trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Request for a cryonics decision flowchart
by curiousepic — 2012-09-12T23:11:46.046Z

After occasionally researching cryonics over the past couple years, I remain confused about what happens certain situations. Could we create, collaboratively or otherwise, a comprehensive flowchart or decision tree that represents what options exist if, for example, one is a member of CI, but has not yet funded the procedure, and enters a life-threatening coma? Or which situations one needs to fund SA for standby or transport?

This or something like it seems like low-hanging fruit for preventing cryocrastination, at least in my case - I want to fully understand the system before investing in it.
Under-acknowledged Value Differences
by Wei Dai — 2012-09-12T22:02:19.263Z

I've been reading a lot of the recent LW discussions on politics and gender, and noticed that people rarely bring up or explicitly acknowledge that different people affected by some political or gender issue have different values/preferences, and therefore solving the problem involves a strong element of bargaining and is not just a matter of straightforward optimization. Instead, we tend to talk as if there is some way to solve the problem that's best for everyone, and that rational discussion will bring us closer to finding that one best solution.

For example, when discussing gender-related problems, one solution may be generally better for men, while another solution may be generally better for women. If people are selfish, then they will each prefer the solution that's individually best for them, even if they can agree on all of the facts. (It's unclear whether people should be selfish, but it seems best to assume that most are, for practical purposes.)

Unfortunately, in bargaining situations, epistemic rationality is not necessarily instrumentally rational. In general, convincing others of a falsehood can be useful for moving the negotiated outcome closer to one's own preferences and away from others', and this may be done more easily if one honestly believes the falsehood. (One of these falsehoods may be, for example, "My preferred solution is best for everyone.") Given these (subconsciously or evolutionarily processed) incentives, it seems reasonable to think that the more solving a problem resembles bargaining, the more likely we are to be epistemicaly irrationality when thinking and talking about it.

If we do not acknowledge and keep in mind that we are in a bargaining situation, then we are less likely to detect such failures of epistemic rationality, especially in ourselves. We're also less likely to see that there's an element of Prisoner's Dilemma in participating in such debates: your effort to convince people to adopt your preferred solution is costly (in time and in your and LW's overall sanity level) but may achieve little because someone else is making an opposite argument. Both of you may be better off if neither engaged in the debate.
Living accommodations for my possibly deconverted Mormon friend
by Plubbingworth — 2012-09-12T20:35:47.560Z

Hello. I need a bit of advice, and I'm not quite sure where to put this.

Ummm, well, here's the deal. I have a friend, my age, who recently prematurely ended his Mormon missionary trip (from Knoxville, TN to... uh... Eastern California?) for his own reasons, and has asked for my help. Seeing as this person is like a brother to me (the two of us have known each other for all of our twenty years), he has asked me for advice on living accommodations, as he does not want to return to his parent's home. I'm not even sure they would let him, as they were very serious about his mission.

He's perfectly welcome to stay with me, but getting him back on his feet is a must. And I don't think either of us know how to go about figuring this out.

His reasons are currently known only to himself, so I don't know if it is based on misgivings about his church, or personal problems. Er, assuming the two are even different. Apparently I'm going to be the recipient of some venting from him.

It might not have been a good idea to ask Less Wrong this (I guess), but if anyone could direct me to a more... appropriate... website or service for these matters, I would appreciate it.
Meetup : Melbourne social meetup
by toner — 2012-09-12T20:07:49.879Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne social meetup

WHEN:
21 September 2012 07:00:00PM (+1000)

WHERE:
see mailing list, Carlton VIC 3053

Melbourne's next social meetup is on Friday 21 September, 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 or Scott (shokwave) on 0432 862 932.

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
The Yudkowsky Ambition Scale
by loup-vaillant — 2012-09-12T15:08:06.292Z

From Hacker News.

We're going to build the next Facebook!

We're going to found the next Apple!

Our product will create sweeping political change! This will produce a major economic revolution in at least one country! (Seasteading would be change on this level if it worked; creating a new country successfully is around the same level of change as this.)

Our product is the next nuclear weapon. You wouldn't want that in the wrong hands, would you?

This is going to be the equivalent of the invention of electricity if it works out.

We're going to make an IQ-enhancing drug and produce basic change in the human condition.

We're going to build serious Drexler-class molecular nanotechnology.

We're going to upload a human brain into a computer.

We're going to build a recursively self-improving Artificial Intelligence.

We think we've figured out how to hack into the computer our universe is running on.

