trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Carpe Diem, the Optimization Game: Level 1
by Zvi — 2015-03-17T21:41:58.000Z

Leads To: Carpe Diem: The Problem of Scarcity and Abundance

Less Wrong contributor owencb links us to a fourteen page paper of his that proposes optimizing your time via a three-resource model. You can find the full document here. Here’s his abstract, which is a good summary:

Abstract: We get lots of opportunities to convert between time and money, and it’s hard to know which ones to take, since they use up other mental resources. I introduce the neutral hour as a tool for thinking about how to make these comparisons. A neutral hour is an hour spent where your mental energy is the same level at the start and the end. I work through some examples of how to use this tool, look at implications for some common scenarios, and explore the theory behind them.

This is a great advancement on the two-resource model of money and time.

In the two-resource model, your time can be traded for dollars, and dollars can be used to buy time, so your task is to figure out the exchange rate and take all offers better than the exchange rate, while declining offers below the exchange rate. If you notice yourself running out of time but not money, or vice versa, you can adjust the exchange rate until the market clears.

In Owen’s three-resource model, you have not only money (M) and time (T) but mental energy (E). Some activities, such as doing your taxes, are taxing, and cost mental energy. Other activities, such as taking a nice walk, are recuperative and recover your mental energy. You can use your recuperative resources to turn time (T) into mental energy (E) as needed, so the exchange rate between T and E can be solved for. Thus, by noting the net gain or loss of E, we can observe what Owen calls the NH, or neutral hour, cost of an activity in time, and compare this to your chosen exchange rate.

He also notes that your current level of energy (E) changes the neutral time cost of activities; being below the threshold needed is very bad, but being too far above that threshold means you’ll burn off energy automatically over time, increasing effective cost, so he recommends keeping your energy level in the optimal range as much as possible, while noting implicitly that having too much energy is a small mistake relative to too little. He also gives the example of a chess tournament that is exhausting today but invigorating in the long term, noting that there are in truth far more than two...
Identity and quining in UDT
by Squark — 2015-03-17T20:01:12.375Z

Outline: I describe a flaw in UDT that has to do with the way the agent defines itself (locates itself in the universe). This flaw manifests in failure to solve a certain class of decision problems. I suggest several related decision theories that solve the problem, some of which avoid quining thus being suitable for agents that cannot access their own source code.

EDIT: The decision problem I call here the "anti-Newcomb problem" already appeared here. Some previous solution proposals are here. A different but related problem appeared here.

Updateless decision theory, the way it is usually defined, postulates that the agent has to use quining in order to formalize its identity, i.e. determine which portions of the universe are considered to be affected by its decisions. This leaves the question of which decision theory should agents that don't have access to their source code use (as humans intuitively appear to be). I am pretty sure this question has already been posed somewhere on LessWrong but I can't find the reference: help? It also turns out that there is a class of decision problems for which this formalization of identity fails to produce the winning answer.

When one is programming an AI, it doesn't seem optimal for the AI to locate itself in the universe based solely on its own source code. After all, you build the AI, you know where it is (e.g. running inside a robot), why should you allow the AI to consider itself to be something else, just because this something else happens to have the same source code (more realistically, happens to have a source code correlated in the sense of logical uncertainty)?

Consider the following decision problem which I call the "UDT anti-Newcomb problem". Omega is putting money into boxes by the usual algorithm, with one exception. It isn't simulating the player at all. Instead, it simulates what would a UDT agent do in the player's place. Thus, a UDT agent would consider the problem to be identical to the usual Newcomb problem and one-box, receiving $1,000,000. On the other hand, a CDT agent (say) would two-box and receive $1,000,1000 (!) Moreover, this problem reveals UDT is not reflectively consistent. A UDT agent facing this problem would choose to self-modify given the choice. This is not an argument in favor of CDT. But it is a sign something is wrong with UDT, the way...
Two methods on akrasia / unhealthy habits / addictions
by  — 2015-03-17T17:14:20.292Z

