trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
LessWrong is providing feedback and proofreading on drafts as a service
by Ruby — 2021-09-07T01:33:10.666Z

This announcement follows the

Amazon PR/FAQ format

. This is an actual feature announcement.

TL;DR

Before one publishes a post, it can be hard to know if you caught all the typos, explained things clearly, made a critical error, or wrote something that anybody is interested in to begin with. To reduce the guesswork, LessWrong is now providing free feedback on drafts (and post ideas) to any user with 100+ karma. We’ll provide the feedback ourselves, send your draft to a professional copy editor, or get the opinion of a relevant peer or expert in your domain. Or something else, whatever is needed to be helpful!

The Problem

Many people are reluctant to share posts before they’re confident that (i) they’re correct, (ii) they’ll get a good reception. It sucks to put out a post and then notice a dumb typo a day later, or to publish and then have a critical flaw immediately revealed to everyone, or to share a post and hear only crickets. The fear of these outcomes is enough to prevent a lot of great ideas from ever escaping their creators’ heads. And although many people feel better after getting some feedback, soliciting it can be effortful–you’ve got to find someone else and then tap into your social capital and ask a favor.

Solution

To help get more excellent posts into the world, LessWrong is now providing feedback on tap. Any author with 100+ karma can ask for the kind of feedback they need, and the LessWrong team will make it happen. Quick, easy, free. Within a couple of days (or hours), we’ll have feedback on your post that will let you post with greater confidence that your post is good.

Getting Started

On the post edit page (create a new post or edit an existing draft), if you have 100+ karma, you will see a new button: Request Feedback. Clicking it will start an Intercom chat with a LessWrong team member; in that chat, describe what kind of feedback you’re looking for (proofreading, style, coherence, expert feedback, etc.) and the LessWrong team will make it happen.

You needn’t have even written anything to use the feature. Feel free to chat to us about post ideas you have.

The new button (left) appears when create a new post or edit an existing one.

Press "Request Feedback" to have the Intercom Messenger popup.

Quotes (fictional)

After getting a round of feedback through the new LessWrong system, I’m much less afraid that people will ignore or downvote my post. I’ve g

...
Coordination Schemes Are Capital Investments
by Raemon — 2021-09-06T23:27:28.384Z

Second post in the Coordination Frontier sequence. Intro is here.

Once upon a time, we didn’t have money, or auctions, or markets. We didn’t have the concept of voting (let alone distinctions between first-past-the-post, or approval voting). We didn’t have

banks

or stock trading. We didn’t have Kickstarter.

We had to haggle over everything, which cost time. And it fundamentally limited the scale at which we could accomplish things. If a transaction cost exceeds the value of a trade, that trade can’t happen. [edit: arguably false, see discussion in comments, but fortunately not that cruxy for the rest of the post]

Once upon a time, someone had to be the first person to invent each of these concepts. The people around them were probably vaguely annoyed at having to learn a new thing. Many of the concepts required multiple building blocks and took thousands of years to reach saturation.

If you are happen to be around a lot of people around who:

geek out about coordination schemes, and
have an entrepreneurial bent

Then a really valuable thing you can do is explore new coordination schemes, while making an effort to distill them down into something the general population might actually be able to use.

This is hard. There are lots of failure modes. But, coordination schemes are a key thing that makes humanity powerful. Pushing the state-of-the-art forward is valuable.

With that in mind, let’s explore some examples and concepts.

Examples: Negotiation Technology

Second Price Auctions

I remember the first time I got the results of a

second-price auction

. It felt like magic. Instead of arguing for hours about who got which room in a new apartment, I just wrote down my true preference for how much I was willing to pay for each room. Then I automagically got assigned a room that was cheaper than I had been willing to pay for it. (In a second price auction, each participant submits a sealed bid, and then person who bid highest pays the second-highest bid)

At previous apartments, we had just eyeballed the size of each room, and then came up with rent-allocations for each room that had vaguely round, fair-sounding numbers, and then picked rooms. It was chaotic, and didn't have a good way to account for some people valuing particular rooms for subtle, personal reasons.

