trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Interpersonal and intrapersonal utility comparisons
by AlexMennen — 2013-01-04T03:05:36.635Z

Utility functions are only defined up to an additive constant and a positive multiplier. For example, if we have a simple universe with only 3 possible states (X, Y, and Z), a utility function u such that u(X)=0, u(Y)=1, and u(Z)=3, and another utility function w such that w(X)=-1, w(Y)=1, and w(Z)=5, then as utility functions, u and w are identical, since w=2u-1.

Preference utilitarianism suggests maximizing the sum of everyone's utility function. But the fact that utility functions are invariant on multiplication by positive scalars makes this operation poorly defined. For example, suppose your utility function is u (as defined above), and the only other morally relevant agent has a utility function v such that v(X)=0, v(Y)=2000, and v(Z)=1000. He argues that according to utilitarianism, Y is the best state of the universe, since if you add each of your utility functions, you get (u+v)(X)=0, (u+v)(Y)=2001, and (u+v)(Z)=1003. You complain that he cheated by multiplying his utility function by a large number, and that if you treat v as v(X)=0, v(Y)=2, and v(Z)=1, then Z is the best state of the universe according to utilitarianism. There is no objective way to resolve this dispute, but anyone who wants to build a preference utilitarianism machine has to find a way to resolve such disputes that gives reasonable results.

I'm pretty sure that the idea of the previous two paragraphs has been talked about before, but I can't find where. [Edit: here and here]

Anyway, one might argue that if you are not a preference utilitarian, and not planning to build a friendly AI, you have little reason to care about this problem. If you just want to maximize your personal utility function, surely you don't need a solution to that problem, right?

Wrong! Unless you know exactly what your preferences are, which humans don't. If you're unsure whether or not u or v (as described above) describes your true preferences, and you assign a 50% probability to each, then you face the same problem that preference utilitarianism did in the previous example.

Humans are a lot better at getting ordinal utilities straight than they are at figuring out cardinal utilities, but even assuming that you know the order of your preferences, the problems remain. Let's say that, in another 3-state world (with states A, B, and C) you know you prefer B over A, and C over B, but you are uncertain between the po...
PSA: Please list your references, don't just link them
by Benya — 2013-01-04T01:57:33.937Z

In what became 5th most-read new post on LessWrong in 2012, Morendil told us about a study widely cited in its field... except that source cited, which isn't online and is really difficult to get, makes a different claim — and turns out to not even be the original research, but a PowerPoint presentation given ten years after the original study was published!

Fortunately, the original study turns out to be freely available online, for all to read; Morendil's post has a link. The post also tells us the author and the year of publication. But that's all: Morendil didn't provide a list of references; he showed how the presentation is usually cited, but didn't give a full citation for the original study.

The link is broken now. The Wayback machine doesn't have a copy. The address doesn't give hints about the study's title. I haven't been able to find anything on Google Scholar with author, year, and likely keywords.

I rest my case.
How much to spend on a high-variance option?
by RolfAndreassen — 2013-01-03T18:38:18.801Z

So the jackpot in the Ohio lottery is around 25 million, and the chance of winning it is one in roughly 14 million, with tickets at 1 dollar a piece. It appears to me that roughly a quarter million tickets are sold each drawing; so, supposing you win, the probability of someone else also winning is 1 - (1 - 1/14e6)^{250000}=2%, which does not significantly reduce the expectation value of a ticket. So, unless I'm making a silly mistake somewhere, buying lottery tickets has positive expected value. (I find this counterintuitive; where are all the economists who should be picking up this free money? But I digress.)

I pointed this out to my wife, and said that it might be worth putting a dollar into it; and she very cogently asked, "Then why not make it 100 dollars?" Why not, indeed! Is there any sensible way of deciding how much to put into an option that has a positive expected value, but very low chance of payoff?
My Best Case vs Your Worst Case
by HalMorris — 2013-01-03T14:11:10.082Z

Is there a name for the (I claim) extremely common practice of blithely and unconsciously always looking at your own view (political especially) in terms of its best possible outcomes, while always characterizing an opposing point of view by its worst possibilities?

If not, I think there should be. It seems like a major major source of unfruitful argumentation.
2012: Year in Review
by Kaj_Sotala — 2013-01-03T11:56:06.327Z

The beginning of a new year is a customary time to take a look back and consider what has happened during the last 12 months. And while the time for doing so is admittedly rather arbitrary - after all, "years" do not really exist in the universe, just in our heads - it is useful and fun to review one's accomplishments every now and then. And a time when everyone else is doing it gives us a nice Schelling point for joining in, so we can pretend that it's not quite that arbitrary.