1. Ignoring goals, tabooing / identifying with methods - the opposite of Beeminder, even the opposite of SMART

Suppose I want to lose weight. Have a general idea of how much and how fast, and decide on the method. Then I ignore the goal and focus on the method. I ignore both the long-term and short-term goal (no Beeminder), ignore the measurement (SMART), ignore all the common wisdom here. The reason I ignore them that I want to avoid constantly haggling with myself, using the soda example, "Surely this one glass will not set me back much?" and instead I identify with the method, such as, simply shaping my identity as a person who does not drink soda, period. Instead of being conscious of the goal, just focus on this new identity. Without a goal in mind, there is nothing to haggle about and that makes it work. So there is not that kind of "Perhaps, this is a special case because X so half a glass should be allowed..." instead, it is just taboo, because it violates my new sense of self of a person who just does not do that. The beauty of this solution that there is nothing to haggle about. It is a harnessing of the cognitive dissonance and protect-your-identity mechanisms, if the new self is the sort of person who just does not drink soda then the only way to not get dissonant and to preserve the identity is to not do so. This, so far, seems to be surprisingly easy for me. It is similar to religious taboos, like people who don't eat X because then they could no longer consider themselves a pious follower of religion Y and it would shake their identity. You could say it is a custom-made nanoreligion each time. Being pious by not violating self-made taboos, preserving the identity of the pious person, without having keep the goal in consciousness.

2. Don't fight The Boss

Someone casually dropped on stopdrinking.reddit.com "It is not about fighting your urges, it is about stopping to fight your better judgement." Precisely. There is a Higher Self (say, Superego) telling me to live healthy and a Lower Self (Ego, Id) telling me to indulge in urges and cravings. Identify with Higher Self, and it is a constant fight with the Lower Self. Identify with the Lower Self and all I need to do is to surrender to the commands of the Higher Self. It does not feel good, but in this case it is okay to not feel good. I call the Higher Self The Bos. It is like "I r...
Don't Be Afraid of Asking Personally Important Questions of Less Wrong
by Evan_Gaensbauer — 2015-03-17T06:54:52.923Z

Related: LessWrong as a social catalyst
I primarily used my prior user profile asked questions of Less Wrong. When I had an inkling for a query, but I didn't have a fully formed hypothesis, I wouldn't know how to search for answers to questions on the Internet myself, so I asked them on Less Wrong.
The reception I have received has been mostly positive. Here are some examples:

I asked for a cost-benefit analysis of deliberately using nicotine for its nootropic effects.

Back when I was trying to figure out which college major to pursue, I queried Less Wrong about which one was worth my effort. I followed this up with a discussion about whether it was worthwhile for me to personally, and for someone in general, to pursue graduate studies.

Other student users of Less Wrong benefit from the insight of their careered peers:

A friend of mine was considering pursuing medicine to earn to give. In the same vein as my own discussion, I suggested he pose the question to Less Wrong. He didn't feel like it at first, so I posed the query on his behalf. In a few days, he received feedback which returned the conclusion that pursuing medical school through the avenues he was aiming for wasn't his best option relative to his other considerations. He showed up in the thread, and expressed his gratitude. The entirely of the online rationalist community was willing to respond provided valuable information for an important question. It might have taken him lots of time, attention, and effort to look for the answers to this question by himself.

My friends, users Peter Hurford and Arkanj3l, have had similar experiences for choosing a career and switching majors, respectively.

In engaging with Less Wrong, with the rest of you, my experience has been that Less Wrong isn't just useful as an archive of blog posts, but is actively useful as a community of people. As weird as it may seem, you can generate positive externalities that improve the lives of others by merely writing a blog post. This extends to responding in the comments section too. Stupid Questions Threads are a great example of this; you can ask questions about your procedural knowledge gaps without fear of reprisal. People have gotten great responses about getting more value out of conversations, to being more socially successful, to learning and appreciating music as an adult. Less Wrong may be one of few ...
Socially optimal weirdness
by KatjaGrace — 2015-03-17T03:57:00.000Z

I wrote recently about considerations in choosing how weird to be. Today let us consider the question from an impersonal perspective: what is the socially optimal allocation of weirdness? Society and weirdness are complicated, so again let us just discuss some considerations.

Social costs of people being judged badly

When individuals avoid being weird, it is often because they want to be judged well in some way. From an impersonal perspective, does it matter if you judge me badly? This seems to depend on the extent to which people judge one another absolutely, versus relatively, and whether people care about the judgement absolutely or relatively.

If you judge me as a relatively bad friend, and then you replace me with a different friend, this seems bad for me, but good for your other friend, so socially neutral. If you judge me as an absolutely bad friend, this might hurt me without providing a compensating benefit to someone else. It will hurt me more if I care about my absolute quality as a friend than if I’m mostly worried about being at least as good as most people. It seems to me that a combination of these things happens in practice. So the private costs of being judged for weirdness partly translate to social costs.

It also matters how much you care about making judgments in a particular way (e.g. correctly). If you actually don’t want to interact with people with the wrong political beliefs for instance, then if I hide my political beliefs and we become friends this will be bad for you. If you merely don’t want to have awkward political discussions, then it is fine if I hide my beliefs.

