trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
John Baez Interviews with Eliezer (Parts 2 and 3)
by multifoliaterose — 2011-03-29T17:36:12.514Z

John Baez's This Week's Finds (Week 311) [Part 1; added for convenience following Nancy Lebovitz's comment]

John Baez's This Week's Finds (Week 312)

John Baez's This Week's Finds (Week 313)

I really like Eliezer's response to John Baez's last question in Week 313 about environmentalism vs. AI risks. I think it satisfactorily deflects much of the concern that I had when I wrote The Importance of Self-Doubt.

Eliezer says

Anyway: In terms of expected utility maximization, even large probabilities of jumping the interval between a universe-history in which 95% of existing biological species survive Earth’s 21st century, versus a universe-history where 80% of species survive, are just about impossible to trade off against tiny probabilities of jumping the interval between interesting universe-histories, versus boring ones where intelligent life goes extinct, or the wrong sort of AI self-improves.

This is true as stated but ignores an important issue which is there is feedback between more mundane current events and the eventual potential extinction of the humane race. For example, the United States' involvement in Libya has a (small) influence on existential risk (I don't have an opinion as to what sort). Any impact on human society impact due to global warming has some influence on existential risk.

Eliezer's points about comparative advantage and of existential risk in principle dominating all other considerations are valid, important, and well-made, but passing from principle to practice is very murky in the complex human world that we live in.

Note also the points that I make in Friendly AI Research and Taskification.
London Hackday, this Friday, April 1st (No, this is not a joke)
by Alexandros — 2011-03-29T14:57:40.930Z

This coming Friday, April 1st 2011, a few of us from London will be getting together to hack on some as yet unidentified project. The event will be held at the London Hackspace. We'll be starting at 10am and expect to be there for most of the day.

We have quite a few suggestions and will probably spend the first hour of our meeting figuring out what to do. Being there early means you will be able to contribute in the direction the day will take. You're welcome to turn up later of course. There is no particular skill level required to attend, just a desire for hacking on things with others. Teaching each other is just as important as the actual outcome. Letting us know you're coming in advance will help us plan better.

If you would like to be in the loop for future LessWrong events in London, send me with your e-mail via private message so I can add you to the LessWrong London mailing list.
HP:MoR Audio Book Pilot
by Eneasz — 2011-03-29T06:05:02.356Z

Like far too many people, I have a job that for decent chunks of my day doesn't require much concentration. I listen to various podcasts and ebooks to alleviate the boredom at these times, as well as to get me through my daily commute. I have several friends with plenty of audio-listening time, a fair bit of which is given to amateur podcasts (in the "not getting paid for it" sense), who have much less time available for straight reading. I have, on more than one occasion, thought "Wouldn't it be great if Methods of Rationality was available in audio format?"

Well, now it is.

At least, the first chapter is, in a "testing the waters" sort of way.

If you have 17 minutes free and any interest, here's the file - http://www.filedropper.com/hpmorpilot

I have one over-riding question to anyone/everyone: is this of any value? Would this be useful to anyone here, either personally, or to share with others? Would a spruced-up first chapter, and regular production of further chapters, be something you want more of?

A closely-related follow-up question: if so - am I the right person to do this? Even "acceptable", I'm not shooting for perfection. Or is something about my voice/manner so grating I should stick to non-radio work.

If the answer to these is "yes", then are there any comments/suggestions? I'm new to this recording thing. I got a decent mic and a pop-filter, and I've played around with the software a bit, but I'm still learning. I have noticed that I need to enunciate more, it turns out my "can't win" sounds just like my "can win". Further suggestions? I'm thinking of varying my pitch when different characters are talking to make it more apparent when dialog is switching back and forth, hopefully that won't be too cheesy.

If people want more of this I'll get an actual server to host the files and make it available through iTunes as a podcast.

