trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
[SEQ RERUN] Sorting Pebbles Into Correct Heaps
by MinibearRex — 2012-07-26T05:39:45.864Z

Today's post, Sorting Pebbles Into Correct Heaps was originally published on 10 August 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

A parable about an imaginary society that don't understand what their values actually are.

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 Inseparably Right; or, Joy in the Merely Good, 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.
Neuroscience basics for LessWrongians
by ChrisHallquist — 2012-07-26T05:10:04.229Z

The origins of this article are in my partial transcript of the live June 2011 debate between Robin Hanson and Eliezer Yudkowsky. While I still feel like I don't entirely understand his arguments, a few of his comments about neuroscience made me strongly go, "no, that's not right."

Furthermore, I've noticed that while LessWrong in general seems to be very strong on the psychological or "black box" side of cognitive science, there isn't as much discussion of neuroscience here. This is somewhat understandable. Our current understanding of neuroscience is frustratingly incomplete, and too much journalism on neuroscience is sensationalistic nonsense. However, I think what we do know is worth knowing. (And part of what makes much neuroscience journalism annoying is that it makes a big deal out of things that are totally unsurprising, given what we already know.)

My qualifications to do this: while my degrees are in philosophy, for awhile in undergrad I was a neuroscience major, and ended up taking quite a bit of neuroscience as a result. This means I can assure you that most of what I say here is standard neuroscience which could be found in an introductory textbook like Nichols, Martin, Wallace, & Fuchs' From Neuron to Brain (one of the text books I used as an undergraduate). The only things that might not be totally standard are the conjecture I make about how complex currently-poorly-understood areas of the brain are likely to be, and also some of the points I make in criticism of Eliezer at the end (though I believe these are not a very big jump from current textbook neuroscience.)

One of the main themes of this article will be specialization within the brain. In particular, we know that the brain is divided into specialized areas at the macro level, and we understand some (though not very much) of the micro-level wiring that supports this specialization. It seems likely that each region of the brain has its own micro-level wiring to support its specialized function, and in some regions the wiring is likely to be quite complex.

1. Specialization of brain regions

One of the best-established facts about the brain is that specific regions handle specific functions. And it isn’t just that in each individual, specific brain regions handle specific functions. It’s also that which regions handle which functions is consistent across individuals. Th

...
Article about LW: Faith, Hope, and Singularity: Entering the Matrix with New York’s Futurist Set
by Malo — 2012-07-25T19:28:25.901Z

Faith, Hope, and Singularity: Entering the Matrix with New York’s Futurist Set

To my knowledge LessWrong hasn't received a great deal of media coverage. So, I was surprised when I came across an article via a Facebook friend which also appeared on the cover of the New York Observer today. However, I was disappointed upon reading it, as I don't think it is an accurate reflection of the community. It certainly doesn't reflect my experience with the LW communities in Toronto and Waterloo.

I thought it would be interesting to see what the broader LessWrong community thought about this article. I think it would make for a good discussion.

Possible conversation topics:

This article will likely reach many people that have never heard of LessWrong before. Is this a good introduction to LessWrong for those people?

Does this article give an accurate characterization of the LessWrong community?

Edit 1: Added some clarification about my view on the article.

Edit 2: Re-added link using “nofollow” attribute.
Meetup : Humanist Open Mic, NYC, Wednesday August 1st
by Raemon — 2012-07-25T18:38:24.194Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Humanist Open Mic, NYC, Wednesday August 1st

WHEN:
01 August 2012 02:35:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
159 E Houston Street, New York, NY 10003

Half a year ago, I wrote extensively about the value of art, ritual and community building. Six months later, after much exploration, learning and work, I've started the Open Mind Open Mic.

The Open Mic is an opportunity for rationally-minded people to share performance art related to things they value. Have a piece to share about rationality, science, ethics or human achievement? It can be a song, story, poem, comedy act... any kind of performance art that excites you. Covers of existing songs that you find appropriate are also encouraged. And if you just want to come and listen, that's great too.

The meetup will feature people from the NY Less Wrong community as well as skeptics from Center for Inquiry, the largest network of humanist meetups in NYC. It will be held in the basement of the National Underground, a bar in downtown Manhattan.

