trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Why Eliezer Yudkowsky receives more upvotes than others
by XiXiDu — 2010-12-11T21:04:07.869Z

One of the reasons for why Yudkowsky is being drastically upvoted is of course that he's often, fasten your seatbelts, brilliantly right (whoever reads my comments knows that I am not really the most frenetic believer, so I think I can say this without sounding cultish). But others are too, so is Less Wrong a cult? Nah! There is a simple explanation for this phenomenon:

As you can see, there are already 13 people who subscribe to his Less Wrong feed via Google Reader. And there are many other ways to subscribe to a RSS feed (which is not the only way to follow his mental outpourings anyway), so the number of people who follow every post and comment is likely much higher.

That's why most of his comments receive more upvotes than other comments. It is not because he is a cult leader, it's just that his comments are read by many more people than the average comment on Less Wrong. There are of course other causes as well, but this seems to explain a fair chunk of the effect.

Also consider that I'm often upvoted (with a current Karma score of 1959) and I do not keep quiet regarding my doubts about some topics directly related to Yudkowsky and the SIAI. How could this happen if Less Wrong was an echo chamber?

I just wanted to let you know, because I have been wondering about it in the past.
If reductionism is the hammer, what nails are out there? 
by AnnaSalamon — 2010-12-11T13:58:18.087Z

EDIT: I'm moving this to the Discussion section because people seem to not like it (lack of upvotes) and to find the writing unclear. I'd love writing advice, if anyone wants to offer some.

Related to: Dissolving the question, Explaining vs explaining away

I review parts of the reductionism sequence, in hopes of setting up for future reduction work.

So, you’ve been building up your reductionism muscles, on LW or elsewhere. You’re no longer confused about a magical essence of free will; you understand how particular arrangements of atoms can make choices. You’re no longer confused about a magical essence of personal identity; you understand where the feeling of “you” comes from, and how one could in principle create many copies of you that continued "your" experiences, and how the absence of an irreducible essence doesn’t reduce life’s meaning.

The natural next question is: what other phenomena can you reduce? What topics are we currently confused about which may yield to the same tools? And what tools, exactly, do we have for such reductions?

With the goal of paving the way for new reductions, then, let’s make a list of questions that persistently felt like questions about magical essences, including both questions that have been solved, and questions about which we are currently confused. And let’s also list tools or strategies that assisted in their dissolution. I made an attempt at such lists below; perhaps you can help me refine them?

Some places where many expected a fundamental or non-reducible “essence”[1]:

1. Ducks.

Why it's tempting to postulate an essence: Organisms seem to come in types. New organisms of the given type (e.g., new ducks) come into existence, almost as though the the type “Duck” had causal power. Humans are able to form mental concepts of "duck" that approximately mirror the outside predictive regularities.

2. Life.

Why it's tempting to postulate an essence: Living creatures act very differently from dead creatures. A recently killed animal doesn’t move, loses its body heat, etc., even though its matter is in almost the same configuration. [2]

3. Free will.

Why it's tempting to postulate an essence: Humans (among other things) are in fact organized to &l...
Life-tracking application for android
by Alexei — 2010-12-11T01:48:11.676Z

Hi, lesswrong.

I just finished my application for android devices, LifeTracking, which has been motivated by the discussions here; primarily discussions about akrasia and measuring/tracking your own actions. I don't want to make this sound like an advertisement (the application is completely free anyway), but I would really really like to get feedback from you and hear your comments, criticism, and suggestions. If there are enough LessWrong-specific feature requests, I will make a separate application just for that.

Here is a brief description of the app:

LifeTracking application allows you to track any value (like your weight or your lesswrong karma), as well as any time-consuming activities (like sleeping, working, reading Harry Potter fanfic, etc). You can see the data visually, edit it, and analyze it.

The goal of the application is to help you know yourself and your schedule better. Hopefully, when you graph various aspects of your life side-by-side you will come to a better understanding of yourself. Also, this way you will not have to rely on your faulty memory to remember all that data.

