trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Proposal: Systematic Search for Useful Ideas
by Nic_Smith — 2011-06-01T00:09:43.010Z

LessWrong is a font of good ideas, but the topics and interests usually expressed and explored here tend to cluster over few areas. As such, high-value topics may still be present for the community in other fields which can be systematically explored, rather than waiting for a random encounter. Additionally, there seems to be interest here in examining a wider variety of topics. In order to do this, I suggest creating a community list of areas to look into (besides the usual AI, Cog Sci, Comp Sci, Econ, Math, Philosophy, Psych, Statistics, etc.) and then reading a bit on the basics of these fields. In additional to potentially uncovering useful ideas per se, this also might offer the opportunity to populate the textbooks resource list and engage in not-random acts of scholarship.

Everyone Split Up, There’s a A Lot of Ideosphere to Cover

A rough sketch of how I think the project will work follows. I’ll be proceeding with this and tackling at least one or two subjects as long as there’s at least a few other people interested in working on it too.

Step 1, Community Evaluation: Using All Our Ideas or similar, generate a list of fields to investigate.
Step 2, Sign-Up: People have the best sense of what they already know and their abilities, so at this point anyone that wants to can pick a subject that’s best for them to look into.
Step 3, Study: I imagine this will mostly involve self-directed reading of a handful of texts, watching some online videos, and maybe calling up one or two people -- in other words, nothing too dramatic. If a vein of something interesting is found, it’s probably better that it’s “marked” for further follow-up rather than further examined alone.
Step 4, Post: Some these investigations will not reveal anything -- that’s actually a good thing (explained below); for these, a short “Looked into it, nothing here” sort of comment should suffice. Subjects with bigger findings should get bigger, more detailed comments/posts.

Evaluation of Proposal

As a first step, I’ll use a variation of the Heilmeier questions which is an (admittedly idiosyncratic) mix of the original version and gregv’s enhanced version.

What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon.
Produce comments or po

...
West LA Weekly Meetups: Wednesday, June 8th
by  — 2011-05-31T23:34:02.922Z

ETA: Meetups are now every other Tuesday.

When: 7pm - 9pm, Wednesday, June 8th.

Where: The Westside Pavillion - on the bridge, which connects Nordstrom 3rd floor with Barnes & Noble / Landmark Theatres 3rd floor.

Parking is free for 3 hours.

Whether you're a regular reader or totally new, here for the theoretical musings or the practical things, come by and say hello! If enough people want to change the time or place for future meetups, we will - send me a message.

I will be the guy with the map.

See also: Irvine weekly meetups, SoCal google group.
Generalizing From One Example & Evolutionary Game Theory
by multifoliaterose — 2011-05-31T23:23:32.998Z

Back in April 2010 Robin Hanson wrote a post titled Homo Hypocritus Signals. Hal Finney wrote a comment

This reasoning does offer an explanation for why big brains might have evolved, to help walk the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Still it seems like the basic puzzle remains: why is this hypocrisy unconscious? Why do our conscious minds remain unaware of our subconscious signaling?

to which Vladimir M responded. This post is a short addendum to the discussion.

In Generalizing From One Example Yvain wrote

There's some evidence that the usual method of interacting with people involves something sorta like emulating them within our own brain. We think about how we would react, adjust for the other person's differences, and then assume the other person would react that way.

It's plausible that the evolutionary pathway to developing an internal model of other people's minds involved bootstrapping from one's awareness of one's own mind. This would work well to the extent that there was psychological unity of humankind. In our evolutionary environment, people who interact with each other were more similar to one another than they are today.

I don't understand many of the decision theory posts on Less Wrong, but my impression is that the settings in which one is better off with timeless decision theory or updateless decision theory than with casual decision theory are situations in which the other agents have a good model of the one's own internal wiring.

This together with one's model of others being based on one's model of one's own mind and the psychological unity of humankind would push in the direction of the conscious mind adapting to something like timeless/updateless decision theory; based around cooperating with others. But the unconscious mind would then have free reign to push in the direction of defection (say, in one-shot prisoners' dilemma situations) because others would not have conscious access toward their own tendency toward defection and consequently would not properly emulate this tendency toward defection in their model of the other person.

The analysis given here is overly simplistic; for example quoting myself

The conscious vs. unconscious division is not binary but gradualist. There are aspects of one's thinking that one is very aware of, aspects that one is somewhat aware of, aspects that one is obliquel

...
Are the Sciences Better Than the Social Sciences For Training Rationalists?
by James_Miller — 2011-05-31T17:45:52.368Z

A Wall Street Journal article by Harvard professor of government Harvey Mansfield claims that the social sciences and humanities are inferior to the sciences. The article implicitly urges undergraduates to major in science. From the article:

“Science has knowledge of fact, and this makes it rigorous and hard.”

