trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Chatbots or set answers, not WBEs
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2015-09-08T17:17:45.908Z

A putative new idea for AI control; index here.

In a previous post, I talked about using a WBE to define a safe output for a reduced impact AI.

I've realised that the WBE isn't needed. Its only role was to ensure that the AI's output could have been credibly produced by something other than the AI - "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that." is unlikely to be the output of a random letter generator.

But a whole WBE is not needed. If the output is short, a chatbot with access to a huge corpus of human responses could function well. We can specialise it in the direction we need - if we are asking for financial advice, we can mandate a specialised vocabulary or train it on financial news sources.

So instead of training the reduced impact AI to behave as the 'best human advisor', we are are training it to behave as the 'luckiest chatbot'. This allows to calculate odds with greater precision, and has the advantage of no needing to wait for a WBE.

For some questions, we can do even better. Suppose we have a thousand different stocks, and are asking which one would increase in value the most during the coming year. The 'chatbot' here is simply an algorithm that picks a stock at random. So we now have an exact base rate - 1/1000 - and predetermined answers from the AI.

[EDIT:] Another alternative is to get online users to submit answers to the question. Then the AI selects the best answer from the choices. And if the AI is not turned on, a random answer is selected.
Median utility rather than mean?
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2015-09-08T16:35:59.533Z

tl;dr A median maximiser will expect to win. A mean maximiser will win in expectation. As we face repeated problems of similar magnitude, both types take on the advantage of the other. However, the median maximiser will turn down Pascal's muggings, and can say sensible things about distributions without means.

Prompted by some questions from Kaj Sotala, I've been thinking about whether we should use the median rather than the mean when comparing the utility of actions and policies. To justify this, see the next two sections: why the median is like the mean, and why the median is not like the mean.

Why the median is like the mean

The main theoretic justifications for the use of expected utility - hence of means - are the von Neumann Morgenstern axioms. Using the median obeys the completeness and transitivity axioms, but not the continuity and independence ones.

It does obey weaker forms of continuity; but in a sense, this doesn't matter. You can avoid all these issues by making a single 'ultra-choice'. Simply list all the possible policies you could follow, compute their median return, and choose the one with the best median return. Since you're making a single choice, independence doesn't apply.

So you've picked the policy πm with the highest median value - note that to do this, you need only know an ordinal ranking of worlds, not their cardinal values. In what way is this like maximising expected utility? Essentially, the more options and choices you have - or could hypothetically have - the closer this policy must be to expected utility maximalisation.

Assume u is a utility function compatible with your ordinal ranking of the worlds. Then πu = 'maximise the expectation of u' is also a policy choice. If we choose πm, we get a distribution dmu of possible values of u. Then E(u|πm) is within the absolute deviation (using dmu) of the median value of dmu. This absolute deviation always exists for any distribution with an expectation, and is itself bounded by the standard deviation, if it exists.

Thus maximising the median is like maximising the mean, with an error depending on the standard deviation. You can see it as a risk averse utility maximising policy (I know, I know - risk aversion is supposed to go in defining the utility, not in maximising it. Read on!). And as we face more and more choices, the standard deviation ...
Meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Short Talks
by rocurley — 2015-09-08T13:06:57.051Z

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Short Talks

WHEN:
14 September 2015 06:15:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
1061 Market St #4, San Francisco, CA 94103

We'll be meeting to give/listen to short talks. Planning isn't necessary: these are not expected to be polished.

I can be reached at 301-458-0764 if you need help getting in. As always, feel free to show up late.

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Short Talks
Need help with organizing philosophy event
by LizzardWizzard — 2015-09-08T12:19:55.108Z

Hi LessWrong, it is my first post here, and I'll be asking for help outright. In my local city I am willing to help with organization of Philosophy Festival. The concept is so and so that there will be 4 Platonic steps of knowledge, and one of them is going to be closely associated with technology and future of humanity, for which your obedient servant is responsible. The audience is going to be very broad, so many concepts obvious for our community would be if not completely unknown, then very vaguely realised by most of the those present. Edutainment is the key feature, people should not get tired of too technical stuff (it is philosophy event after all) and I see the output as a cocktail of talks, visual perfomances and engaging activities.