You can download the app from the Market (link only works from Android devices) or download .apk directly. Screenshots: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6].

Edit: LifeTracking website

And while we are on topic of mobile apps, what other applications would you like to see made? (For example, another useful application would be "your personal prediction tracker", where you enter various short-term predictions, your confidence interval, and then enter the actual result. You can classify each prediction and then see if you are over- or under-confident in certain areas. (I remember seeing a website that does something similar, but can't find it now.))
The term 'altruism' in group selection
by Axel — 2010-12-10T20:50:16.563Z

The way I see it, altruism has been the big selling point for group selection. The only way altruism would have been able to evolve is through group selection, so the presence of altruism is strong evidence for the existence of group selection.

Group selectionists have been (rightly) criticized by pointing out that they were merely looking for an explanation that would fit the results they had already decided on and wrote the conclusion before looking for hypotheses. They wanted a nice, friendly, altruistic world and devised a theory of why this should be so.

Now, while I fully agree their methods were wrong, I want to take a closer look at the word “altruism” in this context.

Is a cow a vegetarian?

Think about this question, if you will, before reading on.

I would say no, it’s not. True, a cow only eats plants but there is a crucial difference that separates it from a real vegetarian. When a cow is hungry its brain tells it to eat grass, it doesn’t give the option to choose meat. A cow’s digestive system is specialized in processing grass, eating meat would send it haywire.

A vegetarian, on the other hand, is a human, an omnivore, he can just as easily process food from animal as plant sources. Not eating meat is a deliberate and conscious choice.

The point I’m getting at is that eating plants because that’s all you can do doesn’t make you a real vegetarian. Luckily we have a convenient term to make this distinction: herbivore.

Now lets go back to altruism.

Bees have been called altruistic; after all, what greater sacrifice can an organism bring then its ability to reproduce? What if we, to stop overpopulation, sterilize every newborn child for the next three years.

Every time we meet one of those children we would give them a pat on the back and congratulate them for the enormous amounts of altruism they have displayed. I doubt many of them would agree.

It’s not really altruism if you have no choice, is it? The difference between true altruism and cases like this is deliberate choice and doing more then “default helping”.

In short: whenever the group selectionists saw a herbivore, they called it a vegetarian. Just like we make a distinction between herbivores and vegetarians, I would like to see someone introducing a new term f

...
A sense of logic
by NancyLebovitz — 2010-12-10T18:19:38.320Z

What's the worst argument you can think of?

One of my favorites is from a Theodore Sturgeon science fiction story in which it's claimed that faster than light communication must be possible because even though stars are light years apart, a person can look from one to another in a moment.

I don't know about you, but bad logic makes my stomach hurt, especially on first exposure.

This seems rather odd-- what sort of physical connection might that be?

Also, I'm not sure how common the experience is, though a philosophy professor did confirm it for himself and (by observation) his classes. He mentioned one of the Socratic dialogues (sorry, I can't remember which one) which is a compendium of bad arguments and which seemed to have that effect on his classes.

So, how did you feel when you read that bit of sf hand-waving? If your stomach hurt, what sort of stomach pain was it? Like nausea? Like being hit? Something else? If you had some other sensory reaction, can you describe it?

For me, the sensation is some sort of internal twinge which isn't like nausea.

Anyway, both for examination and for the fun of it, please supply more bad arguments.

I think there are sensory correlates for what is perceived to be good logic (unfortunately, they don't tell you whether an argument is really sound)-- kinesthesia which has to do with solidity, certainty, and at least in my case, a feeling that all the corners are pinned down.

Addendum: It looks as though I was generalizing from one example. If you have a fast reaction to bad arguments and it isn't kinesthetic, what is it?
Rational entertainment industry?
by rwallace — 2010-12-10T15:55:48.002Z

By "the industry" in this post, I refer to that part of the entertainment industry which:

1. Produces movies, TV and video games (as opposed to books, comics etc.)

2. Is motivated by profit (as opposed to fun, politics etc.)

3. Consists of companies (as opposed to lone developers, student teams etc.)

It seems to me that the industry has two characteristics:

Formulaic

Most products follow some formula which is known to be workable.

