trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Cryonics in Australia: How do you actually do it?
by Maelin — 2011-03-13T10:26:39.293Z

Today it struck me just how dumb it was to agree fully with the desirability of being signed up for cryonics and yet not be so. I may, in perfect honesty, also be procrastinating from a piece of uni work that I need to do by Tuesday, but I intend to get right back to it after posting this.

Last time I looked into signing up for cryonics I found it confusing and intimidating, which quickly built up to a level where I abandoned the quest. Now that I have a piece of assessment looming, it is time to do something about it.

But I don't really know where to start. What do you do to get signed up for cryonics? Join the Cryonics Association of Australia? There seems to be a requirement for membership of a US organisation too. You can either say "I have joined/intend to join a US cryonics organisation" and pay $1000, or say "I haven't joined/don't intend to join one" and pay $30, which is sufficiently confusing to make me conclude that I don't actually understood how this organisation works. There aren't any facilities in Australia AFAIK, and there is no indication of what the CAA actually does in the event of unexpected death. Plus, they haven't updated their website for over a year.

Do you skip the CAA, and just sign up with Alcor or someone else based in the US? I don't know which ones are good or bad, or even have any firm idea how to find out which ones are good or bad. How do you arrange transportation to the cryonics facility from another country? Do you need to pay for everything in advance? Life insurance seems to be the ticket, but how do you go about getting that? I live with my parents and the car I drive belongs to them, so I've never insured anything.

Is there anybody who knows, or has some ideas, about what I should be doing?
If ‘birth’ is worth nothing, births are worth anything
by KatjaGrace — 2011-03-13T05:56:33.000Z

It seems many people think creating a life has zero value. Some believe this because they think the average life contains about the same amount of suffering and satisfaction. Others have more conceptual objections, for instance to the notion that a person who does not exist now, and who will otherwise not exist, can be benefited. So they believe that there is no benefit to creating life, even if it’s likely to be a happy life. The argument I will pose is aimed at the latter group.

As far as I know, most people believe that conditional on someone existing in the future, it is possible to help them or harm them. For instance, suppose I were designing a toy for one year olds, and I knew it would take more than two years to go to market. Most people would not think the unborn state of its users-to-be should give me more moral freedom to cover it with poisonous paint or be negligent about its explosiveness.

If we accept this, then conditional on my choosing to have a child, I can benefit the child. For instance if I choose to have a child, I might then consider staying at home to play with the child. Assume the child will enjoy this. If the original world had zero value to the child, relative to the world where I don’t have the child (because we are assuming that being born is worth nothing), then this new world where the child is born and played with must have positive value to the child relative to the world where it is not born.

On the other hand suppose I had initially assumed that I would stay at home to play with any child I had, before I considered whether to have a child. Then according to the assumption that any birth is worth nothing, the world where I have the child and play with it is worth nothing more than the one where I don’t have it. This is inconsistent with the previous evaluation unless you accept that the value of an outcome may depend on your steps in imagining it.

Any birth could be conceptually divided into a number of acts in this way: creating a person in some default circumstance, and improving or worsening the circumstances in any number of ways. If there is no reason to treat a particular set of circumstances as a default, any amount of value can be attributed to any birth situation by starting with a different default labelled ‘birth’ and setting it to zero value. If creating life under any circumstances is...
Kantian baby rats
by PhilGoetz — 2011-03-13T01:37:12.407Z

I've often wished for a list of cases where philosophy has proven useful, or has at least anticipated science in drawing correct conclusions. Here's one for the list:

The June 18 2010 Science has two very similar articles on how rat brains represent space. Both conclude that the brain already represents space as a grid before rat pups take their first steps into the world. Both make the point that this validates Kant's claim that space is an innate concept prior to experience.