Discussion article for the meetup : Humanist Open Mic, NYC, Wednesday August 1st
Leaps of faith in college selection
by tomme — 2012-07-25T15:23:43.470Z

Since this fall I will be applying to college in the USA, I have compiled a hefty list of colleges based on the following criteria:

-4-year school;

-co-ed or all men;

-Biology major;

-"full-ride" financial aid available.

The problem's that I have quite a lot of choices, hundreds, as a matter of fact. So how should I narrow down my list even further, given that I don't care about other stuff, such as campus size or location?

Moreover, to how many colleges should I apply? As far as I know, mpst people apply to 6-9 colleges, but some even apply to 20! I guess that by applying to as many colleges possible, my chances of admission go up. But, I probably won't have time to write hundreds of admission essays, or the money to send in my application to all these colleges.

Lastly, as my objective is to gain admission somewhere, should I only apply to colleges with acceptance rates above a certain percentage? What should that percentage be?

If anyone would like to take this in private, I'd be more than happy to receive some advice from any member of the community!
Max Autonomy
by blogospheroid — 2012-07-25T07:22:17.541Z

I would like to raise a discussion topic in the spirit of trying to quantify risk from uncontrolled / unsupervised software.

What is the maximum autonomy that has been granted to an algorithm according to your best estimates? What is the likely trend in the future?

The estimates could be in terms of money, human lives, processes, etc.

Another estimate could be on the time it takes for a human to come in the process and say "This isn't right".

A high speed trading algorithm has a lot of money on the line, but a drone might have lives on the line.

A lot of business processes might get affected by data coming in via an API from a system that might have had slightly different assumptions resulting in catastrophic events. eg. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Flash_Crash

The reason this topic might be worth researching is that it is a relatively easy to communicate risk of AGI. There might be many people who have an implicit assumption that whatever software is being deployed in the real world, there are humans to counter balance it. For them, empirical evidence that they are mistaken about the autonomy given to present day software may shift beliefs.

EDIT : formatting
[SEQ RERUN] Inseparably Right; or, Joy in the Merely Good
by MinibearRex — 2012-07-25T06:16:17.180Z

Today's post, Inseparably Right; or, Joy in the Merely Good was originally published on 09 August 2008 . A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Don't go looking for some pure essence of goodness, distinct from, you know, actual good.

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 Morality as Fixed Computation, 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 : Berkeley meetup: Rationalist group therapy
by Nisan — 2012-07-25T05:51:15.278Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley meetup: Rationalist group therapy

WHEN:
25 July 2012 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
Berkeley, CA

The Berkeley meetup tomorrow (Wednesday) will feature an activity that I hear is popular with the New York meetup. The way it works is this: One person shares with the group a problem they're having in their life, or a goal they want to achieve — it could be about their career, their family life, their romantic life, or health; it could be a habit they want to form or to break, or something bigger about themselves that they want to change. Then the group discusses the problem and offers insight and advice.

I did this with the Mountain View meetup and it was great! It's so nice to be able to get advice from a room of particularly sane people.

The most important thing is to listen to the individual's problem non-judgmentally. We don't want to punish each other for talking openly about our problems, and a normative reaction like "You're perpetually late to meetings? Ugh, I hate people who do that" is a strong enough punishment to thwart the whole activity.

We'll be able to put a handful of people in the hotseat, one at a time, until we get tired and hang out for the rest of the meetup. I won't be there this time but Shannon will be around, and I'll make sure someone is in charge of getting the meetup started.

The meetup will be at Zendo. Doors open at 7pm and Rationalist Group Therapy begins at 7:30pm.

Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley meetup: Rationalist group therapy
Meetup : Berkeley meetup: Rationalist group therapy
by Nisan — 2012-07-25T05:50:53.138Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley meetup: Rationalist group therapy

WHEN: 25 July 2012 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE: Berkeley, CA

The Berkeley meetup tomorrow (Wednesday) will feature an activity that I hear is popular with the New York meetup. The way it works is this: One person shares with the group a problem they're having in their life, or a goal they want to achieve — it could be about their career, their family life, their romantic life, or health; it could be a habit they want to form or to break, or something bigger about themselves that they want to change. Then the group discusses the problem and offers insight and advice.

I did this with the Mountain View meetup and it was great! It's so nice to be able to get advice from a room of particularly sane people.

