trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
[QUESTION]: Looking for insights from machine learning that helped improve state-of-the-art human thinking
by VipulNaik — 2014-07-25T02:10:10.859Z

This question is a follow-up of sorts to my earlier question on academic social science and machine learning.

Machine learning algorithms are used for a wide range of prediction tasks, including binary (yes/no) prediction and prediction of continuous variables. For binary prediction, common models include logistic regression, support vector machines, neural networks, and decision trees and forests.

Now, I do know that methods such as linear and logistic regression, and other regression-type techniques, are used extensively in science and social science research. Some of this research looks at the coefficients of such a model and then re-interprets them.

I'm interesting in examples where knowledge of the insides of other machine learning techniques (i.e., knowledge of the parameters for which the models perform well) has helped provide insights that are of direct human value, or perhaps even directly improved unaided human ability. In my earlier post, I linked to an example (courtesy Sebastian Kwiatkowski) where the results of naive Bayes and SVM classifiers for hotel reviews could be translated into human-understandable terms (namely, reviews that mentioned physical aspects of the hotel, such as "small bedroom", were more likely to be truthful than reviews that talked about the reasons for the visit or the company that sponsored the visit).

PS: Here's a very quick description of how these supervised learning algorithms work. We first postulate a functional form that describes how the output depends on the input. For instance, the functional form in the case of logistic regression outputs the probability as the logistic function applied to a linear combination of the inputs (features). The functional form has a number of unknown parameters. Specific values of the parameters give specific functions that can be used to make predictions. Our goal is to find the parameter values.

We use a huge amount of labeled training data, plus a cost function (which itself typically arises from a statistical model for the nature of the error distribution) to find the parameter values. In the crudest form, this is purely a multivariable calculus optimization problem: choose parameters so that the total error function between the predicted function values and the observed function values is as small as possible. There are a few complications that need to be addressed to g...
Intuitive cooperation
by Adele_L — 2014-07-25T01:48:22.196Z

This is an exposition of some of the main ideas in the paper Robust Cooperation. My goal is to make the ideas and proofs seem natural and intuitive - instead of some mysterious thing where we invoke Löb's theorem at the right place and the agents magically cooperate. Also I hope it is accessible to people without a math or CS background. Be warned, it is pretty cheesy ok.

In a small quirky town, far away from other cities or towns, the most exciting event is a game called (for historical reasons) The Prisoner's Dilemma. Everyone comes out to watch the big tournament at the end of Summer, and you (Alice) are especially excited because this year it will be your first time playing in the tournament! So you've been thinking of ways to make sure that you can do well.

The way the game works is this: Each player can choose to cooperate or defect with the other player. If you both cooperate, then you get two points each. If one of you defects, then that player will get three points, and the other player won't get any points. But if you both defect, then you each get only one point. You have to make your decisions separately, without communicating with each other - however, everyone is required to register the algorithm they will be using before the tournament, and you can look at the other player's algorithm if you want to. You also are allowed to use some outside help in your algorithm.

Now if you were a newcomer, you might think that no matter what the other player does, you can always do better by defecting. So the best strategy must be to always defect! Of course, you know better, if everyone tried that strategy, then they would end up defecting against each other, which is a shame since they would both be better off if they had just cooperated.

But how can you do better? You have to be able to describe your algorithm in order to play. You have a few ideas, and you'll be playing some practice rounds with your friend Bob soon, so you can try them out before the actual tournament.

Your first plan:

I'll cooperate with Bob if I can tell from his algorithm that he'll cooperate with me. Otherwise I'll defect.

For your first try, you'll just run Bob's algorithm and see if he cooperates. But there's a problem - if Bob tries the same strategy, he'll have to run your algorithm, which will run his algorithm again, and so...
Should altruists pay for profitable things?
by KatjaGrace — 2014-07-24T18:52:08.000Z

People often claim that activities which are already done for profit are bad altruistic investments, because they will be done anyway, or at least because the low hanging fruit will already be taken. It seems to me that this argument doesn’t generally work, though something like it does sometimes. Paul has written at more length about altruistic investment in profitable ventures; here I want to address just this one specific intuition which seems false.

Suppose there are a large number of things you can invest in, and for each one you can measure private returns (which you get), public returns (which are good for the world, but you don’t control), or total returns (the sum of those). Also, suppose all returns are diminishing, so if an activity is invested in, it pays off less the next time someone invests in it, both privately and publicly.

Suppose private industry invests in whatever has the highest private returns, until they have nothing left they want to invest. Then there is a market rate of return: on the margin more investment in anything gives the same private return, except for some things which always have lower private returns and are never invested in. This is shown in the below diagram as a line with a certain slope, on the private curve.