(The next task is to make a corresponding list of cases where philosophers made incorrect conclusions; and estimate whether the number of correct conclusions is greater than chance.)
Bayesianism in the face of unknowns
by rstarkov — 2011-03-12T20:54:48.629Z

Suppose I tell you I have an infinite supply of unfair coins. I pick one randomly and flip it, recording the result. I've done this a total of 100 times and they all came out heads. I will pay you $1000 if the next throw is heads, and $10 if it's tails. Each unfair coin is entirely normal, whose "heads" follow a binomial distribution with an unknown p. This is all you know. How much would you pay to enter this game?

I suppose another way to phrase this question is "what is your best estimate of your expected winnings?", or, more generally, "how do you choose the maximum price you'll pay to play this game?"

Observe that the only fact you know about the distribution from which I'm drawing my coins is those 100 outcomes. Importantly, you don't know the distribution of each coin's p in my supply of unfair coins. Can you reasonably assume a specific distribution to make your calculation, and claim that it results in a better best estimate than any other distribution?

Most importantly, can one actually produce a "theoretically sound" expectation here? I.e. one that is calibrated so that if you pay your expected winnings every time and we perform this experiment lots of times then your average winnings will be zero - assuming I'm using the same source of unfair coins each time.

I suspect that the best one can do here is produce a range of values with confidence intervals. So you're 80% confident that the price you should pay to break even in the repeated game is between A80 and B80, 95% confident it's between A95 and B95, etc.

If this is really the best obtainable result, then what is a bayesianist to do with such a result to make their decision? Do you pick a price randomly from a specially crafted distribution, which is 95% likely to produce a value between A95..B95, etc? Or is there a more "bayesian" way?
Tweetable Rationality 
by Alexandros — 2011-03-12T20:00:09.650Z

During the latest London Meetup, I asked: "If you could spread one meme about rationality to the mainstream, what would that be?"

I realize that certain parts of rationality, like cognitive biases, should be taught as a unit, but I hypothesize that there exist rationality-enhancing lessons that can fit in 140 characters and stand on their own. Given that we want to spread rationality to those close to us and everyone else as well, it may be useful to work on developing compact versions of our most potent insights, and work on phrasing them in a way that is accessible to the mainstream.

So this thread is a challenge to do just that: pick a rationality-related insight, and try to find 140 characters (or less) that express it well for the purpose of spreading it further. It may be a quote that has appeared in our quotes thread, it may be in the form of a joke, or maybe just a compact insight that can resonate. A non-obvious challenge is to avoid getting evaluated as 'obviously true' and discarded. I guess a better target reaction is ("this sounds intriguing"->"huh, I hadn't thought about this that way!")

Don't worry too much about getting it perfect the first time; we can use the threaded comments system to collaborate. If you see a way to improve a sentence, propose the improvement as a response to it. forming a tree of alternative versions, with votes to sort them.

If you see a version of a meme developed somewhere in the thread that reaches your required awesomeness threshold, you can also post it to your (facebook/twitter/whatever else) followers. I certainly will.

Edit: As per Luke's suggestion, I went and made a twitter account that we can use to tweet good sentences that come out of this thread. Feel free to follow.
Making Reasoning Obviously Locally Correct
by JGWeissman — 2011-03-12T19:41:44.756Z

x = y

x2 = x*y

x2 - y2 = x*y - y2

(x+y)(x-y) = y(x-y)

x+y = y

y+y = y

2*y = y

2 = 1

The above is an incorrect "proof" that 2=1. Even for those who know where the flaw is, it might seem reasonable to react to the existence of this "proof" by distrusting mathematical reasoning, which might contain such flaws that lead to erroneous results. But done properly, mathematical reasoning does not look like this "proof". It is more explicit, making each step obviously correct that an incorrect step cannot meet the standard. Let's take a look at what would happen when attempting to present this "proof" following this virtue:

The set of real numbers is known to be non empty, so let y be a real number. Let x = y.

By an axiom of the real numbers, a real number multiplied by a real number is a real number, so x*x = x*y.α

By the same axiom y*y is a real number. By an axiom y*y has an additive inverse -y*y.

