trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Everybody's talking about machine ethics
by sbenthall — 2014-09-17T17:20:57.516Z

There is a lot of mainstream interest in machine ethics now. Here are some links to some popular articles on this topic.

By Zeynep Tufecki, a professor at the I School at UNC, on Facebook's algorithmic newsfeed curation and why Twitter should not implement the same.

By danah boyd, claiming that 'tech folks' are designing systems that implement an idea of fairness that comes from neoliberal ideology.

danah boyd (who spells her name with no capitalization) runs the Data & Society, a "think/do tank" that aims to study this stuff. They've recently gotten MacArthur Foundation funding for studying the ethical and political impact of intelligent systems.

A few observations:

First, there is no mention of superintelligence or recursively self-modifying anything. These scholars are interested in how, in the near future, the already comparatively powerful machines have moral and political impact on the world.

Second, these groups are quite bad at thinking in a formal or mechanically implementable way about ethics. They mainly seem to recapitulate the same tired tropes that have been resonating through academia for literally decades. On the contrary, mathematical formulation of ethical positions appears to be ya'll's specialty.

Third, however much the one-true-morality may be indeterminate or presently unknowable, progress towards implementable descriptions of various plausible moral positions could at least be incremental steps forward towards an understanding of how to achieve something better. Considering a slow take-off possible future, iterative testing and design of ethical machines with high computational power seems like low-hanging fruit that could only better inform longer-term futurist thought.

Personally, I try to do work in this area and find the lack of serious formal work in this area deeply disappointing. This post is a combination heads up and request to step up your game. It's go time.

Sebastian Benthall

PhD Candidate

UC Berkeley School of Infromation
Meetup : MelbLW: September Social Meetup
by MelbourneLW — 2014-09-17T14:28:23.902Z

Discussion article for the meetup : MelbLW: September Social Meetup

WHEN:
19 September 2014 06:30:00PM (+0800)

WHERE:
Alchemist's Refuge, 328 Little Collins St, Melbourne

September's social meetup is scheduled for this Friday (19th September) as usual. This month, we will be returning to Alchemist's Refuge.

Our social meetups are relaxed, informal events where we chat and often play games. The start and finish times are very loose - people will be coming and going throughout the night, so don't worry if you are coming later.

Where? Alchemist's Refuge, 328 Little Collins St, Melbourne - near the corner of Queen St, downstairs from Games Laboratory

When? From 6:30pm until late, Friday September 19th

Contact? If you have any questions, just text or call me (Richard) on 0421231789

Dinner? There are a number of take-away places nearby that deliver to Alchemist's Refuge. It is also quite likely that a group of us will go out for late night souvlakis after Refuge closes.

Games? Alchemist's Refuge do allow board games and they also have a number that can be borrowed for a minor fee. Ask around and you'll easily find some others to join you!

To organise similar events, please send an email to melbournelw@gmail.com

Discussion article for the meetup : MelbLW: September Social Meetup
What It's Like to Notice Things
by LoganStrohl — 2014-09-17T14:19:02.157Z

Phenomenology

Phenomenology is the study of the structures of experience and consciousness. Literally, it is the study of "that which appears". The first time you look at a twig sticking up out of the water, you might be curious and ask, "What forces cause things to bend when placed in water?" If you're a curious phenomenologist, though, you'll ask things like, "Why does that twig in water appear as though bent? Do other things appear to bend when placed in water? Do all things placed in water appear to bend to the same degree? Are there things that do not appear to bend when placed in water? Does my perception of the bending depend on the angle or direction from which I observe the twig?"

Pehenomenology means breaking experience down to its more basic components, and being precise in our descriptions of what we actually observe, free of further speculation and assumption. A phenomenologist recognizes the difference between observing "a six-sided cube", and observing the three faces, at most, from which we extrapolate the rest.

I consider phenomenology to be a central skill of rationality. The most obvious example: You're unlikely to generate alternative hypotheses when the confirming observation and the favored hypothesis are one and the same in your experience of experience. The importance of phenomenology to rationality goes deeper than that, though. Phenomenology trains especially fine grained introspection. The more tiny and subtle are the thoughts you're aware of, the more precise can be the control you gain over the workings of your mind, and the faster can be your cognitive reflexes.

(I do not at all mean to say that you should go read Husserl and Heidegger. Despite their apparent potential for unprecedented clarity, the phenomenologists, without exception, seem to revel in obfuscation. It's probably not worth your time to wade through all of that nonsense. I've mostly read about phenomenology myself for this very reason.)

I've been doing some experimental phenomenology of late.

Noticing

I've noticed that rationality, in practice, depends on noticing. Some people have told me this is basically tautological, and therefore uninteresting. But if I'm right, I think it's likely very important to know, and to train deliberately.

