trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : Atlanta June meetup - Hacking Motivation
by Adele_L — 2014-06-02T15:46:07.414Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Atlanta June meetup - Hacking Motivation

WHEN:
08 June 2014 07:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
2388 Lawrenceville Hwy. Unit L. Decatur, GA 30033

Oge says:
I recently read “The Motivation Hacker” by Nick Winter, a book which summarizes the state of the art in setting goals and getting our human brains to actually want to accomplish those goals. At this meetup, I’ll give a short talk on the highlights of the book. Afterward, we’ll collaboratively hack on any motivation issues that are brought to the group (so bring yours).
I can’t wait to see y’all again!
If you have trouble getting to the venue, contact me at 404-542-6392
You can nominate future meetup topics here.

Discussion article for the meetup : Atlanta June meetup - Hacking Motivation
Meetup : Bangalore meetup
by anandjeyahar — 2014-06-02T11:11:01.155Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Bangalore meetup

WHEN:
21 June 2014 05:30:27PM (+0530)

WHERE:
Leela palace, kodihalli, Bangalore

Hi, I am looking for more study partners (aka Bayesian co-conspirators wink) in my attempts at improving my rationality. I am set in Bangalore, India and not sure how many of you are in Bangalore. So how about we meet up in Bangalore sometime in last weekend of June(25th or 26th ) and find out? . As for location, Well there's enough coffee shops around bangalore. I'm thinking of around Leela palace, old airport road, or perhaps leela palace (barista if my memory is right) coffee shop itself.. We can decide about what to do, and how often to meet on that meeting.

Update: Ok people, Sorry got involved in work and forgot to update contact info. It is still on today 21st Jun 5.30 at leela palace. The coffee shop is called Lavazza. Here's a google maps link.https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Leela+Palace+Bangalore/@12.9607933,77.6482773,15z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x3bae14067cca9bdd:0x111bbe37cc24e71a.

If you can't find the shop or the group or the place gimme a call on 89513655147

Discussion article for the meetup : Bangalore meetup
Strategyproof Mechanisms: Possibilities
by badger — 2014-06-02T02:26:29.399Z

Despite dictatorships being the only strategyproof mechanisms in general, more interesting strategyproof mechanisms exist for specialized settings. I introduce single-peaked preferences and discrete exchange as two fruitful domains.

Strategyproofness is a very appealing property. When interacting with a strategyproof mechanism, a person is never worse off for being honest (at least in a causal decision-theoretic sense), so there is no need to make conjectures about the actions of others. However, the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem showed that dictatorships are the only universal strategyproof mechanisms for choosing from three or more outcomes. If we want to avoid dictatorships while keeping strategyproofness, we’ll have to narrow our attention to specific applications with more structure. In this post, I’ll introduce two restricted domains with more interesting strategyproof mechanisms.

Before jumping into those, I should mention another potential escape route from Gibbard-Satterthwaite: randomization. So far, I’ve only considered deterministic social choice rules, where a type profile corresponds to a particular outcome. Considering randomized social choice rules—mapping a type profile onto a lottery over outcomes—will widen the scope of possibility just slightly. Instead of one person being the dictator, we can flip a coin to decided who is in charge. In particular, any strategyproof mechanism that chooses an outcome with certainty when all agents rank it as their first choice must be a random dictatorship, selecting among agents with some fixed probability and then choosing that agent’s favorite. Unlike a deterministic dictatorship, a random dictatorship with equal weights on agents seems palatable enough to use in practice.

Single-peaked preferences

Our first refuge from dictatorship theorems is the land of single-peaked preferences on a line, a tree, or more generally a median graph. These settings have enough structure on preferences that a mechanism doesn’t have to waste power eliciting rankings through dictatorship. Instead, we can deduce enough information from an agent’s ideal outcome that we have power left over to do something more interesting with a mechanism.

In the previous post, I discussed how strategyproofness comes down to the monotonicity of a social choice rule. Monotonicity says that if the o...
Political ideas meant to provoke thought
by John_Maxwell — 2014-06-02T01:20:12.305Z

Politics as gymnastics for rationalists. No one one Less Wrong is quite sure why politics is a taboo topic or how things got to be that way. What we do think we know is that politics is a great way to bring out the irrationality in people. So why not take advantage of that and use politics as a way to measure rationality? Since politics brings out the most irrationality, it should provide the strongest signal. Since there aren't useful objective metrics of how a political discussion went, we'd have to use subjective judgements by neutral third-party raters, kind of like they do in gymnastics. (In the comment thread for this post, feel free to find fights that you have no dog in, improvise a rationality rubric, and grade participants according to your rubric... let's see how it goes.)

