trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
"3 Reasons It’s Irrational to Demand ‘Rationalism’ in Social Justice Activism"
by PhilGoetz — 2016-03-29T15:16:37.309Z

The lead article on everydayfeminism.com on March 25:

3 Reasons It’s Irrational to Demand ‘Rationalism’ in Social Justice Activism

The scenario is always the same: I say we should abolish prisons, police, and the American settler state— someone tells me I’m irrational. I say we need decolonization of the land — someone tells me I’m not being realistic.... When those who are the loudest, the most disruptive — the ones who want to destroy America and all of the oppression it has brought into the world — are being silenced even by others in social justice groups, that is unacceptable.

(The link from "decolonization" is to "Decolonization is not a metaphor", to make it clear s/he means actually giving the land back to the Native Americans.)

I regularly see people who describe how social justice activists act accused of setting up a straw man. This article show that the bias of some SJWs against reason is impossible to strawman. The author argues at length that rationality is bad, and that justice arguments shouldn't be rational or be defended rationally. Ze is, or was, confused about what "rationality" means, but clearly now means it to include reason-based argumentation.

This isn't just some wacko's blog; it was chosen as the headline article for the website. I had to click around to a few other articles to make sure it wasn't a parody site.

But it isn't just a sign of how irrational the social justice movement is—it has clues to how it got that way.

The author came to hate "rationality" because s/he thought "rationality" meant "conventionality".

In fact, by American standards, my very existence is irrational. For many, I simply do not exist as a queer, Vietnamese femme who is neither a man or a woman. Living in my body, wading through my truths, is not a rational act. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Based on my experiences as a marginalized person, being rational just means going easy on my oppressors.

The narrow bit of room that rationalism gave me wasn’t enough for me to envision new possibilities for my gender, to escape the confines of impending manhood. It wasn’t enough for me to understand my personhood as infinitely more complicated than the models of personhood fed to me by white cis people.

S/he didn't realize tha...
Meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Cooking
by rocurley — 2016-03-29T05:32:57.113Z

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Cooking

WHEN:
04 April 2016 06:15:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
1597 Howard St. San Francisco, CA

We'll be meeting to cook! If you want to lead a cooking team, send me an email or pm (sooner rather than later would be ideal), and I'll get you set up. Otherwise, you can join someone's team and put together something delicious!
As always, call me at 301-458-0764 to be let in.

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Cooking
Meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Stories
by rocurley — 2016-03-28T15:14:24.652Z

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Stories

WHEN:
28 March 2016 06:15:13PM (-0700)

WHERE:
1597 Howard St. San Francisco, CA

We'll be meeting to tell each other stories! Ideally, come with a story from your life (doesn't have to be about anything in particular) that you want to tell other people.

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Stories
Open Thread March 28 - April 3 , 2016
by  — 2016-03-28T02:06:44.359Z

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.
Predictor schemes with logarithmic advice
by Vanessa Kosoy — 2016-03-27T08:41:23.000Z

We introduce a variant of optimal predictor schemes where optimality holds within the space of random algorithms with logarithmic advice. These objects are also guaranteed to exist for the error space Δ2avg. We introduce the class of generatable problems and construct a uniform universal predictor scheme for this class which is optimal in the new sense with respect to the Δ2avg error space. This is achieved by a construction similar to Levin's universal search.

Results

New notation

Given n∈N, evn:N×{0,1}∗n+1alg−→{0,1}∗ is the following algorithm. When evkn(Q,x1…xn) is computed, Q is interpreted as a program and Q(x1…xn) is executed for time k. The resulting output is produced.

The notation evk(Q,x1…xn) means evkn(Q,x1…xn).

β:{0,1}∗→[0,1] is the mapping from a binary expansion to the corresponding real number.

Given μ a word ensemble, X a set, Q:{0,1}∗2alg−→X, TμQ(k,s) stands for the maximal runtime of Q(x,y) for x∈suppμk, y∈{0,1}s.

