trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
The Pink Sparkly Ball Thing (Use unique, non-obvious terms for nuanced concepts)
by MalcolmOcean — 2016-02-20T23:25:16.034Z

Naming things! Naming things is hard. It's been claimed that it's one of the hardest parts of computer science. Now, this might sound surprising, but one of my favoritely named concepts is Kahneman's System 1 and System 2.

I want you to pause for a few seconds and consider what comes to mind when you read just the bolded phrase above.

Got it?

If you're familiar with the concepts of S1 and S2, then you probably have a pretty rich sense of what I'm talking about. Or perhaps you have a partial notion: "I think it was about..." or something. If you've never been exposed to the concept, then you probably have no idea.

Now, Kahneman could have reasonably named these systems lots of other things, like "emotional cognition" and "rational cognition"... or "fast, automatic thinking" and "slow, deliberate thinking". But now imagine that it had been "emotional and rational cognition" that Kahneman had written about, and the effect on the earlier paragraph.

It would be about the same for those who had studied it in depth, but now those who had heard about it briefly (or maybe at one point knew about the concepts) would be reminded of that one particular contrast between S1 and S2 (emotion/reason) and be primed to think that was the main one, forgetting about all of the other parameters that that distinction seeks to describe. Those who had never heard of Kahneman's research might assume that they basically knew what the terms were about, because they already have a sense of what emotion and reason are.

This is related to a concept known as overshadowing, when a verbal description of a scene can cause eyewitnesses to misremember the details of the scene. Words can disrupt lots of other things too, including our ability to think clearly about concepts.

An example of this in action is Ask and Guess Culture model (and later Tell, and Reveal). People who are trying to use the models become hugely distracted by the particular names of the entities in the model, which only have a rough bearing on the nuanced elements of these cultures. Even after thinking about this a ton myself, I still found myself accidentally assuming that questions an Ask Culture thing.

So "System 1" and "System 2" have several advantages:

they don't immediately and easily seem like you already un

...
Thyroid Hormones, Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia: A Hypothesis and a Proposed Experiment
by johnlawrenceaspden — 2016-02-20T23:20:18.665Z

[For background see: http://lesswrong.com/lw/n8u/a_medical_mystery_thyroid_hormones_chronic/

I thought of a class of solutions, I went looking for possible evidence, someone's already proposed what looks like a perfect answer, and the problem is much bigger than I originally thought.]

[ Epistemic Status 1: Gather Underpants 2: ? 3: Profit! ]

Suppose that:

(1) Some common mechanism(s) can interfere with the reception of the endocrine hormones by the cells on which they should act.

There would be a high genetic load on such a mechanism, so we should look for recent environmental change, immune defence, or incomplete adaptation to less recent environmental change for the causes.[1] [2]

Seek, and you will find: Such a mechanism was proposed in 2003 in:

A metabolic basis for fibromyalgia and its related disorders: the possible role of resistance to thyroid hormone R. L. Garrison, P. C. Breeding

These authors may have seen the whole of the truth for all I know, it looks terribly plausible to me, but I don't understand any of the interesting words in their paper. Hyaluronic. Now there is an interesting word. I wonder what it means. Nevertheless, this is exactly the sort of thing we should be looking for. I would imagine that there might be more than one such mechanism.

Then we would expect to see something like the classical presentations of endocrine disorders without any evident disturbance of the endocrine hormone levels in the blood.

Consider for instance Hypothyroidism / Hypometabolism / Myxoedema, a form of general metabolic collapse disease with famously many symptoms which appear almost at random, famously difficult to diagnose.

Pick a symptom of Hypometabolism and suppose it your primary symptom: For instance T3 deprivation in cells reduces the ability of mitochondria to recycle ATP, resulting in complete, shattering exhaustion from the mildest exercise.

Take this to your doctor. If competent she will test you for hypothyroidism (and all other common causes of fatigue). Your test will show that your blood hormone levels are normal. At this point, you have a mysterious unexplained syndrome in which the primary symptom is chronic fatigue, but which overall shows similarities to hypothyroidism. You have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Suppose that the symptom that bothers you most is widespread pain. Then you wil...
Meetup : London rationalish meetup, 2016-02-21
by philh — 2016-02-20T14:09:42.635Z

Discussion article for the meetup : London rationalish meetup, 2016-02-21

WHEN:
21 February 2016 02:00:00PM (+0000)

WHERE:
Shakespeare's Head, 64-68 Kingsway, London WC2B 6AH

We're still going strong, with around twenty people last time.

