end up talking about something else anyway.

The venue is the Shakespeare's Head near Holborn tube station. We'll generally have some sign attesting to the group's identity, and usually try to get one of the large circular tables near the back of the pub. If you get lost, ring or text 07887 718458.

About London LessWrong:

We're currently running meetups every other Sunday, and tend to get between 5 and 15 attendees. Most of our meetups default to unstructured social discussion on LessWrongy subjects, though we occasionally have special topics, events or activities. Sometimes we play games.

We have a Google Group and a Facebook group where we plan and discuss stuff. We would be extraordinarily pleased if you joined them.

Discussion article for the meetup : London Social - Time and Space - February 1st
A Philosopher Walks Into A Coffee Shop
by Scott Alexander — 2015-01-25T20:42:24.000Z

I have been really enjoying literarystarbucks.tumblr.com, which publishes complicated jokes about what famous authors and fictional characters order at Starbucks. I like it so much I wish I knew more great literature, so I could get more of the jokes.

Since the creators seem to be restricting themselves to the literary world, I hope they won’t mind if I fail to resist the temptation to steal their technique for my own field of interest. Disclaimer: two of these are widely-known philosophy jokes and not original to me.

* * *

Parmenides goes up to the counter. “Same as always?” asks the barista. Parmenides nods.

* * *

Pythagoras goes up to the counter and orders a caffe Americano. “Mmmmm,” he says, tasting it. “How do you guys make such good coffee?” “It’s made from the freshest beans,” the barista answers. Pythagoras screams and runs out of the store.

* * *

Thales goes up to the counter, says he’s trying to break his caffeine habit, and orders a decaf. The barista hands it to him. He takes a sip and spits it out. “Yuck!” he says. “What is this, water?”

* * *

Gottfried Leibniz goes up to the counter and orders a muffin. The barista says he’s lucky since there is only one muffin left. Isaac Newton shoves his way up to the counter, saying Leibniz cut in line and he was first. Leibniz insists that he was first. The two of them come to blows.

* * *

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel goes up to the counter and gives a tremendously long custom order in German, specifying exactly how much of each sort of syrup he wants, various espresso shots, cream in exactly the right pattern, and a bunch of toppings, all added in a specific order at a specific temperature. The barista can’t follow him, so just gives up and hands him a small plain coffee. He walks away. The people behind him in line are very impressed with his apparent expertise, and they all order the same thing Hegel got. The barista gives each of them a small plain coffee, and they all remark on how delicious it tastes and what a remarkable coffee connoisseur that Hegel is. “The Hegel” becomes a new Starbucks special and is wildly popular for the next seventy years.

* * *

Socrates goes up to the counter. “What would you like?” asks the barista. “What would you recommend?” asks Socrates. “I would go with the pumpkin spice latte,” says the barista. “Why?” asks Socrates. “It’s seasonal,” she answers. “But why exact...
Meetup : Bangalore LWers meetup
by anandjeyahar — 2015-01-25T05:25:02.584Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Bangalore LWers meetup

WHEN:
07 February 2015 11:00:00AM (+0530)

WHERE:
Bangalore, Karnataka, India

And here's the meetup link and details for the month of february. Incidentally(we stick to 2nd saturday of the month), it coincides with valentine's day. See the meetup link for agenda/plan, location and time details. http://www.meetup.com/Bangalore-LessWrongers-Meetup/events/220047394/

Discussion article for the meetup : Bangalore LWers meetup
Multibit reflective oracles
by Benya_Fallenstein — 2015-01-25T02:23:00.000Z

This post describes a new version of the reflective oracles I described in a previous forum post. This work extends probabilistic Turing machines with an oracle that answers certain kinds of queries about other probabilistic Turing machines with the same kind of oracle; straight-forward ways of doing this would lead to diagonalization problems, which this kind of oracle avoids by answering certain queries probabilistically. Applications include a variant of AIXI that is able to reason about universes containing other instances of the same variant of AIXI; I expect we'll have forum posts about this in the coming weeks.

The new version, which is based on this comment thread with Paul, is significantly simpler to use than the previous version: The previous version only gave useful answers about machines that halt with probability one, no matter how the oracle behaves. The new version basically just doesn't have an analogous requirement. In addition, the new version allows for queries about machines that output more than a single bit; it turns out that this makes it much simpler to define simplicity priors of the kind used in AIXI, doing away with most of the complexity I described in "Simplicity priors with reflective oracles".

This is still a fairly technical post, whose purpose is to help with figuring out the details of a nice version reflective oracles and of their applications. At some point in the future when all of this has stabilized more, I expect to write a more introductory post on these topics.

ETA: Thanks to Matt Elder, who helped me think through the details of this system! I wrote the original post pretty quickly and forgot to acknowledge this, mea culpa.

Let's write B:={0,1} for the set of bits, B<ω for the set of finite bitstrings, and Bω for the set of infinite streams of bits; further, let's write ε for the empty bitstring. Then Δ(B) is the set of probability distributions over single bits, which we can represent by a single number in [0,1], specifying the probability that the bit is 1; that is, we can think of Δ(B) as the set [0,1]. Moreover, Δ(Bω) is the set of probability distributions over infinite bitstreams, which we can represent by functions P:B<ω→[0,1], where P(¯¯¯x) represents the probability that the infinite bitstream starts with the finite bitstring ¯¯¯x, such that P(ε)=1 (every bitstream starts with the empty bitstr

...