Under what circumstances is this rational? (I'm not commenting on whether it's artistically good or bad; again, I'm only discussing entertainment as a commercial enterprise motivated by profit.) It seems to me following a proven formula is rational if your priority is to not lose, to go for the sure thing, i.e. the chance of a big hit is not worth the risk of a complete flop.

Hit driven

It's the accepted wisdom that entertainment is a hit driven industry: almost all the profits are generated by a handful of the most successful products, with the rest losing money or barely covering costs.

Now my question: isn't there a contradiction here? If you're selling insurance, following a proven formula may well be the rational thing to do. If you're the owner of one of the handful of franchises that is pulling in big profits, of course you shouldn't mess with a winner. But if you're one of the many also-rans, how is it rational to stick with an almost sure loser? In a hit driven industry, wouldn't it be more rational to concentrate on maximizing your chance of winning big, instead of trying to minimize the risk of a flop?

But I've never worked in the entertainment industry; perhaps my layman's impression of it is inaccurate. Is there something I'm missing, or is a substantial amount of expected profit really being left on the table?
Link: What does it feel like to be stupid?
by Vladimir_Golovin — 2010-12-10T07:43:28.889Z

What does it feel like to be stupid?

I had an arterial problem for a couple of years, which reduced blood supply to my heart and brain and depleted B vitamins from my nerves (to keep the heart in good repair). Although there is some vagueness as to the mechanisms, this made me forgetful, slow, and easily overwhelmed. In short I felt like I was stupid compared to what I was used to, and I was.

It was frightening at first because I knew something wasn't right but didn't know what, and very worrying for my career because I was simply not very good any more.

However, once I got used to it and resigned myself, it was great.

Full article:
http://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-to-be-stupid
A Thought on Pascal's Mugging
by komponisto — 2010-12-10T06:08:00.687Z

For background, see here.

In a comment on the original Pascal's mugging post, Nick Tarleton writes:

[Y]ou could replace "kill 3^^^^3 people" with "create 3^^^^3 units of disutility according to your utility function". (I respectfully suggest that we all start using this form of the problem.)

Michael Vassar has suggested that we should consider any number of identical lives to have the same utility as one life. That could be a solution, as it's impossible to create 3^^^^3 distinct humans. But, this also is irrelevant to the create-3^^^^3-disutility-units form.

Coming across this again recently, it occurred to me that there might be a way to generalize Vassar's suggestion in such a way as to deal with Tarleton's more abstract formulation of the problem. I'm curious about the extent to which folks have thought about this. (Looking further through the comments on the original post, I found essentially the same idea in a comment by g, but it wasn't discussed further.)

The idea is that the Kolmogorov complexity of "3^^^^3 units of disutility" should be much higher than the Kolmogorov complexity of the number 3^^^^3. That is, the utility function should grow only according to the complexity of the scenario being evaluated, and not (say) linearly in the number of people involved. Furthermore, the domain of the utility function should consist of low-level descriptions of the state of the world, which won't refer directly to words uttered by muggers, in such a way that a mere discussion of "3^^^^3 units of disutility" by a mugger will not typically be (anywhere near) enough evidence to promote an actual "3^^^^3-disutilon" hypothesis to attention.

This seems to imply that the intuition responsible for the problem is a kind of fake simplicity, ignoring the complexity of value (negative value in this case). A confusion of levels also appears implicated (talking about utility does not itself significantly affect utility; you don't suddenly make 3^^^^3-disutilon scenarios probable by talking about "3^^^^3 disutilons").