Again: http://www.filedropper.com/hpmorpilot
12-year old challenges the Big Bang
by  — 2011-03-29T05:40:26.696Z

I thought this may be of interest to the LW community. Jacob Barnett is a 12-year old male who taught himself all of high school math (algebra through calculus), has a currently scored math IQ of 170 (for what that's worth) and is currently on track to become a researcher of astrophysics. His current major news worthy claim-to-fame (aside from being really young): The Big Bang Theory is currently incorrect (I believe the article states he has something about a lack of carbon in the model), and he's planning to develop a new theory.
I haven't learned anything serious in physics, so I have nothing to note on his claim. I realize the news article cited puts him claim fairly generally, so I'll ask this: Can someone explain how elements are generally modeled to have formed from the big bang? And is there anything that it Jacob may be missing in the current literature?
Life hacks from the dark side
by ata — 2011-03-29T03:22:52.721Z

“So, Lone Starr, now you see that evil will always triumph, because good is dumb.”

— Dark Helmet

In a recent article, the unusually well-researched comedy site Cracked.com discussed “5 scientific reasons the dark side will always win,” including:

Clenching your fists and thinking evil thoughts can increase strength and willpower. (Hung & Labroo 2011, Schubert 2004, Gray 2010)

Particular “power poses” raise testosterone and lower cortisol levels (in both men and women) and increase feelings of power and tolerance for risk. (Carney et al. 2010)

Boosts in pride can allow you to work longer and harder on “effortful and hedonically negative” tasks. (Williams & DeSteno 2008)

Negative moods can decrease gullibility, increase persuasiveness and social influence, and improve the accuracy of eyewitness recollections. (Forgas 2007, Forgas 2008, Forgas et al. 2005)

Perhaps, then, it could be useful to intentionally cultivate a Mysterious Dark Side, or just ask yourself “What would Voldemort do?” once in a while (please do not murder anyone). I’m definitely going to be giving some of these a try; fist-clenching and power-posing are easy, and as a source of evil thoughts and pride, I already have a dark lord alter-ego I could channel when necessary (I’ll probably need to flesh out his character a bit more than I have so far).

The Cracked.com article mostly links to news stories, so, for your convenience, here are the original papers they refer to:

Frank, Mark G. and Gilovich, Thomas (1988). “The Dark Side of Self- and Social Perception: Black Uniforms and Aggression in Professional Sports.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(1), 74-85.

Hung, Iris W. and Labroo, Aparna A. (2011). “From Firm Muscles to Firm Willpower: Understanding the Role of Embodied Cognition in Self-Regulation.” Journal of Consumer Research, 37(6), 1046-1064.

Gray, Kurt (2010). “Moral Transformation: Good and Evil Turn the Weak Into the Mighty.” Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1(3), 253-258.

Carney, Dana R., Cuddy, Amy J.C., and Yap, Andy J. (2010). “Power Posing: Brief Nonverbal Displays Affect Neuroendocrine Levels and Risk Tolerance.” Psychological Science, 21(10), 1363–1368.

Schubert, Thomas W. (2004). “The Power In

...
Q: Experiment on blaming the one you hurt?
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2011-03-29T01:10:11.929Z

For bookwriting - Does anyone have a quick ref for experiments where the subject is forced to hurt someone, and then evaluates that person negatively ("The victim deserved it")? I can't recall the Google keyword; it doesn't show up for "blaming the victim" or "just-world hypothesis".
Claremont Meetup
by atucker — 2011-03-28T22:07:11.820Z

I got into Harvey Mudd, and will be attending the Admitted Students Program from April 10th-11th.
Anyone want to do a Claremont Meetup on those dates? Or the 12th.
I didn't post this on the front page because I'm not actually in Claremont, nor do I know people there, nor do I even know where would be a good place/time to meet.
Creationism's effect on the progress of our understanding of evolution
by AlexMennen — 2011-03-28T20:36:26.967Z

Lynn Margulis argues that natural selection cannot provide a powerful enough evolutionary force to account for the punctuated equilibrium demonstrated in the fossil record. She proposes as an alternative that evolution is driven by changes in symbiotic relationships. I'm not a biologist, and I don't understand what exactly her theory means, so I'm not going to try to argue for or against it, but it got me thinking:

Evolutionary biologists cannot afford to let Margulis's theory become well-known and accepted as a mainstream theory, because that would create a rift in the pro-evolution camp, and creationists would be able to exploit this by combining Margulis's argument that natural selection cannot account for punctuated equilibrium with arguments by Neo-Darwinists against Margulis's theory to support their claim that evolution is false. This would be effective because many people would not understand that "we do not understand everything about how evolution works" does not imply "creationism is correct". Thus, many evolutionary biologists might feel that they have to be very careful to look like they do know everything about how evolution works. This could make it more difficult for them to spot aspects in which their assumptions about evolution are mistaken. Maybe the biggest damage caused by creationism is that it suppresses legitimate criticism of the current accepted models of evolution, besides spreading false information to the general public.

Again, I'm not arguing in favor of Margulis's theory in particular, but the statement "There exists at least one false fact about evolutionary biology that is accepted as true by a consensus of researchers in that field" seems fairly likely to be true.
Philosophy: A Diseased Discipline
by lukeprog — 2011-03-28T19:31:58.441Z

Part of the sequence: Rationality and Philosophy

Eliezer's anti-philosophy post Against Modal Logics was pretty controversial, while my recent pro-philosophy (by LW standards) post and my list of useful mainstream philosophy contributions were massively up-voted. This suggests a significant appreciation for mainstream philosophy on Less Wrong - not surprising, since Less Wrong covers so many philosophical topics.

If you followed the recent very long debate between Eliezer and I over the value of mainstream philosophy, you may have gotten the impression that Eliezer and I strongly diverge on the subject. But I suspect I agree more with Eliezer on the value of mainstream philosophy than I do with many Less Wrong readers - perhaps most.

That might sound odd coming from someone who writes a philosophy blog and spends most of his spare time doing philosophy, so let me explain myself. (Warning: broad generalizations ahead! There are exceptions.)

Failed methods

Large swaths of philosophy (e.g. continental and postmodern philosophy) often don't even try to be clear, rigorous, or scientifically respectable. This is philosophy of the "Uncle Joe's musings on the meaning of life" sort, except that it's dressed up in big words and long footnotes. You will occasionally stumble upon an argument, but it falls prey to magical categories and language confusions and non-natural hypotheses. You may also stumble upon science or math, but they are used to 'prove' things irrelevant to the actual scientific data or the equations used.

Analytic philosophy is clearer, more rigorous, and better with math and science, but only does a slightly better job of avoiding magical categories, language confusions, and non-natural hypotheses. Moreover, its central tool is intuition, and this displays a near-total ignorance of how brains work. As Michael Vassar observes, philosophers are "spectacularly bad" at understanding that their intuitions are generated by cognitive algorithms.

A diseased discipline

What about Quinean naturalists? Many of them at least understand the basics: that things are made of atoms, that many questions don't need to be answered but instead dissolved, that the brain is not an a priori truth factory, that intuitions come from cognitive algorithms, that humans are loaded with bias, that langu...
How to talk to yourself
by KatjaGrace — 2011-03-28T16:10:56.000Z

Image via Wikipedia

Mental module 2: Eeek! Don’t make me go on that airplane! We will surely die! No no no!

Mental module 1: There is less than one in a million chance we die if we get on that airplane, based on actual statistics from as far as you are concerned identical airplanes.

Mental module 2: No!! it’s a big metal box in the sky – that can’t work. Panic! Panic!

Mental module 1: If we didn’t have an incredible pile of data from other big metal boxes in the sky your argument would have non-negligible bearing on the situation.

Mental module 2: but what if it crashes??

Mental module 1: Our lives would be much nicer if you paid attention to probabilities as well as how you feel about outcomes.

Mental module 2: It will shudder and tip over and we will not know how to update our priors on that, and we will be terrified, briefly, before we die!

Mental module 1: If it shuddering and tipping over were actually good evidence the plane was going to crash, there would presently be an incredibly small chance of them occurring, so you need not worry.