The difference between seeing the twig as bent and seeing the twig as seeming bent may seem inane. It is not news that things that are...
Link: How Community Feedback Shapes User Behavior
by Tyrrell_McAllister — 2014-09-17T13:49:35.217Z

This article discusses how upvotes and downvotes influence the quality of posts on online communities. The article claims that downvotes lead to more posts of lower quality from the downvoted commenter.

From the abstract:

Social media systems rely on user feedback and rating mechanisms for personalization, ranking, and content filtering. [...] This paper investigates how ratings on a piece of content affect its author’s future behavior. [...] [W]e find that negative feedback leads to significant behavioral changes that are detrimental to the community. Not only do authors of negatively-evaluated content contribute more, but also their future posts are of lower quality, and are perceived by the community as such. In contrast, positive feedback does not carry similar effects, and neither encourages rewarded authors to write more, nor improves the quality of their posts.

The authors of the article are Justin Cheng, Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, and Jure Leskovec.

Edited to add: NancyLebovitz already posted about this study in the Open Thread from September 8-14, 2014.
Meetup : Perth, Australia: Games night
by  — 2014-09-17T04:01:44.777Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Perth, Australia: Games night

WHEN:
07 October 2014 06:00:00PM (+0800)

WHERE:
Sync Labs, 6/663 Newcastle Street, Leederville, Australia

Come play Zendo, an inductive logic game. Rowdy will teach us, and I'm told the rules are pretty simple.

Zendo seems cool because it can perhaps teach the skill of "looking into the dark".

We'll be at Sync Labs, a coworking space in Leederville. The entrance is between Niche and Cranked. Don't trust Google Maps!

You can RSVP here: http://www.meetup.com/Perth-Less-Wrong/events/207744102/

Discussion article for the meetup : Perth, Australia: Games night
Should EA's be Superrational cooperators? 
by diegocaleiro — 2014-09-16T21:41:10.712Z

Back in 2012 when visiting Leverage Research, I was amazed by the level of cooperation in daily situations I got from Mark. Mark wasn't just nice, or kind, or generous. Mark seemed to be playing a different game than everyone else.

If someone needed X, and Mark had X, he would provide X to them. This was true for lending, but also for giving away.

If there was a situation in which someone needed to direct attention to a particular topic, Mark would do it.

You get the picture. Faced with prisoner dilemmas, Mark would cooperate. Faced with tragedy of the commons, Mark would cooperate. Faced with non-egalitarian distributions of resources, time or luck (which are convoluted forms of the dictator game), Mark would rearrange resources without any indexical evaluation. The action would be the same, and the consequentialist one, regardless of which side of a dispute was the Mark side.

I never got over that impression. The impression that I could try to be as cooperative as my idealized fiction of Mark was.

In game theoretic terms, Mark was a Cooperational agent.

Altruistic - MaxOther

Cooperational - MaxSum

Individualist - MaxOwn

Equalitarian - MinDiff

Competitive - MaxDiff

Aggressive - MinOther

Under these definitions of kinds of agents used in research on game theoretical scenarios, what we call Effective Altruism would be called Effective Cooperation. The reason why we call it "altruism" is because even the most parochial EA's care about a set containing a minimum of 7 billion minds, where to a first approximation MaxSum ≈ MaxOther.

Locally however the distinction makes sense. In biology Altruism usually refers to a third concept, different from both the "A" in EA, and Alt, it means acting in such a way that Other>Own without reference to maximizing or minimizing, since evolution designs adaptation executors, not maximizers.

A globally Cooperational agent acts as a consequentialist globally. So does an Alt agent.
The question then is,

How should a consequentialist act locally?

The mathematical response is obviously as a Coo. What real people do is a mix of Coo and Ind.

My suggestion is that we use our undesirable yet unavoidable moral tribe distinction instinct, the one that separates Us from Them, and act always as Coos with Effective Altruists and mix Coo and Ind only with non EAs. That is what Mark did.
Meetup : Warsaw, next week!
by  — 2014-09-16T16:27:46.685Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Warsaw, next week!

WHEN:
23 September 2014 06:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Warsaw

I invite you to participate in a meetup next week; exact date will be chosen by voting here: http://doodle.com/2dshyg6hqbth72zvnp96sa73/admin#table. Time and place will be posted here later.

If you use Facebook, please join our local group for better coordination: https://www.facebook.com/groups/lwwarsaw/

Discussion article for the meetup : Warsaw, next week!
Group Rationality Diary, September 16-30
by therufs — 2014-09-16T13:33:37.764Z

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for September 16-30.

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 cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating.