Previous posts focused on prediction of distributional decision problems, which is the "computational uncertainty" analogue of probability. Here, we use the broader concept of predicting distributional estimation problems (functions), which is analogous to expectation value.

Definition 1

A distributional estimation problem is a pair (f,μ) where f:{0,1}∗→[0,1] is an arbitrary function (even irrational values are allowed) and μ is a word ensemble.

Definition 2

Given an appropriate set X, consider P:N2×{0,1}∗3alg−→X, r:N2→N polynomial and a:N2→{0,1}∗. The triple (P,r,a) is called an X-valued (poly,log)-bischeme when

(i) The runtime of P(k,j,x,y,z) is bounded by p(k,j) with p polynomial.

(ii) |a(k,j)|≤c1+c2log(k+1)+c3log(j+1) for some c1,c2,c3∈N.

A [0,1]-valued (poly,log)-bischeme will also be called a (poly,log)-predictor scheme.

We think of P as a random algorithm where the second word parameter represents its internal coin tosses. The third word parameter represents the advice and we usually substitute a there.

We will use the notations Pkj(x,y,z):=P(k,j,x,y,z), akj:=a(k,j).

Definition 3

Fix Δ an error space of rank 2 and (f,μ) a distributional estimation problem. Consider (P,r,a) a (poly,log)-predictor scheme. (P,r,a) is called a Δ(poly,log)-optimal predictor scheme for (f,μ) when for any (poly,log)-predictor scheme (Q,s,b), there is δ∈Δ s.t.

Eμk×Ur(k,j)[(Pkj(x,y,akj)−f(x))2]≤Eμk×Us(k,j)[(Qkj(x,y,bkj)−f(x))2]+δ(k,j)

Note 1

The n

...
[Video] The Essential Strategies To Debiasing From Academic Rationality
by Gleb_Tsipursky — 2016-03-27T03:04:11.479Z

A lifetime of work by a world expert in debiasing boiled down into four broad strategies in this video. A nice approach to this topic from the academic side of rationality.

Disclosure - the academic is Dr. Hal Arkes, a personal friend and Advisory Board Member of Intentional Insights, which I run.

EDIT: Seems like the sound quality is low. Anyone willing to do a transcript of this video as a volunteer activity for the rationality community? We can then subtitle the video.
What can we learn from Microsoft's Tay, its inflammatory tweets, and its shutdown?
by InquilineKea — 2016-03-26T03:41:09.876Z

http://www.wired.com/2016/03/fault-microsofts-teen-ai-turned-jerk/

Could this be a lesson for future AIs? The AI control problem?

[future AIs may be shutdown, and matyred..]
Meetup : Baltimore Area / UMBC: Intro to LW and future of the meetup
by iarwain1 — 2016-03-25T19:13:57.552Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Baltimore Area / UMBC: Intro to LW and future of the meetup

WHEN:
03 April 2016 03:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
Performing Arts and Humanities Bldg Room 456, 1000 Hilltop Cir, Baltimore, MD 21250

We have some new members, so we'll do some introductory material on confirmation biases, probabilistic thinking, etc. We'll also discuss timing and content suggestions for future meetups.

Meeting is on 4th floor of the Performing Arts and Humanities Building. Permit parking designations do not apply on weekends, so park pretty much wherever you want.

My contact info:

Cell: 443-453-6673 (might not pick up if I don't recognize the number, so leave a message)

Email: nyratynaqre@tznvy.pbz (rot13'd to avoid spam)

Discussion article for the meetup : Baltimore Area / UMBC: Intro to LW and future of the meetup
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2016-03-25T15:36:24.646Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on March 25th. The following week's summary is here.

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

Ann Arbor Meetup - singing: 26 March 2016 07:00PM
European Community Weekend: 02 September 2016 03:35PM

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:

[Melbourne] "What is the Intelligence Explosion?" (and more...) LW Melbourne dojo: 02 April 2016 02:00PM
New Hampshire Meetup: 12 April 2016 07:00PM
Vienna Meetup: 16 April 2016 02:00PM

Washington, D.C.: Singing: 27 March 2016 03:30PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buffalo, Canberra, Columbus, Denver, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Moscow, Mountain View, New Hampshire, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, Seattle, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers and a Slack channel for daily discussion and online meetups on Sunday night US time.

