trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Is latent Toxoplasmosis worth doing something about?
by jsalvatier — 2011-11-17T17:04:48.138Z

Toxoplasmodi gondii is a parasitic protozoa who's primary host is cats but also infects other mammals, primarily mice and rats but including humans, as part of its life cycle. Infection by Toxoplasmodi gondii is called Toxoplasmosis and may be acute (flu like symptoms) or latent.

Toxoplasmosis is extremely common. Worldwide, about 30% (US 11%; France 88%!) of people about of people have Toxoplasmosis.

Toxoplasmosis is known to cause behavioral changes in rats:

It has been found that the parasite has the ability to change the behaviour of its host: infected rats and mice are less fearful of cats—in fact, some of the infected rats seek out cat-urine-marked areas. This effect is advantageous to the parasite, which is able proliferate if a cat eats the infected rat and thereby becomes a carrier.

Observational studies suggest that latent Toxoplasmosis may also cause behavioral changes in humans (source paper). The observed differences between infected people and non-infected people include:

Decreased novelty seeking behavior

Slower reactions

Lower rule-consciousness and greater jealousy (in men)

Greater warmth, conscientiousness and moralistic behavior (in women)

It's also suspected by some of being a cause of Schizophrenia.

Obviously some or all these may be due to unobserved 3rd causes.

There haven't been any randomized studies yet, as far as I know. It seems like such studies would be easy to conduct rigorously since a high fraction of the population is already infected. For example, by finding people who are already infected and randomly cure some of them. This kind of experiment is even pretty close to how you would expect the information to be used.

I've been around cats a fair amount and the base rate is high in the US, so my chances of having latent Toxoplasmosis seem fairly high. Thus I am curious whether this is worth doing something about. Diagnosis sounds like it is fairly simple (PCR on blood samples). It's easy enough so that it can be done in large scale studies at least. Treatment is done with atovaquone and clindamycin, which appear to be relatively inexpensive.

I'd expect the effects to be net negatives (most random changes are detrimental) and even if the behavioral effects are smallish, the effects over a lifetime will add up. Has anyone else gotten tested and/or treated for latent Toxoplasmosis? Is it

...
Bayes Slays Goodman's Grue
by Ronny Fernandez — 2011-11-17T10:45:37.460Z

This is a first stab at solving Goodman's famous grue problem. I haven't seen a post on LW about the grue paradox, and this surprised me since I had figured that if any arguments would be raised against Bayesian LW doctrine, it would be the grue problem. I haven't looked at many proposed solutions to this paradox, besides some of the basic ones in "The New Problem of Induction". So, I apologize now if my solution is wildly unoriginal. I am willing to put you through this dear reader because:

I wanted to see how I would fare against this still largely open, devastating, and classic problem, using only the arsenal provided to me by my minimal Bayesian training, and my regular LW reading.

I wanted the first LW article about the grue problem to attack it from a distinctly Lesswrongian aproach without the benefit of hindsight knowledge of the solutions of non-LW philosophy.

And lastly, because, even if this solution has been found before, if it is the right solution, it is to LW's credit that its students can solve the grue problem with only the use of LW skills and cognitive tools.

I would also like to warn the savvy subjective Bayesian that just because I think that probabilities model frequencies, and that I require frequencies out there in the world, does not mean that I am a frequentest or a realist about probability. I am a formalist with a grain of salt. There are no probabilities anywhere in my view, not even in minds; but the theorems of probability theory when interpreted share a fundamental contour with many important tools of the inquiring mind, including both, the nature of frequency, and the set of rational subjective belief systems. There is nothing more to probability than that system which produces its theorems.

Lastly, I would like to say, that even if I have not succeeded here (which I think I have), there is likely something valuable that can be made from the leftovers of my solution after the onslaught of penetrating critiques that I expect form this community. Solving this problem is essential to LW's methods, and our arsenal is fit to handle it. If we are going to be taken seriously in the philosophical community as a new movement, we must solve serious problems from academic philosophy, and we must do it in distinctly Lesswrongian ways.

"The first emerald ever observed was green.
The second emerald ever observed

...
[SEQ RERUN] Fake Utility Functions
by MinibearRex — 2011-11-17T05:50:43.120Z

Today's post, Fake Utility Functions was originally published on 06 December 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Describes the seeming fascination that many have with trying to compress morality down to a single principle. The sequence leading up to this post tries to explain the cognitive twists whereby people smuggle all of their complicated other preferences into their choice of exactly which acts they try to justify using their single principle; but if they were really following only that single principle, they would choose other acts to justify.