Previous diary: September 1-15

Next diary: October 1-15

Rationality diaries archive
Meetup : Urbana-Champaign: Tortoises
by Jack_LaSota — 2014-09-16T03:14:27.316Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Urbana-Champaign: Tortoises

WHEN:
21 September 2014 02:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
206 S. Cedar St, 61801

What kind of easy exercises can we do every day to become a little bit more rational? How can we tell if they're working?

Discussion article for the meetup : Urbana-Champaign: Tortoises
Superintelligence Reading Group - Section 1: Past Developments and Present Capabilities
by KatjaGrace — 2014-09-16T01:00:40.991Z

This is part of a weekly reading group on Nick Bostrom's book, Superintelligence. For more information about the group, see the announcement post. For the schedule of future topics, see MIRI's reading guide.

Welcome to the Superintelligence reading group. This week we discuss the first section in the reading guide, Past developments and present capabilities. This section considers the behavior of the economy over very long time scales, and the recent history of artificial intelligence (henceforth, 'AI'). These two areas are excellent background if you want to think about large economic transitions caused by AI.

This post summarizes the section, and offers a few relevant notes, thoughts, and ideas for further investigation. My own thoughts and questions for discussion are in the comments.

There is no need to proceed in order through this post. Feel free to jump straight to the discussion. Where applicable, page numbers indicate the rough part of the chapter that is most related (not necessarily that the chapter is being cited for the specific claim).

Reading: Foreword, and Growth modes through State of the art from Chapter 1 (p1-18)

Summary

Economic growth:

Economic growth has become radically faster over the course of human history. (p1-2)

This growth has been uneven rather than continuous, perhaps corresponding to the farming and industrial revolutions. (p1-2)

Thus history suggests large changes in the growth rate of the economy are plausible. (p2)

This makes it more plausible that human-level AI will arrive and produce unprecedented levels of economic productivity.

Predictions of much faster growth rates might also suggest the arrival of machine intelligence, because it is hard to imagine humans - slow as they are - sustaining such a rapidly growing economy. (p2-3)

Thus economic history suggests that rapid growth caused by AI is more plausible than you might otherwise think.

The history of AI:

Human-level AI has been predicted since the 1940s. (p3-4)

Early predictions were often optimistic about when human-level AI would come, but rarely considered whether it would pose a risk. (p4-5)

AI research has been through several cycles of relative popularity and unpopularity. (p5-11)

By around the 1990s, 'Good Old-Fashioned Artificial Intelligence' (GOFAI) techniques based on symbol manipulation gave way to new methods such as artificial neural networ

...
Unpopular ideas attract poor advocates: Be charitable
by  — 2014-09-15T19:30:54.251Z

Unfamiliar or unpopular ideas will tend to reach you via proponents who:

...hold extreme interpretations of these ideas.

...have unpleasant social characteristics.

...generally come across as cranks.

The basic idea: It's unpleasant to promote ideas that result in social sanction, and frustrating when your ideas are met with indifference. Both situations are more likely when talking to an ideological out-group. Given a range of positions on an in-group belief, who will decide to promote the belief to outsiders? On average, it will be those who believe the benefits of the idea are large relative to in-group opinion (extremists), those who view the social costs as small (disagreeable people), and those who are dispositionally drawn to promoting weird ideas (cranks).
I don't want to push this pattern too far. This isn't a refutation of any particular idea. There are reasonable people in the world, and some of them even express their opinions in public, (in spite of being reasonable). And sometimes the truth will be unavoidably unfamiliar and unpopular, etc. But there are also...
Some benefits that stem from recognizing these selection effects:

It's easier to be charitable to controversial ideas, when you recognize that you're interacting with people who are terribly suited to persuade you. I'm not sure "steelmanning" is the best idea (trying to present the best argument for an opponent's position). Based on the extremity effect, another technique is to construct a much diluted version of the belief, and then try to steelman the diluted belief.

If your group holds fringe or unpopular ideas, you can avoid these patterns when you want to influence outsiders.

If you want to learn about an afflicted issue, you might ignore the public representatives and speak to the non-evangelical instead (you'll probably have to start the conversation).

You can resist certain polarizing situations, in which the most visible camps hold extreme and opposing views. This situation worsens when those with non-extreme views judge the risk of participation as excessive, and leave the debate to the extremists (who are willing to take substantial risks for their beliefs). This leads to the perception that the current camps represent the only valid positions, which creates a polarizing loop. Because this is a sort of coordination failure among non-extremists, knowing to covertly look

...
Open thread, September 15-21, 2014
by gjm — 2014-09-15T12:24:53.165Z

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

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

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

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

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.
Open thread, September 15-21, 2014
by polymathwannabe — 2014-09-15T12:18:41.594Z

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

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one.