Signaling race

In some cases, ‘not weird’ is continually and narrowly redefined, to make locating it a reasonable sign of social savvy. For instance, if you are a girl in high school, you might learn that it is weird to not own any barbie dolls. However once you manage to get a barbie doll, you may find that it is the wrong barbie doll, or that barbie dolls are no longer the normal thing any more and are now the preserve of weird kids like you. This race presumably takes some amount of effort from the weird and the non-weird people alike, which would be averted if people didn’t try to avoid weirdness.

Neutral views

Suppose everyone chooses one topic on which to spend their weirdness budget, and there they think deeply and advocate hard fo...
Psychological validity of the "Seven deadly sins"?
by InquilineKea — 2015-03-17T01:25:44.742Z

So I was reading the list of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins and I was impressed with the list (seeing how many of these sins are what ultimately bring down many major historical figures). I also recognize how many of these sins were responsible for some of my major setbacks in life, and am thinking of creative ways to reduce their effects (by putting value on things that don't involve any of those sins).

I'm curious: to what extent do the "seven deadly sins" cover the most common reasons why people engage in self-defeating behavior? Are there any major omissions in the list of "seven deadly sins"? If you were to make a list of "X deadly sins", which sins would you include?

As examples: should excessive guilt be counted as a sin? Should stupidity be counted as a sin? What about being excessively "autistic"?

Which of the "Seven deadly sins" do you think are most applicable to LessWrong posters? To what extent are they responsible for akrasia?
Superintelligence 27: Pathways and enablers
by KatjaGrace — 2015-03-17T01:00:51.539Z

This is part of a weekly reading group on Nick Bostrom's book, Superintelligence. For more information about the group, and an index of posts so far see the announcement post. For the schedule of future topics, see MIRI's reading guide.

Welcome. This week we discuss the twenty-seventh section in the reading guide: Pathways and enablers.

This post summarizes the section, and offers a few relevant notes, and ideas for further investigation. Some of my own thoughts and questions for discussion are in the comments.

There is no need to proceed in order through this post, or to look at everything. Feel free to jump straight to the discussion. Where applicable, page numbers indicate the rough part of the chapter that is most related (not necessarily that the chapter is being cited for the specific claim).

Reading: “Pathways and enablers” from Chapter 14

Summary

Is hardware progress good?

Hardware progress means machine intelligence will arrive sooner, which is probably bad.

More hardware at a given point means less understanding is likely to be needed to build machine intelligence, and brute-force techniques are more likely to be used. These probably increase danger.

More hardware progress suggests there will be more hardware overhang when machine intelligence is developed, and thus a faster intelligence explosion. This seems good inasmuch as it brings a higher chance of a singleton, but bad in other ways:

Less opportunity to respond during the transition

Less possibility of constraining how much hardware an AI can reach

Flattens the playing field, allowing small projects a better chance. These are less likely to be safety-conscious.

Hardware has other indirect effects, e.g. it allowed the internet, which contributes substantially to work like this. But perhaps we have enough hardware now for such things.

On balance, more hardware seems bad, on the impersonal perspective.

Would brain emulation be a good thing to happen?

Brain emulation is coupled with 'neuromorphic' AI: if we try to build the former, we may get the latter. This is probably bad.

If we achieved brain emulations, would this be safer than AI? Three putative benefits:

"The performance of brain emulations is better understood"

However we have less idea how modified emulations would behave

Also, AI can be carefully designed to be understood

"Emulations wou

...
Join a major effective altruist fundraiser: get sponsored to eat for under $2.50 a day
by tog — 2015-03-16T22:55:40.580Z

LessWrongers who like GiveWell recommended charities may be interested in taking part in or donating to a new fundraiser called Experience Poverty. As well as deworming hundreds of children, it's an unusually good opportunity to find people who are interested in cost-effective charity and start conversations with them - something it's rare to find an excuse to do. Dozens of people and many effective altruist groups around the world are going to take part. Here are the details:

What: Spend only $2.50 a day on food for three days. Get sponsored to raise money to fight poverty.
Why: Half of the world spends $2.50 or less on food each day. This reflects income levels at which people often can’t afford basic health care. All money raised goes to buy medicines that cost only 50 cents. It is so cheap to us, but people still cannot afford it.
Who: People who want to do something to help the global poor and get a sense of what poverty's like.
When: April 22-24, 2015. If those dates don’t work for you you can set your own. For example, if you're at a US university you can choose to do it on April 6-8, when some American college groups are doing it.
What you can vary: Any of this: the amount you spend, the number of days and the date. For example, see below for the ‘challenge mode’ of spending only $1.50.
How: Sign up via these links for the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, Switzerland, Sweden and the Eurozone. Then ask friends and family to sponsor you. We’ll send you guides, pointers, and we can even do a one-on-one Skype to help you help the most people possible. Just contact us at info@charityscience.com with “Experience Poverty Skype” as the subject line.

