trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup: October
by Maelin — 2016-10-16T05:53:38.550Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup: October

WHEN:
21 October 2016 06:30:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
The Bull & Bear Tavern, 347 Flinders Lane, Melbourne VIC

This month's Social Meetup is on as usual!

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/2092157011008864/

Social Meetups are casual get-togethers held on the third Friday of each month. They are informal events where we sit around and chat over a few drinks and a meal.

Where? The Bull & Bear Tavern, 347 Flinders Lane, Melbourne

When? Friday 21st October, starting from 6:30pm. Feel free to arrive later on!

Dinner? The B&B serves reasonable pub food, and we will usually share a couple of bowls of wedges or similar. A few of us typically go for a late dinner after we leave the B&B - usually at Father's Office, which offers late night dining at half price.

Contact? Any issues or questions, contact Richard on 0421231789

Hope to see you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup: October
Control and security
by paulfchristiano — 2016-10-15T21:11:55.000Z

I used to think of AI security as largely unrelated to AI control, and my impression is that some people on this forum probably still do. I've recently shifted towards seeing control and security as basically the same, and thinking that security may often be a more appealing way to think and talk about control.

This post fleshes out this view a little bit. I'm interested in any disagreement or pushback.

(This view was in large part absorbed from Ian at OpenAI, but now it feels very natural.)

My basic claims:

The sets {security problems} and {control problems} are basically the same.

Security problems sound less exotic so we should talk about them that way. And it's not a sleight of hand or anything, the technical issues really will probably occur first in a security context, and the best near-term analogies for control problems will probably be security problems.

If you want to approximate the correct mindset for control using something that people are familiar with, probably security is probably your best bet.

This is closely related to MIRI and Eliezer's enthusiasm about the security mindset. I'm suggesting a somewhat more literal analogy though.
Map and Territory: a new rationalist group blog
by Gordon Seidoh Worley — 2016-10-15T17:55:06.762Z

If you want to engage with the rationalist community, LessWrong is mostly no longer the place to do it. Discussions aside, most of the activity has moved into the diaspora. There are a few big voices like Robin and Scott, but most of the online discussion happens on individual blogs, Tumblr, semi-private Facebook walls, and Reddit. And while these serve us well enough, I find that they leave me wanting for something like what LessWrong was: a vibrant group blog exploring our perspectives on cognition and building insights towards a deeper understanding of the world.

Maybe I'm yearning for a golden age of LessWrong that never was, but the fact remains that there is a gap in the rationalist community that LessWrong once filled. A space for multiple voices to come together in a dialectic that weaves together our individual threads of thought into a broader narrative. A home for discourse we are proud to call our own.

So with a lot of help from fellow rationalist bloggers, we've put together Map and Territory, a new group blog to bring our voices together. Each week you'll find new writing from the likes of Ben Hoffman, Mike Plotz, Malcolm Ocean, Duncan Sabien, Anders Huitfeldt, and myself working to build a more complete view of reality within the context of rationality.

And we're only just getting started, so if you're a rationalist blogger please consider joining us. We're doing this on Medium, so if you write something other folks in the rationalist community would like to read, we'd love to consider sharing it through Map and Territory (cross-positing encouraged). Reach out to me on Facebook or email and we'll get the process rolling.

https://medium.com/map-and-territory
Meetup : Baltimore Area / UMBC Weekly Meetup
by iarwain1 — 2016-10-14T16:39:57.573Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Baltimore Area / UMBC Weekly Meetup

WHEN:
16 October 2016 08:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
Performing Arts and Humanities Bldg Room 456, 1000 Hilltop Cir, Baltimore, MD 21250

Meeting is on 4th floor of the Performing Arts and Humanities Building. Permit parking designations do not apply on weekends, so park pretty much wherever you want.

Discussion article for the meetup : Baltimore Area / UMBC Weekly Meetup
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2016-10-14T15:56:24.185Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on October 14th. The following week's summary is here.

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

Stockholm: Trigger-Action Plans: 14 October 2016 05:00PM

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:

Bay Area Winter Solstice 2016: 17 December 2016 07:00PM
San Francisco Meetup: Rationality Diary: 17 October 2016 06:15PM
Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games: 16 October 2016 03:30PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buffalo, Canberra, Columbus, Denver, Kraków, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Moscow, New Hampshire, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, St. Petersburg, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers and a Slack channel for daily discussion and online meetups on Sunday night US time.