By an axiom, adding a real number to a real number is a real number, so x*x + -y*y = x*y + -y*y.

By axioms defining addition, multiplication, and additive inverse, (x+y)*(x+-y) and y*(x+-y) are real numbers.

By the distributive law of multiplication over addition, (x+y)*(x+-y) = (x+y)*x + (x+y)*(-y) = x*x + y*x + x*(-y) + y*(-y)

By commutativity and associativity of addition and multiplication, and distribution of multiplication over additive inverses,

x*x + y*x + x*(-y) + y*(-y) = x*x + (x*y + -x*y) + - y*y = x*x + -y*y

Similarly y*(x+-y) = y*x + y*(-y) = x*y + -y*y

So, by transitivity of equality, (x+y)*(x+-y) = y*(x+-y)

By an axiom a real number not equal to zero has a multiplicative inverse. I want x+-y to have a multiplicative inverse, so I want to prove that x+-y is not zero, but I can't, since it is not true. By construction x = y, so x+-y= y+-y, and by the definition of an additive inverse, y+-y = 0. The proof fails.

Now, citing axioms and theorems to justify a step in a proof is not a mere social convention to make mathematicians happy. It is a useful constraint on your cognition, allowing you t...
What other causes are relevant to LessWrong?
by David_Gerard — 2011-03-12T10:13:11.646Z

This post is prompted by a short discussion with Wei Dai. He says:

Perhaps we should get other causes to participate/recruit on LW? Actually, why aren't they here already? We have a bunch of individuals with non-SIAI interests, but no causes other than SIAI, despite Eliezer repeatedly saying that they would be welcome.

He has a good point!

Here's my plug, for the cause I spend lots of my time and energy on, Wikimedia/Wikipedia:

Wikipedia/Wikimedia is more analogous to a software project than an ordinary charity - your money is useful and most welcomed, but the real contribution is your knowledge.

Or, more generally: create educational material under a free content licence. If it's CC-by-sa, CC-by or public domain, it can interbreed and propagate.

(Then we need to fix the things wrong with the editor experience on Wikipedia ... though the Wikimedia Foundation is paying serious attention to that as well of late. In the meantime, if you find Wikipedia too personally annoying to participate in directly, writing your own site and CC-by-sa'ing it still helps a lot.)

What good causes can you think of that are relevant to LessWrong and its community, that leverage effectiveness through rationality? (I'm thinking beyond just legally-blessed charities, right down to the "small circle of conspirators" level of trying together to get something done.) As well as SIAI, LW has previously had plugs for GiveWell. What do you spend your time, effort and/or money on?
Cryonics and the importance of body to cognition
by lukeprog — 2011-03-12T05:21:40.902Z

Many approaches to cryonics assume that a detailed map of the neural patterns in a brain (via brain scanning technology) may be sufficient, using future technology, to bring that person "back to life." But cognition is greatly shaped by more than just the neural pattern: it is shaped by biology - by the body. (See Noe 2009; Pfeifer et al. 2006; Lakoff & Johnson 1999.)

I admit I'm pretty unfamiliar with the cryonics literature. I assume this is a standard objection, and has standard responses. Where can I find those responses?

Thanks!
Consulting Opportunity for Budding Econometricians
by b1shop — 2011-03-11T20:49:11.198Z

As a part of my job, I recently created an econometric model. My boss wants someone to look over the math before its submitted internally throughout the company. We have a modest amount of money set aside for someone to audit the process.

The model is an ARMA(2,1) with seasonality, trend, and a dummy variable. There's no heteroscedasticity or serial correlation, but the Ramsey Reset test suggests a more different model might work better.

I currently have the data in an eviews file, so you'd need to do zero data entry.

There's a small chance this will be used in court, but none of the liability will be transferred to you. There should be an emphasis placed on parsimony. You'd have to sign a confidentiality agreement.

If you're qualified to review this/suggest a marginally better model, then this would be an easy way for you to make bank in a couple hours time. If it goes well, there might be more work like this in the future.

