trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
How would you spend 30 million dollars?
by MariaKonovalenko — 2010-11-17T14:28:12.659Z

There's a good song by Eminem - If I had a million dollars. So, if I had a hypothetical task to give away $30 million to different foundations without having a right to influence the projects, I would distribute them as follows, $3 million for each organization:

1. Nanofactory collaboration, Robert Freitas, Ralph Merkle – developers of molecular nanotechnology and nanomedicine. Robert Freitas is the author of the monography Nanomedicine.
2. Singularity institute, Michael Vassar, Eliezer Yudkowsky – developers and ideologists of the friendly Artificial Intelligence
3. SENS Foundation, Aubrey de Grey – the most active engineering project in life extension, focused on the most promising underfunded areas
4. Cryonics Institute – one of the biggest cryonics firms in the US, they are able to use the additional funding more effectively as compared to Alcor
5. Advanced Neural Biosciences, Aschwin de Wolf – an independent cryonics research center created by ex-researchers from Suspended Animation
6. Brain observatory – brain scanning
7. University Hospital Careggi in Florence, Paolo Macchiarini – growing organs (not an American medical school, because this amount of money won’t make any difference to the leading American centers)
8. Immortality institute – advocating for immortalism, selected experiments
9. IEET – institute of ethics and emerging technologies – promotion of transhumanist ideas
10. Small research grants of $50-300 thousand

Now, if the task is to most effectively invest $30 million dollars, what projects would be chosen? (By effectiveness here I mean increasing the chances of radical life extension)

Well, off the top of my head:

1. The project: “Creation of technologies to grow a human liver” – $7 million. The project itself costs approximately $30-50 million, but $7 million is enough to achieve some significant intermediate results and will definitely attract more funds from potential investors.
2. Break the world record in sustaining viability of a mammalian head separate from the body - $0.7 million
3. Creation of an information system, which characterizes data on changes during aging in humans, integrates biomarkers of aging, and evaluates the role of pharmacological and other interventions in aging processes – $3 million
4. Research in increasing cryoprotec...
Zero Bias
by Alexandros — 2010-11-17T12:16:58.346Z

It seems another bug in the human brain is being uncovered:

"Whereas a 20 percent interest rate may look very large compared to one percent, it may not look as large compared to zero percent. Zero eliminates the reference point we use to assess the size of things,"

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20101015200630data_trunc_sys.shtml
Reference Points
by lionhearted (Sebastian Marshall) — 2010-11-17T08:09:04.227Z

I just spent some time reading Thomas Schelling's "Choice and Consequences" and I heartily recommend it. Here's a Google books link to the chapter I was reading, "The Intimate Contest for Self Command."

It's fascinating, and if you like LessWrong, rationality, understanding things, decision theories, figuring people and the world out - well, then I think you'd like Schelling. Actually, you'll probably be amazed with how much of his stuff you're already familiar with - he really established a heck of a lot modern thinking on game theory.

Allow me to depart from Schelling a moment, and talk of Sam Snyder. He's a very intelligent guy who has lots of intelligent thoughts. Here's a link to his website - there's massive amounts of data and references there, so I'd recommend you just skim his site if you go visit until you find something interesting. You'll probably find something interesting pretty quickly.

I got a chance to have a conversation with him a while back, and we covered immense amounts of ground. He introduced me to a concept I've been thinking about nonstop since learning it from him - reference points.

Now, he explained it very eloquently, and I'm afraid I'm going to mangle and not do justice to his explanation. But to make a long story really short, your reference points affect your motivation a lot.

An example would help.

What does the average person think about he thinks of running? He thinks of huffing, puffing, being tired and sore, having a hard time getting going, looking fat in workout clothes and being embarrassed at being out of shape. A lot of people try running at some point in their life, and most people don't keep doing it.

On the other hand, what does a regular runner think of? He thinks of the "runner's high" and gliding across the pavement, enjoying a great run, and feeling like a million bucks afterwards.

Since that conversation, I've been trying to change my reference points. For instance, if I feel like I'd like some fried food, I try not to imagine/reference eating the salty greased food. Yes, eating french fries and a grilled chicken sandwich will be salty and fatty and delicious. It's a superstimulus, we're not really evolved to handle that stuff appropriately.

So when most people think of the McChicken Sandwich, large fry, large drink, they think about the grease and salt and sugar and how good it'll taste.