I am most likely willing to include:

talk on cognitive biases (mostly entertaining based on sequences, Kahneman&Tversky and Dan Ariely books) by me

talk on human augmentation (maybe presented by a member of biohacking community, however not very easy to find one in Russia so far)

talk on artificial intelligence by one of the professors of Technology Institute

quests on Oculus Rift

3d video-mapping

MindFlex tournament

Portable planetarium

I would be delighted to hear your ideas, if you have any contacts of various experts in those fields who may be willing to participate or give a talk (this applies mainly, but not fully to Russian members, International guests are also very welcome, but it is a coinflip so far if we are going to find sponsors to afford expensive riders) please PM me or write your suggestions in comments

UPDATE: event is delayed and will be held at summer, your suggestions about any possible guests are welcome

Venue - St.Petersburg, Russia
[LINK] Waitbutwhy article on the history and future of space exploration, SpaceX and more
by LizzardWizzard — 2015-09-08T11:14:43.067Z

Epic work, it's always fascinates me when author explores the topic so deep, that doesn't know where to begin, so finally starts with the whole history of the universe or the existence of human race.

http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-colonize-mars.html
Feedback on popularizing rationality-informed strategies for making major financial decisions 
by Gleb_Tsipursky — 2015-09-08T02:29:27.273Z

As part of my broader project of popularizing rationality and raising the sanity waterline, I'm writing a blog about how to make a major financial decision more rationally. The audience we're targeting are educated people into self-improvement, so the blog post, as all of our other content, is couched in that language and style. Any feedback on how to improve the blog to make the blog more clear and emotionally evocative, and thus better suited to spread rationality among a broad audience, would be helpful, as would specific comments on the methodology described. The blog draft itself is below the solid line. Thanks!

P.S. The blog was inspired by this earlier LW discussion post.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Avoid Emotional Traps for Your Happiness!

That backyard was simply gorgeous. Entering it was like going into a magic grove. Lush and shady trees spread their branches around you and protect you from the summer’s heat. Oh, and how beautiful the leaves would get in the fall. Can you imagine all the range of colors that would emerge – different shades of red, yellow, and orange?

The image of that backyard was my single most vivid experience looking for a new house after my wife and I decided to move. It was the strongest impression left after our day of intense house shopping when we were looking at the finalists on our list. I imagined myself lounging in a hammock in the shade of the trees all day, experiencing the calm of a majestic forest, except in the middle of a city. Yet unlike a forest or a public park, it was private, and could be all ours! Exhausted and excited at the end of that long day, my wife and I discussed our top choices, and the backyard was the clincher for both of us. We told our realtor to put in a bid on that house, and couldn’t wait to move in. Little did we know, the backyard was a trap!

Ok, so that might have been a bit overly dramatic. We weren’t going to be swarmed by the Empire’s starfighters in that house. However, it was indeed a trap for our decision-making processes.

Why is that? Here’s an example of similar trap, see if you can spot it.

Doesn’t that Toyota FJ Cruiser look great going into the rugged peaks of the San Juan mountains? Yeah, it’s perfect there. Indeed, Toyota ...
Reading group for Calculus by Spivak
by AlexZ — 2015-09-07T23:05:56.430Z

I am getting started reading Calculus by Spivak. (It is a rigorous textbook on Calculus that flirts with Real Analysis) I plan on moving fast, especially on the first few chapters which I read a few months back before refocusing on something else. Are there LWers who want to join in on the fun? If you are in the bay area, we could get together occasionally to do problems and help each other out.
Meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Group Debugging
by rocurley — 2015-09-07T07:10:07.103Z

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Group Debugging

WHEN:
07 September 2015 06:15:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
1390 Market St, San Francisco, CA 94103

We'll be meeting to try and solve each others problems! As usual, call 301-458-0764 to be let in.

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Group Debugging
Mistakes #4: breaking Chesterton’s fence in the presence of bull
by KatjaGrace — 2015-09-07T03:01:30.000Z

(Mistakes #1, #2, #3)

Lots of prominent activities don’t immediately make pragmatic sense. I mean, they make sense in the sense that you want to do them, but not in the sense that you can give an explicit account of why you want to do them.

For instance, visiting family in holidays. For one thing, why do we even have holidays? For a few days, and not on other days? And why eat turkeys or champagne then, and not eat them the rest of the time? For another thing, why do we have families? And why see your family exactly that week? For those who like their families, is that the most convenient week? Or do people really need to coordinate in holding family dinner at the same time as people not in their families? For those who don’t like their families, why go to so much trouble to see people whose only special feature is that you were already forced to spend too much time with them decades ago? Also, why guess what someone else wants you to buy for them, while they spend the same amount on a guess for you? And why does everything have to be decorated in colors and sparklinesses that nobody during more sober times finds aesthetically pleasing?

