trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : Sunday Meetup at Buffalo Lab
by StonesOnCanvas — 2013-02-25T17:56:06.667Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Sunday Meetup at Buffalo Lab

WHEN:
28 February 2013 04:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
2727 Broadway Ave. Suite 210, Cheektowaga, NY

Hey everyone,

The next post linked in this series is "Focus you Uncertainty". It seems to be a sort of warm up for Bayes' Theorem. I think its about time we did a whole lesson on Bayesian Reasoning.

Instead of reading the next post in the series, I'd recommend you read "An Intuitive Explanation of Bayes' Theorem" http://yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes OR "Bayes' Theorem Illustrated" http://lesswrong.com/lw/2b0/bayes_theorem_illustrated_my_way/ which both do a good job explaining Bayes' Theorem in different ways. Different people learn in different ways, so if one explanation isn't working for you, try the other post and see if that makes more sense. In any case, we'll cover it at the meetup and why its important to know.

P.S. Since Buffalo Lab is not clearly visible from the road, I recommend using google maps satellite view to make it a bit easier to find.

Discussion article for the meetup : Sunday Meetup at Buffalo Lab
Why Bayes? A Wise Ruling
by Vaniver — 2013-02-25T15:52:40.847Z

Why is Bayes' Rule useful? Most explanations of Bayes explain the how of Bayes: they take a well-posed mathematical problem and convert given numbers to desired numbers. While Bayes is useful for calculating hard-to-estimate numbers from easy-to-estimate numbers, the quantitative use of Bayes requires the qualitative use of Bayes, which is noticing that such a problem exists. When you have a hard-to-estimate number that you could figure out from easy-to-estimate numbers, then you want to use Bayes. This mental process of testing beliefs and searching for easy experiments is the heart of practical Bayesian thinking. As an example, let us examine 1 Kings 3:16-28:

Now two prostitutes came to the king and stood before him. One of them said, “Pardon me, my lord. This woman and I live in the same house, and I had a baby while she was there with me. The third day after my child was born, this woman also had a baby. We were alone; there was no one in the house but the two of us.

“During the night this woman’s son died because she lay on him. So she got up in the middle of the night and took my son from my side while I your servant was asleep. She put him by her breast and put her dead son by my breast. The next morning, I got up to nurse my son—and he was dead! But when I looked at him closely in the morning light, I saw that it wasn’t the son I had borne."

The other woman said, “No! The living one is my son; the dead one is yours.”

But the first one insisted, “No! The dead one is yours; the living one is mine.” And so they argued before the king.

The king said, “This one says, ‘My son is alive and your son is dead,’ while that one says, ‘No! Your son is dead and mine is alive.’”

Notice that Solomon explicitly identified competing hypotheses, raising them to the level of conscious attention. When each hypothesis has a personal advocate, this is easy, but it is no less important when considering other uncertainties. Often, a problem looks clearer when you branch an uncertain variable on its possible values, even if it is as simple as saying "This is either true or not true."

Then the king said, “Bring me a sword.” So they brought a sword for the king. He then gave an order: “Cut the living child in two and give half to one and half to th

...
Meetup : Vancouver Personal Productivity
by  — 2013-02-25T15:34:40.576Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Vancouver Personal Productivity

WHEN:
02 March 2013 03:00:00PM (-0800)

WHERE:
2505 west broadway, vancouver

We're going to try to go somewhere more practical this week. We'll talk about how to actually get stuff done in your available time. I don't have the silver bullet; I was hoping that we collectively have a few tricks to share.

As usual lately, the meetup will be at Benny's Bagels (2505 west broadway) at 15:00 on Saturday.

We can also follow up on the list of bad habits and possible improvements we came up with two weeks ago (or one week? whatever).

The discussion has been quite theoretical for a few weeks. I've been impressed by our ability to discuss hard topics without bursting into flames, but even so, I want to take us in a more practical direction for a while. Most of us seem to be lacking in applied winning-skill more than in abstract thinking-skill.

Join us on our mailing list

See you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : Vancouver Personal Productivity
Newcomb's Problem dissolved?
by EGI — 2013-02-25T15:34:34.536Z

First reading about Newcomb’s Problem my reaction was petty much "wow, interesting thought" and "of course I would one box, I want to win $ 1 million after all". But I had a lingering nagging feeling, that there is something wrong with the whole premise. Now, after thinking about it for a few weeks I think I have found the problem.

First of all I want to point out, that I would still one box after seeing Omega predicting 50 or 100 other people correctly, since 50 to 100 bits of evidence are enough to ovecome (nearly) any prior I have about how the universe works. Only I do not think this scenario is physically possible in our universe.