This made me laugh, but from the look of it, I'd say there is little work to do to make it serious. Personally, I'd try to shorten it so it is punchier and more memorable.
Meetup : West LA Meetup - "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences"
by  — 2012-09-12T05:36:33.667Z

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup - "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences"

WHEN:
12 September 2012 07:00:00PM (-0700)

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

When: 7:00pm - 9:00pm Wednesday, September 12th.

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: We will discuss the ideas discussed in a paper summarized here. Also, read this.

There will be general discussion too, and there are lots of interesting recent posts. 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 - "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences"
Meta: LW Policy: When to prohibit Alice from replying to Bob's arguments?
by SilasBarta — 2012-09-12T03:29:59.041Z

In light of recent (and potential) events, I wanted to start a discussion here about a certain method of handling conflicts on this site's discussion threads, and hopefully form a consensus on when to use the measure described in the title. Even if the discussion has no impact on site policy ("executive veto"), I hope administrators will at least clarify when such a measure will be used, and for what reason.

I also don't want to taint or "anchor" the discussion by offering hypothetical situations or arguments for one position or another. Rather, I simply want to ask: Under what conditions should a specific poster, "Alice" be prohibited from replying directly to the arguments in a post/comment made by another poster, "Bob"? (Note: this is referring specifically to replies to ideas and arguments Bob has advanced, not general comments about Bob the person, which should probably go under much closer scrutiny because of the risk of incivility.)

Please offer your ideas and thoughts here on when this measure should be used.
Meetup : Madison: Reading Group, Seeing with Fresh Eyes
by fiddlemath — 2012-09-12T02:56:36.033Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Madison: Reading Group, Seeing with Fresh Eyes

WHEN:
16 September 2012 07:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
1053 Rutledge St #3, Madison, WI

At this meetup, we'll discuss the Seeing with Fresh Eyes sequence. Roughly speaking, this sequence is about the stickiness of old ideas, and how hard they can make it to have new ideas. Try to read this before showing up -- as usual for our reading group sessions, you're welcome to come if you haven't read these lately, but some of the conversation might be incomprehensible. To keep the reading down to a reasonable length, I recommend the following handful of pages.

First, a few well-documented studies, pointing vaguely at the general trend:

Anchoring and Adjustment

Priming and Contamination

Do We Believe Everything We're Told?

Then, a mad plunge into related speculation and advice:

Cached Thoughts

We Change Our Minds Less Often Than We Think

Hold Off On Proposing Solutions

The Genetic Fallacy

As usual, I also like the rest of the posts in the sequence, but they don't fit together with these so well, I think; so I'll leave those out of this list. If you have the time for those, too, go ahead and read the full sequence.

Also, thanks to Nick for offering to host this week!

Discussion article for the meetup : Madison: Reading Group, Seeing with Fresh Eyes
[SEQ RERUN] Trying to Try
by MinibearRex — 2012-09-12T01:45:19.423Z

Today's post, Trying to Try was originally published on 01 October 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

As a human, if you try to try something, you will put much less work into it than if you try something.

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 The Magnitude of His Own Folly, 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.
Random LW-parodying Statement Generator
by Armok_GoB — 2012-09-11T19:57:49.672Z

So, I were looking at this, and then suddenly this thing happened.

EDIT:

New version! I updated the link above to it as well. Added LOADS and LOADS of new content, although I'm not entirely sure if it's actually more fun (my guess is there's more total fun due to varity, but that it's more diluted).

I ended up working on this basically the entire day to day, and implemented practically all my ideas I have so far, except for some grammar issues that'd require disproportionately much work. So unless there are loads of suggestions or my brain comes up with lots of new ideas over the next few days, this may be the last version in a while and I may call it beta and ask for spell-check. Still alpha as of writing this thou.

Since there were some close calls already, I'll restate this explicitly: I'd be easier for everyone if there weren't any forks for at least a few more days, even ones just for spell-checking. After that/I move this to beta feel more than free to do whatever you want.

Thanks to everyone who commented! ^_^

old Source, old version, latest source

Credits: http://lesswrong.com/lw/d2w/cards_against_rationality/ , http://lesswrong.com/lw/9ki/shit_rationalists_say/ , various people commenting on this article with suggestions, random people on the bay12 forums that helped me with the engine this is a descendent from ages ago.
[LINK] Interfluidity on "Rational Astrologies" 
by Zvi — 2012-09-11T13:00:16.300Z

The article can be found here. While it is not, for many of us, new ground, it is an excellent treatment, and it requires no rationalist background in order to be understood. The subject is the pernicious pull of doing the standard thing, regardless of whether or not the standard thing makes any sense, and it does us the service of giving that phenomenon a descriptive link we can share as well as an excellent name.