The most important thing is to listen to the individual's problem non-judgmentally. We don't want to punish each other for talking openly about our problems, and a normative reaction like "You're perpetually late to meetings? Ugh, I hate people who do that" is a strong enough punishment to thwart the whole activity.

We'll be able to put a handful of people in the hotseat, one at a time, until we get tired and hang out for the rest of the meetup. I won't be there this time but Shannon will be around, and I'll make sure someone is in charge of getting the meetup started.

The meetup will be at Zendo. Doors open at 7pm and Rationalist Group Therapy begins at 7:30pm. For directions to Zendo, see the mailing list or call Nisan at .
[Paper] Simulation of a complete cell
by Richard_Kennaway — 2012-07-24T15:04:13.938Z

"A Whole-Cell Computational Model Predicts Phenotype from Genotype" by Jonathan Karr et al.

This paper appeared a few days ago in Cell, and describes a computational simulation of the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium, conducted at this lab. The paper is behind a paywall, but is blogged about here. The simulation software is freely available from the project web site.

From the abstract: "Here, we present a ‘‘whole-cell’’ model of the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium, a human urogenital parasite whose genome contains 525 genes. Our model attempts to: (1) describe the life cycle of a single cell from the level of individual molecules and their interactions; (2) account for the specific function of every annotated gene product; and (3) accurately predict a wide range of observable cellular behaviors."

According to an editorial commentary in the same issue, this is the first simulation of a complete free-living microbe.
Group rationality diary, 7/23/12
by cata — 2012-07-24T08:49:25.064Z

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of July 23rd. It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:

Established a useful new habit

Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief

Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations

Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior

Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something

Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life

Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you

Tried doing any of the above and failed

Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.

Thanks to everyone who contributes!

Last week's diary; archive of prior diaries.
[SEQ RERUN] Morality as Fixed Computation
by MinibearRex — 2012-07-24T04:47:00.643Z

Today's post, Morality as Fixed Computation was originally published on 08 August 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

A clarification about Yudkowsky's metaethics.

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 Contaminated by Optimism, 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 : Madison: Team Problem-Solving
by fiddlemath — 2012-07-24T03:45:22.457Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Madison: Team Problem-Solving

WHEN:
29 July 2012 07:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
650 State Street, Madison, WI

I'll run a handful of problem-solving games for small teams, each of which should take between 5 to 30 minutes. I'll start the first of these games at 7:30 sharp. Hopefully, this will offer a chance to practice some of the practical skills we've discussed in the past few months.

Chatting and coffee, before and after these events.

I'm excited about this. I've been bouncing it around in my head for at least a month now. I think this might be awesome.

Discussion article for the meetup : Madison: Team Problem-Solving
Game Theory As A Dark Art
by Scott Alexander — 2012-07-24T03:27:07.391Z

One of the most charming features of game theory is the almost limitless depths of evil to which it can sink.
Your garden-variety evils act against your values. Your better class of evil, like Voldemort and the folk-tale version of Satan, use your greed to trick you into acting against your own values, then grab away the promised reward at the last moment. But even demons and dark wizards can only do this once or twice before most victims wise up and decide that taking their advice is a bad idea. Game theory can force you to betray your deepest principles for no lasting benefit again and again, and still leave you convinced that your behavior was rational.

Some of the examples in this post probably wouldn't work in reality; they're more of a reductio ad absurdum of the so-called homo economicus who acts free from any feelings of altruism or trust. But others are lifted directly from real life where seemingly intelligent people genuinely fall for them. And even the ones that don't work with real people might be valuable in modeling institutions or governments.
Of the following examples, the first three are from The Art of Strategy; the second three are relatively classic problems taken from around the Internet. A few have been mentioned in the comments here already and are reposted for people who didn't catch them the first time.