Total returns and private returns to different levels of investment.

There won’t generally be a market rate of total returns, unless people use the total returns to make decisions, instead of the private returns. But note that if total returns to an endeavor are generally some fraction larger than private returns (i.e. positive externalities are larger than negative ones), then the rates of total returns available across interventions that are invested in for private good should generally be higher than the market rate of private returns.

So, after the market has invested in the privately profitable things, the slope of every private returns curve for a thing that was invested in at all will be the same, except those that were never invested in. What do you know about those things? That the their private returns slope must be flatter, and that they have been invested in less.

Private returns for four different endeavors. Dotted lines show how much people have invested in the endeavor before stopping. At the point where people stop, all of the endeavors have the same rate of returns (slope).

Wh...
Knightian uncertainty in a Bayesian framework
by So8res — 2014-07-24T14:31:54.420Z

Recently, I found myself in a conversation with someone advocating the use of Knightian uncertainty. I pointed out that it doesn't really matter what uncertainty you call "normal" and what uncertainty you call "Knightian" because, at the end of the day, you still have to cash out all your uncertainty into a credence so that you can actually act.

My conversation partner, who I'm anonymizing as "Sir Percy", acknowledged that this is true if your goal is to maximize your expected gains, but denies that he should maximize expected gains. He proposes maximizing minimum expected gains given Knightian uncertainty ("using the MMEU rule"), and when using such a rule, the distinction between normal uncertainty and Knightian uncertainty does matter. I motivate the MMEU rule in my previous post, and in the next post, I'll explore it in more detail.

In this post, I will be examining Knightian uncertainty more broadly. The MMEU rule is one way of cashing out Knightian uncertainty into decisions in a way that looks non-Bayesian. But this decision rule is only one way in which the concept of Knightian uncertainty could prove useful, and I want to take a post to explore the concept of Knightian uncertainty in its own right.

According to Wikipedia:

In economics, Knightian uncertainty is risk that is immeasurable, not possible to calculate.

There are many ways to interpret this. In Sir Percy's coin toss, we cash out the idea of Knightian uncertainty by saying that we have "Knightian uncertainty" about whether the coin was weighted, and that we can narrow down our credence in the event H to a "Knightian interval" [.4, .6], but no further. This indicates a failure of introspection: an agent with this sort of Knightian uncertainty cannot get a precise credence for every event.

Another common phrase tossed around when people mention Knightian uncertainty is "black swan events", events that are unpredictable in foresight but which have very high impact. One common example of a black swan event was the dawn of personal computing: in the 1940's, very few people would have predicted that personal computers would become so pervasive, yet when they did, they completely altered the course of history.

People who expect black swan events to occur often claim they have Knightian uncertainty about the future. This indicates a failure of prediction: an agent with this sort of Knightian uncerta...
Three questions about source code uncertainty
by cousin_it — 2014-07-24T13:18:01.363Z

In decision theory, we often talk about programs that know their own source code. I'm very confused about how that theory applies to people, or even to computer programs that don't happen to know their own source code. I've managed to distill my confusion into three short questions:

1) Am I uncertain about my own source code?

2) If yes, what kind of uncertainty is that? Logical, indexical, or something else?

3) What is the mathematically correct way for me to handle such uncertainty?

Don't try to answer them all at once! I'll be glad to see even a 10% answer to one question.
Meetup : Warsaw Meetup proposal
by  — 2014-07-24T10:07:42.603Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Warsaw Meetup proposal

WHEN:
30 July 2014 05:30:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Warsaw

There was one Warsaw meetup that I know about, which I did not attend. My attempt at organizing another one didn't work out, nobody arrived.
So if you are interested in talking to a fellow LW reader in Warsaw, post a comment. Please suggest another date if this particular one doesn't suit you. We'll also agree on a place later.
Also, check the FB group for Warsaw LW users.

Discussion article for the meetup : Warsaw Meetup proposal
Alpha Mail
by Chef — 2014-07-24T05:01:59.057Z

I recently stumbled upon an article from early 2003 in Physics World outlining a bit of evidence that some of the constants in nature may change over time. In this particular case, researchers studying quasars noticed that the fine-structure constant (α) might have fluctuated a bit billions of years ago, in both directions (bigger and smaller) with significance 4.1 sigma. What intrigues me about this is that I’ve previously pondered if something like this might be found, albeit for very different reasons.

Back in the 90s I read a book that made a case for the universe as a computer simulation. That particular book wasn’t all that compelling to me, but I’ve never been completely satisfied with arguments against that model and tend to think of the universe generally in those terms anyway. Can I still call myself an atheist if I allow the possibility of a creator in this context? A non-practicing atheist maybe?