This meetup will be social discussion in a pub, with no set topic. If there's a topic you want to talk about, feel free to bring it.

The pub is the Shakespeare's Head in Holborn. There will be some way to identify us.

The event on facebook is visible even if you don't have a facebook account. Any last-minute updates will go there.

We're a fortnightly London-based meetup for members of the rationalist diaspora. The diaspora includes, but is not limited to, LessWrong, Slate Star Codex, rationalist tumblrsphere, and parts of the Effective Altruism movement.

You don't have to identify as a rationalist to attend: basically, if you think we seem like interesting people you'd like to hang out with, welcome! You are invited. You do not need to think you are clever enough, or interesting enough, or similar enough to the rest of us, to attend. You are invited.

People start showing up around two, and there are almost always people around until after six, but feel free to come and go at whatever time.

Discussion article for the meetup : London rationalish meetup, 2016-02-21
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2016-02-19T16:50:30.754Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on February 12th. The following week's summary is here.

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

Ann Arbor Meetup, 2/19/16: 19 February 2016 07:00PM
European Community Weekend: 02 September 2016 03:35PM
San Francisco Meetup: Projects: 15 February 2016 06:15PM
Sao Paulo monthly meetup: 13 February 2016 02:00PM

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:

Austin, TX - Quack's: 13 February 2016 01:30PM
[Canberra] Rationality Dojo: Habits: 14 February 2016 03:00PM
[Moscow] Role playing game based on HPMOR in Moscow: 13 February 2016 02:00PM
Sydney Rationality Dojo - March: 06 March 2016 04:00PM
[Tel Aviv] Quantum Homeschooling: 16 February 2016 07:00PM
Vienna: 13 February 2016 03:00PM
Washington, D.C.: National Portrait Gallery/American Art Museum: 14 February 2016 03:00PM

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 m...
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2016-02-19T14:46:11.235Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on February 19th. The following week's summary is here.

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

Ann Arbor Meetup, 2/19/16: 19 February 2016 07:00PM
Baltimore Area Meetup: Futurology / Open Discussion: 28 February 2016 03:00PM
Cologne meetup: 27 February 2016 05:00PM
European Community Weekend: 02 September 2016 03:35PM
San Antonio Meetup: 21 February 2016 02:00PM

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:

Moscow meetup: Hamming circle, Fallacymania, Tower of Chaos: 21 February 2016 02:00PM
[Moscow] Games in Kocherga club: FallacyMania, Tower of Chaos, Training game: 24 February 2016 07:40PM
Moscow 2nd LW group meetup: 03 March 2016 07:30PM
New Hampshire Meetup: 23 February 2016 07:00PM
Sydney Rationality Dojo - March: 06 March 2016 04:00PM
Vienna: 12 March 2016 03:00PM
Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games: 21 February 2016 03:00PM

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...
[spoilers] EY's “A Girl Corrupted...?!” new story is an allegorical study of quantum immortality?
by Algernoq — 2016-02-19T11:02:33.568Z

If you haven't read "A Girl Corrupted by the Internet is the Summoned Hero?!” yet, you should.

Spoilers ahead:

Continuing...

The Spell summons the hero with the best chance of defeating the Evil Emperor. This sounds like Quantum Immortality...

Specifically: Imagine the set of all possible versions of myself that are alive 50 years in the future, in the year 2066. My conscious observation at that point tends to summon the self most likely to be alive in 2066.

To elaborate: Computing all possible paths forward from the present moment to 2066 results in a HUGE set of possible future-selves that exist in 2066. But, some are more likely than others. For example, there will be a bunch of paths to a high-probability result, where I worked a generic middle-class job for years but don't clearly remember a lot of the individual days. There will also be a few paths where I do low-probability things. Thus, a random choice from that HUGE set will tend to pick a generic (high-probability) future self.

But, my conscious awareness observes one life path, not one discrete moment in the future. Computing all possible paths forward from the present moment to the end of the Universe results in a HUGE x HUGE set of possible life-paths, again with considerable overlap. My consciousness tends to pick a high-probability path.

In the story, a hero with a 100% probability of victory exists, so that hero is summoned. The hero observing their own probability of victory ensures they converge on a 100% probability of victory.

In real life, life paths with infinite survival time exist, so these life paths tend to be chosen. Observing one's own probability of infinite survival ensures convergence on 100% survival probability.