What do folks think of this? Any obvious problems?
Kazakhstan's president urges scientists to find the elixir of life
by Document — 2010-12-10T04:17:13.544Z

...according to this front-page Reddit headline I just saw, which links to this Guardian article. I wonder if he's heard of KrioRus, whether he's signed up (Wikipedia says they offer services "to clients from Russia, CIS and EU"), and what his odds would be if he were (would it be possible to emigrate to Russia to be closer to the facility, and if not, what would be the best possible option?). Given his being a head of state, presumably it'd be pretty tough for an advocate to even get close enough to try to make the case.

Searching the Reddit comment thread for "cryo" turned up nothing.
“Fake Options” in Newcomb’s Problem
by Normal_Anomaly — 2010-12-10T02:12:09.126Z

This is an exploration of a way of looking at Newcomb’s Problem that helped me understand it. I hope somebody else finds it useful. I may add discussions of other game theory problems in this format if anybody wants them.

Consider Newcomb’s Problem:: Omega offers you two boxes, one transparent and containing $1000, the other opaque and containing either $1 million or nothing. Your options are to take both boxes, or only take the second one; but Omega has put money in the second box only if it has predicted that you will only take 1 box. A person in favor of one-boxing says, “I’d rather have a million than a thousand.” A two-boxer says, “Whether or not box B contains money, I’ll get $1000 more if I take box A as well. It’s either $1001000 vs. $1000000, or $1000 vs. nothing.” To get to these different decisions, the agents are working from two different ways of visualising the payoff matrix. The two-boxer sees four possible outcomes and the one-boxer sees two, the other two having very low probability.

The two-boxer’s payoff matrix looks like this:

Box B

|Money | No money|

Decision 1-box| $1mil | $0 |

2-box | $1001000| $1000 |

The outcomes $0 and $1001000 both require Omega making a wrong prediction. But as the problem is formulated, Omega is superintelligent and has been right 100 out of 100 times so far. So the one-boxer, taking this into account, describes the payoff matrix like this:

&...
Unpacking the Concept of "Blackmail"
by Vladimir_Nesov — 2010-12-10T00:53:18.674Z

Keep in mind: Controlling Constant Programs, Notion of Preference in Ambient Control.

There is a reasonable game-theoretic heuristic, "don't respond to blackmail" or "don't negotiate with terrorists". But what is actually meant by the word "blackmail" here? Does it have a place as a fundamental decision-theoretic concept, or is it merely an affective category, a class of situations activating a certain psychological adaptation that expresses disapproval of certain decisions and on the net protects (benefits) you, like those adaptation that respond to "being rude" or "offense"?

We, as humans, have a concept of "default", "do nothing strategy". The other plans can be compared to the moral value of the default. Doing harm would be something worse than the default, doing good something better than the default.

Blackmail is then a situation where by decision of another agent ("blackmailer"), you are presented with two options, both of which are harmful to you (worse than the default), and one of which is better for the blackmailer. The alternative (if the blackmailer decides not to blackmail) is the default.

Compare this with the same scenario, but with the "default" action of the other agent being worse for you than the given options. This would be called normal bargaining, as in trade, where both parties benefit from exchange of goods, but to a different extent depending on which cost is set.

Why is the "default" special here? If bargaining or blackmail did happen, we know that "default" is impossible. How can we tell two situations apart then, from their payoffs (or models of uncertainty about the outcomes) alone? It's necessary to tell these situations apart to manage not responding to threats, but at the same time cooperating in trade (instead of making things as bad as you can for the trade partner, no matter what it costs you). Otherwise, abstaining from doing harm looks exactly like doing good. A charitable gift of not blowing up your car and so on.

My hypothesis is that "blackmail" is what the suggestion of your mind to not cooperate feels like from the inside, the answer to a difficult problem computed by cognitive algorithms you don't understand, and not a simple property of the decision problem itself. By saying "don't respond to blackmail", you are pushing most of the hard work into intuitive categorization of decision problems into "blackmail" and "trade"...
Science reveals how not to choke under pressure
by Matt_Simpson — 2010-12-09T16:46:28.536Z

Found via reddit, excerpt:

Choking happens when we let anxious thoughts distract us or when we start trying to consciously control motor skills best left on autopilot. ...

