trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Why aren't we pooling our knowledge-resources yet?
by adamisom — 2012-09-26T23:46:39.597Z

Why aren't we systematically pooling many excellent and relevant academic articles yet?

I'm well aware of the current thread on the best textbooks for any subject, but why only share "the best" "textbooks"? I understand the desire for vetted quality, but I think we're missing an awesome opportunity here. I, for one, have a long (to me) list of fascinating academic articles I'm probably not going to read, but which I think other LessWrongers might very much like to be pointed to. For example:

Formalizing Trust as a Computational Concept, a CS dissertation by Stephen Marsh, 1994. From the abstract: "This thesis provides a clarification of trust. We present a formalism for trust which provides us with a tool for precise discussion. The formalism is implementable: it can be embedded in an artificial agent, enabling the agent to make trust-based decisions."

Mechanisms of Social Cognition, Frith and Frith, 2012, Annual Review of Psychology, which includes a spectacular table on pages 4 and 5: column 1, the broad areas considered (e.g. reward learning, tracking intentions); column 2, the mechanisms involved; column 3, the brain regions involved; and column 4, the social processes to which the mechanism and/or brain region apply.

Peering into the Bias Blind Spot, in which we learn that part of the reason people think themselves to be less biased than the average is because they rely on introspections while looking at behavior in others.

Information processing, computation, and cognition (Piccinini and Scarantino, 2009), which argues that there are a number of myths concerning these topics that stand in the way of theoretical progress, myths like 'computation is the same as information processing' or 'the Church-Turing thesis entails that cognition is computation'.

Review articles on operant conditioning; implementation intentions, a major new scientific approach to forming habits'; the planning fallacy (and it's "cognitive, motivational, and social origins"); and procrastination (the last one has already been mentioned here in lukeprog's main procrastination article).

We could have a database of some kind. And it could include articles that have already been well-spread here, like the seminal Kahneman & Tversky papers. Or the Singularity Institute's work and related work, such as Asimov's 3 laws of robotics and machine meta-ethics ...
Causality: a chapter by chapter review
by Vaniver — 2012-09-26T16:55:32.611Z

This is a chapter by chapter review of Causality (2nd ed.) by Judea Pearl (UCLA, blog). Like my previous review, the intention is not to summarize but to help readers determine whether or not they should read the book (and if they do, what parts to read). Reading the review is in no way a substitute for reading the book.
I'll state my basic impression of the book up front, with detailed comments after the chapter discussions: this book is monumentally important to anyone interested in procuring knowledge (especially causal knowledge) from statistical data, but it is a heavily technical book primarily suitable for experts. The mathematics involved is not particularly difficult, but its presentation requires dedicated reading and clarity of thought. Only the epilogue, this lecture, is suitable for the general audience, and that will be the highest value portion for most readers of LW.

1. Introduction to Probabilities, Graphs, and Causal Models

While the descriptions are complete, this chapter may be more useful as a refresher than as an introduction. The three sections are detailed in inverse proportion to the expected reader's familiarity.

For the reader who's seen probability calculus before, Pearl's description of it in 12 pages is short, sweet, and complete. For the reader that hasn't seen it, that's just enough space to list the definitions and give a few examples. Compare Eliezer's explanation of Bayes' Rule (almost 50 pages) to Pearl's (around 2).

The section on graphs moves a little less quickly, but even so don't be afraid to find an online tutorial on d-separation if Pearl's explanation is too fast. For some reason, he does not mention here that section 11.1.2 (p 335-337 in my copy) is a gentler introduction to d-separation. [edit] His blog also linked to this presentation, which is an even gentler introduction to graphs, causal networks, and d-separation.

The section on causal models is the most detailed, as it will be new to most readers, and closely follows the section on graphs. Pearl uses an example to demonstrate the use of counterfactuals, which is a potent first glance at the usefulness of causal models.

He also draws an i

...
[Poll] Less Wrong and Mainstream Philosophy: How Different are We?
by Jayson_Virissimo — 2012-09-26T12:25:48.899Z

Despite being (IMO) a philosophy blog, many Less Wrongers tend to disparage mainstream philosophy and emphasize the divergence between our beliefs and theirs. But, how different are we really? My intention with this post is to quantify this difference.

The questions I will post as comments to this article are from the 2009 PhilPapers Survey. If you answer "other" on any of the questions, then please reply to that comment in order to elaborate your answer. Later, I'll post another article comparing the answers I obtain from Less Wrongers with those given by the professional philosophers. This should give us some indication about the differences in belief between Less Wrong and mainstream philosophy.

