trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : Less Wrong Sydney - June
by Oklord — 2012-06-12T15:00:33.320Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong Sydney - June

WHEN:
28 June 2012 06:30:00PM (+1000)

WHERE:
77 Liverpool Street, Sydney, Australia, Level 2

[Note - because of a large proportion of people attending who do not regularly read less wrong, a more general topic was chosen]

On this night, the topic is something recently highlighted on Less Wrong's sister blog, Overcoming bias. http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/06/the-smart-are-more-biased-to-think-they-are-less-biased.html

Essentially, do you think being smarter makes you more fair in your judgement? Does the ability to see more patterns make you better, or merely more likley to be a conspiracy theorist?

Don't know the topic? Worried this is just another cult out for your organs? Doesn't matter. Come for the mindset, board games and to meet new people. Also, the increasingly absurd desserts available at Norita's Cafe and Board games.

Feel free to bring whomever you wish, as always. If you want to invite friends to the group, ask for admin status in the FB group!

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong Sydney - June
[Video] Presentation on metacognition contains good intro to basic LW ideas 
by Cyan — 2012-06-12T13:12:13.283Z

I attended a talk yesterday given under the auspices of the Ottawa Skeptics on the subject of "metacognition" or thinking about thinking -- basically, it was about core rationality concepts. It was designed to appeal to a broad group of lay people interested in science and consisted of a number of examples drawn from pop-sci books such as Thinking, Fast and Slow and Predictably Irrational. (Also mentioned: straw vulcans as described by CFAR's own Julia Galef.) If people who aren't familiar with LW ask you what LW is about, I'd strongly recommend pointing them to this video.

Here's the link.
[Link] Some notes on Rationality in Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
by mstevens — 2012-06-12T12:44:05.494Z

http://www.etla.org/hpmor_notes.html

This is an ongoing project of mine, although I haven't worked on it in a while. I've been trying to extract the references to Rationality - the Methods of Rationality from HPMoR. It also ended up having a few quotes that seemed interesting about how the story's going. I've linked references where I could find them.

I've only got as far as Chapter 40. Any extra submissions welcome.

At least one person - User:DavidGerard suggested it deserved being posted as a discussion link.
Group rationality diary, 6/11/12
by cata — 2012-06-12T06:39:20.052Z

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of June 11th. It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:

Established a useful new habit

Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief

Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations

Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior

Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something

Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life

Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you

Tried doing any of the above and failed

Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.

Thanks to everyone who contributes!

(Previously: 5/14/12, 5/21/12, 5/28/12, 6/4/12)
[SEQ RERUN] Optimization and the Singularity
by MinibearRex — 2012-06-12T03:01:32.951Z

Today's post, Optimization and the Singularity was originally published on 23 June 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

An introduction to optimization processes and why Yudkowsky thinks that a singularity would be far more powerful than calculations based on human progress would suggest.

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 Surface Analogies and Deep Causes, 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.
Atkins Diet - How Should I Update?
by Liron — 2012-06-11T21:40:14.138Z

This seems like an authoritative 25-year research project that the Atkins diet is pretty bad:

http://www.nutritionj.com/content/11/1/40/abstract

Right now my belief is that the Atkins diet is good. It's backed by anecdotal evidence of trying a low-carb diet for 18 months following a 12-month low-fat diet and seemingly getting better results with the low-carb diet.

I'm counting on LWers to tell me how to update my belief in light of this study. Thanks.
Intellectual insularity and productivity 
by  — 2012-06-11T15:10:36.294Z

Guys I'd like your opinion on something.

Do you think LessWrong is too intellectually insular? What I mean by this is that we very seldom seem to adopt useful vocabulary or arguments or information from outside of LessWrong. For example all I can think of is some of Robin Hanson's and Paul Graham's stuff. But I don't think Robin Hanson really counts as Overcoming Bias used to be LessWrong.
The community seems to not update on ideas and concepts that didn't originate here. The only major examples fellow LWers brought up in conversation where works that Eliezer cited as great or influential. :/