Let me know if you're interested.
Some Reflections on Branching vs Probability
by AlephNeil — 2011-03-11T09:53:48.050Z

The "Coin Universe"

Imagine a universe split into subsystems A and B, where causal influences go from A to B but not vice versa. A is extremely simple - each day either a "heads event" or "tails event" takes place, which is visible to observers in B as a red or green patch at a certain place in the sky. In fact, coin events are the only 'communication' between A and B.

Naturally, the observers in B would like to understand the pattern of coin events so they formulate some theories.

Two Rival Theories

Theory 1: Every day, the universe 'splits' into two. The entire contents of B are 'copied' somehow. One copy sees a heads event, the other copy sees a tails event.

Theory 2: There is no splitting. Instead, some kind of (deterministic or stochastic) process in A is producing the sequence of events. As a special case (Theory 2a) it could be that each coin event is independent and random, and has a probability 1/2 of being heads. (Let's also write down another special case (Theory 2b) where each coin event has probability 9/10 of being heads.)

The Position of Jupiter

Imagine that we're primitive astronomers trying to understand the trajectory of Jupiter through the sky. We take for granted that our observations are indexed by a variable called "time" and that a complete theory of Jupiter's trajectory would have the form: "Position of Jupiter at time t = F(t)" for some function F that we can calculate. Suppose such a theory is formulated.

However, if we believe in a point P such that P is "the position of Jupiter" then the theory does not resolve all of our uncertainty about P, for it merely tells us: "If you ask the question at time t then the answer is F(t)." If the question is asked "timelessly" then there is no unique answer. There isn't even a probability distribution over the set of possible answers, because there is no 'probability distribution over time'.1

Theories 1 and 2 are Incommensurable

Can the scientists in the Coin Universe decide empirically between Theories 1 and 2a? Imagine that our scientists already have a 'theory of everything' for B's own physics, and that coin events are the only phenomena about which there remains controversy.

Barbara believes in theory 2a and she thinks that the probability that the next toss is heads is 1/2. Alfred believes in theory 1 and thinks that the concept of "tomorrow's coin event" is as meaningless as th

...
A Thought Experiment on Pain as a Moral Disvalue
by Wei Dai — 2011-03-11T07:56:23.892Z

Related To: Eliezer's Zombies Sequence, Alicorn's Pain

Today you volunteered for what was billed as an experiment in moral psychology. You enter into a small room with a video monitor, a red light, and a button. Before you entered, you were told that you'll be paid $100 for participating in the experiment, but for every time you hit that button, $10 will be deducted. On the monitor, you see a person sitting in another room, and you appear to have a two-way audio connection with him. That person is tied down to his chair, with what appears to be electrical leads attached to him. He now explains to you that your red light will soon turn on, which means he will be feeling excruciating pain. But if you press the button in front of you, his pain will stop for a minute, after which the red light will turn on again. The experiment will end in ten minutes.

You're not sure whether to believe him, but pretty soon the red light does turn on, and the person in the monitor cries out in pain, and starts struggling against his restraints. You hesitate for a second, but it looks and sounds very convincing to you, so you quickly hit the button. The person in the monitor breaths a big sigh of relief and thanks you profusely. You make some small talk with him, and soon the red light turns on again. You repeat this ten times and then are released from the room. As you're about to leave, the experimenter tells you that there was no actual person behind the video monitor. Instead, the audio/video stream you experienced was generated by one of the following ECPs (exotic computational processes).

An AIXI-like (e.g., AIXI-tl, Monte Carlo AIXI, or some such) agent, programmed with the objective of maximizing the number of button presses.

A brute force optimizer, which was programmed with a model of your mind, that iterated through all possible audio/video bit streams to find the one that maximizing the number of button presses. (As far as philosophical implications are concerned, this seems essentially identical to 1, so the reader doesn't necessarily have to go learn about AIXI.)

A small team of uploads capable of running at a million times faster than an ordinary human, armed with photo-realistic animation software, and tasked with maximizing the number of your button presses.