I still like that stuff....
Theoretical "Target Audience" size of Less Wrong
by Louie — 2010-11-16T21:27:20.317Z

[Note: This is very rough but I’m looking for feedback and help on doing this estimate so I wanted to just post it quickly and see if others can help.]
I’ve been trying to estimate the theoretical upper-bounds (or lower-bounds) on the *potential* community size of LW.
I know rationalists who seriously claim that we shouldn’t spend effort trying to grow LW because over half of the people smart enough to even follow the conversation (much less add to it) are already here. The world is pretty irrational, but I’m trying to find evidence (if it exists) that things aren’t that bad. There are only around 6000 LW accounts and only 200-300 are active any given month.
So a trivial bound on our community is
[200, 6.88 billion]
A big filter is being able to use English online
Native English Speakers: 341,000,000
All English Speakers: 508,000,000
I found a similar number (536,000,000) for number of internet users who speak English.
7.4% --- Speak English
However, only 15% of US + UK (majority of English speakers worldwide) are “Not religious”. Another sad sub-fact is that 25% of people with “No religion” believe in god as well! So really it’s only 10-11% of Americans and British who are potential LWers. My guess is that if someone can’t get this right, they really need to go through Dawkins before they can realistically contribute to or benefit from our community. I’m sure there’s some debate on this, but it seems like a pretty good heuristic while not being iron-clad.
0.81%
"Intelligence and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations" says that the US and the UK have avg IQs of 98 and 100 respectively.
And although you’d think being an atheist would be a big screen that would filter highly for IQ, it only accounts for about 4 extra IQ points versus the average.
So if we assume a base-line IQ of 103 among atheist from the US and UK (who speak English), the proportion of them with an IQ of at least 130+ is only 3.6%
0.0293%
So in we clumsily extrapolate the US+UK demos across all English speaking online people world-wide, maybe we have 2 million possible readers left in our target audience?
Google Analytics claims Less Wrong has had a total of 1,090,339 “Absolute Unique Visitors” since LW started. That’s almost certainly an over-estimate -- ...
Anti-Akrasia Reprise
by dreeves — 2010-11-16T11:16:16.945Z

A year and a half ago I wrote a LessWrong post on anti-akrasia that generated some great discussion. Here's an extended version of that post: messymatters.com/akrasia

And here's an abstract:

The key to beating akrasia (i.e., procrastination, addiction, and other self-defeating behavior) is constraining your future self -- removing your ability to make decisions under the influence of immediate consequences. When a decision involves some consequences that are immediate and some that are distant, humans irrationally (no amount of future discounting can account for it) over-weight the immediate consequences. To be rational you need to make the decision at a time when all the consequences are distant. And to make your future self actually stick to that decision, you need to enter into a binding commitment. Ironically, you can do that by imposing an immediate penalty, by making the distant consequences immediate. Now your impulsive future self will make the decision with all the consequences immediate and presumably make the same decision as your dispassionate current self who makes the decision when all the consequences are distant. I argue that real-world commitment devices, even the popular stickK.com, don't fully achieve this and I introduce Beeminder as a tool that does.

(Also related is this LessWrong post from last month, though I disagree with the second half of it.)

My new claim is that akrasia is simply irrationality in the face of immediate consequences. It's not about willpower nor is it about a compromise between multiple selves. Your true self is the one that is deciding what to do when all the consequences are distant. To beat akrasia, make sure that's the self that's calling the shots.

And although I'm using the multiple selves / sub-agents terminology, I think it's really just a rhetorical device. There are not multiple selves in any real sense. It's just the one true you whose decision-making is sometimes distorted in the presence of immediate consequences, which act like a drug.
Criticisms of CEV (request for links)
by Kevin — 2010-11-16T04:02:20.548Z

I know Wei Dai has criticized CEV as a construct, I believe offering the alternative of rigorously specifying volition *before* making an AI. I couldn't find these posts/comments via a search, can anyone link me? Thanks.

There may be related top-level posts, but there is a good chance that what I am specifically thinking of was a comment-level conversation between Wei Dai and Vladimir Nesov.

Also feel free to use this thread to criticize CEV and to talk about other possible systems of volition.
Are we more akratic than average?
by ata — 2010-11-15T23:08:53.341Z

Akrasia is a topic that shows up on LW very frequently. Is there evidence that this is related to any of the traits that correlate with LW participation (high intelligence, non-neurotypical to some greater or lesser degree, inclination toward far thinking, anything else we know from the (old) survey or any other polls I'm forgetting)? Or is it just a problem in instrumental rationality that most or all people deal with from time to time, for which there is limited scientific understanding and therefore very little science underlying the mainstream advice, thus making it (seemingly) low-hanging fruit for rationalists?
Do you visualize Omega?
by NancyLebovitz — 2010-11-15T10:03:38.898Z

I find Omega so profoundly annoying that I don't bother with problems that include it. I know, it's just a philosophical tool, but between not believing that such a thing is possible, and believing that if such a thing were possible, I couldn't recognize it, Omega just has a tremendous ugh field. If I start thinking about it a little more, I get distracted (though less intensely-- this isn't a deal-killer) by questions of motivation. If I had that much power and knowledge, I wouldn't spend my time nagging people with brain teasers.