“Others try to imitate the sciences and call themselves ‘social scientists.’ The best imitators of scientists are the economists. Among social scientists they rank highest in rigor, which means in mathematics... Just as Gender Studies taints the whole university with its sexless fantasies, so economists infect their neighbors with the imitation science they peddle. (Game theorists, I'm talking about you.)”

Do you agree with this? As a game theorist I probably have a rather biased view of the situation. It's certainly true that the ideal of the scientific method is vastly better than the practice of economists, but I think that majoring in economics provides better training for a rationalist than majoring in any of the sciences does.

Economics explicitly considers what it means to be rational. Although it infrequently considers ways in which humans are irrational, I'm under the impression that the hard sciences never do this. Furthermore, because economists can almost never perform replicable experiments we have to rely on what everyone in the profession recognizes as messy data; therefore we’re far more equipped than hard scientists to understand the limits of using statistical inference to draw conclusions from real world situations. Although I have seen no data on this, I bet that a claim by nutritionists that they have found a strong causal link between some X and heart disease would be treated with far more skepticism by the average economist than the average hard scientist.
Remaining human
by tel — 2011-05-31T16:42:42.354Z

If our morality is complex and directly tied to what's human—if we're seeking to avoid building paperclip maximizers—how do you judge and quantify the danger in training yourself to become more rational if it should drift from being more human?

My friend is a skeptical theist. She, for instance, scoffs mightily at Camping's little dilemma/psychosis but then argues from a position of comfort that Rapture it's a silly thing to predict because it's clearly stated that no one will know the day. And then she gives me a confused look because the psychological dissonance is clear.

On one hand, my friend is in a prime position to take forward steps to self-examination and holding rational belief systems. On the other hand, she's an opera singer whose passion and profession require her to be able to empathize with and explore highly irrational human experiences. Since rationality is the art of winning, nobody can deny that the option that lets you have your cake and eat it too is best, but how do you navigate such a narrows?

In another example, a recent comment thread suggested the dangers of embracing human tendencies: catharsis might lead to promoting further emotional intensity. At the same time, catharsis is a well appreciated human communication strategy with roots in Greek stage. If rational action pulls you away from humanity, away from our complex morality, then how do we judge it worth doing?

The most immediate resolution to this conundrum appears to me to be that human morality has no consistency constraint: we can want to be powerful and able to win while also want to retain our human tendencies which directly impinge on that goal. Is there a theory of metamorality which allows you to infer how such tradeoffs should be managed? Or is human morality, as a program, flawed with inconsistencies that lead to inescapable cognitive dissonance and dehumanization? If you interpret morality as a self-supporting strange loop, is it possible to have unresolvable, drifting interpretations based on how you focus you attentions?

Dual to the problem of resolving a way forward is the problem of the interpreter. If there is a goal to at least marginally increase the rationality of humanity, but in order to discover the means to do so you have to become less capable of empathizing with and communicating with humanity, who acts as an interpreter between...
Making projects happen
by jsalvatier — 2011-05-31T15:56:34.766Z

Judging by the number of upvotes, Brandon Reinhart's analysis of SIAI's financial filings is valuable to quite a few people. Similar analysis' of Alcor and the Cryonics Institute would be quite valuable. There has been talk of more work on condensing LW content and placing it on the wiki. I'm sure lots of people would like to know about the literature on low dose asprin. People seem to want a front page more accessible to newcomers. Will these projects get accomplished? Some of them, but probably fewer than optimal. I think we can do better.

I would like to look for ways to channel group willingness to contribute to a project into focused individual willingness to work on a project.

Observations about the problem space

The following is based on discussions at the Seattle Less Wrong meetup.

Many people would get a moderate amount of benefit from such projects, but only a small number would end up putting in the hard work to make them happen.

The people most enthusiastic about a given project may not be the best people to work on the project. Perhaps they have very time consuming jobs or have a hard time being objective about the topic (e.g. someone who gets especially emotional about Cryonics) or have too many other projects already or perhaps they are intellectually motivated but not emotionally motivated by the project which might make it difficult to Get Things Done.

Trying to generalize too early is a risk here. Going out and building fancy tools or otherwise trying something elaborate is probably not a good idea at first. Better to try some concrete trials first and learn from those experiences.

Sources of motivation

There are three major potential sources of motivation: Money (the unit of caring), social status (Karma, kind words etc.), things (pizza, books, cookies, pony pictures).

Money

Transfers of money (the unit of caring) are often much more efficient than transfers of other goods.

