trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : Bratislava meetup
by BarbaraB — 2012-10-11T17:32:04.002Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Bratislava meetup

WHEN: 20 October 2012 05:30:00PM (+0200)

WHERE: Venturska 9

Hi everybody,

the next LessWrong meetup will be in "The tea room under-ground" (Cajovna v podzemi) at Venturska 9, Bratislava, in the city center. For questions, contact me at barbarabrezna@gmail.com.

Directions for people coming from Vienna: I recommend the connection by Blaguss bus from the busstop "Wien,Erdbergstrasse 202" departing at 16:10. The bus is directed towards Bratislava airport, but take off one stop earlier at 17:10. The name of the bus-stop is "Bratislava, Nový most", also called "Most SNP" , translated as New Bridge or Bridge of Slovak National Uprising. (Why the hell did I choose the bus-stop, which has two synonymous names ???) Walk from there according to the map where "Most SNP" is marked with an arrow.

Other options: The transportation ticket for 15 minutes (price 0,70 €) should be enough from either train station or main bus station of the city. From the Main bus station "Autobusova stanica Mlynske Nivy", you can use the bus 70 to "Most SNP". From the Main train station "Hlavna stanica", take the bus 93 to the stop "Zochova". From the train station "Petrzalka", take the bus 93 or 94 to the stop "Zochova", or bus 91 or 191 to "Most SNP". "Most SNP", "Zochova" and tea-house are marked with an arrow on the map.

See You there !

Barbara

Click here for larger version.

Discussion article for the meetup : Bratislava meetup
[Link] Are Children Natural Bayesians?
by JQuinton — 2012-10-11T17:05:22.204Z

This recent article at Slate thinks so:

Why Your 4-Year-Old Is As Smart as Nate Silver

It turns out that even very young children reason [using Bayes Theorem]. For example, my student Tamar Kushnir, now at Cornell, and I showed 4-year-olds a toy and told them that blocks made it light up. Then we gave the kids a block and asked them how to make the toy light up. Almost all the children said you should put the block on the toy—they thought, sensibly, that touching the toy with the block was very likely to make it light up. That hypothesis had a high “prior.”

Then we showed 4-year-olds that when you put a block right on the toy it did indeed make it light up, but it did so only two out of six times. But when you waved a block over the top of the toy, it lit up two out of three times. Then we just asked the kids to make the toy light up.

The children adjusted their hypotheses appropriately when they saw the statistical data, just like good Bayesians—they were now more likely to wave the block over the toy, and you could precisely predict how often they did so. What’s more, even though both blocks made the machine light up twice, the 4-year-olds, only just learning to add, could unconsciously calculate that two out of three is more probable than two out of six. (In a current study, my colleagues and I have found that even 24-month-olds can do the same).

There also seems to be a reference to the Singularity Institute:

The Bayesian idea is simple, but it turns out to be very powerful. It’s so powerful, in fact, that computer scientists are using it to design intelligent learning machines, and more and more psychologists think that it might explain human intelligence.

(Of course, I don't know how many other AI researchers are using Bayes Theorem, so the author also might not have the SI in mind)

If children really are natural Bayesians, then why and how do you think we change?
[Link] Learning New Languages Helps The Brain Grow
by Yuu — 2012-10-11T08:03:14.779Z

http://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/o.o.i.s?news_item=5928&id=24890

According to Johan Mårtensson from Lund University, if you are learning new language quickly, it helps your brain to become bigger and increase its activity:

This finding came from scientists at Lund University, after examining young recruits with a talent for acquiring languages who were able to speak in Arabic, Russian, or Dari fluently after just 13 months of learning, before which they had no knowledge of the languages.

After analyzing the results, the scientists saw no difference in the brain structure of the control group. However, in the language group, certain parts of the brain had grown, including the hippocampus, responsible for learning new information, and three areas in the cerebral cortex.

And there is more:

One particular study from 2011 provided evidence that Alzheimer's was delayed 5 years for bilingual patients, compared to monolingual patients.
Meetup : Melbourne social meetup
by toner — 2012-10-11T07:05:17.494Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne social meetup

WHEN:
19 October 2012 07:00:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
see mailing list, Carlton VIC 3053 Australia

Melbourne's next social meetup is on Friday 19 October, 6:30 for 7pm, at my house. If you have any trouble working out the location or getting in, you can call me on 0412 996 288.

We'll get some snacks and organise some form of take-away for dinner. BYO drinks and games.

We always look forward to meeting new people!

This meetup is usually on the third Friday of the month. We also have a regular meetup about practical rationality on the first Friday of each month.