As a young person, learning about the world, you can respond to this sort of thing in at least two ways. One option is to go along with the things. Perhaps you have great trust in society. Perhaps you don’t notice. Perhaps you have little curiosity or passion for improving the world. Perhaps you have heard of Chesterton’s fence.

Another option is to politely disregard any of the things that don’t make apparent sense, and redesign your life according to reason. Or rudely disregard any of the things that don’t make sense, if you don’t see the use in politeness! If you see no reason for eating dinner before dessert, or exchanging gifts, or doing well in school, then you just don’t do those things.

I have a soft spot for the social innovator, who sees the people needlessly toiling for senseless or forgotten goals and is willing to face social censure to make a better world. However I think young, intelligent people often make mistakes this way. It’s not clear to me that these mistakes can be avoided without giving up a valuable attitude, but my guess is that some can.

There are at least three closely related mistakes: breaking down Chesterton’s fence because you don’t kn...
Open thread 7th september - 13th september
by Elo — 2015-09-06T22:27:10.999Z

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

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 is the best way to develop a strong sense of having something to protect
by ChristianKl — 2015-09-06T21:37:10.416Z

In HPMOR Eliezer makes "Something to Protect" Harry's power that the Dark Lord doesn't have. In Posture for Mental Arts Valentine from CFAR argues that it's likely a key part of having proper mental posture.

Did any of you make a conscious attempt to develop this sense of having something to protect? If so what worked for you? What didn't work?

Is there relevant academic research on the topic that's useful to know?
Make your bad habits the villains
by AshwinV — 2015-09-06T09:20:43.050Z

An often effective learning technique is the memory palace. The reason it works is because humans are simply better at remembering long routes than they are at memorizing long lists of abstract words, numbers etc. We have evolved in this fashion.

Apparently, humans are just inherently better at some things than at others.

In[this link](http://lesswrong.com/lw/31i/have_no_heroes_and_no_villains/), PhilGoetz argues that making heroes and villains out of people is a natural tendency. He views it as one of the habits that can be de-programmed, but requires effort - "a conscious effort to shatter the good guy, bad guy narrative".

But can we do better than simply de-program this tendency? Can we put it to use the way, the memory palace has been subverted to our own end?

[Anthropomorphism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropomorphism) to the rescue.

Make that short-tempered habit of yours, the alcoholic wife-beater that you loath. Make your habit of procrastination, the lazy employee in the office who never gets things done and gets his whole team into trouble. Make your deepest insecurities, the most despicable version of Peter Pettigrew that you have come across.

See if it works. Let me know in the comments section.
Residing in the mortal realm
by So8res — 2015-09-06T03:00:00.000Z
Link: https://mindingourway.com/residing-in-the-mortal-realm/

The last sevenish posts describe the main tools I have for removing guilt-based motivation. The common thread running through them can be summed up as follows: Reside in the mortal realm.

Many people hold themselves to a very different standard than they hold others. They hold themselves accountable for failing to do the psychologically impossible. They fret over past mistakes and treat themselves as failed gods, rather than ambitious monkeys. This condemning-of-the-self can lead to great guilt, with all its negative effects.

My suggestion for dealing with guilt, roughly speaking, is to first focus your guilt, by dispelling the guilt that comes from not doing what other people think you should or from from false obligations, and shifting all your guilt into guilt about the fact that you have not yet made the future how you want it to be. Then, once your guilt is focused there, remember that you are a denizen of the mortal realm.

In the past, you have failed to act as you wished to act. You have failed to make the best available choices. But these facts have little bearing on what you do next. They have some bearing, insofar as your memories still hold lessons that can teach you about how to better steer yourself to steer the world, but they do not say anything about the color of your soul. They are simply the background knowledge against which you move forwards, from here, looking only towards the future.

You are a mortal, who often struggles to follow their own will, and your actions set the course of the entire future. Instead of berating yourself for your shortcomings, figure out how to do the best you can given the shortcomings — sometimes by spending time and effort to fix them (mere willpower seldom suffices), and sometimes by taking them as given and working around them.

Be a mere mortal, and do the best you can anyway. Learn everything your can from your mistakes, and then forgive yourself your sins, and look only to how much better you can make the future (knowing what you know now about how you perform in different situations).

Guilt has no place among mortals: we already know we're fallible. We don't need to suffer over that fact: our failings provide only information about what to do next, if we want to steer the future.

Over the last few months, three different people have informed me that I broke their motivation systems. In short, one found themselve...
making notes - an instrumental rationality process.
by Elo — 2015-09-05T22:51:46.994Z

The value of having notes. Why do I make notes.

Story time!