Second price auction was an important, conceptual advance. But it’s not very popular in broader society. Why?

At my...
I read “White Fragility” so you don’t have to (but maybe you should)
by David Gross — 2021-09-06T22:31:54.813Z

[I use “we”/“us”/“our”/etc. to refer to white people throughout this review because I am white and because this book is deliberately targeted toward and attempts to describe a white readership.]

In White Fragility (2018), Robin DiAngelo asks white people to reconsider what racism is, and how we help to perpetuate it in spite of our good intentions.

Racism, as DiAngelo uses the word, does not mean the explicit pro­fes­sion that there are es­sen­tial­ly dif­fer­ent human races and that some are better than others. That, she says, is an un­so­phis­ti­ca­ted folk de­fi­ni­tion of racism (I’ll call that “racismF”).

The de­fi­ni­tion she prefers (what I’ll call “racismS”) is that racismS is a sys­tem­ic, usual­ly (now­a­days) non-ex­pli­cit or eu­phem­is­tic, often sub­con­scious, in­ter­lock­ing and per­va­sive set of social, cultural, and political devices that reinforce white supremacy. RacismS is impossible to avoid. It’s everywhere, and is drilled into everyone in a multitude of ways, day in and day out.

“White fragility” is one of the devices that reinforce white supremacy. White fragility is a sort of defensiveness that takes the form of a variety of strategies that white people deploy when we are confronted with how we participate in and perpetuate racismS. Whites use these strategies to deflect or avoid such a confrontation and to defend a comfortable, privileged vantage point from which race is “not an issue” (at least to us who benefit from it).

The folk definition, racismF, is in fact one of the pillars of white fragility. Because, according to this definition, racismF is the conscious, explicit endorsement of an unconscionable belief system — all we white people have to do to stop participating in racismF is to disavow racial bigotry and then congratulate ourselves for our good sense. But this leaves racismS fully intact.

If you tell a white person like me that he is participating in and perpetuating racismS, he’ll typically respond by denying he has anything to do with racismF: e.g. “I don’t have a racist bone in my body.” White people interpret criticism about our patterns of behavior that perpetuate racismS as though we had been accused of adhering to racismF — of being crude bigots — and we respond defensively to what we perceive as an insult against our characters. In this way we give ourselves a pass on having to think about our inevitable parti...
How much should we value life?
by Adam Zerner — 2021-09-06T22:30:29.976Z

Until recently, I've largely ignored the question of how long I expect to live, and similarly, how much value I place on my life. Why? For starters, thinking about mortality is scary, and I don't like to do things that are scary unless the benefits outweigh the cost.

So, do they? My answer has always been, "Nah. At least not in the short-to-mid term. I'll probably have to think hard about it at some point in the future though." Whatever the conclusion I draw — high value on life, low value on life — I didn't see how it would change my behavior right now. How the conclusions would be actionable.

Recently I've been changing my mind. There have been various things I've been thinking about that all seem to hinge on this question of how much we should value life.

Covid

Cryonics

Driving

If you expect (as in expected value) to live eg. 50 years, and thus value life at a typical value of eg. $10M:

You probably don't have to worry much about Covid and can roughly return to normal.

Cryonics becomes a wacky idea that won't work and thus isn't worth paying for.

Driving is well worth it. The price you pay for the risk of dying is something like $250/year.

But... if you expect (as in expected value) to live something like 10k years:

Covid becomes too risky to justify returning to normal.

Cryonics becomes an intriguing idea that is well worth paying for.

Driving becomes something where the risk of dying costs you more like $25k/year, and thus probably is not worth doing.

