trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : Baltimore Weekly Meetup
by iarwain1 — 2016-06-30T11:34:09.273Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Baltimore Weekly Meetup

WHEN:
03 July 2016 08:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
1726 reisterstown road pikesville maryland 21208

Pikesville DoubleTree - Hilton, at the restaurant / bar or at one of the tables outside.

Discussion article for the meetup : Baltimore Weekly Meetup
Therapy and materialistic accounts of behavior
by KatjaGrace — 2016-06-30T06:57:21.000Z

I used to see a therapist. Every week they would give me actions to take in the coming week. For instance, fill out a sheet about panic attacks immediately after any panic attacks that I had. Or, do a mindfulness exercise about once per day, at a time when I was anxious.

It seemed to me that it order for any of these things to happen with high probability, I would need to immediately do something to cause them to happen. For instance, think about what symptoms of anxiety should trigger the mindfulness exercise and try to imagine them happening and exactly what I hope to do then. Or make a note to put the panic attack sheet under the honey that I eat if I’m having a panic attack. Or at least make a note in my todo list to figure out how to make these things happen later.

Being somewhat anxious is just not sufficiently salient and distinctive that I’m going to think ‘oh hey, anxiety—what do I do now?’ And whatever it is that the therapist wanted me to do is also not sufficiently memorable or unique that I will think of it. This may sound implausible, but remember that I have several other things going in life besides paying attention to my own anxiety, many of which also involve paying attention to things, or doing things. And my therapist is far from the only source of suggestions on what I should do if I’m anxious. So just being told to do another thing one time is probably not going to make it happen.

Furthermore, if I’m actually having a panic attack, it’s a good day if I can remember to do the things that I know make it better, let alone fill out some form that’s in my bag somewhere. (Panic attacks can be associated with an extremely perceptible decrease in one’s shit being together.) So getting these weekly exercises to happen would require some actual thought.

This worldview seemed foreign to my therapist. They seemed to think that if I agreed to do a thing, then I would magically do it. Like a story character running on narrative coherence, not like a machine running on causality.

Often I did not do the things, or did them at the wrong times. Usually because it didn’t occur to me at the relevant time, in line with my theory. (Really I should have had a standing plan to think about these things immediately after therapy each time, but I didn’t.) My therapist would emphasize to me that it is important to do the things at the right times.

...
The Ethics of AI and Its Effect On Us
by cameroncowan — 2016-06-30T02:18:29.921Z

As many of you know, I've been pretty passionate about the melding to science through AI and philosophy. I've often asked questions on this forum in regards to thought, culture, and figuring out how to decide what an AI should do and how to keep and AI friendly. Fortunately, Slate.com has given me yet another opportunity to wax on the subject again (unpoetically).

The article is here

One of the subjects of the article is an interesting case in what the future might hold for AI.

Saqib Shaikh is a microsoft engineering working on one of their many AI projects. His claim to fame is his ability to use AI and machine learning to create smart glasses that he uses to compensate for his loss of sight when he was a child. Rather that improve his sight, the glasses give him sounds and he sees using the sound. From avoiding a skateboarder to finding his family, he gets about. It is an excellent example of how assistive technologies could become an important part of our lives.

Ethical AI is a rather large topic and it is something that we will have to deal with sooner rather than later. The writer reminds us that we need greater collaboration on AI. This could be challenging thanks to nativism, Brexit, and overall national feelings that are sweeping the world. In the moment when we really need to come together on a technology that could solve a host of problems and help is make really great decisions, we're coming apart at every seam. But that's another story for another time.

We tend to have these pop culture notions about AI. As the article states we're somewhere between HAL and Siri in terms of our understanding and acceptance of AI in our lives. But the fact is that every items are getting smarter and getting infused with technology like never before giving these devices the chance to do even more for us than ever before.

Obviously, if we are creating something as smart and complex as we are we want some assurance that they will behave in a way that we find acceptable. In this way we refer to this boundary of behavior as an ethic and we hope for a friendly AI. The problem with ethics is that it is very subjective and requires judgement and discernment and is deeply cultural. What we think is right in the West might not be so true in parts of Asia where the civilization ethic is very different. How is AI going to respond to those nuances?

We can find...
Market Failure: Sugar-free Tums
by PhilGoetz — 2016-06-30T00:12:16.143Z

In theory, the free market and democracy both work because suppliers are incentivized to provide products and services that people want. Economists consider it a perverse situation when the market does not provide what people want, and look for explanations such as government regulation.

The funny thing is that sometimes the market doesn't work, and I look and look for the reason why, and all I can come up with is, People are stupid.

