trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : Brussels monthly meetup: time!
by Roxolan — 2013-11-12T18:44:13.952Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Brussels monthly meetup: time!

WHEN:
14 December 2013 01:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Rue des Alexiens 55 1000 Bruxelles

This month's topic: time! Are you struggling with the planning fallacy? Do you have scientific knowledge and/or science-fiction recommendations to share? Have you been stuck in the 14th of December 2013 for the past thousand years? If you have, there are worse places to spend that afternoon than with LW Brussels.

I'll try to find some kind of relevant experiment or game we can do, to continue the streak. Suggestions welcome.

From a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, we will meet at 1 pm at La Fleur en papier doré, close to the Brussels Central station. The meeting will be in English to facilitate both French and Dutch speaking members. Time travelers, please come incognito.

If you are coming for the first time, please consider filling out this one minute form, to share your contact information: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1qSvI1NWkFSsfIJhUMORb_Wd8fdJTVPhdw49grDQwRTI/viewform

The Brussels meetups use a Google Group: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/lesswrong-brussels

Discussion article for the meetup : Brussels monthly meetup: time!
Meetup : London social meetup - New venue
by philh — 2013-11-12T14:39:13.441Z

Discussion article for the meetup : London social meetup - New venue

WHEN:
17 November 2013 02:00:00PM (+0000)

WHERE:
London W6 8BS

LW London is experimenting with switching to weekly meetups, and also experimenting with a new venue! You should come along and complain about poor experimental design, over discussion of whatever else seems interesting.

I can't get the map to point at the right place, so: the venue is The Latymers, on Hammersmith Road. It's about five minutes' walk from the Hammersmith tube station, served by the District, Piccadilly, Circle, and Hammersmith & City lines. We'll meet at 2pm, and we'll have the two tables on the right as you enter, and we'll have a sign identifying us as us.

Feel free to contact me through email (philip.hazelden@gmail.com) or phone (07792009646) if you have questions or difficulty finding us.

Also check out our google group.

Discussion article for the meetup : London social meetup - New venue
Meetup : Amsterdam
by steven0461 — 2013-11-12T09:12:31.710Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Amsterdam

WHEN:
23 November 2013 02:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Oosterdokseiland 4, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Let's have a Netherlands LessWrong meetup on Saturday the 23rd. We're meeting in the Starbucks / "East Dock Lounge" on the Oosterdokseiland next to Amsterdam's Central Station. (The building is new and not yet pictured on Google Maps, but I've verified that it exists in the territory. Note that there's also a Starbucks in the station itself; that isn't where we're meeting.)

I'll bring a sign that says "LW". You can reach me at 0611431304.

Discussion article for the meetup : Amsterdam
MIRI course list study pairs
by Adele_L — 2013-11-12T05:44:57.723Z

Inspired by: On learning difficult things

In his recent post, user So8res says his number one piece of advice for learning something difficult is to have study partner to learn with you.

Since there is a decent amount of interest here in going through the MIRI course list, it might be worth finding other people here to learn and study this with, and to form pairs or groups.

So here is a space for finding and organizing such partnerships!

Of course, part of the reason I wrote this is because I am interested in learning these books with people. My background: I'm currently a second year Ph.D. student in mathematics (number theory). I'm still pretty new to the type of math emphasized here. I have Probabilistic Graphical Models, Category Theory for Computer Scientists and The Logic of Provability (by George Boolos -- not on the course list, but good to get background for the Robust Cooperation paper and for understanding Loeb's theorem) all lying around. I'm also taking a class on numerical analysis. Part of my problem is that I start lots of projects and then end up fizzling out on them, and I hope having a partner will help with this.

I've already been going through MIRI's publications with a friend from the local LW community, which has been really nice. I'm still interested in finding more partners <insert poly joke here> for going through books on the course list specifically. I'm also willing to explain things I understand, or let someone explain things to me (I've found that explaining things to someone else is a very good way of solidifying your understanding of something) when I have time.

Some things to consider:

What is the best online format for doing this? I've been doing this sort of thing with Workflowy + Mathflowy but there is probably something better.

Does a pair dynamic, or a group dynamic seem more likely to work? I'm hoping that there can be a collection of pairs all centered in a common community, or something like that.

If a central community seems like a good idea, how should it be centralized?

Probably some other issues/meta stuff.
On learning difficult things
by So8res — 2013-11-11T23:35:31.327Z

I have been autodidacting quite a bit lately. You may have seen my reviews of books on the MIRI course list. I've been going for about ten weeks now. This post contains my notes about the experience thus far.

Much of this may seem obvious, and would have seemed obvious if somebody had told me in advance. But nobody told me in advance. As such, this is a collection of things that were somewhat surprising at the time.