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 Uncritical Supercriticality, 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.
Justification Through Pragmatism
by Irgy — 2011-11-17T05:39:31.671Z

Justification Through Pragmatism
In this article, I propose a new method of justifying fundamental philosophical assumptions.
The fundamental assumptions on which we base our thinking cannot ever be proven to be true, as such a proof must rely on our own thinking and be circular as a result. The proposed alternative is that rather than even worry about whether these assumptions are true at all, instead demonstrate that regardless of their truth, there is no conceivable benefit to negating them. This article demonstrates this point by way of a number of examples of such assumptions.
0. Basic Capacity for Reason
Assumption: That one has the most basic ability to understand anything correctly.
Negation: One has no ability to understand anything nor to make any rational decisions whatsoever. One may have a delusion of understanding, but it bears no correlation with truth.
I start at 0 because this is such a fundamental assumption that it's on a level below everything else. Descartes started by doubting even his own existance, but found a proof of his existence from the very doubt itself. However, he could have gone a step further and doubted his basic ability to even understand that proof. Sure it seems a compelling argument that you must exist in order to doubt your own existance, but just seeming compelling doesn't make it true. How do we know for sure that anything at all we think is true?
The fact is, we demonstrably don't. One visible property of the insane is that they often do not know they are insane, and no-one is able to tell them. Every thought we have really could be worthless, and their seeming correspondence with reality a delusion. But if so, well, there's nothing you can really do about it is there? So why worry about it?
If every thought is meaningless, then it doesn't matter what you think. So you might as well assume that at least some of what you think makes sense. Thus the assumption that we have some basic capacity for reason may be justified pragmatically, without any concern for whether it is even true.
This assumption of basic capacity for reason is absolutely not to be confused with assuming every thought you have to be correct, nor even assuming any particular thought or belief to be correct. By all means question your beliefs and your thought processes. Indeed choosing not to do so is a good step towards failing to live up to this assumption i...
LessWrong virtual meetup this Saturday evening
by erratio — 2011-11-17T03:30:25.430Z

Several months ago jwhendy called for people who can't make it to regular LW meetups (or just can't get enough of the LW crowd) to meet online instead. Several months later, a small number of us still do, on a near-weekly basis. We socialise, teach each other about our fields, throw theories around and discuss LW material. We're looking for fresh blood after losing some of our regulars to real life commitments.

Meetup details:

Time: Saturday, 19th November, 9pm EST

Location: Skype (add me as erratio1 on there)

Format: Variable. The last few meetups have been text-only due to connection problems at my end, but since the overall quality of the meetup was much higher when we had voice chat I'd like to get back to that if possible. Although if a majority of interested people would prefer text-only, we can do that too.

For those who can't make it to this meetup but are interested, comment with your availabilities here or at our Google Group so we can potentially accommodate you in future weeks.
Writing feedback requested: activists should pursue a positive Singularity
by  — 2011-11-16T21:14:30.443Z

I managed to turn an essay assignment into an opportunity to write about the Singularity, and I thought I'd turn to LW for feedback on the paper. The paper is about Thomas Pogge, a German philosopher who works on institutional efforts to end poverty and is a pledger for Giving What We Can.

I offer a basic argument that he and other poverty activists should work on creating a positive Singularity, sampling liberally from well-known Less Wrong arguments. It's more academic than I would prefer, and it includes some loose talk of 'duties' (which bothers me), but for its goals, these things shouldn't be a huge problem. But maybe they are - I want to know that too.

I've already turned the assignment in, but when I make a better version, I'll send the paper to Pogge himself. I'd like to see if I can successfully introduce him to these ideas. My one conversation with him indicates that he would be open to actually changing his mind. He's clearly thought deeply about how to do good, and may simply have not been exposed to the idea of the Singularity yet.

I want feedback on all aspects of the paper - style, argumentation, clarity. Be as constructively cruel as I know only you can.

If anyone's up for it, fee free to add feedback using Track Changes and email me a copy - mjcurzi[at]wustl.edu. I obviously welcome comments on the thread as well.

You can read the paper here in various formats.

Upvotes for all. Thank you!
FAI FAQ draft: What is the Singularity?
by lukeprog — 2011-11-16T19:11:14.253Z

I invite your feedback on this snippet from the forthcoming Friendly AI FAQ. This one is an answer to the question "What is the Singularity?"

_____

There are many types of mathematical and physical singularities, but in this FAQ we use the term 'Singularity' to refer to the technological singularity.