I've written before about the market's apparent failure to provide cup holders in cars. I saw another example this week in the latest Wired magazine, a piece on page 42 about a start-up called Thinx to make re-usable women's underwear that absorbs menstrual fluid--all of it, so women don't have to slip out of the middle of meetings to change tampons. The piece's angle was that venture capitalists rejected the idea because they were mostly men and so didn't "get it".

I'd guess they "got it". It isn't a complicated idea. The thing is, there are already 3 giant companies battling for that market. The first thing a VC would say when you tell him you're going to make something better than a tampon is, "Why haven't Playtex, Kotex, or Tampax already done that?"

So, Thinx did a kickstarter and has now sold hundreds of thousands of thousands of absorbent underwear for about $30 each.

The failure in this case is not that VCs are sexist, but that Playtex, etc., never developed this product, although there evidently is a demand for it, and there is no evident reason it couldn't have been produced 20 years ago. The belief that the market doesn't fail then almost led to a further failure, the failure to develop the product at the present time, because the belief that the market doesn't fail implied the product could not be profitable.

I just now came across an even clearer case of market failure: Sugar-free Tums.

Sugar-free Tums are Tums calcium antacid tablets made with aspartame instead of sugar. Lots of people want sugar-free antacids. Diabetics can't have the tablets with sugar, people who are health-conscious don't want them, and most acid reflux happens at night, after you've already brushed your teeth, and chomping every night on sugar tablets which get crushed into chalk and impacted between all your teeth until morning is a sure way to get cavities.

Suga...
Meetup : Washington, D.C.: Outdoor Fun & Games
by RobinZ — 2016-06-29T19:24:55.242Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Outdoor Fun & Games

WHEN:
03 July 2016 03:30:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
Meridian Hill Park, Washington DC

We will be going to the park to hang out, play games, and have fun conversation ... outside.

Location: Meridian Hill Park is around 16th & W Streets NW (Google Maps); it's a few blocks away from the Columbia Heights or Woodley Park-Zoo Metro stations. Note that there is a drum circle that meets on Sunday afternoons, so that will probably be audible from where we meet.

Edit: Being as the park is somewhat large, one of the people on the list suggested meeting somewhere just north of the entrance on 16th street near W.

Upcoming meetups:

Jul. 10: Webcomics

Jul. 17: Reading Book Excerpts

Jul. 24: Fun & Games

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Outdoor Fun & Games
Rationality when Insulated from Evidence
by JustinMElms — 2016-06-29T16:03:59.696Z

Basically: How does one pursue the truth when direct engagement with evidence is infeasible?

I came to this question while discussing GMO labeling. In this case I am obviously not in a position to experiment for myself, but furthermore: I do not have the time to build up the bank of background understanding to engage vigorously with the study results themselves. I can look at them with a decent secondary education's understanding of experimental method, genetics, and biology, but that is the extent of it.

In this situation I usually find myself reduced to weighing the proclamations of authorities:

I review aggregations of authority from one side and then the other--because finding a truly unbiased source for contentious issues is always a challenge, and usually says more about the biases of whoever is anointing the source "unbiased."

Once I have reviewed the authorities, I do at least some due diligence on each authority so that I can modulate my confidence if a particular authority is often considered partisan on an issue. This too can present a bias spiral checking for bias in the source pillorying the authority as partisan ad infinitum.

Once I have some known degree of confidence in the authorities of both sides, I can form some level of confidence in a statement like: "I am ~x% confident that the scientific consensus is on Y's side" or "I am ~Z% confident that there is not scientific consensus on Y"

Once that establishes a baseline on an issue, I am able to do some argumentation analysis to see what arguments each side has that simply should not be included in the discussion. This is usually irrelevant appeals (e.g.: In the GMO labeling debate, "It must be better because it's more natural") or corollary citations that are screened off by evidence closer to the source (e.g.: In the GMO labeling debate, "X many countries require GMO labeling" should be screened off by looking at the evidence that led to that decision).

After that, I find myself with a rather unfulfilling meta-assessment of an issue. I fear that I am asking for a non-existent shortcut around the hard solution of: "If an answer is important to you, do the necessary learning to at least be able to engage directly with the evidence," but I will ask anyway: does anyone else have strategies for seeking the truth while insulated from direct evidence?
Mistakes #6: Identifying reality slowly
by KatjaGrace — 2016-06-29T06:47:57.000Z

(Mistakes #1, #2, #3, #4, #5)

One thing I was confused about when I was about eight was which things were ‘real’. It was not that I had any trouble distinguishing between the mundane objects around me—including my parents and a perplexed child psychologist—and my so-called ‘imaginary friends’. They were clearly different in kind. It just wasn’t obvious which kind was the ‘real’ one, philosophically speaking. The objects and parents and so on produced vivid mental images, whereas the other things didn’t. And I had some kind of intuitive feeling that that one was the only real world. But one doesn’t want to trust feelings in important matters such as these. Especially as a particularly young person with little experience of things, when feelings are about as suspicious as the next psychological phenomenon.