Be a sheep. This is probably the exact opposite of what you were taught in your high school civics class. But if my friend Jane is more intelligent, more informed, and less ideological than I am, it seems like voting however Jane is going to vote is a strict improvement over voting however I would naively. It also saves me time, and gives Jane an incentive to put even more time in to carefully considering political issues since she now controls two votes instead of one. Done on a large scale, this could provide an interesting twist on representative democracy. Imagine a directed graph where each node represents a person and an edge is directed from person A to person B if person A is auto-copying person B's votes. There's a government computer system where you can change the person you're auto-copying votes from at any time or override an auto-copied vote with your own personal guess about what's best for society. Other than that, it's direct democracy... all bills are put before all citizens to vote on. Problems this might solve:

Voting as signaling - a smaller portion of the population is expected to follow politics, so they have an incentive to understand issues in depth and make the right choice for society as a whole rather than signal that they have some characteristic or another.

Lobbying - I could configure my voting so that I auto-copy the votes of a lobbying watchdog group whenever it votes on anything, and fall back to my regular representative's vote when the watchdog group absta

...
Rationality Quotes June 2014
by Tyrrell_McAllister — 2014-06-01T20:32:02.500Z

Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)

Do not quote yourself.

Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.

No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.
June 2014 Media Thread
by ArisKatsaris — 2014-06-01T15:04:05.928Z

This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.

If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.

Please use the comment trees for genres. There is a meta thread for comments about future threads.

If you think there should be a thread for a particular genre of media, please post it to the Other Media thread for now, and add a poll to the Meta thread asking if it should be a thread every month.

Note for this month's thread: As per comment in last month's 'meta' subthread, the "Television and Movies" subthread has been split into two: "TV and Movies (Animation)" and "TV and Movies (Live Action)"
Group Rationality Diary, June 1-15
by therufs — 2014-05-31T22:23:40.712Z

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for June 1-15.

It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:

Established a useful new habit

Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief

Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations

Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior

Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something

Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life

Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you

Tried doing any of the above and failed

Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.

Thanks to cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating.

Previous diary: May 16-31

Next diary: June 16-30

Rationality diaries archive
An onion strategy for AGI discussion
by lukeprog — 2014-05-31T19:08:24.784Z

Cross-posted from my blog.

"The stabilization of environments" is a paper about AIs that reshape their environments to make it easier to achieve their goals. This is typically called enforcement, but they prefer the term stabilization because it "sounds less hostile."

"I'll open the pod bay doors, Dave, but then I'm going to stabilize the ship..."

Sparrow (2013) takes the opposite approach to plain vs. dramatic language. Rather than using a modest term like iterated embryo selection, Sparrow prefers the phrase in vitro eugenics. Jeepers.

I suppose that's more likely to provoke public discussion, but... will much good will come of that public discussion? The public had a needless freak-out about in vitro fertilization back in the 60s and 70s and then, as soon as the first IVF baby was born in 1978, decided they were in favor of it.

Someone recently suggested I use an "onion strategy" for the discussion of novel technological risks. The outermost layer of the communication onion would be aimed at the general public, and focus on benefits rather than risks, so as not to provoke an unproductive panic. A second layer for a specialist audience could include a more detailed elaboration of the risks. The most complete discussion of risks and mitigation options would be reserved for technical publications that are read only by professionals.

Eric Drexler seems to wish he had more successfully used an onion strategy when writing about nanotechnology. Engines of Creation included frank discussions of both the benefits and risks of nanotechnology, including the "grey goo" scenario that was discussed widely in the media and used as the premise for the bestselling novel Prey.

Ray Kurzweil may be using an onion strategy, or at least keeping his writing in the outermost layer. If you look carefully, chapter 8 of The Singularity is Near takes technological risks pretty seriously, and yet it's written in such a way that most people who read the book seem to come away with an overwhelmingly optimistic perspective on technological change.

