trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
A bit of word-dissolving in political discussion
by  — 2014-12-07T17:05:08.734Z

I found Scott Alexander's steelmanning of the NRx critique to be an interesting, even persuassive critique of modern progressivism, having not been exposed to this movement prior to today. However I am also equally confused at the jump from "modern liberal democracies are flawed" to "restore the devine-right-of-kings!" I've always hated the quip "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others" (we've yet tried), but I think it applies here.

-- Mark Friedenbach

Of course, with the prompting to state my own thoughts, I simply had to go and start typing them out. The following contains obvious traces of my own political leanings and philosophy (in short summary: if "Cthulhu only swims left", then I AM CTHULHU... at least until someone explains to me what a Great Old One is doing out of R'lyeh and in West Coast-flavored American politics), but those traces should be taken as evidence of what I believe rather than statements about it.

Because what I was actually trying to talk about, is rationality in politics. Because in fact, while it is hard, while it is spiders, all the normal techniques work on it. There is only one real Cardinal Sin of Attempting to be Rational in Politics, and it is the following argument, stated in generic form that I might capture it from the ether and bury it: "You only believe what you believe for political reasons!" It does not matter if those "reasons" are signaling, privilege, hegemony, or having an invisible devil on your shoulder whispering into your bloody ear: to impugn someone else's epistemology entirely at the meta-level without saying a thing against their object-level claims is anti-epistemology.

Now, on to the ranting! The following are more-or-less a semi-random collection of tips I vomited out for trying to deal with politics rationally. I hope they help. This is a Discussion post because Mark said that might be a good idea.

Dissolve "democracy", and not just in the philosophical sense, but in the sense that there have been many different kinds of actually existing democracies. There are always multiple object-level implementations of any meta-level idea, and most political ideas are sufficiently abstract to count as meta-level. Even if, for purposes of a thought experiment, you find yourself saying, "I WILL ONLY EVER CONSIDER SYSTEMS THAT COUNT

...
Meetup : Brussels - Hope & Self-improvement
by Roxolan — 2014-12-07T17:04:50.525Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Brussels - Hope & Self-improvement

WHEN:
13 December 2014 01:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Rue des Alexiens 55 1000 Bruxelles

t's Christmas season, so I thought of doing something about rational giving, but we've already talked your ears off about Effective Altruism last meetup. Instead, let's fight off seasonal depression with the Power of Friendship (and of Chemistry).

What makes you hope for your own future? How has your life improved recently, and what makes you expect it will improve again? What makes you hope for the future of humanity? Which recent scientific development brings us one step towards utopia?

This month, a meetup that will go better than expected.

We will meet at 1 pm at "La Fleur en papier doré, close to the Brussels Central station. The meeting will be in English to facilitate both French and Dutch speaking members.

If you are coming for the first time, please consider filling out this one minute form to share your contact information.

The Brussels meetup group communicates through a Google Group.

Meetup announcements are also mirrored on meetup.com

Discussion article for the meetup : Brussels - Hope & Self-improvement
Linked decisions an a "nice" solution for the Fermi paradox
by Beluga — 2014-12-07T14:58:01.373Z

One of the more speculative solutions of the Fermi paradox is that all civilizations decide to stay home, thereby meta-cause other civilizations to stay home too, and thus allow the Fermi paradox to have a nice solution. (I remember reading this idea in Paul Almond’s writings about evidential decision theory, which unfortunately seem no longer available online.) The plausibility of this argument is definitely questionable. It requires a very high degree of goal convergence both within and among different civilizations. Let us grant this convergence and assume that, indeed, most civilizations arrive at the same decision and that they make their decision knowing this. One paradoxical implication then is: If a civilization decides to attempt space colonization, they are virtually guaranteed to face unexpected difficulties (for otherwise space would already be colonized, unless they are the first civilization in their neighborhood attempting space colonization). If, on the other hand, everyone decides to stay home, there is no reason for thinking that there would be any unexpected difficulties if one tried. Space colonization can either be easy, or you can try it, but not both.

Can the basic idea behind the argument be formalized? Consider the following game: There are N>>1 players. Each player is offered to push a button in turn. Pushing the button yields a reward R>0 with probability p and a punishment P<0 otherwise. (R corresponds to successful space colonization while P corresponds to a failed colonization attempt.) Not pushing the button gives zero utility. If a player pushes the button and receives R, the game is immediately aborted, while the game continues if a player receives P. Players do not know how many other players were offered to push the button before them, they only know that no player before them received R. Players also don’t know p. Instead, they have a probability distribution u(p) over possible values of p. (u(p)>=0 and the integral of u(p) from 0 to 1 is given by int_{0}^{1}u(p)dp=1.) We also assume that the decisions of the different players are perfectly linked.