The psychologist promised me that she was real, and the imaginary friends weren’t. The imaginary friends laughed at her and promised me right back that they were real, and that psychologists were imaginary. So far the only asymmetry was that the psychologist was stupid.

There were some other asymmetries really, like how the psychologist was part of a rich and perceptible world, and the imaginary friends seemed to belong to some hazier shadow realm. I guess at least some of the time, my alternative model was something like, the imaginary friends lived in a more real world outside the physical world, and had a lot of control over the physical world, rather than the physical world being nonexistent.

It was unusually important to determine whether the imaginary friends were real because they were not friendly, and often threatened me. ‘You’ll die if you walk down that hill”, and so on. (Those of you who believe in psychologists may recognize this as some form of obsessive compulsive disorder).

I think in the end I decided the balance of evidence was in favor of the psychologist and other humans being real, in part because they were surprisingly stupid or full of non sequiturs. The imaginary friends seemed clever to me, because they saw considerations that I saw. Also their threats were so well designed for my own mind, it was as if they were intimately familiar with it. And if ever I thought of a thing that would be terrible for my imaginary friends to do, they were immediately on it in a way that indicated that they must be telepathic. And telepathy...
Research immersiveness
by KatjaGrace — 2016-06-28T12:00:43.000Z

Suppose you want someone to calculate the current price of cheap computing hardware.

Alice knows roughly how much computing hardware cost a year ago, and know what the different kinds of computing hardware are, and how prices vary by time and market, and as she does the calculation she thinks things like ‘ooh, that is cheap’.

Bob doesn’t know anything about hardware and also isn’t trying to think about it. He mechanically follows an abstract research process he devised without reference to the subject matter, and makes no attempt to form an intuitive model. He reasons that in order to find the price of X, it will be necessary to locate the cheapest readily available version of X. He searches in various ways for cheap X. He writes down the best X prices he can find. He doesn’t notice if the prices are similar, or if there is a pattern behind the different X and prices associated with them. He determines the lowest price on his list, and returns it as the cheapest X. He writes words like ‘hardware’ instead of X, but it doesn’t really matter for his process.

I expect Alice to produce better research. Here are some advantages I expect her to have over Bob:

She will know to look for cheap prices for common kinds of computers such as supercomputers, CPUs, and GPUs.

If her searches only return CPUs, she will notice that maybe supercomputers aren’t coming up for some reason other than their not being cheap, and look them up directly.

If Alice finds numbers that are very different from the number a year ago, she will be surprised and check more carefully.

Alice will have an idea of whether the prices of GPUs she has found so far are relatively representative cheap GPUs, based on things like how much they vary, what brands they are from.

If any numbers or patterns of numbers are surprising or interesting, Alice will notice and be able to do further research on a relevant sub-question, such as ‘is Moore’s law speeding up for computing cost?’

She will remember much more of what she has found so far, because it is meaningful to her.

Basically, Alice is getting feedback, while Bob may as well have set up the whole research procedure to run mechanically at the start, because he is not getting any information from what he finds. And often feedback is good.

You can do research without engaging with the topic, carrying out abstract calculations while igno...
Meme: Valuable Vulnerability
by Commander Zander — 2016-06-27T23:54:15.107Z

There's an idea i've encountered in a couple essays and posts (not on LW) that being emotionally vulnerable is, counterintuitively, a desirable trait. I think this is usually defined as being in a state where what you observe is liable to create negative emotions in you (or in some definitions, a variety of emotions). I've heard several people recommend this meme but i'm still trying to wrap my head around it. Personally i usually aim for more manageable emotional states, and i rarely cultivate this kind of state. On the other hand, its popularity suggests, in my opinion, that it has at least some usefulness.

What do LWers think about this concept? What do you think is the main rationale for this idea, and do you think it is a good policy?
Generative adversarial models, informed by arguments
by jessicata — 2016-06-27T19:28:27.000Z

As background, I suggest reading the imitation learning section of this post.

Suppose we have a generative adversarial model for answering questions. This consists of two agents, an actor and a critic. The actor generates a human-like answer given a question; the critic sees the question and answer, and tries to guess whether the answer was produced by the actor or the human.

The actor could differ from human behavior in important but hard-to-detect ways. For example, it could plagiarize or insert steganography into its answers, as in the informed oversight problem.

To resolve this problem, perhaps we want to make the actor transparent to the critic, so the critic is able to detect plagiarism. But, this makes the critic's job far too easy: if the critic sees a trace of the actor, then it is very easy to check whether the answer to the question was produced by the actor or not (just see if the actor's trace is consistent with the answer to the question).

In some sense, we want the critic to have logical information about the actor's computation, but not physical information about the random bits the actor has access to. Here's a way of doing this.