Edit: Apparently this has been a source of much confusion and mistargeted replies. While I wouldn't mind even more references to quality outside writing, this wasn't my concern. I'm surprised this was problematic to understand for two reasons. First I gave examples of two thinker that aren't often linked to by recent articles on LW yet have clearly greatly influenced us. Secondly this is a trivially false interpretation, as my own submission history shows (it is littered with well received outside links). I think this arises because when I wrote "we seem to not update on ideas and concepts that didn't originate here" people read it as "we don't link to ideas and concepts" or maybe "we don't talk about ideas and concepts" from outside. I clarified this several times in the comments, most extensively here. Yet it doesn't seem to have made much of an impact. Maybe it will be easier to understand if I put it this way, interesting material from the outside never seems to get added to something like the sequences or the wiki. The sole exception to this is hunting even more academic references for the conclusions and concepts we already know and embrace. Thus while individuals will update on them and perhaps even reference them in the future the community as a whole will not. They don't become part of the expected background knowledge when discussing certain topics. Over time their impact thus fades in a way the old core material doesn't.

Another thing, I could be wrong about this naturally, but it seems to clear that LessWrong has not grown. I'm not talking numerically. I can't put my finger to major progress done in the past 2 years. I have heard several other users express similar sentiments. To quote one user:

I notice that, in topics that Eliezer did not explicitly cover

...
Seeking information relevant to deciding whether to try to become an AI researcher and, if so, how.
by ChrisHallquist — 2012-06-11T12:23:20.875Z

I was initially going to title this post, "try to become an AI researcher and, if so, how?" but see Hold Off On Proposing Solutions. So instead, I'm going to ask people to give me as much relevant information as possible. The rest of this post will be a dump of what I've figured out so far, so people can read it and try to figure out what I might be missing.

If you yourself are trying to make this decision, some of what I say about myself may apply to you. Hopefully, some of the comments on this post will also be generally applicable.

Oh, and if you can think of any bias-avoiding advice that's relevant here, along the lines of holding off on proposing solutions, that would be most helpful.

Though I'm really hard to offend in general, I've made a conscious decision to operate by Crocker's Rules in this thread.