So what might be some noteworthy things that happened on Less Wrong in 2012 that could be worth mentioning?

Site upgrades

First, I would like to say "thank you" to all the people working on keeping this site running and helping it make increasingly more awesome! This obviously includes pretty much everyone who comments, posts and writes here, but particularly also the folks at Trikeapps, and everyone who contributes updates to the site's codebase. There were several site upgrades in 2012, four of which were major enough to get separate announcements:

Less Wrong's new front page was rolled out in March, thanks to work by matt. One can easily access a number of site features from the brain graphic, and there's a convenient introduction under it, together with links to featured articles and recent promoted articles. Hopefully, this has made it easier for newcomers to get familiar with the site.

The "Best" sorting system for comments was introduced in July. The work was done by John Simon, and integrated by Wes. Whereas the old default sorting system, "Top", favored old comments that had already floated to the top and were thus more likely to get even more upvotes, "Best" attempts to give newer comments a fairer chance.

In August we got the ability to show parent comments on /comments. The work was done by John Simon, and integrated by wmoore. This change makes it far easier to grasp the context of things seen on the recent comments page, given that we now see the old comment that the new comments are replying to.

And finally, starting from September, we have been able to write comments that contain polls! Work on the code was originally began by jimrandomh, finished later by John Simon, and deployed by wmoore and matt. Although people had long been taking advantage of comment vote counts as a crude way of creating their own polls, this change makes things far easier.

Meetup booklet

In June, we ...
[Link] Hey Extraverts: Enough is Enough
by  — 2013-01-03T08:59:26.073Z

A fun article by Alan Jacobs. Check out the paper he cites, if anyone finds an non-paywalled version, I'll edit in the link here. HT for the link to Michael Bloom.

So in 2005 a very thoroughly researched and well-argued scholarly article was published that demonstrates, quite clearly, that group productivity is an illusion. All those brainstorming sessions and group projects you’ve been made to do at school and work? Useless. Everybody would have been better off working on their own. Here’s the abstract of the article:

"It has consistently been found that people produce more ideas when working alone as compared to when working in a group. Yet, people generally believe that group brainstorming is more effective than individual brainstorming. Further, group members are more satisfied with their performance than individuals, whereas they have generated fewer ideas. We argue that this ‘illusion of group productivity’ is partly due to a reduction of cognitive failures (instances in which someone is unable to generate ideas) in a group setting. Three studies support that explanation, showing that: (1) group interaction leads to a reduction of experienced failures and that failures mediate the effect of setting on satisfaction; and (2) manipulations that affect failures also affect satisfaction ratings. Implications for group work are discussed."

Has the puncturing of that “illusion of group productivity” had any effect? Of course not. Groupthink is as powerful as ever. Why is that?

I’ll tell you. It’s because the world is run by extraverts. (And FYI, that’s the proper spelling: extrovert is common but wrong, because extra- is the proper Latin prefix.) Extraverts love meetings — any possible excuse for a meeting, they’ll seize on it. They might hear others complain about meetings, but the complaints never sink in: extraverts can’t seem to imagine that the people who say they hate meetings really mean it. “Maybe they hate other meetings, but I know they’ll enjoy mine, because I make them fun! Besides, we’ll get so much done!” (Let me pause here to acknowledge that the meeting-caller is only one brand of extravert: some of the most pronouncedly outgoing people I know hate meetings as much as I do.)

The problem with extraverts — not all of them, I grant you, but many, so

...
[SEQ RERUN] For The People Who Are Still Alive
by MinibearRex — 2013-01-03T06:52:50.893Z

Today's post, For The People Who Are Still Alive was originally published on 14 December 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Given that we live in a big universe, and that we can't actually determine whether or not a particular person exists (because they will exist anyway in some other Hubble volume or Everett branch), then it makes more sense to care about whether or not people we can influence are having happy lives, than about whether certain people exist in our own local area.

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 You Only Live Twice, 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.
Applied Rationality Workshops: Jan 25-28 and March 1-4
by AnnaSalamon — 2013-01-03T01:00:34.531Z

The Center for Applied Rationality is running two more four-day workshops: Jan 25-28 and March 1-4 in the SF bay area. Like the previous workshop, these sessions are targeted at ambitious, analytic people who have broad intellectual interests, and who care about making real-world projects work. Less Wrong veterans and Less Wrong newcomers alike are welcome: as discussed below, we are intentionally bringing together folks with varied backgrounds and skill bases.

