trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Tidbit: “Semantic over-achievers”
by kpreid — 2011-12-01T15:49:42.543Z

[I'd put this in an open thread, but those don’t seem to happen these days, and while this is a quote it isn't a Rationality Quote.]

You know, one of the really weird things about us human beings […] is that we have somehow created for ourselves languages that are just a bit too flexible and expressive for our brains to handle. We have managed to build languages in which arbitrarily deep nesting of negation and quantification is possible, when we ourselves have major difficulties handling the semantics of anything beyond about depth 1 or 2. That is so weird. But that's how we are: semantic over-achievers, trying to use languages that are quite a bit beyond our intellectual powers.

— Geoffrey K. Pullum, Language Log, “Never fails: semantic over-achievers”, December 1, 2011

This seems like it might lead to something interesting to say about the design of minds and the usefulness of generalization/abstraction, or perhaps just a good sound bite.
Hack Away at the Edges
by lukeprog — 2011-12-01T13:26:27.899Z

See also: Challenging the Difficult and Tips and Tricks for Answering Hard Questions.

From Michael Nielsen's Reinventing Discovery:

In January 2009, [mathematician Tim] Gowers decided to use his blog to run a very unusual social experiment. He picked out an important and difficult unsolved mathematical problem, a problem he said he’d “love to solve.” But instead of attacking the problem on his own, or with a few close colleagues, he decided to attack the problem completely in the open, using his blog to post ideas and partial progress. What’s more, he issued an open invitation asking other people to help out. Anyone could follow along and, if they had an idea, explain it in the comments section of the blog. Gowers hoped that many minds would be more powerful than one, that they would stimulate each other with different expertise and perspectives, and collectively make easy work of his hard mathematical problem. He dubbed the experiment the Polymath Project.

The Polymath Project got off to a slow start. Seven hours after Gowers opened up his blog for mathematical discussion, not a single person had commented. Then a mathematician named Jozsef Solymosi from the University of British Columbia posted a comment suggesting a variation on Gowers’s problem, a variation which was easier, but which Solymosi thought might throw light on the original problem. Fifteen minutes later, an Arizona high-school teacher named Jason Dyer chimed in with a thought of his own. And just three minutes after that, UCLA mathematician Terence Tao—like Gowers, a Fields medalist—added a comment. The comments erupted: over the next 37 days, 27 people wrote 800 mathematical comments, containing more than 170,000 words. Reading through the comments you see ideas proposed, refined, and discarded, all with incredible speed. You see top mathematicians making mistakes, going down wrong paths, getting their hands dirty following up the most mundane of details, relentlessly pursuing a solution. And through all the false starts and wrong turns, you see a gradual dawning of insight. Gowers described the Polymath process as being “to normal research as driving is to pushing a car.” Just 37 days after the project began Gowers announced that he was confident the polymaths had solved not just his original problem, but a harder problem that includ

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Intuitive Explanation of Solomonoff Induction
by lukeprog — 2011-12-01T06:56:51.233Z

Update: Alex Altair has now finished this tutorial!

A while ago I began writing a Solomonoff Induction tutorial, but now it's one of those Less Wrong articles I probably will never have time to write.

But, maybe a few of you can take what I've started, team up, and finish the thing. I'm basically just following along with the Solomonoff induction tutorials from Shane Legg (2008, 2004), but making them simpler and readable by a wider audience. I think this would be a valuable thing for Less Wrong to have, and one that would draw even more traffic to our community, but I don't have time to write it myself anymore!

Who wants to be a hero and finish this thing? The original markdown source is available here.

This is a tutorial for beginners. Those familiar with Solomonoff induction may prefer to read Rathmanner & Hutter (2011).

People disagree about things. Some say that vaccines cause autism; others say they don't. Some say everything is physical; others believe in a god. Some say that complicated financial derivatives are essential to a modern competitive economy; others think a nation's economy will do better without them. It's hard to know what is true.

And it's hard to know how to figure out what is true. Some think you should assume the things you are most certain about and then deduce all other beliefs from your original beliefs. Others think you should accept at face value the most intuitive explanations of your personal experience. Others think you should generally agree with the scientific consensus until it is disproven.

Wouldn't it be nice if finding out what's true was like baking a cake? What if there was a recipe for finding out what is true? All you'd have to do is follow the written instruction exactly, and after the last instruction you'd inevitably find yourself with some sweet, tasty truth!

As it turns out, there is an exact recipe for finding truth. It was discovered in the 1960s.

The problem is that you don't have time to follow the recipe. To find the truth to even a simple question using this recipe would require you to follow one step after another until long after the heat death of the universe, and you can't do that.