Extrinsic rewards (especially money) can reduce intrinsic motivation.

Large monetary rewards can also make relationship between the project contributors and the project sponsors less social.

Many Less Wrong people are high paid

Less likely to be motivated by small monetary rewards

Have more money to contribute to projects.

Not all Less Wrong people are high paid.

There are services for colle

...
[SEQ RERUN] New Improved Lottery
by badger — 2011-05-31T13:09:13.236Z

Today's post, New Improved Lottery was originally publeslished on April 13, 2007. A summary (from the LW wiki):

If the opportunity to fantasize about winning was a rational justification for the lottery, we could design a "New Improved Lottery", where a single payment buys an epsilon chance of becoming a millionaire over the next five years. All your time could be spent thinking how you could become a millionaire at any moment.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments of the original post).
This post is part of a series rerunning Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts so those interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Lotteries: A Waste of Hope, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki, or creating exercises. Go here for more details, or to discuss the Sequence Reruns.
[Career advice] Machine learning jobs
by outlier — 2011-05-31T09:27:20.419Z

I'm about to get my masters degree in computer science. I've been interested in AI for a few years, studying mathematics and machine learning. I'm pretty sure that I would like to work as machine learning specialist. The question I have for you is: how do I do that?

I live in Szczecin, Poland. It's just 150km from Berlin and I am willing to move there if necessary. My current plan is:

Work as Java programmer with a friend of mine.

Keep on learning maths and machine learning.

Learn German.

Earn some money to move to Berlin.

Move to Berlin

Find machine-learning related job.

I'm still unsure if I should get phd. I don't know if machine learning jobs are common in private sector, but I think they will be in near future (am I wrong about this?). What do you think?
Houston Hackerspace Meetup : Saturday June 4, 2:00PM
by Cog — 2011-05-31T05:05:05.575Z

Saturday June 4, 2:00PM

TX/RX Labs Hackerspace

2010 Commerce St

Houston, TX 77002

The third meeting of the Houston Less Wrong group will be this coming Saturday at TX/RX Labs at 2:00PM. We had some success last time, with Orange Cat (I apologize if I got the formatting of your handle wrong) showing up during the meeting time, and another prospective member who showed up earlier in the day. Hopefully Saturday will be easier for some people.

We have decided to do a reading group on Jayne's "Probability Theory: The Logic of Science". We're still knocking around the reading schedule, so if you want to get involved, let me know. We will hopefully be doing other things as well, but I'll start scheduling those as we get more interest.

Pizza or prepared food are a possibility, if people show up hungry. We have a full kitchen in the hackerspace.

Directions

A pictoral view

This is the set of buildings that the hackerspace is in. It's difficult to see our front from this angle - unfortunately google maps decided to map everything but our little section of commerce street. It's near where the white truck and red motorcycle are. Currently, there is an old military vehicle and generator in front.

And this is the empty lot that you can park in if all the nearby marked spots are taken..

For more reference:

http://maps.google.com/maps?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=2010+Commerce+St.+Houston,+Tx+77002&oe=utf-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x8640bed8ed95625d:0x4c9af214d2032035,2010+Commerce+St,+Houston,+TX+77002&gl=us&ei=C9LRTYHvE8fL0QGu8OjlCw&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBkQ8gEwAA
Overcoming Suffering & Buddhism
by Hul-Gil — 2011-05-31T04:35:00.004Z

The recent post (http://lesswrong.com/lw/5xx/overcoming_suffering_emotional_acceptance) by Kaj_Sotala is very reminiscent of Buddhism to me. Since no one has commented with similar sentiments, and since I get the impression Buddhism is not a common topic of discussion here, I thought I'd make a quick article for the curious. I'm not exactly a Buddhist myself, but I have a good few books about the topic and have experienced mild success with meditation.

Buddhism is one of the few religious belief systems not entirely repellent to me, for a couple of reasons. For one, Buddhism - or some traditions thereof, including the "original" (Theravada), I believe - encourages adherents to be skeptical. The emphasis is not on faith, gods, or symbolism, but rather on actual practice and experience: in other words, on obtaining evidence. You can see for yourself whether or not the system works, because the reward is not in another life. It is the cessation of suffering in this one.
For two, that emphasis on the problem of suffering seems very reasonable to me. Buddhism holds that the problem with this world is suffering, and that suffering can be alleviated by methods somewhat similar to the ones in Kaj_Sotala's post. (The choice of the word "mindfulness" - was that a coincidence, or a reference to the Buddhist concept of the same name?) The idea is that suffering results from unfulfilled desires, themselves a product of an uncontrolled mind. You become upset when the world is This Way, but you want it to be That Way; and even if you try to accept the world-as-it-is, your brain is rebellious. Unpleasant feelings arise, unbidden and unwelcome.