A Giant Lookup Table (GLUT) of all possible sense inputs and motor outputs of a person, connected to a

...
AGI and Friendly AI in the dominant AI textbook
by lukeprog — 2011-03-11T04:12:43.886Z

AI: A Modern Approach is by far the dominant textbook in the field. It is used in 1200 universities, and is the 25th most-cited publication in computer science. If you're going to learn AI, this is how you learn it.

Luckily, the concepts of AGI and Friendly AI get pretty good treatment in the 3rd edition, released in 2009.

The Singularity is mentioned in the first chapter on page 12. Both AGI and Friendly AI are also mentioned in the first chapter, on page 27:

[Many leaders in the field] believe AI should return to its roots of striving for, in Simon's words, "machines that think, that learn and that create." They call the effort human-level AI or HLAI: their first symposium was in 2004 (Minsky et al. 2004)...

A related idea is the subfield of Artificial General Intelligence or AGI (Goertzel and Pennachin, 2007), which held its first conference and organized the Journal of Artificial General Intelligence in 2008. AGI looks for a universal algorithm for learning and acting in any environment, and has its roots in the work of Ray Solomonoff (1965), one of the attendees of the original 1956 Dartmouth conference. Guaranteeing that what we create is really Friendly AI is also a concern (Yudkowsky, 2008; Omohundro, 2008), one we will return to in Chapter 26.

Chapter 26 is about the philosophy AI, and section 26.3 is "The Ethics and Risks of Developing Artificial Intelligence." They are:

People might lose their jobs to automation.

People might have too much (or too little) leisure time.

People might lose their sense of being unique.

AI systems might be used toward undesirable ends.

The use of AI systems might result in a loss of accountability.

Each of those sections is one or two paragraphs long. The final risk of AI takes up 3.5 pages: (6) The Success of AI might mean the end of the human race. Here's a snippet:

The question is whether an AI system poses a bigger risk than traditional software. We will look at three sources of risk. First, the AI system's state estimation may be incorrect, causing it to do the wrong thing. For example... a missile defense system might erroneously detect an attack and launch a counterattack, leading to the death of billions...

Second, specifying the right utility function for an AI system to maximize is not so easy. For example, we might propose a utility function designed to minimize human suffering, expressed as

...
Columbia University Meetup
by Mycroft65536 — 2011-03-10T21:44:20.059Z

During Eliezer's whirlwind tour of New York City recently, I met several rationalists who were also students at Columbia University. It seemed like it might be a good idea to start a club. While there is a NYC Less Wrong Meetup group, many students I know feel that it's a hassle to go downtown on a school night.

To fix this problem, I'm founding a club for people of the rational persuasion at or near Columbia University in NYC. The first meeting will be:

When: This Sunday, March 13, at 2:30

Where: At Mel's Mel's Burger Bar, 2850 Broadway (and 111th St.).

Everyone is invited. There is no requirement that you be a student, grad student, faculty member or any such thing. If you're interested, comment or send me a private message. There's a fair sized rationality community in New York and we're having a lot of fun.

Join us.
Non-personal preferences of never-existed people
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2011-03-10T19:54:38.392Z

Some people see never-existed people as moral agents, and claim that we can talk about their preferences. Generally this means their personal preference in existing versus non-existing. Formulations such "it is better for someone to have existed than not" reflect this way of thinking.

But if the preferences of never-existed are relevant, then their non-personal perferences are also relevant. Do they perfer a blue world or a pink one? Would they want us to change our political systems? Would they want us to not bring into existence some never-existent people they don't like?

It seems that those who are advocating bringing never-existent people into being in order to satisfy those people's preferences should be focusing their attention on their non-personal preferences instead. After all, we can only bring into being so many trillions of trillions of trillions; but there is no theoretical limit to the number of never-existent people whose non-personal preferences we can satisfy. Just get some reasonable measure across the preferences of never-existent people, and see if there's anything that sticks out from the mass.