trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Effective public college tuition vs. private college tuition
by JonahS — 2014-02-14T22:59:50.766Z

Harvard charges $42k/year and $61k/year including room, board, books and personal expenses. UC Berkeley charges $13k/year in tuition and $33k/year including room, board, books and personal expenses. As a part of research for Cognito Mentoring, I looked at UC Berkeley's financial aid calculator and Harvard's financial aid calculator to get a sense for the effective costs of attending the two institutions, and was surprised that it appears as though for people whose parents make between 80k/year and $160k/year, when financial aid is factored in, it's more expensive to attend Berkeley than Harvard. See the figures below.

A cursory glance at financial aid calculators for other elite private universities and public universities gives seems to give broadly similar to those of Harvard and UC Berkeley respectively. I've made a number of simplifying assumptions in filling out the forms I may be making errors of one kind or another (whether conceptual or otherwise), and would appreciate any feedback.

About 83% of American families make less than $160k/year, so it seems that for 4 out of 5 Americans, were they admitted to an elite college, cost wouldn't be a deterrent. In practice, students who go to elite colleges come from disproportionately wealthy families: http://collegeapps.about.com/ reports that 62% of Harvard students get financial aid in the form of grants at all, which is less than the figure of 83% (as one would expect). The average grant size is $41,555, and Harvard reports that 20% of students don't pay at all, suggesting that the amount of financial aid that students receive is very high variance.

It would seem that the people for whom the UC Berkeley vs. Harvard choice would be the hardest on financial grounds are families that make e.g. $200k/year and have $300k in saving.

Harvard

No parental savings

Parental income / effective cost

$80k / $8,600

$100k / $12,600

$120k / $16,600

$140k / $18,600

$160k / $24,600

$180k / $34,300

$200k / $49,200

$220k / $60,850

$300k parental savings

Parental income / effective cost

$80k / $18,600

$100k / $22,600

$120k / $26,600

$140k / $28,600

$160k / $34,600

$180k / $44,300

$200k / $60,850

UC Berkeley

Here I needed to enter the amount that parents were taxed, and used a figure of 25% of gross income.

No parental savings

$80k / $12,972

$100k / $17,419

$120k / $23,092

$140k / $

...
Thoughts on Death
by BlackNoise — 2014-02-14T20:27:27.578Z

Death sucks.

Today (14/2/2014) my mothers’ father died after struggling with cancer for about a year.
What pains me is the loss, but more so how it affects my mother, especially my imagination being ‘useful’ in imagining how losing her would be like.

The tragedy as I see it has a slightly different flavor than that of my other family members: For them it’s probably seen as an ultimately inevitable end, and few perhaps hold some hope/notion of an afterlife or maybe just never thought too hard about what death entails.

For me, as one who identifies with Transhuman ideas, and believes in at least the feasibility (if not high likelihood) of preservation and future restoration, this feels like an ultimately preventable tragedy. Where my mother will grieve, I will have uncertain regret and doubt.

With that as background, I’ve felt the need to write out some of my thoughts regarding identity, anthropics and existence and death.

First off, what is a person?

The way I see it, everything a person is, is the algorithm and information structure contained in some fashion within the brain (most likely in its structure), which means a person isn’t limited to biology as a substrate. If the functional relations and information structure is preserved, there is nothing preventing one from recreating them on a different substrate or even in a simulated environment as an upload.

Moreover, a person isn’t a single continuous entity; the ‘me’ of today is not quite the ‘me’ of yesterday, which in turn isn’t the ‘me’ of a year ago, Rather, a person is a series of ‘Person-instances’, connected causally between themselves and the world.

In this context/worldview, certain philosophical problems get obvious solutions:
Destructive teleport for example, preserves identity by virtue of maintaining the causal connection, even if the teleport is done by destructively scanning a person then recreating them years later; from inside it’d seem like one was teleported into the future.
For non-destructive teleportation or mind-cloning, the answer to “which is ‘you’” is ‘both’ (or ‘yes’), since both satisfy the condition of preserving the identity-information-structure while being causally related to the person-instance of before. However, from th...
I like simplicity, but not THAT much
by Benya — 2014-02-14T19:51:42.131Z

Followup to: L-zombies! (L-zombies?)
Reply to: Coscott's Preferences without Existence; Paul Christiano's comment on my l-zombies post

In my previous post, I introduced the idea of an "l-zombie", or logical philosophical zombie: A Turing machine that would simulate a conscious human being if it were run, but that is never run in the real, physical world, so that the experiences that this human would have had, if the Turing machine were run, aren't actually consciously experienced.