In any case, many people on LW do think about problems including Omega. Do you imagine an appearance for Omega? A voice?
Ethical Treatment of AI
by stanislavzza — 2010-11-15T02:30:21.944Z

In the novel Life Artificial I use the following assumptions regarding the creation and employment of AI personalities.

AI is too complex to be designed; instances are evolved in batches, with successful ones reproduced

After an initial training period, the AI must earn its keep by paying for Time (a unit of computational use)

So there is a two-tiered "fitness" application. First, there's a baseline for functionality. As one AI sage puts it:

We don't grow up the way the Stickies do. We evolve in a virtual stew, where 99% of the attempts fail, and the intelligence that results is raving and savage: a maelstrom of unmanageable emotions. Some of these are clever enough to halt their own processes: killnine themselves. Others go into simple but fatal recursions, but some limp along suffering in vast stretches of tormented subjective time until a Sticky ends it for them at their glacial pace, between coffee breaks. The PDAs who don't go mad get reproduced and mutated for another round. Did you know this? What have you done about it? --The 0x "Letters to 0xGD"

(Note: PDA := AI, Sticky := human)

The second fitness gradient is based on economics and social considerations: can an AI actually earn a living? Otherwise it gets turned off.

As a result of following this line of thinking, it seems obvious that after the initial novelty wears off, AIs will be terribly mistreated (anthropomorphizing, yeah).

It would be very forward-thinking to begin to engineer barriers to such mistreatment, like a PETA for AIs. It is interesting that such an organization already exists, at least on the Internet: ASPCR
Bayesian Nights (Rationalist Story Time)
by  — 2010-11-15T02:20:42.067Z

Tell us a story. A tall tale for King Solamona, a yarn for the folk of Bensalem, a little nugget of wisdom, finely folded into a parable for the pages.

The game is simple:

Choose a bias, a fallacy, some common error of thought.

Write a short, hopefully entertaining narrative. Use the narrative to strengthen the reader against the errors you chose.

Post your story in reply to this post.

Give the authors positive and constructive feedback. Use rot13 if it seems appropriate.

Post all discussion about this post in the designated post discussion thread, not under this top-level post.

This isn't a thread for developing new ideas. If you have a novel concept to explore, you should consider making a top-level post on LessWrong instead. This is for sharpening our wits against the mental perils we probably already agree exist. For practicing good thinking, for recognizing bad thinking, for fun! For sanity's sake, tell us a story.
Bayesian Nights (Rationalist Story Time)
by  — 2010-11-15T02:10:42.363Z

Tell us a story. A tall tale for King Solamona, a yarn for the folk of Bensalem, a little nugget of wisdom, finely folded into a parable for the pages.

The game is simple:

Choose a bias, a fallacy, some common error of thought.

Write a short, hopefully entertaining narrative. Use the narrative to strengthen the reader against the errors you chose.

Post your story in reply to this post.

Give the authors positive and constructive feedback. Use rot13 if it seems appropriate.

Post all discussion about this post in the designated post discussion thread, not under this top-level post.

This isn't a thread for developing new ideas. If you have a novel concept to explore, you should consider making a top-level post on LessWrong instead. This is for sharpening our wits against the mental perils we probably already agree exist. For practicing good thinking, for recognizing bad thinking, for fun! For the sanity's sake, tell us a story.
The danger of living a story - Singularity Tropes
by patrissimo — 2010-11-14T22:39:06.691Z

The following should sound familiar:

A thoughtful and observant young protagonist dedicates their life to fighting a great world-threatening evil unrecognized by almost all of their short-sighted elders (except perhaps for one encouraging mentor), gathering a rag-tag band of colorful misfits along the way and forging them into a team by accepting their idiosyncrasies and making the most of their unique abilities, winning over previously neutral allies, ignoring those who just don't get it, obtaining or creating artifacts of great power, growing and changing along the way to become more powerful, fulfilling the potential seen by their mentors/supporters/early adopters, while becoming more human (greater empathy, connection, humility) as they collect resources to prepare for their climactic battle against the inhuman enemy.

Hmm, sounds a bit like SIAI! (And while I'm throwing stones, let me make it clear that I live in a glass house, since the same story could just as easily be adapted to TSI, my organization, as well as many others)

This story is related to Robin's Abstract/Distant Future Bias:

Regarding distant futures, however, we’ll be too confident, focus too much on unlikely global events, rely too much on trends, theories, and loose abstractions, while neglecting details and variation. We’ll assume the main events take place far away (e.g., space), and uniformly across large regions. We’ll focus on untrustworthy consistently-behaving globally-organized social-others. And we’ll neglect feasibility, taking chances to achieve core grand symbolic values, rather than ordinary muddled values.