If this universe is a computer-generated simulation, programmed by another life form, perhaps the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) should be expanded to include life forms beyond our universe. It sounds nonsensical, but is it?

If I was to design and code an environment sophisticated enough to allow a species of life to evolve in that environment, I am not convinced that I would have many tools at my disposal to truly be able to understand and evaluate that species very well. Sure, I may be able to see them generating patterns that indicate intelligent life within my simulation, but this life form evolved and exists in an environment completely alien to me. I might have only limited methods at my disposal through which to communicate with them. They would exist in a place that to me is not exactly real and vice-versa.

I’ve always imagined it would be more like evaluating patterns and data readouts or viewing cells through a microscope more than say something like, The Sims. Having designed and implemented the very laws of their universe though, the fundamental constants of the universe could act as a sort of communication channel – one that allows me to at the very least let them know I existed (assuming they were intelligent and were looking). I could modify those constants in such a way over time in much the same manner that we might try to communicate with the more local and familiar concept of a...
Meetup : Atlanta Meetup: Self Deception
by Adele_L — 2014-07-24T04:12:37.790Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Atlanta Meetup: Self Deception

WHEN:
27 July 2014 07:00:00AM (-0400)

WHERE:
Norgate Manor 2388 Lawrenceville Highway Unit L Decatur, GA 30033

We'll be discussing Yvain's Positivism, Self Deception, and Neuroscience sequence: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Positivism,_Self_Deception,_and_Neuroscience_(sequence)

In particular, we will be discussing the article Simultaneously Right and Wrong: http://lesswrong.com/lw/1d/simultaneously_right_and_wrong/

Please read the whole sequence and focus specifically on Simultaneously Right and Wrong. We'll be talking about things your brain does to deceive itself and how to recognize and avoid these pitfalls.

There will be snacks and games! Hope to see you then!

Here's a link to the google streetview of the turn in to the apartment complex, since it's hard to find:
https://www.google.com/maps/@33.817518,-84.267679,3a,75y,356.44h,70.19t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sPGiXiJ00M8mb5eELuqwxeA!2e0

Discussion article for the meetup : Atlanta Meetup: Self Deception
Jokes Thread
by Joey Yudelson — 2014-07-24T00:31:36.379Z

This is a thread for rationality-related or LW-related jokes and humor. Please post jokes (new or old) in the comments.

------------------------------------

Q: Why are Chromebooks good Bayesians?

A: Because they frequently update!

------------------------------------

A super-intelligent AI walks out of a box...

------------------------------------

Q: Why did the psychopathic utilitarian push a fat man in front of a trolley?

A: Just for fun.
Fifty Shades of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
by PhilGoetz — 2014-07-24T00:17:43.189Z

The official story: "Fifty Shades of Grey" was a Twilight fan-fiction that had over two million downloads online. The publishing giant Vintage Press saw that number and realized there was a huge, previously-unrealized demand for stories like this. They filed off the Twilight serial numbers, put it in print, marketed it like hell, and now it's sold 60 million copies.

The reality is quite different.

I spoke by email to Anne Jamison, author of "fic: Why Fan-Fiction is Taking Over the World", and the person who originally reported the "over two million hits" that has been widely reported as "over two million downloads". The number two million was much too large to be possible given the size of the fandom, so I asked her about it. She replied,

The "millions" numbers I had were not public; I had them from screenshots from various writers. The counts were from fanfiction.net which, for the Twilight fandom, remained the biggest hub--most if not all stories that were also posted at Twilighted.net and TWCS were also posted on ff.net. Ff.net tallies reads but doesn't--unlike Wattpad or AO3--make them public.

But for all the sites, read or hit counts are for every time someone clicks on the story--so if they click through the front page to get to chapter 37, that's 2 reads.

Fan-fiction is published one chapter at a time. "Fifty Shades of Grey" has 26 chapters, but when it was originally published on fanfiction.net as "Master of the Universe", it had over 100 chapters. Let's say 120.

The number of hits a person generates while reading is determined by how they read it. fanfiction.net adds 1 hit every time any page of the story is reloaded. If you go to chapter 1 and read all the way through to chapter 120 in one sitting, that's 120 hits. If you log in, see it updated, go to chapter 1, and then go from there to the new chapter, that's at least 239 hits to read the book. If you refresh the page, that's another hit. (I just verified this myself by refreshing one chapter of one story of mine 3 times on fanfiction.net, checking the stats before and after.) If you read half of one chapter one day, and log in again and finish it the next, that's at least 2 hits. If you leave it in an open tab on your computer, that's 1 hit every time you open your browser. If you reread the story, the hits double. If you click on the story each d...
Meetup : Less Wrong Israel Meetup (Tel Aviv): Futurism and The Future
by SoftFlare — 2014-07-23T21:48:18.636Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong Israel Meetup (Tel Aviv): Futurism and The Future

WHEN:
24 July 2014 07:00:00PM (+0300)

WHERE:
98 Yigal Alon St., 33rd floor, Tel Aviv

We're going to have a meetup on Thursday, July 24th at Google Israel's offices, Electra Tower, 98 Yigal Alon st., Tel Aviv.