Naively, it seems that players simply have an effective success probability p_eff,1=int_{0}^{1}p*u(p)dp and they should push the button iff p_eff,1*R+(1-p_eff,1)*P>0. Indeed, if players decide not to push the button they should expect that pushing the...
Meetup : West LA—DUMP STAT
by OpenThreadGuy — 2014-12-07T05:32:23.708Z

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA—DUMP STAT

WHEN:
10 December 2014 07:00:00PM (-0800)

WHERE:
11066 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA

How to Find Us: Go into this Del Taco. We will be in the back room if possible.

Parking is free in the lot out front or on the street nearby.

Discussion: Contra Heinlein, humans in large populations ought to specialize. This means sacrificing jack-of-all for expertise in one domain. But which things are best to sacrifice? Which things do you already do that you should do less of? What should your dump stats be?

Recommended Reading:

The Social Coprocessor Model

Comparative Advantage

Dump Stat on TVTropes

No prior exposure to Less Wrong is required; this will be generally accessible.

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA—DUMP STAT
Moving towards the goal
by So8res — 2014-12-07T02:00:00.000Z
Link: http://mindingourway.com/moving-towards-the-goal/

This post contains some advice. I dare not call it obvious, as the illusion of transparency is ever-present. I will call it simple, but people occasionally remind me that they really appreciate the simple advice. So here we go:

1

(As usual, this advice is not for everyone; today I am primarily speaking to those who have something to protect.)

I have been spending quite a bit of time, recently, working with people who are explicitly trying to hop on a higher growth curve and have a larger impact on the world. (Most of them effective altruists.) They wonder how the big problems can be solved, or how one single person can themselves move the needle in a meaningful way. They ask questions like "what needs to be done?", or "what sort of high impact things can I do right now?"

I think this is the wrong way of looking at things.

When I have a big problem that I want solved, I have found that there is one simple process which tends to work. It goes like this:

Move towards the goal.

(It's simple, not easy.)

If you follow this process, you either win or you die. (Or you run out of time. Speed is encouraged. So are shortcuts, so is cheating.)

The difficult part is hidden within step 1: it's often hard to keep moving towards the goal. It's difficult to stay motivated. It's difficult to stay focused, especially when pursuing an ambitious goal such as "end ageing," which requires overcoming some fairly significant obstacles.

But we are human beings. We are the single most powerful optimization process in the known universe, with the only exception being groups of human beings. If we set ourselves to something and don't stop, we either suceed or we die. There's a whole slew of advice which helps make the former outcome more likely than the latter (via efficiency, etc.), but first it is necessary to begin.

Moving towards the goal doesn't mean you have to work directly on whatever problem you're solving. If you're trying to end aging, then putting on a lab coat and combining random chemicals likely won't do you much good.

Rather, moving towards the goal is about always acting to solve the problem, with each motion. Identify the path to the goal that seems shortest, and then walk it. Maybe you need to acquire financial stability first, and more knowledge second. Maybe you need to expand your social network, or fulfill your social attachment needs. Maybe you need to acquire a new skill. M...
Meetup : Sydney Summer Solstice
by luminosity — 2014-12-06T23:37:09.487Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Summer Solstice

WHEN:
21 December 2014 06:00:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
Model Yacht Pond, Centennial Park

Help us celebrate the end of a full year of rekindled Less Wrong Sydney! We will be holding a Summer Solstice event, Sat 21st in Centennial Park.

Come along from 6pm to have dinner and socialise, then watch the sun go down at 8pm, and take part in a final end of year group activity. We will be supplying candles and Less Wrong members can hold the floor and deliver a reading, a focused exercise, etc.

Please leave a comment with the type of exercise you'd like to run (or if you have an idea you'd like to suggest someone else picks up and runs).

If you know anyone else outside of Less Wrong who you think would enjoy the evening please invite them along also!

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Summer Solstice
[Link] Eric S. Raymond - Me and Less Wrong
by philh — 2014-12-05T23:44:57.913Z

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6549

I’ve gotten questions from a couple of different quarters recently about my relationship to the the rationalist community around Less Wrong and related blogs. The one sentence answer is that I consider myself a fellow-traveler and ally of that culture, but not really part of it nor particularly wishing to be.

The rest of this post is a slightly longer development of that answer.
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2014-12-05T21:20:43.079Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on November 28th. The following week's summary is here.