George Church may be following an onion strategy. Regenesis also contains a chapter on the risks of advanced bioengineering, but it's pres...
Brainstorming for post topics
by NancyLebovitz — 2014-05-31T15:08:41.361Z

I suggested recently that part of the problem with with LW was a lock of discussion posts which was caused by people not thinking of much to post about.

When I ask myself "what might be a good topic for a post?", my mind goes blank, but surely not everything that's worth saying that's related to rationality has been said.

So, is there something at the back of your mind which might be interesting? A topic which got some discussion in an open thread that could be worth pursuing?

If you've found anything which helps you generate useable ideas, please comment about it-- or possibly write a post on the subject.
Against Open Threads
by ChristianKl — 2014-05-30T18:09:09.163Z

There are various people who feel that Lesswrong degraded in the last year. In the same timeframe more and more discussions moved into the open thread model and open threads became weekly instead of monthly.

I suggest to counteract that trend by opening all discussions per default on Discussion instead of opening them in weekly open threads. Having the topics in discussion makes it easy to browse the list of topics and choose the headline that are of interest, even if the thread got opened two weeks ago.
Meetup : London social meetup
by Leonhart — 2014-05-30T16:28:24.135Z

Discussion article for the meetup : London social meetup

WHEN:
01 June 2014 02:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Shakespeare's Head, Holborn, WC2B 6BG

Your regularly scheduled meetup. Join us from 2pm to talk about the sorts of things that your other friends will look funny at you for talking about.

The weather is unpredictable right now so start will be in the pub at 2pm. If it's sunny, late comers may find we have moved around the corner to Lincoln's Inn Fields, probably somewhere in the northwest quadrant. PhilH is sure he's going to be there (I may not) so he's the best option to call if confused, on 07792009646.

Discussion article for the meetup : London social meetup
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2014-05-30T15:40:27.948Z

This meetup summary was posted to LW main on May 25th. The following week's summary is here.

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

Chicago Calibration Game: 31 May 2014 03:00PM
Houston, TX: 14 June 2014 02:00PM
Montreal - How to be charismatic: 26 May 2014 07:00PM
[Tel Aviv] Professor Roman Yampolskiy on approaches to AGI risk: 27 May 2014 08:00PM
[Utrecht] Brainstorm and ethics discussion at the Film Café: 31 May 2014 02:00PM

The remaining meetups take place in cities with regular scheduling, but involve a change in time or location, special meeting content, or simply a helpful reminder about the meetup:

Melbourne June Rationality Dojo: Memory: 01 June 2014 03:00PM
Sydney Social Meetup - June (Games night): 12 June 2014 06:30PM
Sydney Meetup - June: 25 June 2014 07:00PM
Washington DC Games meetup: 25 May 2014 03:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Cambridge UK, Canberra, Columbus, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Mountain View, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Sydney, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, Waterloo, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers.

If you'd like to talk with other LW-ers face to face, and there is no meetup in your area, consider starting your own meetup; it's easy (more resources here). Check one out, stretch your rationality skills, build community, and have fun!

In addition to the handy sidebar of upcoming meetups, a meetup overview is posted on the front page every Friday. These are an attempt to collect information on all the meetups happening in upcoming weeks. The best way to get your meetup featured is still to use the Add New Meetup feature, but you'll also have the benefit of having your meetup mentioned in a weekly overview. These overview posts are moved to the discussion section when the new post goes up.

Please note that for your meetup to appear in the weekly meetups feature, you need to post your meetup before the Friday before your meetup!

If you check Less Wrong irregularly, consider subscribing to one or more city-specific mailing list in order to be notified when an irregular meetup is happening: Atlanta, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Marin CA, Ottawa, Pittsburgh, Portland, Southern California (Los Angeles/Ora...
Does this seem to you like evidence for the existence of psychic abilities in humans? 
by gothgirl420666 — 2014-05-30T02:44:00.281Z

I was recently reminded of something I have encountered that seems to me to be good evidence for paranormal phenomena. Can anyone help me figure out what might be going on?

When I was a little younger, I used to play the online riddle game Notpron. In this game, the player (essentially) has to analyze a webpage for clues towards the URL to the next webpage, and then repeat for 140 stages. The creator of this game, DavidM, at some point became a huge new age conspiracy theory loony type. Three years after the original ending of the riddle went online, he revised it to include an additional final level: Level Nu. This level is very different than the ones preceding it. I can't link to the page for obvious reasons, but I will transcribe it here:

835 492 147 264

Remote view the photography this number represents!