What else would the implications be of expecting (I'll stop saying "as in expected value" moving forward) to live 10k years? I'm not sure. I'll think more about it another time. For now, Covid, cryonics and driving are more than enough to make this a question that I am interested in exploring.

Focusing on the parts that matter

There are a lot of parameters you could play around with when exploring these questions. Some are way more important than others though. For example, in looking at how risky Covid is, you could spend time exploring whether a QALY should be valued at $200k or $175k, but that won't really impact your final conclusion too much. It won't bring you from "I shouldn't go to that restaurant" to "I should go to that restaurant". On the other hand, moving from an expectation of a 100 year lifespan to a 1,000 year lifespan could very well end up changing your final conclusion, so I think th...
Three Principles to Writing Original Nonfiction
by lsusr — 2021-09-06T20:08:52.618Z

If you like reading then you should write too.

Three Things Writing Will Do For You

Writing makes you smarter. Thoughts are ephemeral, fast and fleeting. Writing is frozen thought. It is easier to determine if an idea that is written down than an idea that is merely thought or spoken. Writing down your ideas shows you whether they have substance. Detecting when you're wrong is the first step to becoming right. There are many ways to record thought. Writing is the best for improving your rationality because there is nothing to hide behind. Writing is the swimsuit of ideas.

Writing makes you a better communicator. The skills you learn by writing transfer to speaking. Being good at speaking makes you more persuasive.

Writing scales social connections. The best job opportunities I've ever received all came from my writing. The smartest people I've ever met all came from my writing too.

What do I write? How do I write?

I assume you are proficient in English. Besides a basic mastery of language, good nonfiction has three qualities.

It gets to the point.

It is interesting.

It is grounded in reality.

Get to the Point

Text is a static medium. The listener of a podcast must keep up with the audio stream. The reader of a blog can take as long as he/she needs to understand an idea. Text is low-density too. In terms of bits, the reader of a text document processes less raw information than the viewer of an image. Text concentrates a reader's attention on a single idea.

The reader of a blog tends to think harder than that same person watching a video or conversing in real time. The epistemic rigor is correspondingly higher.

We are products of our environment. An author's environment is the written word itself. I write differently from how I talk. I write so differently that readers of this blog are often surprised to discover I'm a kind levelheaded person in real life. Mediums overpower messages.

me before reading your website: [Lsusr] seems like a really even-keeled friendly guy who'll get along with most people

me after reading about your falling into the Dark Night of the Soul while on a hike with people you didn't like: Gosh, glad I read that AFTER cohosting an event with him

―from a conversation with Etirabys

Paul Graham recommends you write like you talk. This doesn't mean you should write a transcript complete with "um"s and "uh"s. It doesn't mean you shouldn't e...
Lots of Hooks
by jefftk — 2021-09-06T18:50:02.477Z

The entryway had gotten pretty messy, with a lot of things scattered
on the horizontal surfaces. We decided to put up some hooks, to move
things onto the vertical services. I used some trim that I'd saved
from an

earlier project,
cut it to width, screwed it into studs, and attached hooks:

This also included a pair of clothespins on wall anchors for the
parking permits.

Each skateboard is on a pair of standard coat hooks, 4"
apart. Each pair is 6" from the next. At some point if we want to
hang some thing else there, the hooks are general purpose.

We also have two bike hooks on the wall. I put them in about four
years ago, and they've worked well:
What Motte and Baileys are rationalists most likely to engage in?
by Chris_Leong — 2021-09-06T15:58:36.378Z

Motte and Bailey is a concept by Nicholas Shackel that Scott Alexander has popularised. He describes this as follows:

The original Shackel paper is intended as a critique of post-modernism. Post-modernists sometimes say things like “reality is socially constructed”, and there’s an uncontroversially correct meaning there. We don’t experience the world directly, but through the categories and prejudices implicit to our society; for example, I might view a certain shade of bluish-green as blue, and someone raised in a different culture might view it as green. Okay.