In her new book, Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Success and Failure at Work and at Play, Beilock deconstructs high-stakes moments—the ones seen around the world and the ones only our mothers care about—to explore why we sometimes falter, and why other times we nail it. ...

What goes wrong in our brain when this happens?
Working memory, housed in the prefrontal cortex, is what allows us to do calculations in our head and reason through a problem. Unfortunately, it’s a limited resource. If we’re doing an activity that requires a lot of cognitive horsepower, such as responding to an on-the-spot question, and at the same time we’re worrying about screwing up, then suddenly we don’t have the brainpower we need.

Also, once we feel stressed, we often try to control what we’re doing in order to ensure success. So if we’re doing a task that normally operates largely outside of conscious awareness, such as an easy golf swing, what screws us up is the impulse to think about and control our actions. Suddenly we’re too attentive to what we’re doing, and all the training that has improved our motor skills is for naught, since our conscious attention is essentially hijacking motor memory. ...

How can I prevent myself from overthinking?
You might think that writing about your worries would just make them more salient. But there is work in clinical psychology showing that writing helps limit ruminative thoughts—those negative thoughts that are very hard to shake and that seem to grow the more you dwell on them. The idea is that you cognitively outsource your worries to the page. Writing about worries for 10 minutes right before taking a standardized test is really beneficial.
Utility is unintuitive
by jsteinhardt — 2010-12-09T05:39:34.176Z

EDIT: My original post was wrong. I will leave it quoted at the end for the purposes of preserving information, but it is now replaced with a new post that correctly expresses my sentiments. The original title of this post was "expected utility maximization is not rational".

As many people are probably aware, there is a theorem, called the Von Neumann-Morgenstern utility theorem, which states that anyone expressing consistent preferences must be maximizing the expected value of some function. The definition of consistent preferences is as follows:

Let A, B, and C be probability distributions over outcomes. Let A < B denote that B is preferred to A, and A = B denote that someone is indifferent between A and B. Then we assume

Either A < B, A > B, or A = B. In other words, you have to express a preference. This is reasonable because in the real world, you always have to make a decision (even "lack of action" is a decision).

If A < B, and B < C, then A < C. I believe that this is also clearly reasonable. If you have three possible actions, leading to distributions over outcomes A, B, and C, then you have to choose one of the three, meaning one of them is always preferred. So you can't have cycles of preferences.

If A < B, then (1-x)A+xC < B for some x in (0,1) that is allowed to depend on A, B, and C. In other words, if B is preferred to A then B is also preferred to sufficiently small changes to A.

If A < B then pA+(1-p)C < pB+(1-p)C for all p in (0,1). This is the least intuitive of the four axioms to me, and the one that I initially disagreed with. But I believe that you can argue in favor of it as follows: I flip a coin with weight p, and draw from X if p is heads and C if p is tails. I let you choose whether you want x to be A or B. It seems clear that if you prefer B to A, then you should choose B in this situation. However, I have not thought about this long enough to be completely sure that this is the case. Most other people seem to also think this is a reasonable axiom, so I'm going to stick with it for now.

Given these axioms, we can show that there exists a real-valued function u over outcomes such that A < B if and only if EA[u] < EB[u], where EX is the expected value with respect to the distribution X.

Now, the important thing to note here is that this is an existence proof only. The function u doesn't have t...
Delayed Solutions Game
by lsparrish — 2010-12-09T05:12:49.474Z

This is a thread to practice holding off on proposing solutions.

Rules:

Post your dilemma (i.e. problem, question, situation, etc.) as a top-level comment. You can always come back to edit this.

For the next 24 hours, replies in that thread can discuss only aspects of the problem, no solutions. (If something sounds too much like a solution, it gets downvoted.)

After the 24 hours have passed from the start of the thread, solutions may be proposed therein.

Note: Timezones for comments are in GMT (e.g. London), so you may need to use this to determine when 24 hours have passed in your local timezone.