Introduce two more agents, an adviser and a misinformer. Both of these agents know whether the answer was produced by a human or the actor, and they both have access to the actor's internal state. The critic will be able to interact with both of these agents, but will not know which the adviser and which is the misinformer. The adviser's objective is for the critic to guess correctly, while the misinformer's objective is for the critic to guess incorrectly.

Suppose the actor plagiarizes (in a case where the human would not plagiarize). Then the adviser may be able to look at the actor's internal state and compile a report showing where the actor has plagiarized. The adviser may give this report to the critic, which will help the critic know that the answer was produced by the actor and not the human. Furthermore, since the critic can check that the plagiarism report is accurate, the presence of the misinformer does not hinder this process. In some sense, by having access to an advisor (who can be confused with a misinformer), the critic can gain logical information about the actor's computations but not physical information.

In some cases, this setup will make the critic's job too easy. Suppose the adviser alw

...
Why would I want a female role model?
by KatjaGrace — 2016-06-27T13:00:24.000Z

People have always talked about the need for female role models, and until recently I didn’t understand how this was meant to help.

Why would I want a female math teacher to be my role model, when that bit of selection power might be used to get someone with more math skill? It seemed maybe insulting that people think I care so much about my femalehood that I prefer to copy someone else who shares it than someone who is chosen solely for being good at math. And if people use role models to decide how to behave, isn’t saying that female role models are important the same as saying either that women should behave differently from men, or that women are somehow unable to copy the behavior of men? Doesn’t it lead to more sexism if you suggest to people in this way that their gender is a defining feature and more important than e.g. math skill?

I now have a model of the potential need for female role models that makes sense to me, though I’m not especially confident in it. It may also be completely obvious to everyone other than me. Anyway, here it is.

Society has many stereotyped roles. The kind teacher. The cool businessman. The class clown. The twenty-something trying to figure out what they should do. The nerd.

My understanding of these is this. If you fit kind of near one of these roles, people will see you as being in it. In the same way that if you write a thing that is kind of like an ‘A’, people will read it as an ‘A’. If someone learns that you program a lot and enjoy playing board games, they think ‘ah, a nerd’ and then interpret more ambiguous characteristics to fit this role. For instance whether your clothing style is edgy or oblivious.

When people meet you, they observe your most striking characteristics, and try to figure out which kinds of person those characteristics mean that you are, from this set of known kinds of people. If your characteristics are striking but don’t seem to fit any known kinds of people, the observer will be confused and curious. Maybe you will get to have your own new role, or ‘weirdo’ is quite a large catchall.

People communicate who they are by either fitting known roles, or riffing on them: sort of fitting, but with unique flourishes that set them apart as individuals. Much like how fiction plays off ideas that exist in culture already, assuming the...
Acquiring common human skills
by KatjaGrace — 2016-06-27T06:36:00.000Z

I used to sometimes pay other people to cut up my meat into small pieces (not as weird as it sounds—our house has a tiny internal token economy). Somehow chewing meat was surprisingly hard for me, and so (unrelatedly?) was cutting it with a knife. I think I attributed these failings to some kind of generalized lack of virtue with respect to dealing with food.

Then one day a few months ago, my boyfriend said something like ‘I don’t understand—why can’t you cut meat? It’s not like there are lots of ways to do it wrong—you just put the knife here, and then go like this’ and I was like ‘Oh!’ and then I could cut the meat. (See picture, and pretend chocolate is meat and plastic knife is metal knife.)

How to cut meat

How not to cut meat

Encouraged, we went on to investigate why I couldn’t chew the meat, and learned that I was attempting to chew it with a different set of teeth to the ones he was using. Apparently you are meant to break up meat with your canine teeth. I tried this, and it worked much better than what I was doing (kind of crushing it together with my back teeth).

Relatedly, the two of us often floss our teeth together, and I always take longer than he does. Similarly, I think we both put this down to some vague moral failure on my part. One day we investigated more carefully, and learned that I have twenty five percent more teeth than he does, which explained the time difference pretty well. (After some confusion we figured out that I have the normal number, and he had all of his wisdom teeth removed, plus another four long ago).

I recounted some of these stories to a different friend, and he asked me if I knew how to drink cold water. I said probably not—in fact I have never understood how people drink iced water, which hurts my teeth. He showed me how to purse my lips to avoid the coldest water touching my teeth.

All this was surprising to me. I had assumed that most variation in people’s abilities to do random things was due to small nebulous differences in many characteristics. Maybe Sam can’t throw a ball as well as Lara because his posture is different in a thousand subtle ways, and he tends to move his body less quickly, and his hands are not the same shapes and he has different attitudes and beliefs and habits, about throwing balls and about learning things in general. The aforementioned series of events suggests that more

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