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, Cambridge UK, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Marin CA, Ottawa, Pittsburgh, Portland, Salt Lake City, Southern California (Los Angeles/Orange County area), Singapore, St. Louis, Vancouver, Warsaw, Waterloo.

Whether or not there's currently a meetup in your area, you can sign up to be noti...
The map of agents which may create x-risks
by turchin — 2016-10-13T11:17:51.236Z

Recently Phil Torres wrote an article where he raises a new topic in existential risks research: the question about who could be possible agents in the creation of a global catastrophe. Here he identifies five main types of agents, and two main reasons why they will create a catastrophe (error and terror).

He discusses the following types of agents:

(1) Superintelligence.

(2) Idiosyncratic actors.

(3) Ecoterrorists.

(4) Religious terrorists.

(5) Rogue states.

Inspired by his work I decided to create a map of all possible agents as well as their possible reasons for creating x-risks. During this work some new ideas appeared.

I think that a significant addition to the list of agents should be superpowers, as they are known to have created most global risks in the 20th century; corporations, as they are now on the front line of AGI creation; and pseudo-rational agents who could create a Doomsday weapon in the future to use for global blackmail (may be with positive values), or who could risk civilization’s fate for their own benefits (dangerous experiments).

The X-risks prevention community could also be an agent of risks if it fails to prevent obvious risks, or if it uses smaller catastrophes to prevent large risks, or if it creates new dangerous ideas of possible risks which could inspire potential terrorists.

The more technology progresses, the more types of agents will have access to dangerous technologies, even including teenagers. (like: "Why This 14-Year-Old Kid Built a Nuclear Reactor” )

In this situation only the number of agents with risky tech will matter, not the exact motivations of each one. But if we are unable to control tech, we could try to control potential agents or their “medium" mood at least.

The map shows various types of agents, starting from non-agents, and ending with types of agential behaviors which could result in catastrophic consequences (error, terror, risk etc). It also shows the types of risks that are more probable for each type of agent. I think that my explanation in each case should be self evident.

We could also show that x-risk agents will change during the pace of technological progress. In the beginning there are no agents, and later there are superpowers, and then smaller and smaller agents, until there will be ...
Meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Rationality Diary
by rocurley — 2016-10-13T05:18:03.800Z

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Rationality Diary

WHEN:
17 October 2016 06:15:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
1769 15th St, San Francisco, CA

We'll be meeting to tell stories about when we tried to solve a problem in our lives, and how it went.

For help getting into the building, please call (or text, with a likely-somewhat-slower response rate): three zero one, three five six, five four two four.

Format:

We meet and start hanging out at 6:15, but don’t officially start doing the meetup topic until 6:45-7 to accommodate stragglers. Usually there is a food order that goes out before we start the meetup topic.

About these meetups:

The mission of the SF LessWrong meetup is to provide a fun, low-key social space with some structured interaction, where new and non-new community members can mingle and have interesting conversations. Everyone is welcome.

We explicitly encourage people to split off from the main conversation or diverge from the topic if that would be more fun for them (moving side conversations into a separate part of the space if appropriate). Meetup topics are here as a tool to facilitate fun interaction, and we certainly don’t want them to inhibit it.

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Rationality Diary
Meetup : Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games
by RobinZ — 2016-10-12T00:02:48.074Z

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

WHEN:
16 October 2016 03:30:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture

We will be meeting in the courtyard to hang out, play games, and engage in fun conversation.

Upcoming meetups:

Oct. 23: Communication

Oct. 30: Halloween Party

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games
MIRI AMA plus updates
by Rob Bensinger — 2016-10-11T23:52:44.410Z

MIRI is running an AMA on the Effective Altruism Forum tomorrow (Wednesday, Oct. 11): Ask MIRI Anything. Questions are welcome in the interim!

Nate also recently posted a more detailed version of our 2016 fundraising pitch to the EA Forum. One of the additions is about our first funding target:

We feel reasonably good about our chance of hitting target 1, but it isn't a sure thing; we'll probably need to see support from new donors in order to hit our target, to offset the fact that a few of our regular donors are giving less than usual this year.