The mistake is nicely stated here:

After all, Joe is a deterministic physical system; his current state (together with the state of his future self's past light-cone) fully determines what Joe's future action will be. There is no Physically Irreducible Moment of Choice, where this same Joe, with his own exact actual past, "can" go one way or the other.

This is only true in this sense if neither MWI is true nor there are any quantum probabilistic processes, i.e., our universe allows for a true Laplace's demon (a.k.a. Omega) to exist.

If MWI is true Joe can set it up so, that "after" Omega filled the boxes and left there "will" be Everett Branches, in which Joe "will" twobox and different Everett Branches in which Joe "will" onebox.

Intuitively I think Joe could even do this with his own brain by leaving it in "undecided" mode until Omega leaves and then using an algorithm which feels "random" to decide if he oneboxes or twoboxes. But of course I would not thrust my intuition here and I do not know enough about Joe's brain to decide if this really works. So Joe would use e.g. a single photon reflected/transmitted off/through a semitransparent mirror, ensuring, that he oneboxes respectively twoboxes in say 50% of the Everett Branches.

If MWI is not true but there are quantum probabilistic process, Omega simply cannot predict the future state of the universe. So the same procedure used above would ensure that Omega cannot predict Joes decision due to true randomness.

So I would be very very VERY surprised if I saw Omega pull this trick 100 times in a row and I could somehow rule out Stage Magic (which I could not).

I am not even sure if there is any serious interpretation of quantum mechanics that allows for the strict dete...
Can biases be used to encourage rational thinking?
by pinyaka — 2013-02-25T15:31:55.865Z

For example, the Forer (or Barnum) effect leads people to believe that vague and general descriptions of personality traits are very accurate when they believe that the results are tailored to them (based on some attribute like astrological sign).
If there were a service available to you that would only send you predictions like "you are more likely to notice and compensate for your biases today" would it be worth signing up for or is there a Shelling point around not deliberately engaging in irrational thought? Is there a way to calculate utility for limited self-deception?
[SEQ RERUN] Cynicism in Ev-Psych (and Econ)
by MinibearRex — 2013-02-25T06:19:19.713Z

Today's post, Cynicism in Ev-Psych (and Econ?) was originally published on 11 February 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Evolutionary Psychology and Microeconomics seem to develop different types of cynical theories, and are cynical about different things.

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 Informers and Persuaders, 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.
How do you not be a hater?
by DanielLC — 2013-02-25T05:31:28.981Z

I was reading a review of Trust in God, or, The Riddle of Kyon. The reviewer went through step by step and listed problems with the fic. Some of them I agreed with, and others did not. What really stood out was in a comment agreeing with it: "reading that fic usually just evoked vague anger and other unpleasantness." Not unlike the vague feeling of anger and other unpleasantness I felt upon reading the review.

I don't consider myself someone whose opinion can be trusted on the quality of the original fic. In addition to being every bit as biased as any hater, although in the opposite direction, I have Asperger's syndrome, and I don't trust myself to notice such things as people acting out of character. However, because of this, I know my revulsion cannot be due to the quality of the review. I looked for it in hopes of weakening any bias I have. I think I can safely say that my revulsion will prevent that from happening.

So, any idea on what I can do? I've always thought haters should just stay away from what they hate. That would work fine if I just hated ponies or something, but I don't think it's such a good idea in cases where ideology is involved. And if nothing else, I don't want a vague feeling of anger and unpleasantness to ruin a perfectly good fanfic, like The Death of Haruhi Suzumia.
Meetup : Toronto - The nature of discourse; what works, what doesn't 
by Giles — 2013-02-25T04:20:05.060Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Toronto - The nature of discourse; what works, what doesn't

WHEN:
26 February 2013 06:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
54 Dundas St E, Toronto, ON

Place: Upstairs at The Imperial Public Library 54 Dundas St. E, near Dundas Station. Enter at the door on the right marked "library", go upstairs and look for the paperclip sign.

How do we avoid competitive debates where everyone loses, and achieve productive discussions where everyone wins? How do we do this when our brains seem set up to embrace "the brawl"?