Part of the reason I'm posting this is because I don't know a lot of autodidacts, and I'm not sure how normal any of my experiences are. (Though on average, I'd guess they're about average.) As always, keep in mind that I am only one person and that your mileage may vary.

Pair up

When I began my quest for more knowledge, I figured that in this modern era, a well-written textbook and an account on math.stackexchange would be enough to get me through anything. And I was right… sort of.

But not really.

The problem is, most of the time that I get stuck, I get stuck on something incredibly stupid. I've either misread something somewhere or misremembered a concept from earlier in the book. Usually, someone looking over my shoulder could correct me in ten seconds with three words.

"Dude. Disjunction. Disjunction."

These are the things that eat my days.

In principle, places like stackexchange can get me unstuck, but they're an awkward tool for the job. First of all, my stupid mistakes are heavily contextualized. A full context dump is necessary before I can even ask my question, and this takes time. Furthermore, I feel dumb asking stupid questions on stackexchange-type sites. My questions are usually things that I can figure out with a close re-read (except, I'm not sure which part needs a re-read). I usually opt for a close re-read of everything rather than asking for help. This is even more time consuming.

The infuriating thing is that answering these questions usually doesn't require someone who already knows the answers: it just requires someone who didn't make exactly the same mistakes as me. I lose hours on little mistakes that could have been fixed within seconds if I was doing this with someone else.

That's why my number one piece of advice for other people attempting to learn on their own is do it with a friend. They don't need to be more knowledgeable than you to answer most of the questions that come up. They just need to make different misunder...
AI Policy?
by ChrisHallquist — 2013-11-11T19:40:07.830Z

Here's a question: are there any policies that could be worth lobbying for to improve humanity's chances re: AI risk?

In the near term, it's possible that not much can be done. Human-level AI still seems a long ways off (and it probably is), making it both hard to craft effective policy on, and hard to convince people it's worth doing something about. The US government currently funds work on what it calls "AI" and "nanotechnology," but that mostly means stuff that might be realizable in the near-term, not human-level AI or molecular assemblers. Still, if anyone has ideas on what can be done in the near term, they'd be worth discussing.

Furthermore, I suspect that as human-level AI gets closer, there will be a lot the US government will be able to do to affect the outcome. For example, there's been talk of secret AI projects, but if the US gov got worried about those, I suspect they'd be hard to keep secret from a determined US gov, especially if you believe (as I do) that larger organizations will have a much better shot at building AI than smaller ones.

The lesson of Snowden's NSA revelations seems to be that, while in theory there are procedures humans can use to keep secrets, in practice humans are so bad at implementing those procedures that secrecy will fail against a determined attacker. Ironically, this applies both to the government and everyone the government has spied on. However, the ability of people outside the US gov to find out about hypothetical secret government AI projects seems less predictable, dependent on decisions of individual would-be leakers.

And it seems like, as long as the US government is aware of an AI project, there will be a lot it will be able to do to shut the project down if desired. For foreign projects, there will be the possibility of a Stuxnet-style attack, though the government might be reluctant to do that against a nuclear power like China or Russia (or would it?) However, I expect the US to lead the world in innovation for a long time to come, so I don't expect foreign AI projects to be much of an issue in the early stages of the game.

The real issue is US gov vs. private US groups working on AI. And there, given the current status quo for how these things work in the US, my guess is that if the government ever became convinced that an AI project was dangerous, they would find some way to shut it down citing "national ...
Reduced impact AI: no back channels
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2013-11-11T14:55:42.135Z

A putative new idea for AI control; index here.

This post presents a further development of the reduced impact AI approach, bringing in some novel ideas and setups that allow us to accomplish more. It still isn't a complete approach - further development is needed, which I will do when I return to the concept - but may already allow certain types of otherwise dangerous AIs to be made safe. And this time, without needing to encase them in clouds of chaotic anti-matter!

Specifically, consider the following scenario. A comet is heading towards Earth, and it is generally agreed that a collision is suboptimal for everyone involved. Human governments have come together in peace and harmony to build a giant laser on the moon - this could be used to vaporise the approaching comet, except there isn't enough data to aim it precisely. A superintelligent AI programmed with a naive "save all humans" utility function is asked to furnish the coordinates to aim the laser. The AI is mobile and not contained in any serious way. Yet the AI furnishes the coordinates - and nothing else - and then turns itself off completely, not optimising anything else.

The rest of this post details an approach that could might make that scenario possible. It is slightly complex: I haven't found a way of making it simpler. Most of the complication comes from attempts to precisely define the needed counterfactuals. We're trying to bring rigour to inherently un-sharp ideas, so some complexity is, alas, needed. I will try to lay out the ideas with as much clarity as possible - first the ideas to constrain the AI, then ideas as to how to get some useful work out of it anyway. Classical mechanics (general relativity) will be assumed throughout. As in a previous post, the approach will be illustrated by a drawing of unsurpassable elegance; the rest of the post will aim to clarify everything in the picture:

Can Super-God detect whether God existed?