The Why MIRI's Approach? section also touches on new topics that we haven't talked about in much detail in the past, but plan to write up some blog posts about in the future. In particular:

Loosely speaking, we can imagine the space of all smarter-than-human AI systems as an extremely wide and heterogeneous space, in which "alignable AI designs" is a small and narrow target (and "aligned AI designs" smaller and narrower still). I think that the most important thing a marginal alignment researcher can do today is help ensure that the first generally intelligent systems humans design are in the “alignable” region. I think that this is unlikely to happen unless researchers have a fairly principled understanding of how the systems they're developing reason, and how that reasoning connects to the intended objectives.

Most of our work is therefore aimed at seeding the field with ideas that may inspire more AI research in the vicinity of (what we expect to be) alignable AI designs. When the first general reasoning machines are developed, we want the developers to be sampling from a space of designs and techniques that are more understandable and reliable than what’s possible in AI today.

In other news, we've uploaded a new intro talk on our most recent result, "Logical Induction," that goes into more of the technical details than our previous talk.

See also Shtetl-Optimized and n-Category Café for recent discussions of the paper.
[Recommendation] Steven Universe & cryonics
by tadrinth — 2016-10-11T16:21:51.672Z

I've been watching Steven Universe with my fiancee (a children's cartoon on Cartoon Network by Rebecca Sugar), and it wasn't until I got to Season 3 that I realized there's been a cryonics metaphor running in the background since the very first episode. If you want to introduce your kids to the idea of cryonics, this series seems like a spectacularly good way to do it.

If you don't want any spoilers, just go watch it, then come back.

Otherwise, here's the metaphor I'm seeing, and why it's great:

In the very first episode, we find out that the main characters are a group called the Crystal Gems, who fight 'gem monsters'. When they defeat a monster, a gem is left behind, which they lock in a bubble-forcefield and store in their headquarters.

One of the Crystal Gems is injured in a training accident, and we find out that their bodies are just projections; each Crystal Gem has a gem located somewhere on their body, which contains their minds. So long as their gem isn't damaged, they can project a new body after some time to recover. So we already have the insight that minds and bodies are separate.

This is driven home by a second episode where one of the Crystal Gems has their crystal cracked; this is actually dangerous to their mind, not just body, and is treated as a dire emergency instead of merely an inconvenience.

Then we eventually find out that the gem monsters are actually corrupted members of the same species as the Crystal Gems. They are 'bubbled' and stored in the temple in hopes of eventually restoring them to sanity and their previous forms.

An attempt is made to cure one of the monsters, which doesn't fully succeed, but at least restores them to sanity. This allows them to remain unbubbled and to be reunited with their old comrades (who are also corrupted). This was the episode where I finally made the connection to cryonics.

The Crystal Gems are also revealed to be over 5000 years old, and effectively immortal. They don't make a big deal out of this; for them, this is totally normal.

This also implies that they've made no progress in curing the gem monsters in 5000 years, but that doesn't stop them from preserving them anyway.

Finally, a secret weapon is revealed which is capable of directly shattering gems (thus killing the target permanently), but the use of it is rejected as unethical.

So, all in all, you have a series wh...
Meetup : St. Petersburg Weekly / Biweekly Meetup
by AvImd — 2016-10-10T17:53:46.959Z

Discussion article for the meetup : St. Petersburg Weekly / Biweekly Meetup

WHEN:
09 October 2021 06:00:00PM (+0300)

WHERE:
St. Petersburg, Russia, ITMO University, пр. Кронверкский, 49

We meet every week or every other week.
Actual date, time and location are announced on VK and Meetup.com.
Applied rationality workshop: vk event.
Regular meetings: vk community, vk event.
Meetup.com page.

Discussion article for the meetup : St. Petersburg Weekly / Biweekly Meetup
Open thread, Oct. 10 - Oct. 16, 2016
by MrMind — 2016-10-10T07:00:15.327Z

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

4. Unflag the two options "Notify me of new top level comments on this article" and "Make this post available under..." before submitting.
Meetup : Stockholm: Trigger-Action Plans
by pepe_prime — 2016-10-09T21:27:02.008Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Stockholm: Trigger-Action Plans

WHEN:
14 October 2016 05:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Lindstedtsvägen 3 room 1537, 114 28 Stockholm, Sweden

In this off week meetup David_Kristoffersson will hold a workshop about TAPs and mental contrasting.

