trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Subsuming Purpose, Part 1
by OrphanWilde — 2012-08-10T18:45:34.081Z

Summary:

The purpose of this entry is to establish the existence of local equilibriums which introduce deviations from an ends-driven organization (an organization whose primary focus is a particular purpose) to transform it into a means-driven organization (an organization whose primary focus is the means to achieve its purpose, rather than the purpose itself).

Subsuming Purpose, Part 1

Imagine you run a charity, and you have two star employees; one shares your goals without any emphasis on a means, the other believes in the cause but believes firmly in fundraising as the best means to that end. Both contribute to your charity, but the fundraiser does more good overall. The fundraiser enables your organization. Who do you set as your successor?

Who will your successor choose as their successor?

The person who believes in the purpose will choose the best person for achieving that purpose. The person who believes in a specific means to achieve that ends will choose the best person for those means. The means will subsume the ends. A person who values specific means, say, fundraising, is more likely to promote fellow fundraisers; he values their contributions more. Specialists, and in particular the lines of thinking which lead to specialization, create rigidity in the organization.

Suppose that you choose the fundraiser. The fundraiser, by dint of having chosen to specialize in fundraising, probably believes that fundraising is more important than the alternative means of supporting the organization: he will probably choose to promote other effective fundraisers over their alternatives.

And now people who don't agree that fundraising will start protesting, seeing their charity becoming increasingly subverted; fundraising is rewarded over the charitable purpose of the organization. They will leave, or protest; if their protests aren't heeded, for example because fundraisers who believe in fundraising do already run the company, they may be marginalized. Such individuals may be selected out, either self-selectively, or by explicit opposition by management to introducing people who are likely to cause trouble for them in the future.

Generalized:

In the example above, I made one particular assumption: That somebody who possesses some choice-driven characteristic X (competency at fundraising in the exampl...
Opinions on Boltzmann brain arguments constraining modern multiverse theories
by Dr_Manhattan — 2012-08-10T18:05:52.417Z

Leading inflationary multiverse theorist Andrei Linde (and others) gives significant enough credence to the Boltzmann brain problem to tweak some of the parameters of his theory (here for example http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0611043). Are there more elegant ways to deal with the issue that LWs are aware of that would not require changing physics to accommodate?
Weekly LW Meetups: Austin, Cambridge UK, Copenhagen, Dublin, Pittsburgh, Washington DC
by FrankAdamek — 2012-08-10T14:44:09.378Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on August 3rd. It has now been moved to discussion.

There are upcoming irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups in:

Dublin, Ireland Meetup: 05 August 2012 03:00PM
Third Copenhagen Meet-up.: 05 August 2012 04:00PM
Washington DC Biased Boardgames meetup: 05 August 2012 03:00PM
Pittsburgh: Semantic Stopsigns: 08 August 2012 06:00PM
Brussels meetup: 11 August 2012 12:00PM

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

Austin, TX: 04 August 2012 01:30PM
Cambridge (MA) Meetup: 05 August 2012 02:00PM
Cambridge (MA) Meetup: 19 August 2012 02:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Cambridge, MA, Cambridge UK, Chicago, Madison WI, Melbourne, Mountain View, New York, Ohio, Oxford, Portland, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Toronto, Waterloo, and West Los Angeles.

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 will continue to be posted on the front page every Friday. These will be an attempt to collect information on all the meetups happening in the next weeks. The best way to get your meetup featured is still to use the Add New Meetup feature, but you'll now also have the benefit of having your meetup mentioned in a weekly overview. These overview posts will be 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, consider subscribing to one or more city-specific mailing list in order to be notified when an irregular meetup is happening: Atlanta, Berlin, Helsinki, London, Marin CA, Ottawa, Pittsburgh, Southern California (Los Angeles/Orange County area), St. Louis, Vancouver, Washington, DC.

If your meetup has a mailing list that you'd like mentioned here, or has become regular and isn't listed as such, let me know!

Want to help out the common good? If one of the meetups listed as regula...
[Link] Admitting to Bias
by GLaDOS — 2012-08-10T08:13:44.744Z

Summary: Current social psychology research is probably on average compromised by political bias leftward. Conservative researchers are likely discriminated against in at least this field. More importantly papers and research that does not fit a liberal perspective faces greater barriers and burdens.

An article in the online publication inside higher ed on a survey on anti-conservative bias among social psychologists.