This time will be a discussion of Futurism - but not necessarily relating to AI. Body and mind modifications, utopias, and everything in between. Vadim Kosoy will open up the session by telling us about possible utopias, safeguards for self-modification and more.

Afterwards we'll have a semi-structured discussion where we'll discuss about our preferences for the future, and anything else relating to what's behind the horizon.

We'll start the meetup at 19:00, and we'll go on as much as we like to. (We've had great success with the earlier hour last meetup and so we're continuing on the trend)

Please come on time, as we will begin the discussions and talks close to when we start. But, if you can only come later, thats totally ok!

We'll meet at the 29th floor of the building (Note: Not where Google Campus is). If you arrive and cant find your way around, call Anatoly who is graciously hosting us at 054-245-1060.

Note that we are trying a transition to a meet once every two weeks. This is to allow people who cant make it to a meetup to not have to wait a whole month to meet again, and because we'd like to have both subject based and social meetups and doing one meetup a month would make that hard.

If you have any question feel free to email me at hochbergg@gmail.com or call me at 054-533-0678.

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong Israel Meetup (Tel Aviv): Futurism and The Future
Meetup : Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games
by RobinZ — 2014-07-23T17:04:02.714Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games

WHEN:
27 July 2014 03:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC

We will be meeting to hang out, play games, and engage in fun conversation.

(The courtyard is in the center of the building, and may be reached from either entrance through the doors straight ahead, on the other side of the information desk.)

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games
Gauging interest for a Tokyo area meetup group
by lirene — 2014-07-23T11:55:17.387Z

I'd like to gauge interest in an (english-language) Tokyo area meetup - given Tokyo's size, if a couple people are interested, it would be good to pick a location/day that's convenient for everybody. Otherwise I will announce a date and time and wait in a cafe with a book hoping that somebody will turn up.

I have been to several LW gatherings and have met consistently awesome and nice people, so if any Tokyo lurkers are reading this, I can assure you it's totally worth it to come! Please make yourself heard in the comments if you are interested.
A Visualization of Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence
by  — 2014-07-23T00:24:00.949Z

Through a series of diagrams, this article will walk through key concepts in Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence. The book is full of heavy content, and though well written, its scope and depth can make it difficult to grasp the concepts and mentally hold them together. The motivation behind making these diagrams is not to repeat an explanation of the content, but rather to present the content in such a way that the connections become clear. Thus, this article is best read and used as a supplement to Superintelligence.

Note: Superintelligence is now available in the UK. The hardcover is coming out in the US on September 3. The Kindle version is already available in the US as well as the UK.

Roadmap: there are two diagrams, both presented with an accompanying description. The two diagrams are combined into one mega-diagram at the end.

Figure 1: Pathways to Superintelligence

Figure 1 displays the five pathways toward superintelligence that Bostrom describes in chapter 2 and returns to in chapter 14 of the text. According to Bostrom, brain-computer interfaces are unlikely to yield superintelligence. Biological cognition, i.e., the enhancement of human intelligence, may yield a weak form of superintelligence on its own. Additionally, improvements to biological cognition could feed back into driving the progress of artificial intelligence or whole brain emulation. The arrows from networks and organizations likewise indicate technologies feeding back into AI and whole brain emulation development.

Artificial intelligence and whole brain emulation are two pathways that can lead to fully realized superintelligence. Note that neuromorphic is listed under artificial intelligence, but an arrow connects from whole brain emulation to neuromorphic. In chapter 14, Bostrom suggests that neuromorphic is a potential outcome of incomplete or improper whole brain emulation. Synthetic AI includes all the approaches to AI that are not neuromorphic; other terms that have been used are algorithmic or de novo AI.

Figure 1 also includes some properties of superintelligence. In regard to its capabilities, Bostrom discusses software and hardware advantages of a superintelligence in chapter 3, when describing possible forms of superintelligence. In chapter 6, Bostrom discusses the superpowers a superintelligence may have. The ...
Meetup : Bratislava Meetup XV.
by Viliam_Bur — 2014-07-22T17:25:18.702Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Bratislava Meetup XV.

WHEN:
28 July 2014 06:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Bistro The Peach, Mariánska 3, Bratislava

Pozor, zmena adresy! Voľná diskusia.

Discussion article for the meetup : Bratislava Meetup XV.