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne social meetup
[SEQ RERUN] Intelligence in Economics
by MinibearRex — 2012-10-11T04:16:09.807Z

Today's post, Intelligence in Economics was originally published on 30 October 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

There are a few connections between economics and intelligence, so economics might have something to contribute to a definition of intelligence.

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 Economic Definition of Intelligence, 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.
[Link] One in five American adults say they are atheist, agnostic or "nothing in particular"
by Pablo — 2012-10-10T23:45:17.260Z

A new study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life [executive summary; full report; New York Times cover story] found that 19.6% of adult Americans answered a question about their current religion by saying they were atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.” In 2007, the figure was 15.3%; in 1972, it was about 7%.

Some relevant quotes from the executive summary:

However, a new survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, conducted jointly with the PBS television program Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, finds that many of the country’s 46 million unaffiliated adults are religious or spiritual in some way. Two-thirds of them say they believe in God (68%). More than half say they often feel a deep connection with nature and the earth (58%), while more than a third classify themselves as “spiritual” but not “religious” (37%), and one-in-five (21%) say they pray every day. In addition, most religiously unaffiliated Americans think that churches and other religious institutions benefit society by strengthening community bonds and aiding the poor.

With few exceptions, though, the unaffiliated say they are not looking for a religion that would be right for them. Overwhelmingly, they think that religious organizations are too concerned with money and power, too focused on rules and too involved in politics.

The growth in the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans – sometimes called the rise of the “nones” – is largely driven by generational replacement, the gradual supplanting of older generations by newer ones. A third of adults under 30 have no religious affiliation (32%), compared with just one-in-ten who are 65 and older (9%). And young adults today are much more likely to be unaffiliated than previous generations were at a similar stage in their lives.

[T]he percentage of Americans who say they never doubt the existence of God has fallen modestly but noticeably over the past 25 years. In 1987, 88% of adults said they never doubt the existence of God. As of 2012, this figure was down 8 percentage points to 80%.

The growth of the unaffiliated has taken place across a wide variety of demographic groups. The percentage of unaffiliated respondents has ticked up among men and women, college graduates and those without

...
Abandoning Cached Selves to Re-Write My Source Code Partially, I've Become Unstable
by diegocaleiro — 2012-10-10T17:47:51.136Z

For very long I've been caring a lot for the preferences of my past selves.

Rules I established in childhood became sacred, much like laws are (can't find post in the sequences in which Yudkowsky is amazed by the fact that some things are good just because they are old), and that caused interesting unusual life choices, such as not wearing formal shoes and suits.

I was spending more and more time doing what my previous selves thought I should, in a sense, I was composed mostly of something akin to what Anna Salomon and Steve Rayhawk called Cached Selves.

That meant more dedication to long term issues (Longevity, Cryonics, Immortality). More dedication to spacially vast issues (Singularity, X-risk, Transhumanism).

Less dedication to the parts of one's self that have a shorter life-span. Such as the instantaneous gratification of philosophical traditions of the east (buddhism, hinduism) and some hedonistic traditions of the west (psychedelism, selfish instantaneous hedonism, sex and masturbation-ism, drugs-isms, thrill-isms).

Also less dedication to time spans such as three months. Personal projects visible, completable and doable in such scales.

This process of letting your past decisions trump your current decisions/feelings/emotions/intuitions was very fruitful for me, and for very long I thought (and still think) it made my life greater than the life of most around me (schoolmates, university peers, theater friends etc... not necessarily the people I choose to hang out with, after all, I selected those!).

At some point more recently, and I'm afraid this might happen to the Effective Altruist community and the immortalist community of Less Wrong, I started feeling overwhelmed, a slave of "past me". Even though a lot of "past me" orders were along the lines of "maximize other people's utility, help everyone the most regardless of what those around you are doing".

Then the whole edifice crumbled, and I took 2 days off of all of life to go to a hotel in the woods and think/write alone to figure out what my current values are.

I wrote several pages, thought about a lot of things. More importantly, I quantified the importance I give to different time-spans of my self (say 30 points to life-goals, 16 points to instantaneous gratification, 23 points to 3MonthGoals etc...). I also quantified differently sized circles of...
[Link] "Fewer than X% of Americans know Y"
by Nisan — 2012-10-10T16:59:38.114Z

How many times have you heard a claim from a somewhat reputable source like "only 28 percent of Americans are able to name one of the constitutional freedoms, yet 52 percent are able to name at least two Simpsons family members"?