Numerous surveys have found that professors, especially those in some disciplines, are to the left of the general public. But those same -- and other -- surveys have rarely found evidence that left-leaning academics discriminate on the basis of politics. So to many academics, the question of ideological bias is not a big deal. Investment bankers may lean to the right, but that doesn't mean they don't provide good service (or as best the economy will permit) to clients of all political stripes, the argument goes.

And professors should be assumed to have the same professionalism.

A new study, however, challenges that assumption -- at least in the field of social psychology. The study isn't due to be published until next month (in Perspectives on Psychological Science), and the authors and others are noting limitations to the study. But its findings of bias by social psychologists (even if just a decent-sized minority of them) are already getting considerable buzz in conservative circles. Just over 37 percent of those surveyed said that, given equally qualified candidates for a job, they would support the hiring of a liberal candidate over a conservative candidate. Smaller percentages agreed that a "conservative perspective" would negatively influence their odds of supporting a paper for inclusion in a journal or a proposal for a grant. (The final version of the paper is not yet available, but an early version may be found on the website of the Social Science Research Network.)

To some on the right, such findings are hardly surprising. But to the authors, who expected to find lopsided political leanings, but not bias, the results were not what they expected.

"The questions were pretty blatant. We didn't expect people would give those answers," said Yoel Inbar, a co-author, who is a visiting assistant professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and an assistant professor of social psychology at Tilburg University, in th

...
[SEQ RERUN] Invisible Frameworks
by MinibearRex — 2012-08-10T06:07:03.782Z

Today's post, Invisible Frameworks was originally published on 22 August 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

A particular system of values is analyzed, and is used to demonstrate the idea that anytime you consider changing your morals, you do so using your own current meta-morals. Forget this at your peril.

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 No License To Be Human, 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 : Board Games "Seattle"
by SarahNibs — 2012-08-10T02:55:00.199Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Board Games

WHEN: 11 August 2012 02:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE: Redmond, WA, USA

Play board games. Have fun. Have fun while playing board games. The agenda is straightforward. Bring friends or games if you like. Here's the thread with more details including an address, ride info, and the number 3^^^3: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/lw-seattle/3KatvMGOe8A%5B1-25%5D

Discussion article for the meetup : Board Games
Solving the two envelopes problem
by rstarkov — 2012-08-09T13:42:19.982Z

Suppose you are presented with a game. You are given a red and a blue envelope with some money in each. You are allowed to ask an independent party to open both envelopes, and tell you the ratio of blue:red amounts (but not the actual amounts). If you do, the game master replaces the envelopes, and the amounts inside are chosen by him using the same algorithm as before.

You ask the independent observer to check the amounts a million times, and find that half the time the ratio is 2 (blue has twice as much as red), and half the time it's 0.5 (red has twice as much as blue). At this point, the game master discloses that in fact, the way he chooses the amounts mathematically guarantees that these probabilities hold.

Which envelope should you pick to maximize your expected wealth?

It may seem surprising, but with this set-up, the game master can choose to make either red or blue have a higher expected amount of money in it, or make the two the same. Asking the independent party as described above will not help you establish which is which. This is the surprising part and is, in my opinion, the crux of the two envelopes problem.

This is not quite how the two envelopes problem is usually presented, but this is the presentation I arrived at after contemplating the original puzzle. The original puzzle prescribes a specific strategy that the game master follows, makes the envelopes indistinguishable, and provides a paradoxical argument which is obviously false, but it's not so obvious where it goes wrong.

Note that for simplicity, let's assume that money is a real quantity and can be subdivided indefinitely. This avoids the problem of odd amounts like $1.03 not being exactly divisible by two.

The flawed argument

The flawed argument goes as follows. Let's call the amount in the blue envelope B, and in red R. You have confirmed that half the time, B is equal to 2R, and half the time it's R/2. This is a fact. Surely then the expected value of B is (2R * 50% + R/2 * 50%), which simplifies to 1.25R. In other words, the blue envelope has a higher expected amount of money given the evidence we have.

But notice that the situation is completely symmetric. From the information you have, it's also obvious that half the time, R is 2B, and half the time it's B/2. So by the same argument the expected value of R is 1.25B. Uh-oh. The expected value of both envelopes is higher than the oth...
From the "weird math questions" department...
by CronoDAS — 2012-08-09T07:19:30.480Z

Here's something I've been wondering about, in the context of Solomonoff induction and uncomputable sequences.