One possibility that's crossed my mind for getting involved is going back go graduate school in philosophy to study under Bostrom or Chalmers. But I really have no idea what the other possible routes for me are, and ought to know about them before making a decision.

~~~~~

Now for the big dump of background info. Feel free to skip and just respond based on what's above the squigglies.

I seem to be good at a lot of different things (not necessarily everything), but I'm especially good at math. SAT was 800 math, 790 verbal, GRE was 800 on both, but in both cases, I studied for the test and getting my verbal score up was much harder work. However, I know there are plenty people who are much better at math than I am. In high school, I was one of the very few students from my city to qualify for the American Regions Math League competition (ARML), but did not do especially well.

Going to ARML persuaded me that I was probably not quite smart enough to be a world-class anything. I entered college as a biochemistry major, with the idea that I would go to medical school and then join an organization like Doctors Without Borders to just do as much good as I could, even if I wasn't a world-class anything. I did know at the time that I was better at math than biology, but hadn't yet read Peter Unger's Living High and Letting Die, so "figure out the best way to covert math aptitude into dollars and donate what you don't need to charity" wasn't a strategy I even considered.

After getting mostly B's in biology and organic chemistry my sophomore year, I decided maybe I was...
Meetup : Washington DC Meetup
by rocurley — 2012-06-11T05:06:42.267Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC Meetup

WHEN: 17 June 2012 03:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE: Portrait Gallery

Topic is EY's response to the Givewell critique, although additional suggestions are solicited. (Also, I'll be there)

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC Meetup
[SEQ RERUN] Surface Analogies and Deep Causes
by MinibearRex — 2012-06-11T04:44:01.150Z

Today's post, Surface Analogies and Deep Causes was originally published on 22 June 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Just because two things share surface similarities doesn't mean that they work the same way, or can be expected to be similar in other respects. If you want to understand what something does, it typically doesn't help you to understand something else. That type of reasoning only works if the two things are especially similar, on a deep level.

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 The Outside View's Domain, 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.
I think I've found the source of what's been bugging me about "Friendly AI"
by ChrisHallquist — 2012-06-10T14:06:40.174Z

In the comments on this post (which in retrospect I feel was not very clearly written), someone linked me to a post Eliezer wrote five years ago, "The Hidden Complexity of Wishes." After reading it, I think I've figured out why the term "Friendly AI" is used so inconsistently.

This post explicitly lays out a view that seems to be implicit in, but not entirely clear from, many of of Eliezer's other writings. That view is this:

There are three kinds of genies: Genies to whom you can safely say "I wish for you to do what I should wish for"; genies for which no wish is safe; and genies that aren't very powerful or intelligent.

Even if Eliezer is right about that, I think that view of his has led to confusing usage of the term "Friendly AI." If you accept Eliezer's view, it may seem to make sense to not worry to much about whether by "Friendly AI" you mean:

A utopia-making machine (the AI "to whom you can safely say, 'I wish for you to do what I should wish for.'") Or:

A non-doomsday machine (a doomsday machine being the AI "for which no wish is safe.")

And it would make sense not to worry too much about that distinction, if you were talking only to people who also believe those two concepts are very nearly co-extensive for powerful AI. But failing to make that distinction is obviously going to be confusing when you're talking to people who don't think that. It will make it harder to communicate both your ideas and your reasons for holding those ideas to them.

One solution would be to more frequently link people back to "The Hidden Complexity of Wishes" (or other writing by Eliezer that makes similar points--what else would be suitable?) But while it's a good post and Eliezer makes some very good points with the "Outcome Pump" thought-experiment, the argument isn't entirely convincing.

As Eliezer himself has argued at great length, (see also section 6.1 of this paper) humans' own understanding of our values is far from perfect. None of us are, right now, qualified to design a utopia. But we do have some understanding of our own values; we can identify some things that would be improvements over our current situation while marking other scenarios as "this would be a disaster." It seems like there might be a point in the future where we can design an AI whose understanding of human values is similarly serviceable but no better than that.

Ma...
Meetup : Punt Trip
by Douglas_Reay — 2012-06-10T14:05:06.238Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Punt Trip

WHEN:
16 June 2012 12:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Cambridge_UK

Come join the Cambridge LessWrong group for a free punt trip up the beautiful river Cam. A Smörgåsbord of discussion, fun, food and learning to punt.

Meet at the Great Gate of Trinity College, CB2 1TQ, at 11:50 for 12 noon departure. For those coming in by car, the nearest multistory carpark to Trinity is on Park Street, CB5 8AS

There's no need to book, but it will help us judge numbers if you send an email to cambridgelesswrong@googlegroups.com if you think there's more than a 25% chance that you'll be coming.

Discussion article for the meetup : Punt Trip
[SEQ RERUN] The Outside View's Domain
by MinibearRex — 2012-06-10T05:03:36.625Z

Today's post, The Outside View's Domain was originally published on 21 June 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

A dialogue on the proper application of the inside and outside views.

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 Heading Toward Morality, 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.
Meetup : Vancouver Big Public Meetup
by  — 2012-06-10T04:03:56.435Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Vancouver Big Public Meetup

WHEN:
14 June 2012 06:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
Benny's Bagels 2505 W Broadway Vancouver, BC

Hello everybody