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

Copenhagen: December Meetup: 20 December 2014 03:00PM
East Coast Solstice Megameetup: 20 December 2014 03:00PM
European Community Weekend 2015: 12 June 2015 12:00PM
Frankfurt: 07 December 2014 02:00PM
Saint Petersburg, Russia meetup: "Low hanging fruit": 19 December 2014 07:00PM
Urbana-Champaign: Seeking advice: 30 November 2014 02:00PM
Utrecht: Game Theory: 30 November 2014 02:00PM
Utrecht: Rationality Games: 14 December 2014 02:00PM
Utrecht: 21 December 2014 02:00PM
Utrecht: a critique of effective altruism: 04 January 2015 02:00PM
Warsaw December Meetup: 05 December 2014 04:00PM

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:

Austin, TX - Caffe Medici: 29 November 2025 01:30PM
Seattle Secular Solstice: 13 December 2014 05:30PM
[Vienna] Rationality Weekend Vienna: 13 December 2014 03:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buffalo, Cambridge UK, Canberra, Columbus, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Moscow, Mountain View, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, Seattle, Sydney, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, 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 subs...
[link] On the abundance of extraterrestrial life after the Kepler mission
by Gunnar_Zarncke — 2014-12-05T21:02:24.692Z

On the abundance of extraterrestrial life after the Kepler mission Amri Wandel

Some recent calculation of the Drake Equation with estimates of the likelihood and logevitiy of civilizations

Related: The Great Filter and Planets in the habitable zone, the Drake Equation, and the Great Filter
Editing meetups
by luminosity — 2014-12-05T09:51:28.750Z

Several times now I've had problems with meetups posting with the wrong times, and then been unable to fix them. Am I missing something on the meetup page that I could go to to correct the meetup, or is this impossible at the moment? Alternatively, is this something a moderator can do, and if so, who should I speak to, to get a meetup fixed?
Meetup : Washington, D.C.: Brains
by RobinZ — 2014-12-05T07:56:01.617Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Brains

WHEN:
07 December 2014 03:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
National Portrait Gallery

We will be meeting in the Kogod Courtyard of the National Portrait Gallery (8th and F Sts or 8th and G Sts NW, go straight past the information desk from either entrance) to talk about brains, neuroscience, and related topics. Per the norm, we plan to let people congregate from 3:00 to 3:30 before kicking things off.

As with prior informal-discussion meetups, conversation on any subject of interest to attendees (be it in the main conversation or in a side conversation) is both permitted and encouraged, but we suggest taking advantage of the meetup topic as a Schelling point.

Upcoming Meetups:

Dec. 14: TBA (to be summarized)

Dec. 21: Fun & Games (bring games, play games, converse, socialize, or any combination thereof)

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Brains
Could you be Prof Nick Bostrom's sidekick?
by RobertWiblin — 2014-12-05T01:09:37.040Z

If funding were available, the Centre for Effective Altruism would consider hiring someone to work closely with Prof Nick Bostrom to provide anything and everything he needs to be more productive. Bostrom is obviously the Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, and author of Superintelligence, the best guide yet to the possible risks posed by artificial intelligence.

Nobody has yet confirmed they will fund this role, but we are nevertheless interested in getting expressions of interest from suitable candidates.

The list of required characteristics is hefty, and the position would be a challenging one:

Willing to commit to the role for at least a year, and preferably several

Able to live and work in Oxford during this time

Conscientious and discreet

Trustworthy

Able to keep flexible hours (some days a lot of work, others not much)

Highly competent at almost everything in life (for example, organising travel, media appearances, choosing good products, and so on)

Will not screw up and look bad when dealing with external parties (e.g. media, event organisers, the university)

Has a good personality 'fit' with Bostrom

Willing to do some tasks that are not high-status

Willing to help Bostrom with both his professional and personal life (to free up his attention)

Can speak English well

Knowledge of rationality, philosophy and artificial intelligence would also be helpful, and would allow you to also do more work as a research assistant.

The research Bostrom can do is unique; to my knowledge we don't have anyone who has made such significant strides clarifying the biggest risks facing humanity as a whole. As a result, helping increase Bostrom's output by say, 20%, would be a major contribution. This person's work would also help the rest of the Future of Humanity Institute run smoothly.

The role would offer significant skill development in operations, some skill development in communications and research, and the chance to build extensive relationships with the people and organisations working on existential risks.

If you would like to know more, or be added to the list of potential candidates, please email me: robert [dot] wiblin [at] centreforeffectivealtruism [dot] org. Feel free to share this post around.

Note that we are also hiring for a bunch of other roles, with applications closing Friday the 12th December.
Meetup : Toronto EA meetup
by Giles — 2014-12-04T20:19:31.824Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Toronto EA meetup

WHEN:
11 December 2014 07:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
Toronto

See here for location and RSVP.

We haven't had an effective altruism meetup in Toronto for a while, so time for a relaunch! No particular fixed topic, just a chance to meet each other, hang out and discuss what's new.