But we can find shortcuts. Suppose you know the exact recipe for baking a cake requires you to count out one molecule of H2O at a time until you have exactly 0.5 cups of water. If you did that, you ...
More "Personal" Introductions
by daenerys — 2011-12-01T06:22:31.684Z

One of the things I loved about studying liberal arts is that you actually got to know your professors. They would discuss their personal experiences in a topic ("Here's what I did during the feminist movement.."), you might get slide shows from their vacation in the country of study, or even invited to their house for a group dinner.
Going into engineering was rather jarring for me in that regard. The vast majority of professors would come to class, lecture on the topic, and that would be it. They might share what their specific field of study was, but they rarely shared any personal details. It actually made it harder for me to learn, because it was like "Who is this person who is talking to me?"

(I think a large part of this for me personally was because I am motivated by a desire to please, and so if I liked my professors, then I wouldn't want to inconvenience them by handing things in late, or bore them by giving them another sub-par paper to read. But that's another discussion...)
I've noticed that Less Wrong is similar in some ways. We may know about each other's views on particular topics, and general fields of study, but we know very little about each other as people, unless a personal topic happens to be related to a particular rationalist study. Even the intro thread set up here focuses mainly on non-personal information.

For example, a Generic Intro post right now would be something like: "I'm X years old. From place Y. The fields I study/want to study are Z. Here's what college/HS was/is like for me. I have akrasia." Pretty boring, right? INSTEAD, the things I would be interested in knowing about my fellow LWers include: "On my time off I enjoy underwater basketweaving and climbing Mt Kilamanjaro. I have 6 young daughters and a dog named Grrr. I love pesto. etc"
From a rational perspective, an argument could be made that it's easier to have constructive arguments that remain civil when you humanize the people you are speaking with.

I was wondering how other LWers feel on the subject. Do you like that our discussions are un-hampered by personal data? Do you like the idea of providing personal intros? Do you not want to provide personalish information for safety reasons, or because you don't think it's anyone business?

If you think you might need help writing a personal intro, I wrote [a general guide](http://lesswrong.com/lw/8n...
[SEQ RERUN] False Laughter
by MinibearRex — 2011-12-01T04:47:21.436Z

Today's post, False Laughter was originally published on 22 December 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Finding a blow to the hated enemy to be funny is a dangerous feeling, especially if that is the only reason why the joke is funny. Jokes should be funny on their own merits before they become deserving of laughter.

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 Two Cult Koans, 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.
What you think about them
by cousin_it — 2011-12-01T02:28:11.684Z

LWers who asked for personal feedback/critique in the comments to What I think about you: Dorikka, atucker, muflax, jsalvatier, Tyrell_McAllister, TheOtherDave.

LWers who asked for personal feedback at lukeprog's Tell me what you think about me: lukeprog, Jolly, SilasBarta, gwern.

If you have met any of these LWers face-to-face, or just have some constructive criticism to offer them, I urge you to do so by any discreet channel, e.g. private messages on LW or the various feedback forms that these LWers have set up. Most of them have declared Crocker's rules. Please don't hesitate: you have a chance to do a lot of good.

There seems to be a large unmet demand for feedback. Any ideas how to better satisfy that demand are welcome!

ETA: Antisuji, endoself, John_Maxwell_IV.
[LINK] Extra Credits: The Singularity 
by  — 2011-11-30T16:56:31.972Z

The show Extra Credits released a video today about the singularity. The show's audience is video gamers. Some of these gamers may not know about the singularity, but may become interested upon hearing about it.

The video itself is a very basic, non-technical introduction to the concept of intelligence explosion. It discusses it in the context of video games. At the end, they plug the SIAI as a place to go for more info.

I thought the video and the plug were pretty awesome, and wanted to share. If you think they're awesome, too, then take a second to give the video a view. Let's positively reinforce this kind of behavior. Here's the link:

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-singularity
The Sword of Good: I need some help to translate it
by loup-vaillant — 2011-11-30T13:41:49.565Z

I am currently translating Eliezer's "The Sword of Good" in French, and hit a rather thorny problem:

How do I translate the words Equilibrium and Balance, given that both words are present in this fiction?

Those two words are rather synonymous, and I can find but one French translation: équilibre. I need a second one, which would convey about the same ideas and sound as solemn as "equilibrium". Or some trick…

For the majority of you who don't speak French, other English words that could have replaced either "equilibrium" and "balance" may also give me valuable cues.

(By the way, translation work is way harder that I anticipated. It strains my mastery of both English and French way beyond what I'm used to.)