Discussion article for the meetup : Toronto - The nature of discourse; what works, what doesn't
[Link] Colonisation of Venus
by  — 2013-02-24T22:16:07.348Z

I was wondering what people thought of this paper by Geoffrey Landis on colonising Venus. In it he suggests that cloud-top Venus is one of the most benign environments in the Solar System. Temperature and gravity are similar to Earth, there's some radiation shielding and useful resources, and aerostats filled only with breathable air would float at that height. I'm no expert so can't speak to how accurate it is, but it's certainly very thought-provoking for such a short paper.
Let's make a "Rational Immortalist Sequence". Suggested Structure. 
by diegocaleiro — 2013-02-24T19:12:57.435Z

Why Don't Futurists Try Harder to Stay Alive?, asks Rob Wiblin at Overcoming Bias

Suppose you want to live for more than 10 thousand years. (I'll assume that suffices for the "immortalist" designation). Many here do.

Suppose in addition that this is by far, very far, your most important goal. You'd sacrifice a lot for it. Not all, but a lot.

How would you go about your daily life? In which direction would you change it?

I want to examine this in a sequence, but I don't want to write it on my own, I'd like to do it with at least one person. I'll lay out the structure for the sequence here, and anyone who wants to help, by writing an entire post (these or others), or parts of many, please contact me in the comments, or message. Obviously we don't need all these posts, they are just suggestions. The sequence won't be about whether it is a good idea to do that. Just assume that the person wants to achieve some form of Longevity Escape Velocity. Take as a given that it is what an agent wants, what should she do?

1) The Ideal Simple Egoistic Immortalist - I'll write this one, the rest is up for grabs.

Describes the general goal of living long, explains it is not about living long in hell, about finding mathy or Nozickian paradoxes, about solving the moral uncertainty problem. It is just simply trying to somehow achieve a very long life worth living. Describes the two main classes of optimization 1)Optimizing your access to the resources that will grant immortality 2)Optimizing the world so that immortality happens faster. Sets "3)Diminish X-risk" aside for the moment, and moves on with a comparison of the two major classes.

2) Everything else is for nothing if A is not the case -

Shows the weaker points (A's) of different strategies. What if uploads don't inherit the properties in virtue of which we'd like to be preserved? What if cryonics facilities are destroyed by enraged people? What if some X-risk obtains, you die with everyone else? What if there is no personal identity in the relevant sense and immortality is a desire without a referent (a possible future world in which the desired thing obtains)? and as many other things as the poster might like to add.

3) Immortalist Case study - Ray Kurzweil -

Examines Kurzweil strategy, given his background (age, IQ, opportunities given while young etc...). Emphasis, for Kurzweil and others, on...
Extrapolating an Obscurantist's Volition
by  — 2013-02-24T06:55:11.209Z

Consider the case of an obscurantist i.e. an irrational agent who is proudly ignorant and opposes the spread of (certain) knowledge even to themselves. First of all, is the existence of such an agent implausible? Not really, considering there are masochists out there and that, to some individuals, ignorance is bliss. How much, then, will be left of an obscurantist's identity upon coherently extrapolating their desires? The answers is probably not much, if anything at all.
Do this force us to renounce to the idea of personal CEV? Hardly so. Instead, do we decry the legitimacy of the obscurantist's desires? Perhaps, but a convincing argument must be provided for the ethical aspects of such a line of thought; a utilitarian could draw support from the societal benefits of increased epistemic hygiene in the absence of obscurantists.
In any case, this (admittedly contrived) example illustrates that there are pressing issues regarding CEV and personal identity. Also, on a related note, I recently heard a leading decision theorist say that their greatest concern with Ideal Advisor Theories was how desires become no longer the individuals' but, rather, those of their advisors; it may well be the case that personal CEV incurs in the same issues, at least under the obscurantist's conditions.
The limiting case above also reveals a subtle interplay between knowledge and volition; our desires might (implicitly) involve not wanting to know certain propositions, wanting to not know certain propositions, not wanting to act as if we knew certain propositions, wanting to act as if we did not know certain propositions.
What I just presented is not a rejection of the idea of personal CEV or similar desire-satisfaction theories of well-being, rather it aims to be a pointer to complications one must keep in mind when developing such proposals.
Improving Human Rationality Through Cognitive Change (intro)
by lukeprog — 2013-02-24T04:49:48.976Z

This is the introduction to a paper I started writing long ago, but have since given up on. The paper was going to be an overview of methods for improving human rationality through cognitive change. Since it contains lots of handy references on rationality, I figured I'd publish it, in case it's helpful to others.

1. Introduction

During the last half-century, cognitive scientists have catalogued dozens of common errors in human judgment and decision-making (Griffin et al. 2012; Gilovich et al. 2002). Stanovich (1999) provides a sobering introduction:

For example, people assess probabilities incorrectly, they display confirmation bias, they test hypotheses inefficiently, they violate the axioms of utility theory, they do not properly calibrate degrees of belief, they overproject their own opinions onto others, they allow prior knowledge to become implicated in deductive reasoning, they systematically underweight information about nonoccurrence when evaluating covariation, and they display numerous other information-processes biases...