We're having our monthly big meetup where we invite everybody and give you plausible reasons why you (yes, even you) should come and hang out with us. If you live in or near vancouver, or will be around next thursday, you should come out.

One of our members is going to present the seeing with fresh eyes sequence, but we are going to let tangents run wild and generally have a fun discussion about topics LWers are interested in. Feel free to come prepared or unprepared.

If you haven't been coming out regularly, or you were looking for an exceptional excuse to start coming, or are otherwise lurking in the woodwork wondering whether we are cool or not, this is your chance! Get it while it's hot; next big meetup will be in a whole month!

As usual, come see us on our mailing list.

See you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : Vancouver Big Public Meetup
What was your biggest recent surprise?
by DataPacRat — 2012-06-09T23:57:21.851Z

I recently flipped through the "Cartoon Guide to Physics", expecting an easy-to-understand rehash of ideas I was long familiar with; and that's what I got - right up to the last few pages, where I was presented with a fairly fundamental concept that's been absent from the popular science media I've enjoyed over the years. (Specifically, that the uncertainty principle, when expressed as linking energy and time, explains what electromagnetic fields actually /are/, as the propensity for virtual photons of various strengths to happen.) I find myself happy to try to integrate this new understanding - and at least mildly disturbed that I'd been missing it for so long, and with an increased curiosity about how I might find any other such gaps in my understanding of how the universe works.

So: what's the biggest, or most surprising, or most interesting concept /you/ have learned of, after you'd already gotten a handle on the basics?
Proposal: Show up and down votes separately
by witzvo — 2012-06-09T23:29:09.625Z

One of the most interesting things about this site is the karma scoring, and that it reflects (to a greater degree than you see elsewhere) an objective assessment of the merits of an argument.

[Edit^6: the proposal in this post is related to the Kibitzer system, but this post discusses adding information, while that system concentrates on taking information away. Special thanks for matt's comment and to Vincentyu for being the first to point to prior discussion. A related issue is discussed here (2009) with reference to a wikipedia, and on which Eliezer said "I may end up linking this from the About page when it comes time to explain suggested voting policies"). Data: It took me ~2 days of effort to obtain get linked to this information (09 June 2012 11:29PM -> 11 June 2012 10:28:26PM).]

Suppose a controversial post/comment has six up votes and three down votes. Right now we only see the net result: 3 points, but when the voting is mixed we're losing important information. If it's reasonably easy to implement, could we please show up and down tallies separately? E.g show "3 points (+6,-3)", at least when the voting is mixed? I think the negative votes are the single most important thing. In particular, I want to know about negative votes I receive and where I receive them, because those are the posts where I need to think carefully.

Example: here's a welcome post by syzygy, which relates to Eliezer's post about Politics as the Mind Killer. I know that it's controversial, because I can sort by controversial and it shows up high on the welcome post thread (neat feature!), but I can't tell how many down votes it has. Does syzygy commit a fallacy? (I don't mean to pick on you, sorry about that; I liked your post.)

Of course this change wouldn't fix everything. If a post has "-1 points (+0,-1)", that doesn't mean only one person read it and disapproved; maybe 100s read it and thought it was bad, but saw that it already had -1 net and considered that sufficiently punitive. This is pretty good; we don't want to spend all our time fiddling with scores.

I mean if we wanted to get fancy and use Bayesian inspired scoring, we could let everyone who wishes assign a score (say from -5 to 5) and report posterior summaries of the scores. Or, more importantly if we value objective scoring, we could identify posts tha...
Conspiracy Theories as Agency Fictions
by  — 2012-06-09T15:15:42.409Z

Related to: Consider Conspiracies, What causes people to believe in conspiracy theories?

Here I consider in some detail a failure mode that classical rationality often recognizes. Unfortunately nearly all heuristics normally used to detect it seem remarkably vulnerable to misfiring or being exploited by others. I advocate an approach where we try our best to account for the key bias, seeing agency where there is none, while trying to minimize the risk of being tricked into dismissing claims because of boo lights.

What does calling something a "conspiracy theory" tell us?

What is a conspiracy theory? Explanations that invoke plots orchestrated by covert groups are easily called or thought of as such. In a more legal sense conspiracy is an agreement between persons to mislead or defraud others. This simple story gets complicated because people aren't very clear on what they consider a conspiracy.

To give an example, is explicit negotiation or agreement really necessary to call something a conspiracy? Does silent cooperation on Prisoner's Dilemma count? What if the players are deceiving themselves that they are really following a different goal and the resulting cooperation is just a side effect? How could we tell the difference and would it matter? The latter is especially interesting if one applies the anthropic principle to social attitudes and norms.

The phrase is also a convenient tool to mark an opponent's tale as low status and unworthy of further investigation. A boo light easily applied to anything that has people acting in something that can be framed as self-interest and happens to be few inferential jumps away from the audience. Not only is its use in this way well known, this is arguably the primary meaning of calling an argument a conspiracy theory.

We have plenty of historical examples of high-stakes conspiracies so we know they can be the right answer. Noting this and putting aside the misuse of the label, people do engage in crafting conspiracy theories when they just aren't needed. Entire communities can fixate on them or fail to call such bad thinking out. Why does this happen? Humans being the social animals that we are, the group dynamics at work probably need an article or sequence of their own. It should suffice for now to point to belief as attire, the bandwagon effect and Robin Hanson's take on status. Let's rather consider the que...