Email me all your results to david@david-m.org. I'll get you some feedback. Get me all elements or impressions that seem really strong for you. Or send me your sketches if you like.

Don't bruteforce, or you'll be banned from this one. You have as many attempts as you like, take your time.

Yes, I mean it. No tricks here, just pure remote viewing. The number represents a picture, I want to know what's on there.

So learn some remote viewing technique you like best and go ahead. The internet has lots of information. Have fun!

Please do this ALL by yourself, not even with your very very close friends. Because its boring and stupid, and because you can put bullshit into each others head, which is hard to get rid of again, because the mind needs to be shut down for this to work properly. So do it alone, just talk to me about it, please.

(Yes, this really works, one friend got the content of the picture on first try...and yes, he only got the number from me.)

31 people have successfully completed this level.

Before this level went up, around 200 people had successfully completed the game (iirc). Given that Notpron has declined in popularity since Level Nu was created in 2008, I would estimate that around 300 people in total are in a position to attempt Level Nu, although it could be more. However, I would imagine that many people 1) probably did not come back once they had already finished, 2) were too intimidated by remote viewing and the trivial inconvenience of having an email discussion with DavidM, 3) did not even bother due to disbelief in remote v

...
Meetup : Retelling stuff from CFAR Epistemic Rationality for EA 
by rocurley — 2014-05-29T20:37:45.023Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Retelling stuff from CFAR Epistemic Rationality for EA

WHEN:
01 June 2014 03:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC 20001, USA

One of our members will be talking about things he learned at the CFAR Epistemic Rationality for Effective Altruists event.

Topics may include:

"5 minute exercises" - basically a way to practice the skill in this post.

"Case studies" - people can volunteer beliefs they want to have challenged/refined, and everyone else asks them questions.

Aversion factoring for epistemic rationality habits

Discussion article for the meetup : Retelling stuff from CFAR Epistemic Rationality for EA
Meetup : Moscow meet up
by Yuu — 2014-05-29T11:03:51.366Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow meet up

WHEN:
08 June 2014 04:00:00PM (+0400)

WHERE:
Russia, Moscow, ulitsa L'va Tolstogo 16

The 1st of June meet up is rescheduled to the 8th of June!

We will have two streams, and sections with the same numbers will be conducted in the same time.

We will have:

Small reports about cognitive biases, for both streams.

The first stream:

Guess the incorrect argument, the game.

Alternative transhumanism, report.

Biofeedback, report.

The second stream:

Discussion and the discussion analysis.

Rational lighting, discussion.

We gather in the Yandex office, you need the first revolving door under the archway. Here is additional guide how to get there: link.
You can fill this one minute form (in Russian), to share your contact information.
We start at 16:00 and sometimes finish at night. Please pay attention that we only gather near the entrance and then come inside.

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow meet up
Meetup : Christchurch, NZ Meetup - Games & Discussion
by free_rip — 2014-05-29T05:33:09.382Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Christchurch, NZ Meetup - Games & Discussion

WHEN:
01 June 2014 04:30:00PM (+1200)

WHERE:
James Hight, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

The third Chch meetup is this Sunday at 4.30pm! We have a few regular attendees so if you live in Chch and would like to connect with the Less Wrong community here it's well worth the effort to come along.

It will be held in James Hight library, discussion room 901, at the University of Canterbury. You do not need to be a student or in any way affiliated with UC to come along, the discussion rooms are open to everyone.

The way to get there is to go through the front (and only) doors of the library, walk forwards until you see elevators to your right, and take one of those elevators to floor 9. Then walk around the edges of the floor until you see room 901. Don't take the stairs, they only lead up one floor! If you need clearer directions or anticipate getting lost, PM or post below and I can clear it up and give you a contact cell number.

Potential activities include rationalist Cards Against Humanity, goal-setting, and if previous occasions are any indication a whole bunch of interesting discussions. It's very casual, so if you have anything you'd like to do or discuss post below or just show up with it :-)

If you'd like to come along, but can't make this day or time, please post below so we know for future meetups. Also, if you have something on early and can come later, that's fine too - meetups typically last 3-4 hours and dropping in partway (or leaving partway) is absolutely fine.

Discussion article for the meetup : Christchurch, NZ Meetup - Games & Discussion