One common reply to this is to deny the possibility of logical philosophical zombies just like the possibility of physical philosophical zombies: to say that every mathematically possible conscious experience is in fact consciously experienced, and that there is no kind of "magical reality fluid" that makes some of these be experienced "more" than others. In other words, we live in the Tegmark Level IV universe, except that unlike Tegmark argues in his paper, there's no objective measure on the collection of all mathematical structures, according to which some mathematical structures somehow "exist more" than others (and, although IIRC that's not part of Tegmark's argument, according to which the conscious experiences in some mathematical structures could be "experienced more" than those in other structures). All mathematically possible experiences are experienced, and to the same "degree".

So why is our world so orderly? There's a mathematically possible continuation of the world that you seem to be living in, where purple pumpkins are about to start falling from the sky. Or the light we observe coming in from outside our galaxy is suddenly replaced by white noise. Why don't you remember ever seeing anything as obviously disorderly as that?

And the answer to that, of course, is that among all the possible experiences that get experienced in this multiverse, there are orderly ones as well as non-orderly ones, so the fact that you happen to have orderly experiences isn't in conflict with the hypothesis; after all, the orderly experiences have to be experienced as well.

One might be tempted to argue that it's somehow more likely that you will observe an orderly world if everybody who has conscious experiences at all, or if at least most conscious observers, see an orderly world. (The "most observers" version of the argument assumes that there is a measure on the conscious observers, a.k.a...
Cambridge (England) lecture: Existential Risk: Surviving the 21st Century, 26th February 
by Sean_o_h — 2014-02-14T19:39:31.632Z

The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk will be holding a public lecture on "Existential Risk: Surviving the 21st Century" in collaboration with 80,000 Hours: Cambridge and Giving What We Can: Cambridge on the 26th of February in Cambridge (United Kingdom).

Lady Mitchell Hall, Sidgwick Site, Cambridge. 5:30pm-6:45pm, with drinks reception to follow.

SPEAKERS:

Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal

Jaan Tallinn, co-founder of Skype

Huw Price, Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge

"In the coming century, the greatest threats to human survival may come from our own technological developments. However, if we can safely navigate the pitfalls, the benefits that technology promises are enormous. A philosopher, an astronomer, and an entrepreneur have come together to form the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. The goal: to bring a fraction of humanity’s talents to bear on the task of ensuring our long-term survival. In this lecture, Huw Price, Martin Rees and Jaan Tallinn will outline humanity’s greatest challenge: surviving the 21st century."

This event is free and open to all.

Facebook event notice is here.

In other news, I hope to be posting a general update on progress with the Centre's establishment fairly shortly for those who are interested, although it's still an ongoing process. Things have become quite busy and there are a lot of opportunities to follow up on, so I'll be taking a leave of absence from the Future of Humanity Institute for 6 months in April to work full-time on the project to establish the centre.
Meetup : Boston: In Defence of the Cathedral
by Vika — 2014-02-14T19:31:52.824Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Boston: In Defence of the Cathedral

WHEN:
16 February 2014 02:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
Citadel, 98 Elm St Apt 1, Somerville, MA

Anders Huitfeldt (Anders_H) will give a presentation called "In Defence of the Cathedral", inspired by the discussion between blogger Scott Alexander and neoreactionaries. If you have time, you may want to first read Scott Alexander's essay "Reactionary Philosophy in an enormous, planet-sized nutshell", but this is not required.

Cambridge/Boston-area Less Wrong meetups start at 2pm, and have an alternating location:

2nd and 4th Sunday meetups are in MIT's building 66 at 25 Ames St, room 156. Room number subject to change based on availability; signs will be posted with the actual room number.

Meetups on other weeks are at Citadel in Porter Sq, at 98 Elm St, apt 1, Somerville.

Our default schedule is as follows:

—Phase 1: Arrival, greetings, unstructured conversation.

—Phase 2: The headline event. This starts promptly at 2:30pm, and lasts 30-60 minutes.

—Phase 3: Further discussion. We'll explore the ideas raised in phase 2, often in smaller groups.

—Phase 4: Dinner.

Discussion article for the meetup : Boston: In Defence of the Cathedral
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2014-02-14T17:03:41.279Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on February 7th. The following week's summary is here.

New meetups (or meetups with a hiatus of more than a year) are happening in:

Inaugural Canberra meetup: 12 February 2014 07:30PM
Meetup: First Meetup in Hamburg, Germany: 07 February 2014 07:00PM

Other irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

Frankfurt meetup: 09 February 2014 02:00PM
Moscow, Scholarship and Happiness: 09 February 2014 04:00PM
Princeton NJ Meetup: 22 February 2014 01:00PM
Sydney Meetup: February: 26 February 2014 06:30PM
Urbana-Champaign: Logical uncertainty: 09 February 2014 02:00PM

The remaining meetups take place in cities with regular scheduling, but involve a change in time or location, special meeting content, or simply a helpful reminder about the meetup:

Austin, TX: 08 February 2020 01:30PM
[Berlin] Community Weekend in Berlin: 11 April 2014 04:00PM
Brussels: Morality - also cake: 08 February 2014 01:00PM
Vienna: 15 February 2014 03:00PM
Washington DC Book Swap meetup: 09 February 2014 03:00PM
[ALERT] West LA [ALERT] Location Change!!: 12 February 2014 07:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Berlin, Brussels, Cambridge, MA, Cambridge UK, Columbus, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Mountain View, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, Waterloo, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers.