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, consider subscribing to one or more city-specific mailing list in order to be notified when an irregular meetup is happening: Atlanta, Cambridge UK, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Marin CA, Ottawa, Pittsburgh, Portland, Salt Lake City, Southern California (Los Angeles/Orange County area), Singapore, St. Louis, Vancouver, Warsaw, W...
A most peculiar utility function
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2016-03-25T10:05:25.000Z

In a previous post, I glibly suggested a utility function u# that would allow a u-maximising agent to print out the expectation of the utility it was maximising.

But u# turns out to be very peculiar indeed.

For this post, define

u#=−q2+2qu,

for some q that is a future output of the AI at time t (assume that q won't be visible or known to anyone except the AI). Assume u only takes non-negative values).

Peculiar subjectivity

I'd always thought that utility functions were clear on the difference between objectivity and subjectivity - that probabilities of probabilities or such didn't make sense, and that we couldn't eg ask the AI to maximise E(u)2 (though we could ask it to maximise E(u2), no problem).

But u# blurs this. It seem a perfectly respectable utility function - the fact that one component is user-defined shouldn't change this. What will a u#-maximiser do?

Well, first of all, at time t, it will pick q=Et(u), and, afterwards, maximise E(u). This fill give it utility f(Et(u)).

Here f(q)=q2, but it turns out that there are versions that work with any differentiable convex function - q4, 1/q, −log(q), exp(q), exp(−q), ...

Thus, maximising u#, before t, involves maximising Et(u)2. Note that this is distinct from maximising either Et(u) or Et(u2).

Consider the following three options the AI can take:

A) u=1.
B) u=0 with 51% probability, u=2 with 49% probability, the AI will not know which happens before t.
C) u=0 with 52% probability, u=2 with 48% probability, the AI will know which happens before t.

Then a u-maximiser will choose A>B>C, while a u2-maximiser will choose B>C>A. But a u# maximiser will choose C>A>B.

Note that since f(q)=q2 is convex, the AI will always benefit from finding out more information about u (and will never suffer from it, in expectation).

And note that this happens without there being any explicit definition of Et(u) in the utility function.

Peculiar corrigibility

The AI will shift smoothly from a f(Et(u)) maximiser before time t to a simple u-maximiser after time t, making this a very peculiar form of corrigibility.
Rationality Reading Group: Part W: Quantified Humanism
by Gram_Stone — 2016-03-24T03:48:57.995Z

This is part of a semi-monthly reading group on Eliezer Yudkowsky's ebook, Rationality: From AI to Zombies. For more information about the group, see the announcement post.

Welcome to the Rationality reading group. This fortnight we discuss Part W: Quantified Humanism (pp. 1453-1514) and Interlude: The Twelve Virtues of Rationality (pp. 1516-1521). This post summarizes each article of the sequence, linking to the original LessWrong post where available.

W. Quantified Humanism

281. Scope Insensitivity - The human brain can't represent large quantities: an environmental measure that will save 200,000 birds doesn't conjure anywhere near a hundred times the emotional impact and willingness-to-pay of a measure that would save 2,000 birds.

282. One Life Against the World - Saving one life and saving the whole world provide the same warm glow. But, however valuable a life is, the whole world is billions of times as valuable. The duty to save lives doesn't stop after the first saved life. Choosing to save one life when you could have saved two is as bad as murder.

283. The Allais Paradox - Offered choices between gambles, people make decision-theoretically inconsistent decisions.

284. Zut Allais! - Eliezer's second attempt to explain the Allais Paradox, this time drawing motivational background from the heuristics and biases literature on incoherent preferences and the certainty effect.

285. Feeling Moral - Our moral preferences shouldn't be circular. If a policy A is better than B, and B is better than C, and C is better than D, and so on, then policy A really should be better than policy Z.