Mental module 2: We could crash into the rocks!!! Rocks! In our face! at terminal velocity! And bits of airplane! Do you remember that movie where an airplane crashed? There were bits of burning people everywhere. And what about those pictures you saw on the news? It’s going to be terrible. Even if we survive we will probably be badly injured and in the middle of a jungle, like that girl on that documentary. And what if we get deep vein thrombosis? We might struggle half way out of the jungle on one leg only to get a pulmonary embolism and suddenly die with no hope of medical help, which probably wouldn’t help anyway.

Mental module 1: (realizing something) But Me 2, we identify with being rational, like clever people we respect. Thinking the plane is going to crash is not rational.

Mental module 2: Yeah, rationality! I am so rational. Rationality is the greatest thing, and we care about it infinitely much! Who cares if the plane is really going to crash – I sure won’t believe it will, because that’s not rational!

Mental module 1: (struggling to overcome normal urges) Yes, now you understand.

Mental module 2: and even when it’s falling from the sky I won’t be scared, because that would not be rational! And when we smash into the ground, we will die for rationa...
Rationalist Movies (Spoilers for the film Limitless)
by Mycroft65536 — 2011-03-28T04:58:00.870Z

I just came back from the film Limitless. The movie contained a very interesting depiction of a character who gets an black market nootropic that works very well. It gives him perfect recall, perfect situational awareness, and the ability to figure out the best thing to say/do in real time. He uses this new power to finish his book, get back together with his girlfriend, become rich, and eventually become president of the united states. Incidentally he gets in shape, establishes himself as high status at top tier social events, learns many new languages, and sleeps with a bunch of women. In the end his new found intelligence leads him to happiness. The drama in the film comes from the fact that the drug has side effects, and there's a mobster who gets his hands on some and wants more. Intelligence is depicted as a fundamentally good thing. It's even described as "I knew what I wanted and I knew how to get it." He affirms several times (and the story agrees) that he's still himself on the drug, just more effective.
Free Will as Unsolvability by Rivals
by Pavitra — 2011-03-28T03:28:31.885Z

Nadia wanted to solve Alonzo. To reduce him to a canonical, analytic representation, sufficient to reconfigure him at will. If there was a potential Alonzo within potential-Alonzo-space, say, who was utterly devoted to Nadia, who would dote on her and die for her, an Alonzo-solution would make its generation trivial.

from True Names, by Cory Doctorow and Benjamin Rosenbaum

Warning: this post tends toward the character of mainstream philosophy, in that it relies on the author's intuitions to draw inferences about the nature of reality.

If you are dealing with an intelligence vastly more or less intelligent than yourself, there is no contest. One of you can play the other like tic-tac-toe. The stupid party's values are simply irrelevant to the final outcome.

If you are dealing with an intelligence extremely close to your own -- say, two humans within about five IQ points of each other -- then both parties' values will significantly affect the outcome.

If you are dealing with an intelligence moderately more or less intelligent than yourself, such as a world-class politician or an average eight-year-old child respectively, then the weaker intelligence might be able to slightly affect the outcome.

If we formalize free will as the fact that what we want to do has a causal effect on what we actually do, then perhaps we can characterize the sensation of free will -- the desire to loudly assert in political arguments that we have free will -- as a belief that our values will have a causal effect on the eventual outcome of reality.

This matches the sense that facing a terrifyingly powerful intelligence, one that can solve us completely, strips away our free will, which in turn probably explains the common misconception that free will is incompatible with reductionism -- knowing that an explanation exists feels like having the explanation be known by someone. We don't want to be understood.

It matches the sense that a person's free will can be denied by forcing them into a straitjacket and tossing them in a padded cell. It matches the assumption that not having free will would feel like sitting at the wheel of a vehicle that was running on autopilot and refusing manual commands.

In general, we can distinguish three successive stages at which free will can be cut off:

The creature can be constructed non-heuristically to begin with; that is, it lacks a

...
Collapsible article sections?
by lukeprog — 2011-03-28T00:55:51.557Z

It would be nice to be able to make 'collapsible sections' in articles, like on my atheism FAQ. That way, each article with (for example) a long list of references at the bottom could by default have the references collapsed, but if you click 'References' then the list of references would appear. That way people wouldn't have to scroll past several pages of references in order to leave a comment. (Examples: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.)