If you'd like to talk with other LW-ers face to face, and there is no meetup in your area, consider starting your own meetup; it's easy (more resources here). Check one out, stretch your rationality skills, build community, and have fun!

In addition to the handy sidebar of upcoming meetups, a meetup overview is posted on the front page every Friday. These are an attempt to collect information on all the meetups happening in upcoming weeks. The best way to get your meetup featured is still to use the Add New Meetup feature, but you'll also have the benefit of having your meetup mentioned in a weekly overview. These overview posts are moved to the discussion section when the new post goes up.

Please note that for your meetup to appear in the weekly meetups feature, you need to post your meetup before the Friday before your meetup!

If you check Less Wrong irregularly, con...
How to illustrate that society is mostly irrational, and how rationality would be beneficial
by Adam Zerner — 2014-02-14T06:16:32.499Z

Does anyone know of a good article that illustrates how society is generally irrational, and how making society more rational would have huge benefits, because it'd be a very high level action?

I'm writing an essay about how to improve education, and one of my proposals is that a core part of the curriculum should be rationality. I believe that doing this would have huge benefits to society, and want to explain why I think this, but I'm having trouble. Any thoughts?

Edit: Part of Raising the Sanity Waterline talks about common ways in which people are irrational. However, they're all links to longer Less Wrong articles. Preferably, I'd like to illustrate it in a few sentences/paragraphs.
[Open Thread] Links (2014-02-14)
by solipsist — 2014-02-14T05:32:26.543Z

This is part of a two-week experiment on having more open threads.

A good read, good site, something that made you think. If you really want to share it but don't think it's worthy of a post, here's the place. Please include a summary.

Other similar threads include:

Open Thread

Media recommendations

Stupid questions

Advice (Not yet posted)

Other Special Threads
Private currency to generate funds for effective altruism
by Stefan_Schubert — 2014-02-14T00:00:05.931Z

In the last few years we have seen two interesting revolutionary ideas on how to change the monetary system. The first is Bitcoin: the most well-known peer-to-peer currency. It has been wildly debated recently and I won't go into the detail of allegations of use in criminal activities etc (for one thing, I don't know much about it). My interest is rather in the money creation part. The people who run the Bitcoin software are rewarded for their work with new Bitcoins - a process called mining. Now the pace at which new Bitcoins are mined is limited, which means that Bitcoin creation is a zero-sum game: the more one miner contributes to the Bitcoin software, the less Bitcoins other miners get. Unsurprisingly, this has led to an arms race: miners spend nearly as much on running the software as they get back in form of new Bitcoins.

The second idea is the Chicago Plan, which was debated already in the 30's, after the great crash of 1929, but which recently was resurrected by Michael Kumhof (senior economist at IMF, of all places). The central idea of the Chicago Plan is to abolish fractional reserve banking - the system by which private banks in effect create money out of thin air. Instead of lending out most of the depositors' money, banks would effectively have to let them stay in the bank.

Instead money would be created by the central bank/government, a process that would generate a massive seignorage for the government. According to Kumhof, it would also have other beneficial effects, such as killing off the "boom-and-bust"-cycles which he thinks fractional reserve banking are mostly responsible for, and diminishing the wasteful parts of the financial sector.

Kumhof ideas' have not been well received. Overall, it is remarkable how little reform there has been of the financial and monetary system given that the world had a major financial meltdown 2008 (and was close to an even greater one, in my understanding). Governments won't challenge the financial system radically in the near future, that's for sure.

Instead radical reforms can only come from private hands. Let us now compare the two ideas. In the Bitcoin system money is created by private hands, but in wasteful ways, which effectively means that there is very little seignorage. Under the Chicago plan, money is created by the government in much more efficient ways, which leads to a large seignora...
Some Tools For Optimizing Our Media Use
by mbitton24 — 2014-02-13T21:28:52.968Z

Benevolent and malevolent media producers possess the power to influence society in positive and negative ways. They can do this through agenda setting, framing, priming, spreading memes, altering perceptions of groups and individuals, outright propaganda, and other methods.

I think more attention should be paid to the pathways from content to effects, so that we can optimize our cultural landscape.

Lest this post soon turn into Applause Light Vegas, I’ll now get into some methods I think can be used to sway mass opinion in a direction amenable to making the world better. Many of these methods deal with familiar biases, heuristics, and psychological effects.