In the story, other characters set up conditions such that a desired outcome was the most likely one, by resolving to let a summoned hero with certain traits win easily.

In real life, an equivalent is the quantum suicide trick: resolving to kill oneself if certain conditions are not met ensures that the life path observed is one where those conditions are met.

In the story, a demon is summoned, and controlled when the demon refuses to fulfill its duty. Control of the demon was guaranteed by 100% probability of victory.

In real life, AI is like a demon, with the power to grant wishes but with perverse and unpredictable consequences that b...
Meetup : Less Wrong NH Meetup
by Tuk — 2016-02-19T05:12:50.610Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong NH Meetup

WHEN:
23 February 2016 07:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
269 Pearl St, Manchester, NH 03104

The thirteenth NH meet-up is Tuesday, 2/23, 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: Instrumental techniques

You may want to bring a notebook.

https://www.facebook.com/events/501964119975678/

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

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong NH Meetup
Posting to Main currently disabled
by Vaniver — 2016-02-19T03:55:08.370Z

The Main / Discussion division has served us well in the past, but traffic to Main has dropped to the point that it's no longer useful. In particular, the low visibility meant that authors would often have to choose between more karma and being seen by more readers. So posting to Main has been disabled, and the successor of Main is on its way. In the meantime, please move everything to discussion.

But I have a great post I've worked really hard on, and I want it to be in Main.

Save it as a draft, let me know, and I'll move it to Main for you.

There's an excellent post that should go on the RSS feed so lots of people read it.

We can still promote posts (and will).

Okay, so Main is dead. What's next?

What's the point of having multiple subreddits? If you have a single website with several different communities, then having different subreddits allows for different rules, different moderators, and different focuses. But LW has many interests that don't seem to cleanly separate into multiple subreddits. Many distinctions overlap, and tags seem better. So there are two main paths forward:

1) Tagging, 'new to you', and customization based on tags.

A tagging system with user input (see Stack Overflow for inspiration) means we can have reliable filtering.

We already track when a user last visited a page in order to highlight new comments; we can also use that to remove it from the new posts view if it's already been read. (What about if there's a comment explosion? We can either return it if there are enough new comments, or trust that you'll see the comment explosion through the Recent Comments view.)

With everything going to one view, giving users control over that view is critical for keeping it clear of trash. What looks to me like a promising way to do that is subsidies and taxes based on tags; if you want to see parenting posts and don't want to see meetup posts, say, you might give the parenting tag +3 karma and the meetup tag -10 karma, so very popular meetup posts can still appear and even unpopular or new parenting posts will be visible to you.

2) Norm codification and separation.

If LW users are split on how they're interested in interacting with other LWers, then it makes sense to build a wall between people who aren't going to get along (or, at least, make it clear to them whether they're at a concert hall or a mosh pi

...
LINK: Videogame with a very detailed simulated universe
by polymathwannabe — 2016-02-19T03:04:56.381Z

"In one sense, because of the game’s procedural design, the entire universe exists at the moment of its creation. In another sense, because the game only renders a player’s immediate surroundings, nothing exists unless there is a human there to witness it."

"Through the use of procedural generation, No Man’s Sky ensures that each planet will be a surprise, even to the programmers. Every creature, AI-guided alien spacecraft, or landscape is a pseudo-random product of the computer program itself. The universe is essentially as unknown to the people who made it as it is to the people who play in it—and ultimately, it is destined to remain that way."

More at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/02/artificial-universe-no-mans-sky/463308/
Notes from a conversation on act-based and goal-directed systems
by jessicata — 2016-02-19T00:42:29.000Z

I had a conversation with Nate about different possible goal systems for agents, and I think some people will be interested in reading this summary.

Goal specification

I started by stating my skepticism about approaches to goal specification that rely on inspecting an
AI's world model and identifying some concept in them (e.g. paperclips)
to specify the goal in terms of. To me, this seems fairly doomed: it is
difficult to imagine a kind of language for describing concepts, such
that I could specify some concept I cared about (e.g. paperclips) in this language,
and I could trust a system to correctly carry out a goal specified in terms of
this concept. Even if we had a nicer theory of multi-level models,
it still seems unlikely that this theory would match human concepts well enough
that it would be possible to specify things we care about in this theory.
See also Paul's comment on this subject and his post on unsupervised learning.

Nate responded that it seems like humans can learn a concept from fairly few
examples. To the extent that we expect AIs to learn "natural categories", and
we expect to be able to point at natural categories with a few examples or views
of the concept, this might work.