If we say that Mr. Y has had a reduced impact upon the world, what do we mean by that? It's hard to define, but here is a sufficient condition: if we come back in 50 years time and cannot find any evidence that Mr. Y ever existed, then he probably had a minute impact. If a very thorough analysis of the whole world and surrounding solar system, fed into the most sophisticated computer systems, fails to detect any evidence for or against the exis...
Meetup : Berlin
by blob — 2013-11-11T12:35:40.100Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Berlin

WHEN:
01 January 2019 01:30:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Berlin, Germany

This is a long term meetup announcement for Berlin. We're not sure we'll actually meet on the date given here, but there'll definitely be meetups (usually at least monthly) in the meantime.

Please join our mailing list for details.

Discussion article for the meetup : Berlin
Meetup : Saint-Petersburg: Game Event
by efim — 2013-11-10T20:23:51.037Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Saint-Petersburg: Game Event

WHEN:
24 November 2013 04:00:00PM (+0400)

WHERE:
Санкт-Петербург, м. Технологический Институт, ул.1-я Красноармейская, дом 15

Join us for evening of games from lesswrong! For our third meetup we will try out new format - maximizing games and exercises!
We will be meeting in PMG cafe, to find it consult our mailing list or contact me (see below)

16:00 - 17:00 - first part
sort of unregulated discussion on lesswrong related topics and\or selected posts that will be determined later and announced via mailing list. (see below)
Suggestions are welcomed and can be made in [http://vk.com/lw_spb]

17:00 - 19:00 - second part
Game of Rationalist Taboo.
[http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Rationalist_taboo]

19:00 - 21:00 - last part
Games and excersises on calibration:
Confidence intervals - solo, one-round Aumann for warm-up and as main course - Paranoid Debating!
[http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/The_Aumann_Game] [http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paranoid_debating]

This is our mailing list - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/less-wrong-saint-petersburg, subscribe for announcements, updates and other meetup-related information.
We also have group in http://vk.com/lw_spb
You can contact me on 8-(911)-843-56-44

You can come to beginning of any announced part of this meetup, though exact timing is not guaranteed each game will not start earlier than specified.

Discussion article for the meetup : Saint-Petersburg: Game Event
Design-space traps: mapping the utility-design trajectory space
by joaolkf — 2013-11-10T17:32:00.753Z

This is a small section on a paper I'm writing on moral enhancement. I'm trying to briefly summarize some of the points which were already made concerning local optima in evolutionary process and safety regarding taking humanity out of those local optima. You might find the text helpful in that it summarizes a very important concept. I don't think there's nothing new here, but I hope the way I tried to more properly phrase the utility-design trajectory space topology at the end can be fruitful. I would appreciate any insights you might have about that formulation in the end, how to better develop it more rigorously and some consequences. I do have some ideas, but I would want to hear what you have to say first. Any other kind of general feedback on the text is also welcomed. But keep in mind this is just a section of a larger paper and I'm mainly interested in how to develop and what are the consequences of the framework at the end, rather than in properly developing any points in the middle.

Local optima are points where every nearby reachable positions are worse off, but there is at least one far away position which is vastly better. A strong case has been made that evolution often gets stuck on such local optima. In evolutionary processes, fitness is a monotonic function, i.e., it will necessarily increase or be maintained, any decrease in fitness will always be selected against. If there are vastly better solutions (for, e.g., solving cooperation problems) but in order to achieve those solutions organisms would have to pass through a lesser fit step, evolution will never reach that vastly better configuration. Evolutionary processes are limited by the topology of the fitness-design trajectory space, it can only go from design x to design y if there is at least one trajectory from x to y which is flat or ascendant, any trajectory momentarily descendent cannot be taken by the evolutionary processes. Say one is on the cyan ring ridge of the colored graphic. Although there is a vastly better configuration on the red peak, one would have to travel through the blue moat in order to get there. Unless one is a process who could pass through a sharp decrease in fitness, there would be no way of improving towards the red peak. Evolution is particularly prone to local optima due to fitness monotonicity. Enhancing human beings with the use of technology d...
Meetup : DC Meetup: Goals spreadsheet, political advocacy as effective altruism, scary rationalist stories
by Benquo — 2013-11-10T14:26:53.257Z

Discussion article for the meetup : DC Meetup: Goals spreadsheet, political advocacy as effective altruism, scary rationalist stories

WHEN:
10 November 2013 03:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC 20001, USA

Roger's description:

"We will be: Talking about goals and trying to revive the goals spreadsheet Discussing several posts on Givewell's blog about political advocacy as effective altruism And (if people have them) telling Haloween stories, as per this thread (a bit late, I know, but why not?):"
http://lesswrong.com/lw/iyb/halloween_thread_rationalists_horrors/

Discussion article for the meetup : DC Meetup: Goals spreadsheet, political advocacy as effective altruism, scary rationalist stories
Meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup
by Maelin — 2013-11-10T13:59:31.709Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup

WHEN:
15 November 2013 06:30:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
5 / 52 Leicester St, Carlton

This month's Social Meetup will be running as usual on the third Friday of the month. All are welcome from 6:30pm.