There are also many things someone might have in mind when they refer to a 'technological Singularity' (Sandberg 2010). Below, we’ll explain just three of them (Yudkowsky 2007):

Intelligence explosion

Event horizon

Accelerating change

Intelligence explosion

Every year, computers surpass human abilities in new ways. A program written in 1956 was able to prove mathematical theorems, and found a more elegant proof for one of them than Russell and Whitehead had given in Principia Mathematica (MacKenzie 1995). By the late 1990s, 'expert systems' had surpassed human skill for a wide range of tasks (Nilsson 2009). In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue computer beat the world chess champion (Campbell et al. 2002), and in 2011 IBM's Watson computer beat the best human players at a much more complicated game: Jeopardy! (Markoff 2011). Recently, a robot named Adam was programmed with our scientific knowledge about yeast, then posed its own hypotheses, tested them, and assessed the results (King et al. 2009; King 2011).

Computers remain far short of human intelligence, but the resources that aid AI design are accumulating (including hardware, large datasets, neuroscience knowledge, and AI theory). We may one day design a machine that surpasses human skill at designing artificial intelligences. After that, this machine could improve its own intelligence faster and better than humans can, which would make it even more skilled at improving its own intelligence. This could continue in a positive feedback loop such that the machine quickly becomes vastly more intelligent than the smartest human being on Earth: an 'intelligence explosion' resulting in a machine superintelligence (Good 1965).

Event horizon

Vernor Vinge (1993) wrote that the arrival of machine superintelligence represents an 'event horizon' beyond which humans cannot model the future, because events beyond the Singularity will be stranger than science fiction: too weird for human minds to predict. So far, all social and technological progress has resulted from human brains, but humans cannot predict what ...
New AI risks research institute at Oxford University
by lukeprog — 2011-11-16T18:52:09.519Z

The Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology (aka FutureTech) is a new research department at Oxford University, roughly a spin-off of FHI, but focusing on AI and nanotech risks and differential technological development. Like FHI, this department is directed by Nick Bostrom. They'll be hiring more researchers soon. Basically, this means more people and money being devoted to existential risk reduction.

Okay, now back to work.
A Rational Approach to Education
by jrichardliston — 2011-11-16T18:43:43.815Z

I invite the LW community to help me identify where my thinking about education is wrong here...

While it is necessary to continue to improve our educational systems for youths, we must do a better job of focusing our energies on educating adults, for it is adults who make the decisions about how our society runs, and how we educate our youths. If adults are not sufficiently educated, then youths will not be sufficiently educated.

What kind of educational program do adults require? I advocate a "pull model" of education: adults must be compelled of their own accord to seek knowledge, because learning can at times be quite difficult. Why is it difficult? It challenges our world views, which can be a very scary thing, particularly for people whose world views have remained essentially unchanged for decades.

On the whole, however, the model we currently employ for education is a "push model": we tend to tell people what they must learn in order to be educated. And in the name of efficiency we pre-construct programs of study. But the push model is impractical. It does not account for the range of human experience and desire. To try to force a person to learn probability and statistics, for example, when they have not yet developed a healthy desire to learn it is too stressful and does not allow their minds to be open to reflecting on and integrating the new concepts. The time for a person to learn a given topic is when they begin to ask questions about it.

How can we create an environment that fosters a pull model of education? First, we can offer a series of courses in multiple disciplines that people can sample. This would consist of a broad range of courses in the arts, sciences and humanities. Rather than lasting for several months at a time, they would last for only a few weeks---long enough for the student to get a sufficient introduction to the topic. And they would be fun. For example, people could get a sense of what they can gain from learning probability and statistics by giving them play money at the beginning of a class and having them gamble on some well-constructed games. Then they can be taught some simple, but perhaps non-intuitive mathematical "tricks" that would allow them to be more successful as they play the games.

By sampling a broad range of topics while engaging in discussions about issues facing current society they will both identify things...
Evidence against Calorie Restriction
by Vaniver — 2011-11-16T18:08:38.397Z

An article about the pitfalls of using mice for animal research leads off with the example of calorie restriction. The controls for calorie restriction mice experiments were obese mice, suggesting that the health benefits of calorie restriction might be conflated with the health benefits of not being obese. I get the impression that people who study calorie restriction still think it worthwhile for life extension, but it's useful to try and integrate all evidence you come across.

[edit] timtyler suggests this is a well-understood effect that's already been taken into account by CR scientists.
Poll results: LW probably doesn't cause akrasia
by AnnaSalamon — 2011-11-16T18:03:39.359Z

Test of: Decision Fatigue, Rationality, and Akrasia.

Shortly before the Summit, Alexandros posted a short discussion post wondering whether rationality training might cause akrasia by prompting folks to make more decisions using deliberate, conscious, "system II" reasoning (instead of rapid, automatic, "system I" heuristics) and, thereby, causing decision fatigue.

This conjecture sounded interesting to me, and I'd wondered similar things myself, so I put up a poll to gather data.