At one point in my life I had a memory crash. Which is to say once upon a time I could remember a whole lot more than I was presently remembering. I recall thinking, "what did I have for breakfast last Monday? Oh no! Why can't I remember!". I was terrified. It took a while but eventually I realised that remembering what I had for breakfast last Monday was:

not crucial to the rest of my life

not crucial to being a function human being

I was not sure if I usually remember what I ate last Monday; or if this was the first time I tried to recall it with such stubbornness to notice that I had no idea.

After surviving my first teen-life crisis I went on to realise a few things about life and about memory:

I will not be remembering everything forever.

Sometimes I forget things that I said I would do. Especially when the number of things I think I will do increases past 2-3 and upwards to 20-30.

Don't worry! There is a solution!

As someone at the age of mid-20s who is already forgetting things; a friendly mid-30 year old mentioned that in 10 years I will have 1/3rd more life to be trying to remember as well. Which should also serve as a really good reason why you should always comment your code as you go; and why you should definitely write notes. "Past me thought future me knew exactly what I meant even though past me actually had no idea what they were going on about".

The foundation of science.

Observation

There are many things that could be considered the foundations of science. I believe that one of the earliest foundations you can possibly engage in is observation.

Evidence

In a more-than-goldfish form; observation means holding information. It means keeping things for review till later in your life; either at the end of this week; month or year. Observation is only the start. Writing it down makes it evidence. Biased, personal, scrawl, (bad) evidence all the same. If you want to be more effective at changing your mind; you need to know what your mind says.

Review

It's great to make notes. That's exactly what I am saying. It goes further though. Take notes and then review them. Weekly; monthly; yearly. Unsure about where you are going? Know where you have come from. With that you can move forward with better purpose.

My note taking process:

1. get a notebook.

This picture...
[Link] Rationality-informed approaches in the media 
by Gleb_Tsipursky — 2015-09-05T16:09:02.739Z

As part of a broader project of promoting rationality, Raelifin and I had some luck in getting media coverage of rationality-informed approaches to probabilistic thinking (1, 2), mental health (1, 2), and reaching life goals through finding purpose and meaning (1, 2). The media includes mainstream media such as the main newspaper in Cleveland, OH; reason-oriented media such as Unbelievers Radio; student-oriented media such as the main newspaper for Ohio State University; and self improvement-oriented media such as the Purpose Revolution.

This is part of our strategy to reach out both to mainstream and to niche groups interested in a specific spin on rationality-informed approaches to winning at life. I wanted to share these here, and see if any of you had suggestions for optimizations of our performance, connections with other media channels both mainstream and nice, and any other thoughts on improving outreach. Thanks!
Rudimentary Categorization of Less Wrong Topics
by ScottL — 2015-09-05T07:32:45.992Z

I find the below list to be useful, so I thought I would post it. This list includes short abstracts of all of the wiki items and a few other topics on less wrong. I grouped the items into some rough categories just to break up the list. I tried to put the right items into the right categories, but there may be some items that can be in multiple categories or that would be better off in a different category. The wiki page from which I got all the items is here.

The categories are:

Property Attribution

Barriers,biases, fallacies, impediments and problems

Techniques/concepts

Epistemic

Barriers,biases, fallacies, impediments and problems

Techniques/concepts

Instrumental

Barriers,biases, fallacies, impediments and problems

Techniques/concepts

Positions

Property Attribution

Barriers, biases, fallacies, impediments and problems

Affective death spiral - positive attributes of a theory, person, or organization combine with the Halo effect in a feedback loop, resulting in the subject of the affective death spiral being held in higher and higher regard.

Anthropomorphism - the error of attributing distinctly human characteristics to nonhuman processes.

Bystander effect - a social psychological phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to offer help in an emergency situation when other people are present.

Connotation - emotional association with a word. You need to be careful that you are not conveying different connotation, then you mean to.

Correspondence bias (also known as the fundamental attribution error) - is the tendency to overestimate the contribution of lasting traits and dispositions in determining people's behavior, as compared to situational effects.

Death Spirals and the Cult Attractor - Cultishness is an empirical attractor in human groups, roughly an affective death spiral, plus peer pressure and outcasting behavior, plus (quite often) defensiveness around something believed to have been perfected

Detached lever fallacy –the assumption that something simple for one system will be simple for others. This assumption neglects to take into account that something may only be simple because of complicated underlying machinery which is triggered by a simple action like pulling a lever. Adding this lever to something else won’t allow the action to occur because the underlying complicated machinery is not there.

Giant cheesecake fallacy- o

...