Glossary

analytic-synthetic distinction, A-theory and B-theory, atheism, compatibilism, consequentialism, contextualism, correspondence theory of truth, deontology, egalitarianism, empiricism, Humeanism, libertarianism, mental content externalism, moral realism, moral motivation internalism and externalism, naturalism, nominalism, Newcomb's problem, physicalism, Platonism, rationalism, relativism, scientific realism, trolley problem, theism, virtue ethics

Note

Thanks pragmatist, for attaching short (mostly accurate) descriptions of the philosophical positions under the poll comments.

Post Script

The polls stopped rendering correctly after the migration to LW 2.0, but the raw data can be found in this repo.
Meetup : Durham NC HPMoR Discussion, chapters 4-7
by evand — 2012-09-26T03:53:48.227Z

Discussion article for the meetup : HPMoR Discussion, chapters 4-7

WHEN: 06 October 2012 11:00:00AM (-0400)

WHERE: Guglhupf bakery, 2706 durham-chapel hill blvd. suite #1 durham, NC

We will discuss HPMoR chapters 4-7 over brunch. Discussion will be informal, and probably ramble off topic after we go over the chapters. Attendees are encouraged to read all the chapters, but also encouraged to come if you haven't read all of them. We'll do chapter summaries as we discuss.

Discussion article for the meetup : HPMoR Discussion, chapters 4-7
[SEQ RERUN] Dark Side Epistemology
by MinibearRex — 2012-09-26T02:30:53.785Z

Today's post, Dark Side Epistemology was originally published on 17 October 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

If you want to tell a truly convincing lie, to someone who knows what they're talking about, you either have to lie about lots of specific object level facts, or about more general laws, or about the laws of thought. Lots of the memes out there about how you learn things originally came from people who were trying to convince other people to believe false statements.

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 Traditional Capitalist Values, 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 : West LA Meetup - Utilitarianism
by  — 2012-09-25T23:15:01.700Z

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup - Utilitarianism

WHEN:
26 September 2012 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
10850 West Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90064

When: 7:00pm Wednesday, September 26th.

Where: The Westside Tavern in the upstairs Wine Bar (all ages welcome), located inside the Westside Pavillion on the second floor, right by the movie theaters. The entrance sign says "Lounge".

Parking is free for 3 hours.

Discussion Topic: The topic du jour is the value of Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism seems to have some problems, and they may not be resolvable. This topic has generated a lot of interesting discussion on Less Wrong - for starters, see the list of articles linked on the lw wiki page.

There will be general discussion too, and there are lots of interesting recent posts (also check out LW's sister site, Overcoming Bias ). But don't worry if you don't have time to read any articles, or even if you've never read any Less Wrong! Bring a friend! The atmosphere is casual, and good, intelligent conversation with friendly people is guaranteed.

I will bring a whiteboard with Bayes' Theorem written on it.

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup - Utilitarianism
Petrov Day Image
by Eneasz — 2012-09-25T22:41:12.568Z

9/26 is Petrov Day

While mentioning this in Facebook statuses, Tweets, and face-to-face conversation is good, things often stick better when there's a picture associated with them. Image macros are popular, and more fun to share. So here's one for Petrov Day I threw together.

http://i.imgur.com/3GNms.jpg
Shutting up and doing the impossible: Leslie Gordon
by Eneasz — 2012-09-25T22:30:38.328Z

Progeria is an extremely rare condition, 15 years ago almost nothing was known about it. Then Leslie Gordon and Scott Berns, both physicians, had a son who was diagnosed with it at 2 years old. They were able to find the cause, isolate the genes responsible, and adapt a drug to combat many of the more fatal symptoms. They had help, and luck. But they are doing the impossible.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/09/25/161691083/experimental-drug-is-first-to-help-kids-with-premature-aging-disease

Bonus: the drug may help slow aging in healthy humans as well.

Also: this has been mentioned on LW before, but without the awesome Do The Impossible narrative. I blame the BBC.
Why humans are sometimes less rational than animals
by lukeprog — 2012-09-25T21:57:11.931Z

New paper from Keith Stanovich (one of my favorite cognitive scientists):

Several formal analyses in decision theory have shown that if people’s preferences follow certain logical patterns (the so-called axioms of rational choice) then they are behaving as if they are maximising utility. However, numerous studies in the decision-making literature have indicated that humans often violate the axioms of rational choice. Additionally, studies of nonhuman animals indicate that they are largely rational in an axiomatic sense. It is important to understand why the finding that humans are less rational than other animals is not paradoxical. This paper discusses three reasons why the principles of rational choice are actually easier to follow when the cognitive architecture of the organism is simpler: contextual complexity, symbolic complexity, and the strong evaluator struggle.