I have a device that is either a halting oracle, or an ordinary Turing machine which gives the correct answer to the halting problem for all programs smaller than some finite length N but always outputs "does not halt" when asked to evaluate programs larger than N. If you don't know what N is and you don't have infinite time, is there a way to tell the difference between the actual halting oracle (which gives correct answers for all possible programs) and a "fake" halting oracle which starts giving wrong answers for some N that just happens to be larger than any program that you've tested so far?

The Kolmogorov complexity of an uncomputable sequence is infinite, so Solomonoff induction assigns it a probability of zero, but there's always a computable number with less than epsilon error, so would this ever actually matter?
Mentioning cryonics to a dying person
by DanielH — 2012-08-09T06:48:03.849Z

My paternal grandmother is dying of cancer (not brain cancer). She is still relatively healthy, and is taking chemo, but there is little hope of remission (and even if that does happen, she'll probably die of heart failure fairly soon). Her current plan is to be cremated and have the ashes buried in a graveyard (in my opinion, the worst of both of the "standard" approaches, but that's not the point of this post).

I would prefer if she were cryopreserved, but am unsure how to even begin to broach the subject. I also have no idea how to convince her. She is not particularly religious, but is concerned with leaving as much money for my grandfather (and later my parents and me) as possible. I have previously discussed cryonics with my parents; my father brushed off the idea and my mom looked into it but dismissed the idea because the future isn't likely to want her (I find this argument ridiculous on several grounds). This means that I can't count on them to help talk to my grandmother. I may be able to talk to my grandfather first, but this would probably not be much of an asset: he is into several different conspiracy theories (the most recent ones center around the world secretly being controlled by the "elites" who use the U.S. President, U.K. Prime Minister, etc. as figurative puppets), but my grandmother doesn't seem to believe these and probably wouldn't listen much to his talk of cryonics either.

Any suggestions of how to broach the topic or convince her once the topic is broached would be appreciated. I am currently at my grandparents' house, but am leaving less than a day after posting this (most of which will be spent at the local nighttime, and thus asleep). I would prefer not to upset her, both for obvious reasons and because I may not be able to bring myself to bring it up on the day we depart if it will cause us to leave on a bad note.
Meetup : Longmont Colorado Meetup
by EvelynM — 2012-08-09T02:50:05.133Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Longmont Colorado Meetup

WHEN:
09 August 2012 07:00:00PM (-0600)

WHERE:
Luna Cafe, 800 Coffman St, Longmont, CO 80501

Trying a new location, as an experiment.

All Denver and Boulder Less Wrongers are welcome to join the Fort Collins group for coffee, conversation, and a walk in the park.

Discussion article for the meetup : Longmont Colorado Meetup
Seeking advice on using evolutionary methods to solve the 3-body problem
by Troshen — 2012-08-08T23:43:44.054Z

NOTE - I mean the 3-body problem in orbital mechanics, not in atomic physics.

Hi there,

Some recent discussions here on LW have led me to ponder the 3-body problem again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem#General_considerations:_solving_the_n-body_problem

I wonder if new and novel methods that exist today might be applied to solving the "unsolvable" 3-body problem.

Specifically I'm wondering "Can I create an evolutionary derived algorithm to solve equations of motion, and then can I continue on with it's evolution to solve the 3-body problem at the level of Sundman's slowly-converging series, and then can I continue on with it's evolution to come up with a closed-form solution to solve for the position of all the bodies in our solar system?

Another question is "What level of hyper-accurate model of the entire solar system would be needed?"

I think that Chaos Theory says this isn't possible. Let's suppose for the moment that Chaos Theory only exists because our models of the universe aren't accurate enough to be use to predict far into the future.

Here's why I'm posting this to LW. I don't really even know where to start with answering these questions, but I bet the LWers can point me in the right direction.
Meetup : Vancouver Big Public Meetup
by Arkanj3l — 2012-08-08T19:10:06.885Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Vancouver Big Public Meetup

WHEN:
09 August 2012 06:06:06PM (-0800)

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

Excelsior Rationalists!
Tomorrow is the Big Monthly Meetup at Benny's Bagels, replete with Capital Letters and other assorted foodstuffs.
Tomorrow's meetup is casual, so there will be no necessary discussion structure or the like. Bringing your own boardgames is encouraged (especially Set, if you have it).
We host these public meetups every month to encourage people to come out and have fun. So here's your chance!