Mark Liberman over at Language Log wrote up a post showing how even when such claims are based on actual studies, the methodology is biased to exaggerate ignorance:

The way it works is that the survey designers craft a question like the following (asked at a time when William Rehnquist was the Chief Justice of the United States):

"Now we have a set of questions concerning various public figures. We want to see how much information about them gets out to the public from television, newspapers and the like….
What about William Rehnquist – What job or political office does he NOW hold?"

The answers to such open-ended questions are recorded — as audio recordings and/or as notes taken by the interviewer — and these records are coded, later on, by hired coders.

The survey designers give these coders very specific instructions about what counts as right and wrong in the answers. In the case of the question about William Rehnquist, the criteria for an answer to be judged correct were mentions of both "chief justice" and "Supreme Court". These terms had to be mentioned explicitly, so all of the following (actual answers) were counted as wrong:

Supreme Court justice. The main one.
He’s the senior judge on the Supreme Court.
He is the Supreme Court justice in charge.
He’s the head of the Supreme Court.
He’s top man in the Supreme Court.
Supreme Court justice, head.
Supreme Court justice. The head guy.
Head of Supreme Court.
Supreme Court justice head honcho.

Similarly, the technically correct answer ("Chief Justice of the United States") would also have been scored as wrong (I'm not certain whether it actually occurred or not in the survey responses).

If, every time you heard a claim of the form "Only X% of Americans know Y" you thought "there's something strange about that", then you get 1 rationality point. If you thought "I don't believe that", then you get 2 rationality points.
[Link] Think Bayes: Bayesian Statistics Made Simple
by Jayson_Virissimo — 2012-10-10T08:11:30.369Z

Allen B. Downey has made a rough draft version of his new introduction to Bayesian statistics textbook available for free online. You can download the pdf version here or read the HTML here.

Think Bayes is an introduction to Bayesian statistics using computational methods. This version of the book is a rough draft. I am making this draft available for comments, but it comes with the warning that it is probably full of errors.
Clarification: Behaviourism & Reinforcement
by Zaine — 2012-10-10T05:30:21.494Z

Disclaimer: The following is but a brief clarification on what the human brain does when one's behaviour is reinforced or punished. Thorough, exhaustive, and scholarly it is not.
Summary: Punishment, reinforcement, etc. of a behaviour creates an association in the mind of the affected party between the behaviour and the corresponding punishment, reinforcement, etc., the nature of which can only be known by the affected party. Take care when reinforcing or punishing others, as you may be effecting an unwanted association.

I've noticed the behaviourist concept of reinforcement thrown around a great deal on this site, and am worried a fair number of those who frequent it develop a misconception or are simply ignorant of how reinforcement affects humans' brains, and why it is practically effective.
In the interest of time, I'm not going to go into much detail on classical black-box behaviourism and behavioural neuroscience; Luke already covered the how one can take advantage of positive reinforcement. Negative reinforcement and punishment are also important, but won't be covered here.

~

The Couple has a three year old son. They are worried their son ingests too few and poorly varied micronutrients. They want their son to become a world conqueror someday, so a poor diet just won't do. Their son loves DragonBox. Every time they all sit down for a meal, their son will barely consume anything, so eager is he to play more DragonBox.
He also very much likes Dragons.
The Couple decides in favor of serving their son a balanced meal consisting solely of micronutrient dense, bioabsorptive foodstuffs. They tell him, "Spawn, you must fletcherise and swallow all that is on your plate if you wish to play more DragonBox." The son understands, and acts accordingly; he eats all that is put before him so he may DragonBox.
What happens in the mind of The Couple's son when he is told thus? His brain creates a new association, or connexion, of concepts[2]; in this case, 'eating all that is put before me' becomes associated with 'more DragonBox!' Perhaps, though, he associates 'more DragonBox!' with a different concept: 'eating green things', say, or 'eating brown things'.
In other words, one can never be certain of the precise association another creates when they are reinforced or punished.

[3]

I think I can make this explanation clearer.
Once a man named Watson wanted ...
[SEQ RERUN] Economic Definition of Intelligence
by MinibearRex — 2012-10-10T04:17:43.044Z

Today's post, Economic Definition of Intelligence? was originally published on 29 October 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Could economics help provide a definition and a general measure of intelligence?

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 Efficient Cross-Domain Optimization, 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.
comment to dude
by moridinamael — 2012-10-09T22:05:48.090Z

Hi,

Things have settled down somewhat and I'm still interested in talking with you about this project.

I suppose, since you've told me some of your ideas in some detail, I should tell you some of mine, so we can get a back-and-forth going.