Then post-modernists go on to say that if someone in a different culture thinks that the sun is light glinting off the horns of the Sky Ox, that’s just as real as our own culture’s theory that the sun is a mass of incandescent gas. If you challenge them, they’ll say that you’re denying reality is socially constructed, which means you’re clearly very naive and think you have perfect objectivity and the senses perceive reality directly.

The writers of the paper compare this to a form of medieval castle, where there would be a field of desirable and economically productive land called a bailey, and a big ugly tower in the middle called the motte. If you were a medieval lord, you would do most of your economic activity in the bailey and get rich. If an enemy approached, you would retreat to the motte and rain down arrows on the enemy until they gave up and went away. Then you would go back to the bailey, which is the place you wanted to be all along.

So the motte-and-bailey doctrine is when you make a bold, controversial statement. Then when somebody challenges you, you retreat to an obvious, uncontroversial statement, and say that was what you meant all along, so you’re clearly right and they’re silly for challenging you. Then when the argument is over you go back to making the bold, controversial statement.

Sometimes Motte and Baileys arguments are the result of bad faith, but I suspect in many cases that those making them have no idea that they are engaging in such a strategy. In fact, it seems highly likely that one or more Motte and Baileys would be popular among rationalists. What are the most common such Motte and Baileys?
A Primer on the Symmetry Theory of Valence
by Michael Edward Johnson — 2021-09-06T11:39:06.223Z

Crossposted from opentheory.net

STV is Qualia Research Institute‘s candidate for a universal theory of valence, first proposed in Principia Qualia (2016). The following is a brief discussion of why existing theories are unsatisfying, what STV says, and key milestones so far.

I. Suffering is a puzzle

We know suffering when we feel it — but what is it? What would a satisfying answer for this even look like?

The psychological default model of suffering is “suffering is caused by not getting what you want.” This is the model that evolution has primed us toward. Empirically, it appears false (1)(2).

The Buddhist critique suggests that most suffering actually comes from holding this as our model of suffering. My co-founder Romeo Stevens suggests that we create a huge amount of unpleasantness by identifying with the sensations we want and making a commitment to ‘dukkha’ ourselves until we get them. When this fails to produce happiness, we take our failure as evidence we simply need to be more skillful in controlling our sensations, to work harder to get what we want, to suffer more until we reach our goal — whereas in reality there is no reasonable way we can force our sensations to be “stable, controllable, and satisfying” all the time. As Romeo puts it, “The mind is like a child that thinks that if it just finds the right flavor of cake it can live off of it with no stomach aches or other negative results.”

Buddhism itself is a brilliant internal psychology of suffering (1)(2), but has strict limits: it’s dogmatically silent on the influence of external factors on suffering, such as health, relationships, or anything having to do with the brain.

The Aristotelian model of suffering & well-being identifies a set of baseline conditions and virtues for human happiness, with suffering being due to deviations from these conditions. Modern psychology and psychiatry are tacitly built on this model, with one popular version being Seligman’s PERMA Model: P – Positive Emotion; E – Engagement; R – Relationships; M – Meaning; A – Accomplishments. Chris Kresser and other ‘holistic medicine’ practitioners are synthesizing what I would call ‘Paleo Psychology’, which suggests that we should look at our evolutionary history to understand the conditions for human happiness, with a special focus on nutrition, connection, sleep, and stress.

I have a deep affection for these ways of think...
How does your data backup solution setup work?
by ChristianKl — 2021-09-06T09:10:48.659Z

I'm currently not happy with how I'm backing up my data. I feel like doing proper databackup is a bit like flossing every day. It's clearly the "right thing to do" but thinking of it feels like a shore that I don't want to deal with. Does anybody have a personal databackup strategy that they are happy with and would recommend?