This suggestion is mostly just for me at this point, though, as I'm the only one doing long lists of references. But I figured I'd mention it anyway.
The Neuroscience of Pleasure
by lukeprog — 2011-03-27T23:57:04.131Z

The scientific approach to self-help suggests that a better understanding of who we are can help us achieve happiness and other goals. Most centrally, it will be helpful to understand our brains, because it is our brains that generate happiness and goals.

In particular, I'd like to explore the neuroscience of pleasure and desire. Today's post covers the neuroscience of pleasure; the next post will cover the neuroscience of desire. After each post I'll consider some of the implications for self-help. In a later post, I'll consider how this research can inform the pursuit of Friendly AI.

Introducing Affective Neuroscience

The last decade has seen the arrival of affective neuroscience: the study of the neural mechanisms behind emotion, including pleasure and desire.1 Most questions remain unanswered, and experts disagree on many specifics,2 but there are some things we can state with confidence. We begin with the reward system in the brain.

The reward system consists of three major components (image)3:

Liking: The 'hedonic impact' of reward, comprised of (1) neural processes4 that may or may not be conscious and (2) the conscious experience of pleasure.

Wanting: Motivation for reward, comprised of (1) processes of 'incentive salience' that may or may not be conscious and (2) conscious desires.

Learning: Associations, representations, and predictions about future rewards, comprised of (1) explicit predictions and (2) implicit knowledge and associative conditioning (e.g. Pavlovian associations).

Unfortunately, the interaction between these components is extraordinarily complex, and many puzzles remain.5

I'll share two examples of our ignorance. First: pleasure electrodes. For decades, it was thought that electrical stimulation of certain structures caused pleasure, because rats and humans would self-administer this stimulation hundreds or thousands of times each hour if allowed to do so.6 But a careful reading of the transcripts reveals the causation of wanting, not liking. Sometimes, the cause was even an unpleasant nervousness.7 Though, there are a few exceptions where liking was produced.8

Second: dopamine. For decades, experts thought dopamine was 'the pleasure chemical'.9 But this is probably false.10 Lack of dopamine does not impair 'liking' reactions.11 And in humans, perceived pleasure is not reduced by los...
How Safe are Uploads?
by paulfchristiano — 2011-03-27T22:31:37.160Z

I have encountered the argument that safe brain uploads are as hard as friendly AI. In particular, this is offered as justification for focusing on the development of FAI rather than spending energy trying to make sure WBE (or an alternative based on stronger understanding of the brain) comes first. I don't yet understand/believe these arguments.

I have not seen a careful discussion of these issues anywhere, although I suspect plenty have occurred. My question is: why would I support the SIAI instead of directing my money towards the technology needed to better understand and emulate the human brain?

Suppose human society has some hope of designing FAI. Then I strongly suspect that a community of uploads have at least as good a chance of designing FAI. If I can find humans who are properly motivated, then I can produce uploads who are also motivated to work on the design of FAI. Moreover, if emulated brains eventually outproduce us signfiicantly, then they have a higher chance of designing an FAI before something else kills them. The main remaining question is how safe an upload would be, and how well an upload-initiated singularity is likely to proceed.

There are three factors suggesting the safety of an upload-initiated singularity. First, uploads always run as fast as the available computing substrate. It is less likely for an upload to accidentally stumble upon (rather than design) AI, because computers never get subjectively faster. Second, there is hope of controlling the nature of uploads; if rational, intelligent uploads can be responsible for most upload output, then we should expect the probability of a friendly singularity to be correspondingly higher.

The main factor contributing to the risk of an upload-initiated singularity is that uploads already have access to uploads. It is possible that uploads will self-modify unsafely, and that this may be (even relatively) easier than for existing humans to develop AI. Is this the crux of the argument against uploads? If so, could someone who has thought through the argument please spell it out in much more detail, or point me to such a spelling out?