The solution, according to Buddhism, is meditation. There are many different types of meditation, both in technique and in topic meditated upon, but I won't go into them here. Meditation appears to be physically healthy just on its own; a quick Google search on "meditation brain" will bring up hundreds of articles about how it affects the thinking organ. However, the main goals of Buddhist meditation are a.) attaining control over your own mind (i.e., learning to separate sense impressions from emotions and values, so that harsh words or even blows cause no corresponding mental disturbance), and b.) attaining insight into Buddhist thought about subjects such as love, impermanence, mindfulness, or skillfulness.

Buddhist thought on some sub...
Defeating Mundane Holocausts With Robots
by lsparrish — 2011-05-30T22:34:39.020Z

Causes of death such as malaria and hunger are certainly worth allocating resources towards preventing, for today's results-oriented philanthropist. It's almost ridiculous to realize we can put $1000 towards mosquito netting and save a human life. However, these kinds of things will eventually run out of low-hanging fruit, especially as countries become more developed. By advancing the adoption of certain key near-term technologies just a little sooner, we can make rather significant gains even in developed countries where the causes of death are more complex and occur later in life.

According to Brad Templeton's executive summary of the case for robotic cars:

Every year we delay deploying robocars (and related technology) in the USA, human driving will kill another 35,000, and 1.2 million worldwide.

Anything in the range of a million people per year definitely qualifies as a holocaust! And yet this is actually a fairly small percentage of the world death rate (about 57 million per year) overall. (Most deaths are caused by heart disease or infectious diseases.) Nonetheless, self-driving cars strike me as an attractive initial goal for the following reasons:

More reliable EMS. Self-driving cars could coordinate with self-driving ambulances, leading to sooner arrival times and lower death rates.

Higher world GDP. Robin Hanson estimates 5-20% long term gains due to road use efficiency alone. Additional economic benefits would include reduced dependence on oil, and fewer deaths (from auto accidents) among the working (pre-retirement-age) population.

Near-term / the world is ready. Self-driving cars seem science-fictional, but they don't trip deep philosophical flags the way cryonics or curing aging does. And there are youtube videos of cars driving themselves safely all over the country, so people can't argue that they are vaporware.

The robotic exo-suit is another near-term source for dramatically increased GDP -- a person wearing one can perform manual labor tasks with greater endurance and reduced danger of physical injury, without undergoing painful physical conditioning. It can delay forced retirement age, as a feeble body will no longer be an obstacle to a number of tasks. Furthermore, powered suits may prove the key to truly comfortable hermetically sealed environments -- something that can be very handy when old age hits and your immune system decline...
Natural wireheadings: formal request.
by MrMind — 2011-05-30T16:21:08.597Z

This post is a formal request for everybody in this forum, who are the most likely humans to produce an FAI in the future, that in the possible resulting utopia some activity will still be available, even if they are not based on challenges of increasing complexity. I call these activity natural wireheadings, and since it is my right to determine my own fun-generating activities, I hereby formally request that some simple pleasure, listened below, will still be available at *any* point in my future cone, and that I will consider a dystopia any future which deprives me of these natural wireheadings (if anyone is still around caring for those things).
A (non-exhaustive) list of them includes the following:
- sex
- eating food/drinking
- feeling relieved for having emptied my bowels
- dancing
- the pleasure of physical activity (wood-carving, sculpting, running, etc)
- the rapture I feel when in the presence of a safe ancestral environment
- social laughter
- the pleasure of talking in a small, same-minded crowd
- listening to pop/metal/rap music
- the pleasure of resting when tired
- scratching an itch
-...
More will come!
[SEQ RERUN] Lotteries: A Waste of Hope
by badger — 2011-05-30T15:13:58.848Z

Today's post, Lotteries: A Waste of Hope was originally published on April 13, 2007. A summary (from the LW wiki):

Some defend lottery-ticket buying as a rational purchase of fantasy — paying a dollar for a day's worth of pleasant anticipation. But then your valuable brain is occupied with a fantasy whose real probability is nearly zero, investing emotional energy. Without the lottery, people might fantasize about things to actually do, which then might lead to making the fantasy a reality. To work around a bias, you must first notice it, analyze it, and decide that it is bad. Many people, such as the lottery advocates above, often fail to complete the third step.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments of the original post).
This post is part of a series rerunning Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts so those interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Priors as Mathematical Objects, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki, or creating exercises. Go here for more details, or to discuss the Sequence Reruns.