Workshop details:

The gist:

We're trying to improve people's rational agency - turn the evolutionary kludge that is a human being into something more like an entity that has goals and actually acts on them. We'll give you tools for becoming more like Kipling’s If (or HPMOR's Harry Potter); one exercise, insight, or habit at a time.

For a more detailed picture, see the schedule from our last workshop (which is close to our Friday through Sunday schedule, though we’ll be making some optimizations), and our list of applied rationality habits.

The logistics:

25 participants: smart, varied, practical, bringing a variety of competencies to the table

3 days of intensive course sessions, all hands-on, exercise-intensive, and performed in small groups (Friday through Sunday; it's recommended that folks arrive on site Thursday evening)

1 optional, but strongly recommended, day of intensive practice (Monday)

6 weeks of one-on-one Skype and email follow-up, as you solidify your new habits and and apply them to your business or personal life.

A lifetime of membership in the alumni community, and connections to others with whom you can explore and collaborate for the long haul.

The workshop costs $3,900 for the full four days, or $3,400 if you stay only Friday through Sunday; some financial aid is available.[1]

Why we’re running broad workshops, and extending beyond the LW crowd:

CFAR's purpose is creating a more reliable art of rationality - an art that includes LW-style epistemic rationality as part of a larger, more practical toolbox; communicated and practiced in a way that can genuinely change people.

Entrepreneurs are a highly fertile ground for developing this art. Entrepreneurs are picky, articulate, and have cross-domain real-world competencies (“business skills”, “productivity skills”) that can fuse with an art of ...
Meetup : 13th January London Meetup
by philh — 2013-01-02T22:37:01.386Z

Discussion article for the meetup : 13th January London Meetup

WHEN:
13 January 2013 02:00:00PM (+0000)

WHERE:
Holborn, London

A meetup in the Shakespeare's Head pub by Holborn tube station. Everyone is welcome.

We also have a Google group.

Discussion article for the meetup : 13th January London Meetup
How to Disentangle the Past and the Future
by royf — 2013-01-02T17:43:27.453Z

I'm on my way to an important meeting. Am I worried? I'm not worried. The presentation is on my laptop. I distinctly remember putting it there (in the past), so I can safely predict that it's going to be there when I get to the office (in the future) - this is how well my laptop carries information through space and time.

My partner has no memory of me copying the file to the laptop. For her, the past and the future have mutual information: if Omega assured her that I'd copied the presentation, she would be able to predict the future much better than she can now.

For me, the past and the future are much less statistically dependent. Whatever entanglement remains between them is due to my memory not being perfect. If my partner suddenly remembers that she saw me copying the file, I will be a little bit more sure that I remember correctly, and that we'll have it at the meeting. Or if somehow, despite my very clear mental image of copying the file, it's not there at the meeting, my first suspicion will nevertheless be that I hadn't.

These unlikely possibilities aside, my memory does serve me. My partner is much less certain of the future than me, and more to the point, her uncertainty would decrease much more than mine if we both suddenly became perfectly aware of the past.

But now she turns on my laptop and checks. The file is there, yes, I could have told her that. And now that we know the state of my laptop, the past and the future are completely disentangled: maybe I put the file there, maybe the elves did - it makes no difference for the meeting. And maybe by the time we get to the office a hacker will remotely delete the file - its absence at the meeting will not be evidence that I'd neglected to copy the file: it was right there! We saw it!

(By "entanglement" I don't mean anything quantum theoretic; here it refers to statistical dependence, and its strength is measured by mutual information.)

The past and the future have mutual information. This is a necessary condition for life, for intelligence: we use the past to predict and plan for the future, and we couldn't do it if it were useless.

On the other hand, the future is independent of the past given the present. That's not profound metaphysics, that's simply how we define the state of a system: it's everything one needs to know of the past of the system to compute its future. The...
Rationality Quotes January 2013
by katydee — 2013-01-02T17:23:36.506Z

Happy New Year! Here's the latest and greatest installment of rationality quotes. Remember:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)

Do not quote yourself

Do not quote comments/posts on LessWrong or Overcoming Bias

No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please
[Link] On the Height of a Field
by badger — 2013-01-02T11:20:28.056Z

Mark Eichenlaub posted a great little case-study about the difficulty of updating beliefs, even over trivial matters like the slope of a baseball field. The basic story of Bayes-updating assumes the likelihood of evidence in different states is obvious, but feedback between observations and judgments about likelihood quickly complicate the situation:

The story of how belief is supposed to work is that for each bit of evidence, you consider its likelihood under all the various hypotheses, then multiplying these likelihoods, you find your final result, and it tells you exactly how confident you should be. If I can estimate how likely it is for Google Maps and my GPS to corroborate each other given that they are wrong, and how likely it is given that they are right, and then answer the same question for every other bit of evidence available to me, I don’t need to estimate my final beliefs – I calculate them. But even in this simple testbed of the matter of a sloped baseball field, I could feel my biases coming to bear on what evidence I considered, and how strong and relevant that evidence seemed to me. The more I believed the baseball field was sloped, the more relevant (higher likelihood ratio) it seemed that there was that short steep hill on the side, and the less relevant that my intuition claimed the field was flat. The field even began looking more sloped to me as time went on, and I sometimes thought I could feel the slope as I ran, even though I never had before.

That’s what I was interested in here. I wanted to know more about the way my feelings and beliefs interacted with the evidence and with my methods of collecting it. It is common knowledge that people are likely to find what they’re looking for whatever the facts, but what does it feel like when you’re in the middle of doing this, and can recognizing that feeling lead you to stop?

Edit: Title changed from "An Empirical Evaluation into Runner's High," the original title of the article, to match the author's new title.
[SEQ RERUN] You Only Live Twice
by MinibearRex — 2013-01-02T06:00:00.504Z

Today's post, You Only Live Twice was originally published on 12 December 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Yudkowsky's addition to Hanson's endorsement of cryonics.

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 We Agree: Get Froze, 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.
Politics Discussion Thread January 2013
by OrphanWilde — 2013-01-02T03:31:07.667Z

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.

Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.

A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.

In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

As Multiheaded added, "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also may belong here.
How not to sort by a complicated frequentist formula
by Meni_Rosenfeld — 2013-01-01T21:58:53.054Z

In How Not To Sort By Average Rating, Evan Miller gives two wrong ways to generate an aggregate rating from a collection of positive and negative votes, and one method he thinks is correct. But the "correct" method is complicated, poorly motivated, insufficiently parameterized, and founded on frequentist statistics. A much simpler model based on a prior beta distribution has more solid theoretical foundation and would give more accurate results.

Evan mentions the sad reality that big organizations are using obviously naive methods. In contrast, more dynamic sites such as Reddit have adopted the model he suggested. But I fear that it would cause irreparable damage if the world settles on this solution.

Should anything be done about it? What can be done?

This is also somewhat meta in that LW also aggregates ratings, and I believe changing the model was once discussed (and maybe the beta model was suggested).

In the Bayesian model, as in Evan's model, we assume for every item there is some true probability p of upvoting, representing its quality and the rating we wish to give. Every vote is a Bernoulli trial which gives information on p. The prior for p is the beta distribution with some parameters a and b. After observing n actual votes, of which k are positive, the parameters of the posterior distribution are a+k and b+(n-k), so the posterior mean of p is (a+k)/(a+b+n). This gives the best estimate for the true quality, and reproduces all the desired effects - convergence to the proportion of positive ratings, where items with insufficient data are pulled towards the prior mean.
The specific parameters a and b depend on the quality distribution in the specific system. a/(a+b) is the average quality and can be taken as simply the empirical proportion of positive votes among all votes in the system. a+b is an inverse measure of variance - a high value means most items are average quality, and a low value means items are either extremely good or extremely bad. It is harder to calibrate, but can still be done using the overall data (e.g., MLE from the entire voting data).

For the specific problem of sorting, there are other considerations than mere quality. A comment can be in universal agreement, but not otherwise interesting or notable. These may not deserve as prominent a mention as controversial comments which provoke stronger reactions. For this purpos...
What is the best paper explaining the superiority of Bayesianism over frequentism?
by Meni_Rosenfeld — 2013-01-01T20:58:04.103Z

Question in title.

This is obviously subjective, but I figure there ought to be some "go-to" paper. Maybe I've even seen it once, but can't find it now and I don't know if there's anything better.

Links to multiple papers with different focus would be welcome. For my current purpose I have a preference for one that aims low and isn't too long.
[Link] TEDx talk of Anders Sandberg on the Fermi "paradox"
by Pablo — 2013-01-01T20:52:18.972Z

Anders Sandberg, Where are they?, TEDxUHasselt.

On the long term, how much change in the universe can a civilization possibly cause? In this talk, Anders Sandberg brings an enthusiastic introduction to the different scenarios of the Fermi paradox and what they mean for the future of humanity.