My initial vision was essentially to create Bayesian Planning Tool. The central idea is that you input your desired goals and outcomes, and then you start working your way towards those outcomes by building a decision-tree framework, assisted by the tool.

Let's say you have a goal of winning some particular contest, for example running a marathon. This gets input explicitly as a terminal goal. Next you break this goal down into the steps needed to reach the goal, but you do it in a probablistic fashion. For example, your intermediate goals are various training and nutritional sub-goals. If one of your sub-goals is "run
Meetup : West LA Meetup - Reasoning About Politics
by  — 2012-10-09T20:23:27.190Z

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup - Reasoning About Politics

WHEN:
10 October 2012 01:06:09PM (-0700)

WHERE:
10850 West Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90064

When: 7:00pm Wednesday, October 10th.

Where: The Westside Tavern in the upstairs Wine Bar (all ages welcome), located inside the Westside Pavillion on the second floor, right by the movie theaters. The entrance sign says "Lounge".

Parking is free for 3 hours.

Discussion Topic: Many on this website would agree that politics is the mind-killer. But there are many important decisions we have to make that concern politics, and engaging in dialogue is a valuable strategy for figuring out complex topics. So how can we successfully talk and reason about politics? What precautions should we take? How do we talk politics with someone who hasn't stopped to think about this sort of thing?

There will be general discussion too, and there are lots of interesting recent posts (also check out LW's sister site, Overcoming Bias ). But don't worry if you don't have time to read any articles, or even if you've never read any Less Wrong! Bring a friend! The atmosphere is casual, and good, intelligent conversation with friendly people is guaranteed.

I will bring a whiteboard with Bayes' Theorem written on it.

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup - Reasoning About Politics
Signs you're on LW too much
by Eneasz — 2012-10-09T18:02:03.685Z

In the style of Jeff Foxworthy's "You Might Be A Redneck If..."

If you're waking up and the characters in your dream start asking you to stay asleep a bit longer because they're running on your brain and they don't want to be consigned to oblivion just yet... you might be on LW too much.

Happened to me this morning, it was kinda weird, and I felt kinda sad. In fairness, it might just be my subconscious brain telling me I need to get more damn sleep.

Anyone have similar stories?
Raising the forecasting waterline (part 1)
by Morendil — 2012-10-09T15:49:57.335Z

Previously: Raising the waterline, see also: 1001 PredictionBook Nights (LW copy), Techniques for probability estimates

Low waterlines imply that it's relatively easy for a novice to outperform the competition. (In poker, as discussed in Nate Silver's book, the "fish" are those who can't master basic techniques such as folding when they have a poor hand, or calculating even roughly the expected value of a pot.) Does this apply to the domain of making predictions? It's early days, but it looks as if a smallish set of tools - a conscious status quo bias, respecting probability axioms when considering alternatives, considering references classes, leaving yourself a line of retreat, detaching from sunk costs, and a few more - can at least place you in a good position.

A bit of backstory

Like perhaps many LessWrongers, my first encounter with the notion of calibrated confidence was "A Technical Explanation of Technical Explanation". My first serious stab at publicly expressing my own beliefs as quantified probabilities was the Amanda Knox case - an eye-opener, waking me up to how everyday opinions could correspond to degrees of certainty, and how these had consequences. By the following year, I was trying to improve my calibration for work-related purposes, and playing with various Web sites, like PredictionBook or Guessum (now defunct).

Then the Good Judgment Project was announced on Less Wrong. Like several of us, I applied, unexpectedly got in, and started taking forecasting more seriously. (I tend to apply myself somewhat better to learning when there is a competitive element - not an attitude I'm particularly proud of, but being aware of that is useful.)

The GJP is both a contest and an experimental study, in fact a group of related studies: several distinct groups of researchers (1,2,3,4) are being funded by IARPA to each run their own experimental program. Within each, small or large number of participants have been recruited, allocated to different experimental conditions, and encouraged to compete with each other (or even, as far as I know, for some experimental conditions, collaborate with each other). The goal is to make predictions about "world events" - and if possible to get them more right, collectively, than we would individually.1

Tool 1: Favor the status quo

The first hint I got that my approach to forecasting needed ...
[SEQ RERUN] Efficient Cross-Domain Optimization
by MinibearRex — 2012-10-09T05:57:48.682Z

Today's post, Efficient Cross-Domain Optimization was originally published on 28 October 2008 . A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

To speak of intelligence, rather than optimization power, we need to divide optimization power by the resources needed, or the amount of prior optimization that had to be done on the system.

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 Measuring Optimization Power, 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.