Second question, of less importance: which translation do you think suits The Lord of Dark best? "Le Seigneur de la Noirceur" ? Or "Le Seigneur des Ténèbres"? Or even something else?
[SEQ RERUN] Two Cult Koans
by MinibearRex — 2011-11-30T04:19:48.015Z

Today's post, Two Cult Koans was originally published on 21 December 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Two Koans about individuals concerned that they may have joined a cult.

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 Politics and Awful Art, 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.
A response to "Torture vs. Dustspeck": The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas
by Logos01 — 2011-11-30T03:34:03.587Z

For those not familiar with the topic, Torture vs. Dustspecks asks the question: "Would you prefer that one person be horribly tortured for fifty years without hope or rest, or that 3^^^3 people get dust specks in their eyes?"

Most of the discussion that I have noted on the topic takes one of two assumptions in deriving their answer to that question: I think of one as the 'linear additive' answer, which says that torture is the proper choice for the utilitarian consequentialist, because a single person can only suffer so much over a fifty year window, as compared to the incomprehensible number of individuals who suffer only minutely; the other I think of as the 'logarithmically additive' answer, which inverts the answer on the grounds that forms of suffering are not equal, and cannot be added as simple 'units'.

What I have never yet seen is something akin to the notion expressed in Ursula K LeGuin's The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.If you haven't read it, I won't spoil it for you.

I believe that any metric of consequence which takes into account only suffering when making the choice of "torture" vs. "dust specks" misses the point. There are consequences to such a choice that extend beyond the suffering inflicted; moral responsibility, standards of behavior that either choice makes acceptable, and so on. Any solution to the question which ignores these elements in making its decision might be useful in revealing one's views about the nature of cumulative suffering, but beyond that are of no value in making practical decisions -- they cannot be, as 'consequence' extends beyond the mere instantiation of a given choice -- the exact pain inflicted by either scenario -- into the kind of society that such a choice would result in.

While I myself tend towards the 'logarithmic' than the 'linear' additive view of suffering, even if I stipulate the linear additive view, I still cannot agree with the conclusion of torture over the dust speck, for the same reason why I do not condone torture even in the "ticking time bomb" scenario: I cannot accept the culture/society that would permit such a torture to exist. To arbitrarily select out one individual for maximal suffering in order to spare others a negligible amount would require a legal or moral framework that accepted such choices, and this violates the principle of individual self-determination -- a principle I ha...
Life Extension versus Replacement
by Julia_Galef — 2011-11-30T01:47:10.475Z

Has anyone here ever addressed the question of why we should prefer

(1) Life Extension: Extend the life of an existing person 100 years
to
(2) Replacement: Create a new person who will live for 100 years?

I've seen some discussion of how the utility of potential people fits into a utilitarian calculus. Eliezer has raised the Repugnant Conclusion, in which 1,000,000 people who each have 1 util is preferable to 1,000 people who each have 100 utils. He rejected it, he said, because he's an average utilitarian.

Fine. But in my thought experiment, average utility remains unchanged. So an average utilitarian should be indifferent between Life Extension and Replacement, right? Or is the harm done by depriving an existing person of life greater in magnitude than the benefit of creating a new life of equivalent utility? If so, why?

Or is the transhumanist indifferent between Life Extension and Replacement, but feels that his efforts towards radical life extension have a much greater expected value than trying to increase the birth rate?

(EDITED to make the thought experiment cleaner. Originally the options were: (1) Life Extension: Extend the life of an existing person for 800 years, and (2) Replacement: Create 10 new people who will each live for 80 years. But that version didn't maintain equal average utility.)

*Optional addendum: Gustaf Arrhenius is a philosopher who has written a lot about this subject; I found him via this comment by utilitymonster. Here's his 2008 paper, "Life Extension versus Replacement," which explores an amendment to utilitarianism that would allow us to prefer Life Extension. Essentially, we begin by comparing potential outcomes according to overall utility, as usual, but we then penalize outcomes if they make any existing people worse off.

So even though the overall utility of Life Extension is the same as Replacement, the latter is worse, because the existing person is worse off than he would have been in Life Extension. By contrast, the potential new person is not worse off in Life Extension, because in that scenario he doesn't exist, and non-existent people can't be harmed. Arrhenius goes through a whole list of problems with this moral theory, however, and by the end of the paper we aren't left with anything workable that would prioritize Life Extension over Replacement.
Anti-Akrasia Tactics Discussion
by atucker — 2011-11-30T01:00:02.187Z

You should probably read the Anti-Akrasia Tactics Review, if you haven't already. There's lots of useful stuff there, and if it works for you but you haven't read it...

You should totally go read it, implement it, and not come back to this thread until you've internalized your favorite tricks.

Feel free to discuss outcomes here.

Did anything work for you?

Is there anything that should be added?

Note: this is basically a "bump", but I suspect that it's a worthwhile reminder. Downvote me if I'm wrong.