Discussion article for the meetup : Vancouver Big Public Meetup
Meetup : Less Wrong Sydney: 20th August 
by Oklord — 2012-08-08T17:44:13.405Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong Sydney: 20th August

WHEN:
20 August 2012 06:30:00PM (+1000)

WHERE:
565-567 George Street, Sydney, Australia 2000

Hey all!

Just a reminder for the up-coming meet up at the Sydney RSL - level 3 at the restaurant.

Wed did not get to try nomic last time- barring a better idea, might as well give it a shot now

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong Sydney: 20th August
[Link] “Proxy measures, sunk costs, and Chesterton's fence”, or: the sunk cost heuristic
by kpreid — 2012-08-08T14:39:02.580Z

Thought this post might be of interest to LW: Proxy measures, sunk costs, and Chesterton's fence. To summarize: Previous costs are a proxy measure for previous estimates of value, which may have information current estimates of value do not; therefore acting according to the sunk cost fallacy is not necessarily wrong.

This is not an entirely new idea here, but I liked the writeup. Previous discussion: Sunk Costs Fallacy Fallacy; Is Sunk Cost Fallacy a Fallacy?.

Excerpt:

If your evidence may be substantially incomplete you shouldn't just ignore sunk costs — they contain valuable information about decisions you or others made in the past, perhaps after much greater thought or access to evidence than that of which you are currently capable. Even more generally, you should be loss averse — you should tend to prefer avoiding losses over acquiring seemingly equivalent gains, and you should be divestiture averse (i.e. exhibit endowment effects) — you should tend to prefer what you already have to what you might trade it for — in both cases to the extent your ability to measure the value of the two items is incomplete. Since usually in the real world, and to an even greater degree in our ancestors' evolutionary environments, our ability to measure value is and was woefully incomplete, it should come as no surprise that people often value sunk costs, are loss averse, and exhibit endowment effects — and indeed under such circumstances of incomplete value measurement it hardly constitutes "fallacy" or "bias" to do so.
Friendly AI and the limits of computational epistemology
by Mitchell_Porter — 2012-08-08T13:16:27.269Z

Very soon, Eliezer is supposed to start posting a new sequence, on "Open Problems in Friendly AI". After several years in which its activities were dominated by the topic of human rationality, this ought to mark the beginning of a new phase for the Singularity Institute, one in which it is visibly working on artificial intelligence once again. If everything comes together, then it will now be a straight line from here to the end.
I foresee that, once the new sequence gets going, it won't be that easy to question the framework in terms of which the problems are posed. So I consider this my last opportunity for some time, to set out an alternative big picture. It's a framework in which all those rigorous mathematical and computational issues still need to be investigated, so a lot of "orthodox" ideas about Friendly AI should carry across. But the context is different, and it makes a difference.
Begin with the really big picture. What would it take to produce a friendly singularity? You need to find the true ontology, find the true morality, and win the intelligence race. For example, if your Friendly AI was to be an expected utility maximizer, it would need to model the world correctly ("true ontology"), value the world correctly ("true morality"), and it would need to outsmart its opponents ("win the intelligence race").
Now let's consider how SI will approach these goals.
The evidence says that the working ontological hypothesis of SI-associated researchers will be timeless many-worlds quantum mechanics, possibly embedded in a "Tegmark Level IV multiverse", with the auxiliary hypothesis that algorithms can "feel like something from inside" and that this is what conscious experience is.
The true morality is to be found by understanding the true decision procedure employed by human beings, and idealizing it according to criteria implicit in that procedure. That is, one would seek to understand conceptually the physical and cognitive causation at work in concrete human choices, both conscious and unconscious, with the expectation that there will be a crisp, complex, and specific answer to the question "why and how do humans make the choices that they do?" Undoubtedly there would be some biological variation, and there would also be significant elements of the "human decision procedure", as instantiated in any specific individual, which are set by experien...
[SEQ RERUN] No License To Be Human
by MinibearRex — 2012-08-08T07:26:16.053Z

Today's post, No License To Be Human was originally published on 20 August 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

We don't pull children off of train tracks because that's what humans do, or because we can consistently hold that it's better to pull children off of train tracks. We pull children off of train tracks because it's right.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was You Provably Can't Trust Yourself, 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.