286. The "Intuitions" for "Utilitarianism" - Our intuitions, the underlying cognitive tricks that we use to build our thoughts, are an indispensable part of our cognition. The problem is that many of those intuitions are incoherent, or are undesirable upon reflection. But if you try to "renormalize" your intuition, you wind up with what is essentially utilitarianism.

287. Ends Don't Justify Means (Among Humans) - Humans have evolved adaptations that allow them to simultaneously deceive themselves into thinking that their policy suggestions are helpful to the tribe and actually enact policies that are self-serving. As a general ru...
Meetup : Less Wrong NH Meetup
by Tuk — 2016-03-24T01:15:22.133Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong NH Meetup

WHEN:
12 April 2016 07:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
269 Pearl St Manchester NH 03104

The sixteenth NH meet-up is Tuesday, 4/12, in Manchester, NH at 7 pm at a private residence. Light refreshments will be provided.

Have you read Rationality: from AI to Zombies, or any of the Sequences on Less Wrong? Maybe you're just a fan of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Come hang out with us and discuss optimization of whatever it is you want to optimize.

Agenda: SCHELLING DAY CELEBRATION!!

You may want to bring a notebook.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1617692351805960/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/695201067251306/

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong NH Meetup
Meetup : Washington, D.C.: Singing
by RobinZ — 2016-03-24T01:11:54.707Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Singing

WHEN:
27 March 2016 03:30:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
US Navy Memorial

Note: there's a chance that it will rain this afternoon; if so, the meetup will be moving back to the National Portrait Gallery courtyard. Updates will be sent to the lesswrong-dc Google Group.

We will be meeting to hang out and sing songs.

As always, side conversations are permitted and encouraged.

Upcoming meetups:

Apr. 3: Fun & Games

Apr. 10: Cherry Blossoms

Apr. 17: Would You Rather

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Singing
The Price Of Glee In China
by Scott Alexander — 2016-03-24T00:12:28.000Z

[Epistemic status: Overly simplistic treatment of a horrifyingly complex topic; I can only hope I haven’t missed enough to completely embarrass myself]

I.

Noah Smith reviews recent economic research suggesting that globalization was a net harm to working class people in rich countries like the US; he tentatively suggests this could justify a weak form of protectionism. But Scott Sumner argues that’s the wrong way to look at things. Globalization fueled China’s transition from a poor agrarian economy to an industrialized modern nation. A billion people were lifted out of poverty, an accomplishment Sumner calls “the best thing that ever happened”. This is far more important than the less dramatic costs imposed on the US. Therefore, even if we agree globalization hurts the working class of rich nations, it’s still a morally defensible policy since it benefits the needier working classes of much poorer nations.

On the one hand, this makes sense. On the other, here’s happiness in China over the past fifteen years:

Measuring happiness is really hard, but the Chinese result seems as robust as any. You get the same thing if you ask about satisfaction versus dissatisfaction. Brookings analyzes five different series of happiness data and concludes that “the Chinese became less happy during their growth boom”. The New York Times agrees and says that “Chinese people’s feelings of well-being have declined in [this] period of momentous improvement in their economic lives”. And this seems to be worst among the poorest Chinese:

Nor does this seem to be an effect from our happiness research just not being good enough to capture changes in happiness even if they occur. There’s good evidence that increased income within a country increases happiness, and various other things have been found to be effective too. I would even argue we can find happiness changes in nations – recent surveys have found Iraq and Syria to be the least happy nations in the world, and I doubt this was true before those countries’ respective wars. It seems to just be national GDP per capita that doesn’t do anything.

This is Easterlin’s Paradox, the observation that a country in general does not get happier as it becomes richer. This is very controversial, with statisticians analyzing and reanalyzing data and crunch...
Perception of the Concrete vs Statistical: Corruption
by Douglas_Knight — 2016-03-23T01:19:33.856Z

People react to statistics very differently than they react to concrete examples, even though statistical generalities mean that there exist many concrete examples. Of course there are systematic differences between generalities and individual examples. For example, a concrete example might not be representative. Indeed, it probably is not representative for the very reason that it is at hand. But there are many other ways that people react differently that seem to me worthy of study.