Ever unsure how to go about to get yourself to do a new behavior or how to motivate yourself to do something?

There’s no magic pill, but there are techniques that, if you practice them, can go a long way. TAPs (Trigger-Action Plans) is a CFAR technique to design how you go about doing things in your life. Mental contrasting is a technique to generate motivation for things you think you should do.

The room is on the 5th floor. Fill in a poll for future times.

Discussion article for the meetup : Stockholm: Trigger-Action Plans
The map of organizations, sites and people involved in x-risks prevention
by turchin — 2016-10-07T12:04:29.954Z

Three known attempts to make a map of x-risks prevention in the field of science exist:

1. First is the list from the Global Catastrophic Risks Institute in 2012-2013, and many links there are already not working:

2. The second was done by S. Armstrong in 2014

3. And the most beautiful and useful map was created by Andrew Critch. But its ecosystem ignores organizations which have a different view of the nature of global risks (that is, they share the value of x-risks prevention, but have another world view).

In my map I have tried to add all currently active organizations which share the value of global risks prevention.

It also regards some active independent people as organizations, if they have an important blog or field of research, but not all people are mentioned in the map. If you think that you (or someone) should be in it, please write to me at alexei.turchin@gmail.com

I used only open sources and public statements to learn about people and organizations, so I can’t provide information on the underlying net of relations.

I tried to give all organizations a short description based on its public statement and also my opinion about its activity.

In general it seems that all small organizations are focused on their collaboration with larger ones, that is MIRI and FHI, and small organizations tend to ignore each other; this is easily explainable from the social singnaling theory. Another explanation is that larger organizations have a great ability to make contacts.

It also appears that there are several organizations with similar goal statements.

It looks like the most cooperation exists in the field of AI safety, but most of the structure of this cooperation is not visible to the external viewer, in contrast to Wikipedia, where contributions of all individuals are visible.

It seems that the community in general lacks three things: a united internet forum for public discussion, an x-risks wikipedia and an x-risks related scientific journal.

Ideally, a forum should be used to brainstorm ideas, a scientific journal to publish the best ideas, peer review them and present them to the outer scientific community, and a wiki to collect results.

Currently it seems more like each organization is interested in creating its own research and hoping that someone will read it. Each small organization seems to want to be the only one to present...
Meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Projects
by rocurley — 2016-10-07T05:27:20.018Z

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Projects

WHEN:
10 October 2016 06:15:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
1769 15th St, San Francisco, CA

We’ll be meeting to work on projects!

Near the beginning, we’ll go around and talk about what we’ll be working on, then do a couple of pomodoros quietly. At some point we’ll break into general conversations and socializing.

For help getting into the building, please call (or text, with a likely-somewhat-slower response rate): 301-458-0764

Format:

We meet and start hanging out at 6:15, but don’t officially start doing the meetup topic until 6:45-7 to accommodate stragglers. Usually there is a food order that goes out before we start the meetup topic.

About these meetups:

The mission of the SF LessWrong meetup is to provide a fun, low-key social space with some structured interaction, where new and non-new community members can mingle and have interesting conversations. Everyone is welcome.

We explicitly encourage people to split off from the main conversation or diverge from the topic if that would be more fun for them (moving side conversations into a separate part of the space if appropriate). Meetup topics are here as a tool to facilitate fun interaction, and we certainly don’t want them to inhibit it.

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Projects
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2016-10-07T03:58:13.712Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on October 7th. The following week's summary is here.

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

Stockholm: When to stop making a decision: 07 October 2016 03:00PM

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:

Baltimore Area / UMBC Weekly Meetup: 09 October 2016 08:00PM
Bay Area Winter Solstice 2016: 17 December 2016 07:00PM
Melbourne: A Bayesian Guide on How to Read a Scientific Paper: 08 October 2016 03:30PM
Moscow: rational review, bias busters, Kolmogorov and Jayes probability: 09 October 2016 02:00PM
Washington, D.C.: Games Discussion: 09 October 2016 03:30PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buffalo, Canberra, Columbus, Denver, Kraków, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Moscow, New Hampshire, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers and a Slack channel for daily discussion and online meetups on Sunday night US time.

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, Cambridge UK, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Marin CA, Ottawa, Pittsburgh, Portland, Salt Lake City, Sout...