The Evil Plutocrat
You are an evil plutocrat who wants to get your pet bill - let's say a law that makes evil plutocrats tax-exempt - through the US Congress. Your usual strategy would be to bribe the Congressmen involved, but that would be pretty costly - Congressmen no longer come cheap. Assume all Congressmen act in their own financial self-interest, but that absent any financial self-interest they will grudgingly default to honestly representing their constituents, who hate your bill (and you personally). Is there any way to ensure Congress passes your bill, without spending any money on bribes at all?
Yes. Simply tell all Congressmen that if your bill fails, you will donate some stupendous amount of money to whichever party gave the greatest percent of their votes in favor.
Suppose the Democrats try to coordinate among themselves. They say “If we all oppose the bill, then if even one Republican supports the bill, the Republicans will get lots of money they can spend on campaigning against us. If only one of us supports the bill, ...
Evolutionary psychology as "the truth-killer"
by Benedict — 2012-07-23T20:44:53.927Z

So, a little background- I've just come out as an atheist to my dad, a Christian pastor, who's convinced he can "fix" my thinking and is bombarding me with a number of flimsy arguments that I'm having trouble articulating a response to, and need help shutting down. The particular issue at the moment deals with non-theistic explanations for human psychology and things like love, morality, and beauty. After attempting to communicate explanations from evolutionary psychology, I was met with amused dismissal of the subject as "speculation".

There's one book in particular he's having me read- The Reason for God by Timothy Keller. In the book, he brings up evolutionary psychology as an alternative to theistic explanations, and immediately dismisses it as apparently self-defeating.

"Evolutionists say that if God makes sense to us, it is not because he is really there, it's only because that belief helped us survive and so we are hardwired for it. However, if we can't trust our belief-forming faculties to tell us the truth about God, why should we trust them to tell us the truth about anything, including evolutionary science? If our cognitive faculties only tell us what we need to survive, not what is true, why trust them about anything at all?" -Timothy Keller

The obvious answer is that knowing the truth about things is generally advantageous to survival- but it hardly addresses the underlying assertion- that without [incredibly specific collection of god-beliefs and assorted dogmas], human brains can't arrive at truth because they weren't designed for it. And of course, I'm talking to a guy with an especially exacting definition of "truth" (100% certainty about the territory)- I could use an LW post that succinctly discusses the role and definition of truth, there.

Another thing Dad likes to do is back me into a corner WRT morality and moral relativism- "Oh, but can you really believe that the act of rape doesn't have an inherent [wrongness]? Are you saying it was justified for [insert historical monster] to do [atrocity] because it would make him reproductively successful?" Armed only with evolutionary explanations for their behavior, I couldn't really respond- possibly my fault, since I haven't read the Morality sequence on account of I got stuck in the Quantum Physics ultrasequence, and knowing that reality is composed of complex amplitudes fl...
A Marriage Ceremony for Aspiring Rationalists
by lukeprog — 2012-07-23T19:33:02.700Z

Recently, LWers Will Ryan and Divia Melwani (now Will and Divia Eden) were married, with Eliezer Yudkowsky officiating.

I've been to 40+ weddings in my lifetime, and this was my favorite ceremony yet. Here is the video, and below is the transcript of Eliezer's... what's it called? "Blessing"?

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here upon this day, to bear witness to William Ryan and Divia Melwani, as they bind themselves together in marriage, becoming William and Divia Eden, from this day endeavoring to live their lives as one. If any person can show just cause why these two should not be joined, let them speak now, or forever hold their peace.

The institution of marriage is as old as Homo sapiens. Donald Brown lists it among the human universals, the parts of culture which are found in almost every tribe that has been studied by anthropologists, alongside such other universals as dancing, storytelling, jealousy, or language. Though we give it a single name, marriage takes many forms.

In some tribes a man may wed more than one woman. In 0.5% of hunter-gatherer tribes studied, a woman may wed more than one man. In civilized parts of the modern world, men may marry men, or women marry women. A hundred years ago, in what was then considered civilization, marriage was a cruel necessity if you wanted to have a public relationship with anyone. There was only one approved option for anyone who didn't want to live alone - marry a single person of the opposite sex and stay together for 70 years or until one of you died.

But in this day, and within this community, marriage necessarily takes on a different meaning. 'Until death do you part' is a different concept if you suspect that indefinite lifespan extension may be invented sometime in the next few decades. Once, getting married at age 20 meant you were probably a quarter of the way through your life. In this day, and in this community, you know that you might actually be getting married at zero point zero zero zero and some more zeroes one percent of the way through your life. Our community contains many people in long-term relationships who are not married and are not waiting around to get married.

Even among those who marry, not every marriage has the same meaning. Some may not be planning to stay together until the stars go out - just enjoy the marriage for however long it lasts. And though marriage is no longer

...