I will compare two stories of political corruption, one statistical and one concrete that seem to me to have had rather different responses. It wouldn’t terribly surprise me if people had failed to believe one or the other. (Which would you expect?) But both of these stories were largely accepted as explained by corruption. Yet within the domain of corruption, the explanations of exactly how it was done were very different, practically disjoint.

The statistical evidence is the study by Ziobrowski, Cheng, Boyd, and Ziobrowski of the stock portfolios of US Senators. They found that stocks held by Senators outperformed the market, with both purchase and sale significant events. People generally accept this as corruption. People usually attribute the result to “insider trading,” and debate several specific theories: that Senators purchase based on their knowledge of upcoming legislation, or corporate information that leaks out in hearings; more corruptly, that stock ownership influences legislation, or that corporate insiders bribe Senators with corporate information.

The concrete example is that Hillary Clinton made a lot of money on cattle futures. This, too, is generally accepted as corruption. But I have never heard anyone put forward any of the four theories above to explain what happened there. Nor have I seen the specific explanation of the cattle futures trades put forward as an explanation of the Senate data. The popular explanation is that Clinton never made any bets based on any information, but that the trades were falsified after the fact to provide a paper trail to launder a bribe.

Of course, it is possible to reconcile the reactions. Perhaps people have a much higher prior on the first four hypotheses than on the fifth, so that they only consider it when the first four have been ruled out; though they don't discuss the process of ruling them out. Or, pe...
Reflection with optimal predictors
by Vanessa Kosoy — 2016-03-22T17:20:37.000Z

A change in terminology: It is convenient when important concepts have short names. The concept of an "optimal predictor scheme" seems much more important than its historical predecessor, the "optimal predictor". Therefore "optimal predictor schemes" will be henceforth called just "optimal predictors" while the previous concept of "optimal predictor" might be called "flat optimal predictor".

We study systems of computations which have access to optimal predictors for each other. We expect such systems to play an important role in decision theory (where self-prediction is required to define logical counterfactuals and mutual prediction is required for a collection of agents in a game) and Vingean reflection (where the different computations correspond to different successor agents). The previously known existence theorems for optimal predictors are not directly applicable to this case. To overcome this we prove new, specifically tailored existence theorems.

The Results section states the main novelties, Appendix A contains adaptations of old theorems, Appendix B proves selected claims from Appendix A and Appendix C proves the novel results.

Results

Notation

Given sets X and Y, X→Y will denote the set of mappings from X to Y.

Before taking on reflection, we introduce a stronger concept of optimal predictor, to which the previous existence theorems still apply.

Definition 1

Let r be a positive integer. A proto-error space of rank r is a set E of bounded functions from Nr to R≥0 s.t.

(i) If δ1,δ2∈Δ then δ1+δ2∈E.

(ii) If δ1∈Δ and δ2≤δ1 then δ2∈E.

(iii) There is a polynomial h:Nr→R s.t. 2−h∈E.

Proposition 1

If E is a proto-error space of rank r and α∈R>0, then Eα:={δα∣δ∈E} is also a proto-error space of rank r.

Proposition 2

If E is a proto-error space of rank r, α,γ∈R>0 and α<γ then Eγ⊆Eα.

Definition 3

Fix E a proto-error space of rank 2 and (f,μ) a distributional estimation problem. Consider ^P a (poly,log)-predictor.

^P is called an E(poly,log)-optimal predictor for (f,μ) when for any (poly,log)-predictor ^Q, there is δ∈E s.t.

Eμk×UrP(k,j)[(^Pkj(x)−f(x))2]≤Eμk×UrQ(k,j)[(^Qkj(x)−f(x))2]+δ(k,j)

^P is called an E∗(poly,log)-optimal predictor for (f,μ) when there is α>0 s.t. ^P is an Eα(poly,log)-optimal predictor for (f,μ).

E∗(poly,log)-optimal predictors have properties closely parallel to Δ(poly,log)-optimal predictors. The corresponding

...