P.S. I'd actually really enjoy feedback on this.
What I think about you
by cousin_it — 2011-11-29T23:28:03.438Z

So, having heard Mike Li compare Jaynes to a thousand-year-old vampire, one question immediately popped into my mind:

"Do you get the same sense off me?" I asked.

-- Eliezer Yudkowsky, The Level Above Mine

Most people need feedback in many areas. Most people can give feedback in many areas. But for some reason I don't see a lot of actual honest feedback happening, neither in my personal life, nor at work, nor here on LW. This looks like some sort of market failure, or perhaps a bug in society.

Would we benefit from a norm that encouraged asking for feedback or critique in any area, perhaps using open threads set up specially for that? I think we would. What do you think?
Review of Machery, 'Doing Without Concepts'
by lukeprog — 2011-11-29T23:22:28.899Z

Edouard Machery's Doing Without Concepts made a big splash in 2009, since it argues in all seriousness that concepts do not exist.

But wait. In order to claim that concepts don't exist, doesn't Machery need the concepts of "concept" and "exist"? To clarify what Machery means, I will summarize his book.

Machery argues for the Heterogeneity Hypothesis, which makes five basic claims:

The best available evidence suggests that for each category (for each substance, event, and so on), an individual typically has several concepts.

Coreferential concepts have very few properties in common. They belong to very heterogeneous kinds of concept.

Evidence strongly suggests that prototypes, exemplars, and theories are among these heterogeneous kinds of concept.

Prototypes, exemplars, and theories are typically used in distinct cognitive processes.

The notion of concept ought to be eliminated from the theoretical vocabulary of psychology.

Concepts in psychology and philosophy

After reviewing the psychological literature on concepts, Machery proposes that by "concept" psychologists usually mean something like this:

A concept of x is a body of knowledge about x that is stored in longterm memory and that is used by default in the processes underlying most, if not all, higher cognitive competences when these processes result in judgments about x.

Philosophers, by contrast, usually means something like this:

Having a concept of x is being able to have propositional attitudes about x as x.

As such, psychologists and philosophers are engaging in different projects when they talk about concepts, and Machery reviews some cases in which this has caused confusion.

Prototypes, exemplars, and theories

Since the death of the classical view of concepts, three paradigms about concepts have emerged in psychology: the prototypes paradigm, the exemplars paradigm, and the theories paradigm.

In fact, we have pretty good evidence for the existence of all three kinds of concepts. Moreover, we seem to possess distinct processes for learning these kinds of concepts, and also distinct processes for categorizing.

Scientific eliminativism

The first seven chapters provide the evidence for Machery's first four claims. The eight chapter makes his eliminativist argument:

In this section, I introduce in some detail a n

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Uncertainty
by Vaniver — 2011-11-29T23:12:11.341Z

This is part of a sequence on decision analysis.

Decision-making under certainty is pretty boring. You know exactly what each choice will do, and so you order the outcomes based on your preferences, and pick the action that leads to the best outcome.

Human decision-making, though, is made in the presence of uncertainty. Decision analysis - careful decision making - is all about coping with the existence of uncertainty.

Some terminology: a distinction is something uncertain; an event is each of the possible outcomes of that distinction; a prospect is an event that you have a personal stake in, and a deal is a distinction over prospects. This post will focus on distinctions and events. If you're comfortable with probability just jump to the four bolded questions and make sure you get the answers right. Deals are the interesting part, but require this background.

I should say from the very start that I am quantifying uncertainty as "probability." There is only one 800th digit of Pi (in base 10), other people already know it, and it's not going to change. I don't know what it is, though, and so when I talk about the probability that the 800th digit of Pi is a particular number what I'm describing is what's going on in my head. Right now, my map is mostly blank (I assign .1 probability to 0 to 9); once I look it up, the map will change but the territory will not. I'll use uncertainty and probability interchangeably throughout this post.

The 800th digit of Pi (in base 10) is a distinction with 10 possible events, 0 through 9. To be sensible, distinctions should be clear and unambiguous. A distinction like "the temperature tomorrow" is unclear- the temperature where, and at what time tomorrow? A distinction like "the maximum temperature recorded by the National Weather Service at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in the 24 hours before midnight (EST) on 11/30/2011" is unambiguous. Think of it like PredictionBook- you want to be able to create this distinction such that anyone could come across it and know what you're referring to.

Possibilities can be discrete or continuous. There are only a finite number of possible digits for the 800th digit of Pi, but the temperature is continuous and unbounded.1 A biased coin has a continuous parameter p that refers to how likely it is to land on heads in certain conditions; while that's bounded by 0 and 1, there are an infi

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