Our social meetups are friendly, informal events where we chat about topics of interest and often play board games. Sometimes we will also play parlour games like Mafia (a.k.a. Werewolf) or Resistance. We usually order some sort of take-away dinner for any that wish to partake.

Just ring number 5 on the buzzer when you arrive in the foyer and we'll buzz you up. If you get lost or have any problems, feel free to call me (Richard) on 0421231789.

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup
A diagram for a simple two-player game
by Paul Crowley — 2013-11-10T08:59:35.069Z

(Copied from my blog)

I always have a hard time making sense of preference matrices in two-player games. Here are some diagrams I drew to make it easier. This is a two-player game:

North wants to end up on the northernmost point, and East on the eastmost. North goes first, and chooses which of the two bars will be used; East then goes second and chooses which point on the bar will be used.

North knows that East will always choose the easternmost point on the bar picked, so one of these two:

North checks which of the two points is further north, and so chooses the leftmost bar, and they both end up on this point:

Which is sad, because there’s a point north-east of this that they’d both prefer. Unfortunately, North knows that if they choose the rightmost bar, they’ll end up on the easternmost, southernmost point.

Unless East can somehow precommit to not choosing this point:

Now East is going to end up choosing one of these two points:

So North can choose the rightmost bar, and the two players end up here, a result both prefer:

I won’t be surprised if this has been invented before, and it may even be superceded – please do comment if so :)

Here’s a game where East has to both promise and threaten to get a better outcome:
The Evolutionary Heuristic and Rationality Techniques
by ChrisHallquist — 2013-11-10T07:30:54.279Z

Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg (2008) have proposed what they call the "evolutionary heuristic" for evaluating possible ways to enhance humans. It begins with posing a challenge, the "evolutionary optimality challenge" or EOC: "if the proposed intervention would result in an enhancement, why have we not already evolved to be that way?"

They write that there seem to be three main categories of answers to this challenge (what follows are abbreviated quotes, see original paper for full explanation):

Changed tradeoffs: "Evolution 'designed' the system for operation in one type of environment, but now we wish to deploy it in a very different type of environment..."

Value discordance: "There is a discrepancy between the standards by which evolution measured the quality of her work, and the standards that we wish to apply..."

Evolutionary restrictions: "We have access to various tools, materials, and techniques that were unavailable to evolution..."

In their original paper, Bostrom and Sandberg are interested in biological interventions like drugs and embryo selection, but it seems that their heuristic could also tell us a lot about "rationality techniques," i.e. methods of trying to become more rational expressible in the form of how-to advice, like what you often find advocated here at LessWrong or by CFAR.

Applying the evolutionary heuristic to rationality techniques supports the value of things like statistics, science, and prediction markets. However, it also gives us reason to doubt that a rationality technique is likely to be effective when it does't have any good answer to the EOC.

Let's start with values dissonance. I've previously noted that much human irrationality seems to be evolutionarily adaptive: "We have evolved to have an irrationally inflated view of ourselves, so as to better sell others on that view." That suggests that if you value truth more than inclusive fitness, you might want to take steps to counteract that tendency, say by actively trying to force yourself to ignore how having various beliefs will affect your self-image or others' opinions of you. (I spell this idea out a little more carefully at the previous link).

But it seems like the kind of rationality techniques discussed at LessWrong generally don't fall into the "values dissonance" category. Rather, if they make any sense at all, they're going to make sense because of diffe...
Meetup : First Meetup in Jacksonville, FL
by rule_and_line — 2013-11-10T00:03:55.103Z

Discussion article for the meetup : First Meetup in Jacksonville, FL

WHEN:
24 November 2013 04:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
869 Stockton St, Jacksonville, FL 32204 (Bold Bean Coffee Roasters)

Jacksonville's a pretty big town, but not much represented in LessWrong land. I'm looking to meet folks who also live here and are similarly interested in LW / CFAR / MIRI / etc.
This first meetup will likely be a socializing event - folks getting to know other folks and gauge interest.
Please leave a comment if you're interested in a LW meetup in Jacksonville, even if you can't attend one in the next weeks/months.
And remember, (almost) everyone is welcome, especially newbies!

Discussion article for the meetup : First Meetup in Jacksonville, FL