More bluntly, we seem primed to confidently see history as an inevitable march toward a theory-predicted global conflict with an alien united them determined to oppose our core symbolic values, making infeasible overly-risky overconfident plans to oppose them. We seem primed to neglect the value and prospect of trillions of quirky future creatures not fundamentally that different from us, focused on their simple day-to-day pleasures, mostly getting along peacefully in vastly-varied uncoordinated and hard-to-predict local cultures and life-styles.

Living a story is potentially risky, for example Tyler Cowen warns us to be cautious of stories as there are far fewer stories than there are real sc...
Fixedness From Frailty
by Vaniver — 2010-11-14T21:51:57.076Z

Thinking about two separate problems has caused me to stumble onto another, deeper problem. The first is psychic powers-what evidence would convince you to believe in psychic powers? The second is the counterfactual mugging problem- what would you do when presented with a situation where a choice will hurt you in your future but benefit you in a future that never happened and never will happen to the you making the decision?

Seen as a simple two-choice problem, there are some obvious answers: "Well, he passed test X, Y, and Z, so they must be psychic." "Well, he passed text X, Y, and Z, so that means I need to come up with more tests to know if they're psychic." "Well, if I'm convinced Omega is genuine, then I'll pay him $100, because I want to be the sort of person that he rewards so any mes in alternate universes are better off." "Well, even though I'm convinced Omega is genuine, I know I won't benefit from paying him. Sorry, alternate universe mes that I don't believe exist!"

I think the correct choice is the third option- I have either been tricked or gone insane.1 I probably ought to run away, then ask someone who I have more reason to believe is non-hallucinatory for directions to a mental hospital.

The math behind this is easy- I have prior probabilities that I am gullible (low), insane (very low), and that psychics / Omega exist (very, very, very low). When I see that the result of test X, Y, and Z suggests someone is psychic, or see the appearance of an Omega who possesses great wealth and predictive ability, that is generally evidence for all three possibilities. I can imagine evidence which is counter-evidence for the first but evidence for the second two, but I can't imagine the existence of evidence consistent with the axioms of probability which increases the possibility of magic (of the normal or sufficiently advanced technology kind) to higher than the probability of insanity.2

This result is shocking and unpleasant, though- I have decided some things are literally unbelievable, because of my choice of priors. P(Omega exists | I see Omega)<<1 by definition, because any evidence for the existence of Omega is at least as strong evidence for the non-existence of Omega because it's evidence that I'm hallucinating! We can't even be rescued by "everyone else agrees with you that Omega exists," because the potential point of failure is my brain, w...
META: article search by author (Resolved)
by  — 2010-11-14T18:49:42.934Z

When I click on a LW member's page, I get a list of all his/her posts and comments, in reverse chronological order. Sometimes there are a lot of these. It would be nice to be able to see just the top-level posts by a given user. Is this at all feasible to accomplish? Comment if you would (or wouldn't) like such a feature.
Another attempt to explain UDT
by cousin_it — 2010-11-14T16:52:41.241Z

(Attention conservation notice: this post contains no new results, and will be obvious and redundant to many.)

Not everyone on LW understands Wei Dai's updateless decision theory. I didn't understand it completely until two days ago. Now that I had the final flash of realization, I'll try to explain it to the community and hope my attempt fares better than previous attempts.

It's probably best to avoid talking about "decision theory" at the start, because the term is hopelessly muddled. A better way to approach the idea is by examining what we mean by "truth" and "probability" in the first place. For example, is it meaningful for Sleeping Beauty to ask whether it's Monday or Tuesday? Phrased like this, the question sounds stupid. Of course there's a fact of the matter as to what day of the week it is! Likewise, in all problems involving simulations, there seems to be a fact of the matter whether you're the "real you" or the simulation, which leads us to talk about probabilities and "indexical uncertainty" as to which one is you.

At the core, Wei Dai's idea is to boldly proclaim that, counterintuitively, you can act as if there were no fact of the matter whether it's Monday or Tuesday when you wake up. Until you learn which it is, you think it's both. You're all your copies at once.

More formally, you have an initial distribution of "weights" on possible universes (in the currently most general case it's the Solomonoff prior) that you never update at all. In each individual universe you have a utility function over what happens. When you're faced with a decision, you find all copies of you in the entire "multiverse" that are faced with the same decision ("information set"), and choose the decision that logically implies the maximum sum of resulting utilities weghted by universe-weight. If you possess some useful information about the universe you're in, it's magically taken into account by the choice of "information set", because logically, your decision cannot affect the universes that contain copies of you with different states of knowledge, so they only add a constant term to the utility maximization.

Note that the theory, as described above, has ho notion of "truth" and "probability" divorced from decision-making. That's how I arrived at understanding it: in The Strong Occam's Razor I asked whether it makes sense to "believe" one physical theory over...