Enjoy.
Meetup : Munich Meetup, October 28th
by David Althaus — 2012-09-25T08:29:15.481Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Munich Meetup, October 28th

WHEN: 28 October 2012 03:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE: Munich Central Station, Coffee Fellows cafe, inside the central station, *second* floor

The last meetup took place more than a year ago, so it's time for another one. Some of the topics discussed last time: Existential risks, anthropics, AI, metaethics, self-improvement and probably more that I can't remember. Of course there is much more to talk about and maybe we'll try some of those fancy rationality-games. (If the cafe sucks, we could easily go elsewhere. I've merely chosen the place, because it's relatively nice, near the central station and easy to find.) I'll be there with a LessWrong sign. Newbies and lurkers are very welcome!

ETA: I created a google group for the Munich LW meetup.

Send me your email adress to myusername@gmx.de and I'll add you.

Discussion article for the meetup : Munich Meetup, October 28th
Meetup : Berkeley meetup: choice blindness
by AlexMennen — 2012-09-25T05:31:44.630Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley meetup: choice blindness

WHEN:
26 September 2012 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
Berkeley, CA

This week's meetup will be at Zendo, as usual. The discussion topic will be choice blindness, particularly the recent experiment showing that choice blindness applies to moral positions (http://www.nature.com/news/how-to-confuse-a-moral-compass-1.11447), and what this means for good epistemic practice.
Recent Less Wrong discussion on the matter: http://lesswrong.com/lw/elg/new_study_on_choice_blindness_in_moral_positions/
For directions to Zendo, see the mailing list http://groups.google.com/group/bayarealesswrong or call me at four-zero-eight-nine-six-six-nine-two-seven-four.

Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley meetup: choice blindness
[SEQ RERUN] Traditional Capitalist Values
by MinibearRex — 2012-09-25T03:39:20.395Z

Today's post, Traditional Capitalist Values was originally published on 17 October 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Before you start talking about a system of values, try to actually understand the values of that system as believed by its practitioners.

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 Entangled Truths, Contagious Lies, 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 : Purdue Meetup
by Curiouskid — 2012-09-25T01:46:30.363Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Purdue Meetup

WHEN:
28 September 2012 09:45:46PM (-0400)

WHERE:
Purdue

We don't have a regular meet-up group at Purdue, which is a shame because meetups are great.

I thought we weren't having meetups because there weren't very many LWers at Purdue. However, the last time I put out a survey was last year, and since then, I've run into a few LWers randomly, so I decided to see if more LWers would respond.

Note: This isn't an actual meetup. It's a survey to see if people would want to do a meetup.

Discussion article for the meetup : Purdue Meetup
Meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup Thursday 7pm *New Place*
by EvelynM — 2012-09-24T19:40:11.947Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup Thursday 7pm *New Place*

WHEN:
27 September 2012 07:00:00PM (-0600)

WHERE:
Mugs, 306 West Laurel, Fort Collins CO

We're meeting at a coffee shop on the north side of the university.
What do you think of Bayesian networks and Probabalistic Graphical Models?

Discussion article for the meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup Thursday 7pm *New Place*
Finally Ending My Cryo-Crastination
by DataPacRat — 2012-09-24T18:15:41.175Z

I've finally decided to take the plunge and make the arrangements for my eventual cryonic preservation. To help myself make sure that I actually follow through with everything necessary, I'm publicly pre-committing myself here to accomplish that.

As initial evidence that I'm actually serious about doing this, I've sent an email to The Cryonics Institute today, whose contents were as follows:

I have decided to finally stop procrastinating and make the necessary arrangements for my eventual cryonic preservation, and I have chosen CI to make those arrangements with.

I have looked through your membership pages and online sample forms, and I believe that I can work through my end of the paperwork without any real trouble, although I would still appreciate any advice you have to offer. For example, I live in Canada, about an hour's drive from Toronto, which might affect which forms are necessary.

Before I send my initial payment, I would at least like to confirm the basic details, and let you know who the money is coming from. It appears that, to start things off, I can Paypal you USD $110, for the yearly membership fee plus the first quarter's dues; after which I would mail you a physical, signed copy of the yearly membership application. After that, there will be a variety of documents to sign and have witnessed; and the insurance plan to arrange for. Is that a reasonable summary?

For the life insurance, I am thinking of a 20-year term policy with RBC (Royal Bank of Canada). Have you had any dealings with them previously, to know whether or not there will be any problems in setting the Cryonics Institute as the beneficiary? Do you have any recommendations about how large a benefit in excess of the basic USD $35,000 amount the policy should pay out, such as to cover currency-exchange fluctuations or the 'local help' rider?