The good news is that researchers have also begun to understand the cognitive mechanisms which produce these errors (Kahneman 2011; Stanovich 2010), they have found several "debiasing" techniques that groups or individuals may use to partially avoid or correct these errors (Larrick 2004), and they have discovered that environmental factors can be used to help people to exhibit fewer errors (Thaler and Sunstein 2009; Trout 2009).

This "heuristics and biases" research program teaches us many lessons that, if put into practice, could improve human welfare. Debiasing techniques that improve human rationality may be able to decrease rates of violence caused by ideological extremism (Lilienfeld et al. 2009). Knowledge of human bias can help executives make more profitable decisions (Kahneman et al. 2011). Scientists with improved judgment and decision-making skills ("rationality skills") may be more apt to avoid experimenter bias (Sackett 1979). Understanding the nature of human reasoning can also improve the practice of philosophy (Knobe et al. 2012; Talbot 2009; Bishop and Trout 2004; Muehlhauser 2012), which has too often made false assumptions about how the mind reasons (Weinberg et al. 2001; Lakoff and Johnson 1999; De Paul and Ramsey 1999). Finally, improved rationality could help decision makers to choose better policies...
[SEQ RERUN] Informers and Persuaders
by MinibearRex — 2013-02-24T04:37:42.041Z

Today's post, Informers and Persuaders was originally published on 10 February 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

A purely hypothetical scenario about a world containing some authors trying to persuade people of a particular theory, and some authors simply trying to share valuable information.

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 (Moral) Truth in Fiction?, 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.
Discussion: Which futures are good enough?
by WrongBot — 2013-02-24T00:06:44.941Z

Thirty years from now, a well-meaning team of scientists in a basement creates a superintelligent AI with a carefully hand-coded utility function. Two days later, every human being on earth is seamlessly scanned, uploaded and placed into a realistic simulation of their old life, such that no one is aware that anything has changed. Further, the AI had so much memory and processing power to spare that it gave every single living human being their own separate simulation.

Each person lives an extremely long and happy life in their simulation, making what they perceive to be meaningful accomplishments. For those who are interested in acquiring scientific knowledge and learning the nature of the universe, the simulation is accurate enough that everything they learn and discover is true of the real world. Every other pursuit, occupation, and pastime is equally fulfilling. People create great art, find love that lasts for centuries, and create worlds without want. Every single human being lives a genuinely excellent life, awesome in every way. (Unless you mind being simulated, in which case at least you'll never know.)

I offer this particular scenario because it seems conceivable that with no possible competition between people, it would be possible to avoid doing interpersonal utility comparison, which could make Mostly Friendly AI (MFAI) easier. I don't think this is likely or even worthy of serious consideration, but it might make some of the discussion questions easier to swallow.

1. Value is fragile. But is Eliezer right in thinking that if we get just one piece wrong the whole endeavor is worthless? (Edit: Thanks to Lukeprog for pointing out that this question completely misrepresents EY's position. Error deliberately preserved for educational purposes.)

2. Is the above scenario better or worse than the destruction of all earth-originating intelligence? (This is the same as question 1.)

3. Are there other values (besides affecting-the-real-world) that you would be willing to trade off?

4. Are there other values that, if we traded them off, might make MFAI much easier?

5. If the answers to 3 and 4 overlap, how do we decide which direction to pursue?
Great rationality posts in the OB archives
by lukeprog — 2013-02-23T23:33:51.624Z

Those aching for good rationality writing can get their fix from Great rationality posts by LWers not posted to LW, and also from the Overcoming Bias archives. Some highlights are below, up through June 28, 2007.

Finney, Foxes vs. Hedgehogs: Predictive Success

Hanson, When Error is High, Simplify

Shulman, Meme Lineages and Expert Consensus

Hanson, Resolving Your Hypocrisy

Hanson, Academic Overconfidence

Hanson, Conspicuous Consumption of Info

Sandberg, Supping with the Devil

Hanson, Conclusion-Blind Review

Shulman, Should We Defer to Secret Evidence?

Shulman, Sick of Textbook Errors

Hanson, Dare to Deprogram Me?

Armstrong, Biases, By and Large

Friedman, A Tough Balancing Act

Hanson, RAND Health Insurance Experiment

Armstrong, The Case for Dangerous Testing

Hanson, In Obscurity Errors Remain

Falkenstein, Hofstadter's Law

Hanson, Against Free Thinkers