I hope to, after more discussion and thought, write a main post on the subject.
Personal information management
by John_Maxwell — 2012-09-11T11:40:53.747Z

Several weeks ago, I began using personal wiki software Zim Wiki (free and cross-platform for Linux & Windows; I recommend nvALT on Mac OS X) to record all of my notes-to-self. I've found it to be a nice software tool for implementing some of the effectiveness advice I've read on Less Wrong. This post is a fairly personal overview of my usage.

I looked at a lot of personal information managers before choosing Zim. Here are the features that caused me to choose it over the other software I looked at:

Probably the most important feature: Jump-to-note capability with autocomplete. Pressing Control-J gives a text box. Start typing in the text box and it autocompletes with the names of any of the notes in my notebook (or allows me to create a new note). This is the proverbial 10% of the feature set that provides 90% of the benefit over scattered text files. Opening a specific note to add another thought or idea to it is a very common operation for me and this feature makes it very quick. Only a few tools I've found seem to have comparable functionality: WikidPad (with Control-O), and the Notational Velocity family of information managers kind of have it. (For Notational Velocity/nvALT, I recommend coming up with some kind of namespacing scheme so note names collide with note text less frequently in your searches. For example, I prepend reminders for future situations with "f.", journal notes with "j.", policy notes with "p.", Less Wrong post drafts with "l.", etc. Then command-L works as a pretty good "jump to note" shortcut.)

Pressing Control-D, then pressing return inserts a timestamp at the position of my cursor. This has been useful for a variety of logging-type applications. (I replicated the same thing with nvALT on OS X with aText.)

Zim is a desktop application. This has a couple advantages:

I configured a keyboard shortcut to open it, or bring it to the front if it was already open, using a modified version of the Linux shell script in this forum thread. (Alfred is nice for this on OS X.)

All my notes are stored as plain text files on my hard drive. I keep them under version control, which lets me do things like answer the question "what new ideas for becoming more effective have I had over the past week?" (I didn't use the built-in vers

...
[SEQ RERUN] The Magnitude of His Own Folly
by MinibearRex — 2012-09-11T05:28:56.806Z

Today's post, The Magnitude of His Own Folly was originally published on 30 September 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Eliezer considers his training as a rationalist to have started the day he realized just how awfully he had screwed up.

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 Above-Average AI Scientists, 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.
Circular Preferences Don't Lead To Getting Money Pumped
by Mestroyer — 2012-09-11T03:42:41.314Z

Edit: for reasons given in the comments, I don't think the question of what circular preferences actually do is well defined, so this an answer to a wrong question.

If I like Y more than X, at an exchange rate of 0.9Y for 1X, and I like Z more than Y, at an exchange rate of 0.9Z for 1Y, and I like X more than Z, at an exchange rate of 0.9X for 1Z, you might think that given 1X and the ability to trade X for Y at an exchange rate of 0.95Y for 1X, and Y for Z at an exchange rate of 0.95Z for 1Y, and Z for X at an exchange rate of 0.95X for 1Z, I would trade in a circle until I had nothing left.

But actually, if I knew that I had circular preferences, and I knew that if I had 0.95Y I would trade it for (0.95^2)Z, which I would trade for (0.95^3)X, then actually I'd be trading 1X for (0.95^3)X, which I'm obviously not going to do.

Similarly, if the exchange rates are all 1:1, but each trade costs 1 penny, and I care about 1 penny much much less than any of 1X, 1Y, or 1Z, and I trade my X for Y, I know I'm actually going to end up with X - 3 cents, so I won't make the trade.

Unless I can set a Schelling fence, in which case I will end up trading once.

So if instead of being given X, I have a 1/3 chance of each of X, Y, and Z, I would hope I wouldn't set a Schelling fence, because then my 1/3 chance of each thing becomes a 1/3 chance of each thing minus the trading penalty. So maybe I'd want to be bad at precommitments, or would I precommit not to precommit?
Kaj Sotala's Posts
by lukeprog — 2012-09-10T21:58:05.689Z

Here's an index of Kaj_Sotala's articles (not including meta posts):

The Curse of Identity (108)

The Psychological Diversity of Mankind (71)

What is Bayesianism? (67)

The Substitution Principle (64)

Avoid Misinterpreting Your Emotions (61)

Consistently Inconsistent (57)

Fallacies as Weak Bayesian Evidence (54)

I Was Not Almost Wrong But I Was Almost Right (50)

Problems in Evolutionary Psychology (50)

What Cost for Irrationality (50)

Your Intuitions are not Magic (49)

Levels of Communication (49)

A Taxonomy of Bias: The Cognitive Miser (48)