Is there anything else you would recommend be discussed before I make that initial payment and set the ball in motion?
Meetup : Pre-Singularity Summit Overcoming Bias / Less Wrong Meetup Party
by Nisan — 2012-09-24T14:46:05.475Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Pre-Singularity Summit Overcoming Bias / Less Wrong Meetup Party

WHEN:
11 October 2012 07:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
2135 Oregon St., Berkeley, CA

In anticipation of the Singularity Summit, there will be a small Overcoming Bias / Less Wrong meetup party, featuring Robin Hanson and Katja Grace of Overcoming Bias. Please join us on Thursday, October 11, between 7pm and 10pm for conversations about important and interesting things, and maybe dancing. OG House has generously offered their home for this event. Bringing drinks or snacks is not required but greatly appreciated. There is street parking, and Ashby BART is half a mile away.

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/09/oblw-party-berkeley.html

Discussion article for the meetup : Pre-Singularity Summit Overcoming Bias / Less Wrong Meetup Party
Meetup : Melbourne, practical rationality
by matt — 2012-09-24T05:24:08.248Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne, practical rationality

WHEN:
05 October 2012 07:00:00PM (+1000)

WHERE:
55 Walsh St West Melbourne 3003 Australia

Practical rationality.
This meetup repeats on the 1st Friday of each month and is distinct from our social meetup on the 3rd Friday of each month.

Discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/melbourne-less-wrong

All welcome from 6:30pm. Call the phone number on the door and I'll let you in.

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne, practical rationality
[SEQ RERUN] Entangled Truths, Contagious Lies
by MinibearRex — 2012-09-24T03:48:51.862Z

Today's post, Entangled Truths, Contagious Lies was originally published on 15 October 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Given that things are often entangled with other things in ways which we do not know, it is really really difficult to tell a perfect lie.

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 Ends Don't Justify Means (Among Humans), 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: Generating More Ideas
by fiddlemath — 2012-09-23T19:20:35.283Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Madison: Generating More Ideas

WHEN:
23 September 2012 07:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
4371 Doncaster Dr, Madison, WI

We've discussed some methods and basic principles for idea generation.

But, of course, there are more!

I'll review what we've discussed before about straightforward, rapid, "make a list" idea generation, and introduce some other methods; in particular, DeBono's "concept fan" and "provocations". And, of course, we'll actually try these out a few times.

Discussion article for the meetup : Madison: Generating More Ideas
No Anthropic Evidence
by Vladimir_Nesov — 2012-09-23T10:33:06.994Z

Closely related to: How Many LHC Failures Is Too Many?

Consider the following thought experiment. At the start, an "original" coin is tossed, but not shown. If it was "tails", a gun is loaded, otherwise it's not. After that, you are offered a big number of rounds of decision, where in each one you can either quit the game, or toss a coin of your own. If your coin falls "tails", the gun gets triggered, and depending on how the original coin fell (whether the gun was loaded), you either get shot or not (if the gun doesn't fire, i.e. if the original coin was "heads", you are free to go). If your coin is "heads", you are all right for the round. If you quit the game, you will get shot at the exit with probability 75% independently of what was happening during the game (and of the original coin). The question is, should you keep playing or quit if you observe, say, 1000 "heads" in a row?

Intuitively, it seems as if 1000 "heads" is "anthropic evidence" for the original coin being "tails", that the long sequence of "heads" can only be explained by the fact that "tails" would have killed you. If you know that the original coin was "tails", then to keep playing is to face the certainty of eventually tossing "tails" and getting shot, which is worse than quitting, with only 75% chance of death. Thus, it seems preferable to quit.

On the other hand, each "heads" you observe doesn't distinguish the hypothetical where the original coin was "heads" from one where it was "tails". The first round can be modeled by a 4-element finite probability space consisting of options {HH, HT, TH, TT}, where HH and HT correspond to the original coin being "heads" and HH and TH to the coin-for-the-round being "heads". Observing "heads" is the event {HH, TH} that has the same 50% posterior probabilities for "heads" and "tails" of the original coin. Thus, each round that ends in "heads" doesn't change the knowledge about the original coin, even if there were 1000 rounds of this type. And since you only get shot if the original coin was "tails", you only get to 50% probability of dying as the game continues, which is better than the 75% from quitting the game.

(See also the comments by simon2 and Benja Fallenstein on the LHC post, and this thought experiment by Benja Fallenstein.)

The result of this exercise could be generalized by saying that counterfactual possibility of dying doesn't in itself ...