Discussion article for the meetup : Toronto EA meetup
Meetup : LW Copenhagen: December Meetup
by Ruby — 2014-12-04T17:25:24.060Z

Discussion article for the meetup : LW Copenhagen: December Meetup

WHEN:
20 December 2014 03:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Stundeterhuset, Købmagergade 52, 1150 København

Hey all,

It's been a while (I've been out of the country a lot), but I'm back it Copenhagen for a bit and we ought to have another meet up.
I'm going to call one for:

Saturday, 20th December
3:00pm
Studenterhuset

Topic: Life Strategicness + Social

We'll spend some time on strategising aspects of our lives, be it in small or large ways (http://lesswrong.com/lw/2p5/humans_are_not_automatically_strategic/), debugging some questions - all with a bit of wisdom from CFAR - and then relaxing in the great environs that Studenterhuset offers.

Cheers,
Ruby

Discussion article for the meetup : LW Copenhagen: December Meetup
Potential vs already existent people and aggregation
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2014-12-04T13:38:26.339Z

EDIT: the purpose of this post is simply to show that there is a difference between certain reasoning for already existing and potential people. I don't argue that aggregation is the only difference, nor (in this post) that total utilitarianism for potential people is wrong. Simply that the case for existing people is stronger than for potential people.

Consider the following choices:

You must choose between torturing someone for 50 years, or torturing 3^^^3 people for a millisecond each (yes, it's a more symmetric variant on the dust-specks vs torture problem).

You must choose between creating someone who will be tortured for 50 years, or creating 3^^^3 people who will each get tortured for a millisecond each.

Some people might feel that these two choices are the same. There are some key differences between them, however - and not only because the second choice seems more underspecified than the first. The difference is the effect of aggregation - of facing the same choice again and again and again. And again...

There are roughly 1.6 billion seconds in 50 years (hence 1.6 trillion milliseconds in 50 years). Assume a fixed population of 3^^^3 people, and assume that you were going to face the first choice 1.6 trillion times (in each case, the person to be tortured is assigned randomly and independently). Then choosing "50 years" each time results in 1.6 trillion people getting tortured for 50 years (the chance of the same person being chosen to be tortured twice is of the order of 50/3^^^3 - closer to zero than most people can imagine). Choosing "a millisecond" each time results in 3^^^3 people, each getting tortured for (slightly more than) 50 years.

The choice there is clear: pick "50 years". Now, you could argue that your decision should change based on how often you (or people like you) expects to face the same choice, and assumes a fixed population of size 3^^^3, but there is a strong intuitive case to be made that the 50 years of torture is the way to go.

Compare with the second choice now. Choosing "50 years" 1.6 trillion times results in the creation of 1.6 trillion people who get tortured for 50 years. The "a millisecond" choice results in 1.6 trillion times 3^^^3 people being created, each tortured for a millisecond. Conditional on what the rest of the life of these people is like, many people (including me) would feel the "a millisecond" option is m...
Where is the line between being a good child and taking care of oneself?
by jkadlubo — 2014-12-04T07:26:46.688Z

I recently saw some posts here about how LW helps with personal stuff and that it's a good idea to post here1. Plus, you are the most supportive people I've ever met. I still hesitate. Know my courage. Also, I pretty much always put needs and feeling of other people ahead of mine, because "mine are not as important" (more on that in note 3 and 5). Saying my feelings and needs out loud is really scary. Writing them down is almost unimaginable.

I recently parted ways with my psychologist, but don't yet want to find a new one. Between our last meetings I had a thought that (as usually) was not explored deep enough. And I think I need to go deeper in it. Maybe you can point me in the right disome interesting directions?

A bit of background information about me and my parents: as a child and adolescent I did not exist as a separate person. I lived by the side of perfection, always not good enough, or simply not good. The chant of that time was "why can't you ... like your sister?" (have good grades, keep the room tidy, have friends, be nice - insert almost anything you can imagine)2. There were also other problems, but let's not make this part too long.

When I grew up and discovered that this all was not normal nor right, I became bitter and angry3. I keep in touch with them, act as if almost everything is fine, but boil inside a lot.

On the surface I want to fix things. I want to be able to ask my mum to teach me something (I haven't been able to do this since I was a preschooler, partly because I feared being laughed at), I want to look at my dad and not remember him calling me a murderer3. In my country it's even unthinkable that I am trying to cut the contact with one of my grandmothers4.

So I invented that I want my mother to understand why what she did was hurting me and apologise. She knows that I think she wronged me, though I doubt she realizes how very bitter I am about it all. For her, the solution is to start anew, with a blank space. I can't do that; I spent my adolescence being hit by her and apologising to her for whatever she deemed my fault on a given day. The problem with my solution is that she's incapable of it. For the sake of simplification: she does not comprehend other people's emotions (but she does have emotions of her own and she mostly comprehends them)5.

My new thought to look at "my solution" from a differe...