Suffering as Attentional-allocational Conflict (46)

It's Okay To Be At Least A Little Irrational (45)

How to Run a Successful Less Wrong Meetup (44)

Controlling Your Inner Control Circuits (43)

How to Always Have Interesting Conversations (42)

Compartmentalization as a Passive Phenomenon (42)

Fundamentally Flawed or Fast and Frugal (40)

Thoughts on Moral Intuitions (38)

Pain and Gain Motivation (37)

Overcoming Suffering: Emotional Acceptance (35)

What Intelligence Tests Miss the Psychology Of Rational Thought (34)

Are These Cognitive Biases, Biases? (34)

The Tragedy of the Anticommons (32)

Strategic Ignorance and Plausible Deniability (31)

What Data Generated That Thought? (30)

A Rational Identity (30)

SIAI vs. FHI Achivements (2008-2010) (27)

You Cannot be Mistaken About (not) Wanting to Wirehead (27)

Why No Archive of Refuted Research? (25)

Applying Utility Functions to Humans Considered Harmful (25)

Rationalists Should Beware Rationalism (23)

Modularity and Buzzy (23)

Applied Bayes' Theorem: Reading People (22)

5-second Level Case Study: Value of Information (21)

Intelligence Explosion vs. Co-operative Explosion (20)

Heuristics and Biases in Charity (20)

Deliberate and Spontaneous Creativity (20)

Does Blind Review Slow Down Science? (20)

To Like Each Other Sing and Dance in Synchrony (19)

Intuitive Differences: When to Agree to Disagree (18)

Declare Your Signaling and Hidden Agendas (17)

Modularity Signaling and Belief in Belief (16)

Smart Non-Reductionists, Philosophical vs. Engineering Mindsets, and Religion (13)

A Taxonomy of Bias: Mindware Problems (13)

What Epistemic Hygiene Norms Should There Be? (11)

Ethics as a Black Box Function (11)

A Social Norm Against Unjustified Opinions (10)

The Concepts Problem (09)

The Twin Webs of Knowledge (05)

Also see: Yvain's p

...
Ted Talk Related to Rationality
by  — 2012-09-10T19:04:07.298Z

Newly published presentation shows vividly why eyewitness testimony are false, ironically through storytelling based on the presenter's memory. This is something I know for quite a while, so I am glad that the knowledge is getting dispersed to a wider audience. It also shows how important our phones, dash cam, and our sousveillance units are in recording the truth.
Meetup : Portland Oregon
by David_Allen — 2012-09-10T17:04:49.430Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Portland Oregon

WHEN:
22 September 2012 12:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
Lucky Labrador Tap Room 1700 North Killingsworth Street, Portland, OR

LessWrong Portland

Discussion article for the meetup : Portland Oregon
Judea Pearl's Turing Award Lecture video now online
by Dr_Manhattan — 2012-09-10T15:18:43.251Z

Lecture is titled "The Mechanization of Causal Inference: A “mini” Turing Test and Beyond"

Includes basic overview of the subject and Judea's estimate of "how it's going" (I think there are some obvious implications to the AI issues discussed here)

http://amturing.acm.org/vp/pearl_2658896.cfm
Meetup : Cancelled: Longmont Colorado Meetup
by EvelynM — 2012-09-10T14:12:40.516Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Cancelled: Longmont Colorado Meetup

WHEN:
13 September 2012 07:00:00PM (-0600)

WHERE:
Ziggis, 400 Main Street, Longmont, CO

Another trip to the south.

Discussion article for the meetup : Cancelled: Longmont Colorado Meetup
Meetup : Moscow: applied rationality and web resources
by Yuu — 2012-09-10T12:36:46.075Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow: applied rationality and web resources

WHEN:
29 September 2012 04:00:00PM (+0400)

WHERE:
Rossiya, Moscow, ulitsa Ostozhenka 14

We will meet at “Subway” restaurant, entrance from Lopukhinskiy pereulok. Look for a table with “LW” banner, I will be there from 16:00 MSK.

Main topics:

Applied rationality.

Web resources about rationality.

Planning regular meetups.

If you are going for the first time, please fill this one minute form (in Russian), to share your contact information. You can also use personal messages here, to introduce yourself and to help me to plan this meeting.

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow: applied rationality and web resources
[SEQ RERUN] Above-Average AI Scientists
by MinibearRex — 2012-09-10T05:50:52.811Z

Today's post, Above-Average AI Scientists was originally published on 28 September 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

A lot of AI researchers aren't really all that exceptional. This is a problem, though most people don't seem to see it.

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 Competent Elites, 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.