Procedure

I put this poll on up LW, asking a number of questions that I hoped bore on: (1) akrasia levels; (2) how the person's akrasia levels had shifted since they came to LW; and (3) how many decisions they made via deliberate "system II" processing. 70 LW-ers completed the survey in time to get included in my data analysis; perhaps because the survey was on Discussion, these were mostly folks who'd been on LW for a while; median response to "months since you started reading LW/OB" was 19.

I also wanted a control group so as to distinguish real LW anomalies from random bugs in most humans' self-reporting architecture. I tried to ask Reddit, but got only 7 responses; then I tried Mechanical Turk and received my full 100 desired responses... but it is hard to be sure that Mechanical Turk data is from real humans.

Validity of “akrasia/procrastination” self-reports

It would be nice if self-reported akrasia levels correlated with (lack of) success with common goals, such as income, exercise, and living in a non-filthy house. To assess participants' akrasia, I asked the following questions:

2. As a kid, how much trouble did you have with procrastination?[1]

3. How much trouble do you have now with procrastination?

4. Have you had any bills go to a collection agency in the last six months?

5. When was your kitchen floor most recently cleaned?

6. How many times have you exercised in the last 7 days?

11. What was your college GPA?

12. What was your high school GPA?

18. What's your present income, in dollars per year?

I replaced all responses with z-score estimates, replaced income with "income controlled for age", and started looking at correlations. Of these items, #3 and #4 failed to correlate with the other "akrasia" questions[2], so I discarded them and noted that "akrasia" might be less of a dimension than I was hoping. The others...
Meetup : Houston Meetup: Saturday, 11/19
by Cog — 2011-11-16T08:25:08.980Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Houston Meetup: Saturday, 11/19

WHEN:
19 November 2011 02:25:07AM (-0600)

WHERE:
2010 Commerce St, Houston, Tx. 77002

Saturday at 3PM, we will be having a meetup on pure logic and mental
content, hosted by a philosopher friend of mine. If there is time
afterward, I'll have a game of paranoid debating ready to play.

As always, if you want to come but can't make it, send me an email or a message, and we'll work out plans for future meetings.

Discussion article for the meetup : Houston Meetup: Saturday, 11/19
Stanovich, 'The Robot's Rebellion' (mini-review)
by lukeprog — 2011-11-16T05:07:54.985Z

The jacket text for Keith Stanovich's The Robot's Rebellion sums up the book well:

The idea that we might be robots is no longer the stuff of science fiction; decades of research in evolutionary biology and cognitive science have led many esteemed scientists to the conclusion that... humans are merely the hosts for two replicators (genes and memes) that have no interest in us except as conduits for replication...

Accepting [this] disturbing idea, Keith Stanovich here provides the tools for the "robot's rebellion," a program of cognitive reform necessary to advance human interests over the limited interest of the replicators and define our own autonomous goals as individual human beings. Drawing on the latest research... The Robot's Rebellion describes how short-term and reflexive thinking processes dominate the higher-order thinking necessary for achieving autonomy from our biological programming. These higher-order evaluative activities of the brain... hold the potential to fulfill our need to ascribe significance to human life.

We may well be robots, but we are the only robots who have discovered that fact. [This] is the first step in constructing a radical new concept of self based on what is truly singular about humans: that they gain control of their lives in a way unique among life forms on Earth — through rational self-determination.

The book is an excellent introduction to the first stage of Yudkowskian philosophy: We are robots in a mechanistic universe running on a swiss army knife of cognitive modules. But at least we finally noticed we're robots, and we can use the skills of rationality to hop off our habit treadmills and pursue our values instead. These values are complex and often arbitrary, but we can use our reflective capacities to extrapolate our values based on "higher-order" desires, a desire for preference consistency, and other considerations. All this is argued for at length in Stanovich's book. The only thing missing is a discussion of what to do about all this when AI arrives.
Open Research 
by NancyLebovitz — 2011-11-16T04:25:59.965Z

This is a TED talk about open science. It starts with a description of a new math problem which is offered on a blog, and which eventually attracts enough mathematicians working on it to solve, not just the original problem, but a more difficult version of it. It was enough easier than the usual way of doing math that it was described as being like driving a car instead of pushing it.

Then the speaker talks about more ambitious projects-- like a wiki about quantum computing-- which get started, but no one is actually willing to do the work, so that the wiki lies all but vacant.

He suggests that public science isn't what scientists get paid for nor what builds their careers, and has some ideas for pushing the standards of science to change. There's been at least one success involving publishing genomes.

Perhaps the reason the math project succeeded was because the problem was small enough that success was both well-defined and possible, not to mention that working on it was probably more fun than figuring out how to do tolerable and sensibly-linked wiki articles.

There may be a way to get publicly funded science to be open source. We're already got proof of concept for solving math problems if they're interesting enough, so I suggest going public if you've got a math problem people might like to work on.