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

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.
What are you learning?
by Viliam_Bur — 2014-09-15T10:50:28.009Z

This is a thread to connect rationalists who are learning the same thing, so they can cooperate.

The "learning" doesn't necessarily mean "I am reading a textbook / learning an online course right now". It can be something you are interested in long-term, and still want to learn more.

Rules:

Top-level comments contain only the topic to learn. (Plus one comment for "meta" debate.) Only one topic per comment, for easier search. Try to find a reasonable level of specificity: too narrow topic means less people; too wide topic means more people who actually are interested in something different than you are.

Use the second-level comments if you are learning that topic. (Or if you are going to learn it now, not merely in the far future.) Technically, "me too" is okay in this thread, but providing more info is probably more useful. For example: What are you focusing on? What learning materials you use? What is your goal?

Third- and deeper-level comments, that's debate as usual.
Meetup : Bratislava
by Viliam_Bur — 2014-09-15T06:41:32.577Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Bratislava

WHEN:
29 September 2014 06:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Bistro The Peach, Mariánska 3, Bratislava

Pre tých, čo chvíľu nechodili: Bistro the Peach sa asi pred dvoma mesiacmi presunulo o ulicu ďalej, a možno stále nie je poriadne označené, ale je to oproti predajni richmanov na Mariánskej. Alebo sa riaďte podľa google mapy a čísla ulice. Vchod vyzerá tak, že na začiatku pasáže sú krátke schody do prvej časti bistra, vedľa je druhá časť, kde sedíme, a potom je ešte terasa.

Máme aj mailovú skupinu, kde zvyčajne posielam informácie o ďalších stretávkach. Ale do konca roka 2014 to bude pravidelne, každé 3 týždne.

Discussion article for the meetup : Bratislava
A Guide to Rational Investing
by ColbyDavis — 2014-09-15T02:36:10.377Z

Hello Less Wrong, I don't post here much but I've been involved in the Bay Area Less Wrong community for several years, where many of you know me from. The following is a white paper I wrote earlier this year for my firm, RHS Financial, a San Francisco based private wealth management practice. A few months ago I presented it at a South Bay Less Wrong meetup. Since then many of you have encouraged me to post it here for the rest of the community to see. The original can be found here, please refer to the disclosures, especially if you are the SEC. I have added an afterword here beneath the citations to address some criticisms I have encountered since writing it. As a company white paper intended for a general audience, please forgive me if the following is a little too self-promoting or spends too much time on grounds already well-tread here, but I think many of you will find it of value. Hope you enjoy!

Executive Summary: Capital markets have created enormous amounts of wealth for the world and reward disciplined, long-term investors for their contribution to the productive capacity of the economy. Most individuals would do well to invest most of their wealth in the capital market assets, particularly equities. Most investors, however, consistently make poor investment decisions as a result of a poor theoretical understanding of financial markets as well as cognitive and emotional biases, leading to inferior investment returns and inefficient allocation of capital. Using an empirically rigorous approach, a rational investor may reasonably expect to exploit inefficiencies in the market and earn excess returns in so doing.

Most people understand that they need to save money for their future, and surveys consistently find a large majority of Americans expressing a desire to save and invest more than they currently are. Yet the savings rate and percentage of people who report owning stocks has trended down in recent years,1 despite the increasing ease with which individuals can participate in financial markets, thanks to the spread of discount brokers and employer 401(k) plans. Part of the reason for this is likely the unrealistically pessimistic expectations of would-be investors. According to a recent poll barely one third of Americans consider equities to be a good way to build wealth over time.2 The verdict of histor...
Meetup : Canberra: More rationalist fun and games!
by DanielFilan — 2014-09-15T01:47:58.425Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Canberra: More rationalist fun and games!

WHEN:
26 September 2014 06:00:00PM (+1000)

WHERE:
108 North Road, Acton, ACT

We will be practising our practical rationality skills by playing (some variant of) Liar's Dice and Mafia. As always, vegan snacks will be provided.

General meetup info:

If you use Facebook, please join our group.

Structured meetups are held on the second Saturday and fourth Friday of each month from 6 pm until late in the CSIT building, room N101.

Discussion article for the meetup : Canberra: More rationalist fun and games!
Meetup : West LA—The Hierarchy of Requests
by OpenThreadGuy — 2014-09-14T23:33:57.171Z

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA—The Hierarchy of Requests

WHEN:
17 September 2014 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
11066 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA

How to Find Us: Go into this Del Taco. We will be in the back room if possible.

Parking is free in the lot out front or on the street nearby.

Discussion: The hierarchy of requests is a useful way of thinking about many situations. I will present it and emphasize certain things.

Recommended Reading:

The Hierarchy of Requests

No prior exposure to Less Wrong is required; this will be generally accessible.

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA—The Hierarchy of Requests