Criteria I'm thinking about are:

Data privacy: Data is encrypted in a trustworthy manner so that think parties can't access it. Hopefully, changes in law can't break that trust because it's backed up by software.
Reasonable price for maybe 1 Terrabyte of data.
If my house floods and everything gets destroyed my data is healthy.
If a ransom ware program encrypts all my data I can still access it.
The neurons that are required to remember a specific password die
Bay Solstice looking for volunteers
by mingyuan — 2021-09-06T06:45:04.697Z

It’s getting to be that time of year again! The 2021 Bay Area Winter Solstice will be held on Sunday, December 12 (in person, unless it becomes illegal) in the planetarium of the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland. Secular Solstice is an annual event where our community comes together to celebrate humanity and reflect on our place in the universe.

This event couldn’t happen without community support, and we're now soliciting volunteers for all the different roles that Solstice will require! We’re looking for people to write and deliver speeches, lead singalongs, run A/V, and help with logistical tasks like program design and day-of coordination. If you’re interested in any of these roles, please consider applying, even if you’re new to the community or have never attended a solstice before. Solstice is a great way to meet people and get more involved, and we’re able to accommodate a wide range of commitment levels. If you have any questions, please contact the organizers at baysolstice2021@gmail.com.

You can apply using this form.
[Link post] When pooling forecasts, use the geometric mean of odds
by Jsevillamol — 2021-09-06T06:45:01.244Z
Link: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sMjcjnnpoAQCcedL2/when-pooling-forecasts-use-the-geometric-mean-of-odds

In short: There are many methods to pool forecasts. The most commonly used is the arithmetic mean of probabilities. However, there are empirical and theoretical reasons to prefer the geometric mean of the odds instead. This is particularly important when some of the predictions have extreme values. Therefore, I recommend defaulting to the geometric mean of odds to aggregate probabilities.

I wrote previously about this topic in LessWrong, and my thoughts have matured quite a bit since then. If you are interested in forecasting, I think you will find this an interesting read. Read more in this link.
Bikes and Babies
by jefftk — 2021-09-06T01:50:02.121Z

In MA, the only legal way [1] to travel by bike with a baby is with a
trailer: they're still too floppy for a child bike seat and the law
doesn't consider options involving the box of a

cargo bike.
Since they're so small, you can use a

car
seat to make sure they're properly supported and protected.

We have a Burley Bee (which I still like a lot)
and today we went for a short ride with Nora:

I used three cords, attaching to the trailer at six points: two points
at the top back, two at the bottom back, and two at the bottom front.
Here's a diagram, with the frame in solid blue and the cords in
dashed red:

It was a bit annoying to get it all set, but once it was connected and
tight the seat was very secure. I did this all before putting Nora
in: there's plenty of room to slide the baby down under the cords and
buckle them in as usual, which also meant that I didn't have to redo
the attachment when it was time for the return trip.

I biked on the slow side (and I'm already not fast), so as not to
jostle too much and give plenty of time to avoid anything dangerous.
We didn't use a helmet: it's not recommended for kids this young, and
you need to be protecting them well enough that their head would not
hit anyway.

[1] In MA
the relevant regulations seem to be (I.XIV.85.11.B.2):

The operator shall ride only upon or astride a permanent and
regular seat attached to the bicycle; a passenger shall ride only upon
or astride a permanent and regular seat attached to the bicycle or to
a trailer towed by the bicycle.

The operator shall not transport another person between the ages
of one to four years, or weighing forty pounds or less, on a bicycle,
except in a ''baby seat'', so-called, attached to the bicycle, in
which such other person shall be able to sit upright; provided,
however, that such seat is equipped with a harness to hold such other
person securely in the seat and that protection is provided against
the feet or hands of such person hitting the spokes of the wheel of
the bicycle; or upon or astride a seat of a tandem bicycle equipped so
that the other person can comfortably reach the handlebars and
pedals. The operator shall not transport any person under the age of
one year on said bicycle.

Any person 16 years of age or younger operating a bicycle or
being carried as a passenger on a bicycle on a public way, bicycle
path

...