Media Use Facilitating Positive Social Change

First, the mass media possesses the power to alter estimates of the likelihood and frequency of specific occurrences. Think back to some of the classic examples of the availability heuristic. When asked to estimate the number of homicides in the USA compared to suicides, people answer that there are far more homicides in the United States, even though the reverse is true. The mass media report on homicides far more often than they report on suicides, so people have more available instances of homicide in their memories and these come to mind more easily. This influences their beliefs about the real world, which can then be politicized to lead to different stances on gun control and education. The priorities of a culture with a homicide problem are not the priorities of a culture with a suicide problem.

This effect is consistent with some theoretical models of the mass media’s impact on society. Cultivation theorists understand the media, especially television, as a system of coherent memes and messages reflecting a society’s dominant ideology. If we accept the fundamental claim of cultivation theory then we should hypothesize exposure to television to be positively correlated with status quo beliefs and attitudes. We might then expect high exposure to non-fiction television to lead to mean- and scary-world beliefs, given the disproportionate amount of media coverage homicides receive. One cultivation theorist found

...
A few remarks about mass-downvoting
by gjm — 2014-02-13T17:06:43.216Z

To whoever has for the last several days been downvoting ~10 of my old comments per day:

It is possible that your intention is to discourage me from commenting on Less Wrong.

The actual effect is the reverse. My comments still end up positive on average, and I am therefore motivated to post more of them in order to compensate for the steady karma drain you are causing.

If you are mass-downvoting other people, the effect on some of them is probably the same.

To the LW admins, if any are reading:

Look, can we really not do anything about this behaviour? It's childish and stupid, and it makes the karma system less useful (e.g., for comment-sorting), and it gives bad actors a disproportionate influence on Less Wrong. It seems like there are lots of obvious things that would go some way towards helping, many of which have been discussed in past threads about this.

Failing that, can we at least agree that it's bad behaviour and that it would be good in principle to stop it or make it more visible and/or inconvenient?

Failing that, can we at least have an official statement from an LW administrator that mass-downvoting is not considered an undesirable behaviour here? I really hope this isn't the opinion of the LW admins, but as the topic has been discussed from time to time with never any admin response I've been thinking it increasingly likely that it is. If so, let's at least be honest about it.

To anyone else reading this:

If you should happen to notice that a sizeable fraction of my comments are at -1, this is probably why. (Though of course I may just have posted a bunch of silly things. I expect it happens from time to time.)

My apologies for cluttering up Discussion with this. (But not very many apologies; this sort of mass-downvoting seems to me to be one of the more toxic phenomena on Less Wrong, and I retain some small hope that eventually something may be done about it.)
Embracing the "sadistic" conclusion
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2014-02-13T10:30:46.492Z

This is not the post I was planning to write. Originally, it was going to be a heroic post where I showed my devotion to philosophical principles by reluctantly but fearlessly biting the bullet on the sadistic conclusion. Except... it turns out to be nothing like that, because the sadistic conclusion is practically void of content and embracing it is trivial.

Sadism versus repugnance

The sadistic conclusion can be found in Gustaf Arrhenius's papers such as "An Impossibility Theorem for Welfarist Axiologies." In it he demonstrated that - modulo a few technical assumptions - any system of population ethics has to embrace either the Repugnant Conclusion, the Anti-Egalitarian Conclusion or the Sadistic conclusion. Astute readers of my blog posts may have noticed I'm not the repugnant conclusion's greatest fan, evah! The anti-egalitarian conclusion claims that you can make things better by keeping total happiness/welfare/preference satisfaction constant but redistributing it in a more unequal way. Few systems of ethics embrace this in theory (though many social systems seem to embrace it in practice).

Remains the sadistic conclusion. A population ethics that accepts this is one where it is sometimes better to create someone whose life is not worth living (call them a "victim"), rather a group of people whose lives are worth living. It seems well named - can you not feel the top hatted villain twirl his moustache as he gleefully creates lives condemned to pain and misery, laughing manically as he prevents the intrepid heroes from changing the settings on his incubator machine to "worth living"? How could that sadist be in the right, according to any decent system of ethics?

Remove the connotations, then the argument

But the argument is flawed, for two main reasons: one that strikes at the connotations of "sadistic", the other at the heart of the comparison itself.

The reason the sadistic aspect is a misnomer is that creating a victim is not actually a positive development. Almost all ethical systems would advocate improving the victim's life, if at all possible (or ending it, if appropriate). Indeed some ethical systems which have the "sadistic conclusion" (such as prioritarianism or egalitarianism) would think it more important to improve the victim's life that some ethical systems that don't have the conclusion (such as total utilitarianism). Only if such help is ...