Nate argued that corrigibility might be a natural concept, and one that is
useful for specifying some proxy for what we care about. This is partially due
to introspection on the concept of corrigibility ("knowing that you're flawed
and that the goal you were given is not an accurate reflection of your
purpose"), and partially due to the fact that superintelligences might want to
build corrigible subagents.

This didn't seem completely implausible to me, but it didn't seem very likely that this would end up saving the goal-directed approach. Then we started getting into the details of alternative
proposals that specify goals in terms of short-term predictions (specifically,
human-imitation and other act-based approaches).

I argued that there's an important advantage to systems whose goals are grounded
in short-term predictions: you can use a scheme like
this to do something useful if you
have a mixture of good and bad predictors, by testing these predictors against
reality. There is no analogous way of testing e.g. good and bad paperclip
concepts against reality, to see which one actually represents paperclips. Nate
agreed that this is an advantage for grounding go

...
Meetup : San Antonio Meetup
by Bryan-san — 2016-02-18T21:52:59.541Z

Discussion article for the meetup : San Antonio Meetup

WHEN:
21 February 2016 02:00:00PM (-0600)

WHERE:
11255 Huebner Rd, San Antonio, TX 78230

ALTERNATE LOCATION THIS WEEK: Boba Sip by the Huebner Oaks Shopping Center

Bubble tea, frozen yogurt, and discussion. All are welcome.

New Meetup to discuss rationality and all things LessWrong and meet the local community. Look for the sign that says Less Wrong.

Discussion article for the meetup : San Antonio Meetup
Goal completion: noise, errors, bias, prejudice, preference and complexity
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2016-02-18T14:37:16.564Z

A putative new idea for AI control; index here.

This is a preliminary look at how an AI might assess and deal with various types of errors and uncertainties, when estimating true human preferences. I'll be using the circular rocket model to illustrate how these might be distinguished by an AI. Recall that the rocket can accelerate by -2, -1, 0, 1, and 2, and the human wishes to reach the space station (at point 0 with velocity 0) and avoid accelerations of ±2. In the forthcoming, there will generally be some noise, so to make the whole thing more flexible, assume that the space station is a bit bigger than usual, covering five squares. So "docking" at the space station means reaching {-2,-1,0,1,2} with 0 velocity.

The purpose of this exercise is to distinguish true preferences from other things that might seem to be preferences from the outside, but aren't. Ultimately, if this works, we should be able to construct an algorithm that identifies preferences, such that anything it rejects is at least arguably not a preference.

So, at least initially, I'll be identifying terms like "bias" with "fits into the technical definition of bias used in this model"; once the definitions are refined, we can then check whether they capture enough of the concepts we wand.

So I'm going to use the following terms to distinguish various technical concepts in this domain:

Noise

Error

Bias

Prejudices

Known prejudices

Preferences

Here, noise is when the action selected by the human doesn't lead to the correct action output. Error is when the human selects the wrong action. Bias is when the human is following the wrong plan. A prejudice is a preference the human has that they would not agree upon if it was brought to their conscious notice. A know prejudice is a prejudice the human knows about, but can't successfully correct within themselves.

And a preference is a preference.

What characteristics would allow the AI to distinguish between these? Note that part of the reason that the terms are non-standard is that I'm not starting with perfectly clear concepts and attempting to distinguish them; instead, I'm finding way of distinguishing various concepts, and seeing if these map on well to the concepts we care about.

Noise versus preference and complexity

In this model, noise is seen as 5% chance of under-accelerating, ie a desired acceleration of ±2

...
Meetup : Moscow meetup: Hamming circle, Fallacymania, Tower of Chaos
by Slava Matyukhin — 2016-02-18T12:06:24.651Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow meetup: Hamming circle, Fallacymania, Tower of Chaos

WHEN:
21 February 2016 02:00:00PM (+0300)

WHERE:
ул. Большая Дорогомиловская, 5к2

Meta: most our members join meetups via other channels. So lately I've been skipping announcements on lesswrong.com because of extra work on providing both russian and english texts. Still, the correlation between "found out about Moscow meetups via lesswrong.com" and "is a great fit for our community" is very high. So from now on I'm going to post a short link to our usual hackpad document and save 80% of extra effort.

Pad with the content for the 10.01.2016 meetup.

We're meeting at anticafe "Kocherga", as usual.

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow meetup: Hamming circle, Fallacymania, Tower of Chaos