Left: What a typical American family eats in a week. Right: What a typical family in Chad (an African country) eats in a week.

Where does the money go? SCI

The money raised goes to the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI for short). Experience Poverty is a partnership between Charity Science and SCI. SCI gives out medicine that cures children who have parasitic worms (including those that cause the disease schistosomiasis). These parasites live inside your body and suck your blood. The effects include fatigue, bloody diarrhoea, fever, chills, and other such lovely symptoms. Rather understandably, being so ill leads to many sick

...
HPMOR Q&A by Eliezer at Wrap Party in Berkeley [Transcription]
by sceaduwe — 2015-03-16T20:54:16.597Z

Transcribed from maxikov's posted videos.

Verbal filler removed for clarity.

Audience Laughter denoted with [L], Applause with [A]

Eliezer: So, any questions? Do we have a microphone for the audience?
Guy Offscreen: We don't have a microphone for the audience, have we?
Some Other Guy: We have this furry thing, wait, no that's not hooked up. Never mind.
Eliezer: Alright, come on over to the microphone.
Guy with 'Berkeley Lab' shirt: So, this question is sort of on behalf of the HPMOR subreddit. You say you don't give red herrings, but like... He's making faces at me like... [L] You say you don't give red herrings, but while he's sitting during in the Quidditch game thinking of who he can bring along, he stares at Cedric Diggory, and he's like, "He would be useful to have at my side!", and then he never shows up. Why was there not a Cedric Diggory?
Eliezer: The true Cedrics Diggory are inside all of our hearts. [L] And in the mirror. [L] And in Harry's glasses. [L] And, well, I mean the notion is, you're going to look at that and think, "Hey, he's going to bring along Cedric Diggory as a spare wand, and he's gonna die! Right?" And then, Lestath Lestrange shows up and it's supposed to be humorous, or something. I guess I can't do humor. [L]
Guy Dressed as a Witch: Does Quirrell's attitude towards reckless muggle scientists have anything to do with your attitude towards AI researchers that aren't you? [L]
Eliezer: That is unfair. There are at least a dozen safety conscious AI researchers on the face of the earth. [L] At least one of them is respected. [L] With that said, I mean if you have a version of Voldemort who is smart and seems to be going around killing muggleborns, and sort of pretty generally down on muggles... Like, why would anyone go around killing muggleborns? I mean, there's more than one rationalization you could apply to this situation, but the sort of obvious one is that you disapprove of their conduct with nuclear weapons. From Tom Riddle's perspective that is.
I do think I sort of try to never have leakage from that thing I spend all day talking about into a place it really didn't belong, and there's a saying that goes 'A fanatic is someone who cannot change his mind, and will not change the subject.' And I'm like ok, so if I'm not going to change my mind, I'll at least endeavor to be able to change the subject. [L] Like, towards the very end of...
[link] If anyone wants to discuss Gödel, Escher, Bach, we have a read-through of it going in /r/rational. Join us!
by  — 2015-03-16T19:16:40.532Z

http://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2z8zm5/geb_discussion_1_introduction_a_musicological/

"Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas R. Hofstadter is the most awesome book that I have ever read. If there is one book that emphasizes the tragedy of Death, it is this book, because it's terrible that so many people have died without reading it."

- Eliezer Yudkowsky

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid is an excellent primer on subjects related to artificial intelligence, like self-reference, metamathematics, formal rules and cognitive science. Yudkowsky has said about the book that it's "the best and most beautiful book ever written by the human species." It was the book that Yudkowsky said launched his career in artificial intelligence and cognitive science.

That's why we decided to start a read-through of it in reddit.com/r/rational. If you have any interest in analyzing or discussing the book, join us!
Meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup
by Maelin — 2015-03-16T12:55:59.478Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup

WHEN:
20 March 2015 06:30:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
The Bull & Bear Tavern, 347 Flinders Lane, Melbourne

The March social meetup is scheduled for this Friday (20th March) at 6:30pm as usual. This month, we will be returning to the Bull & Bear Tavern on Flinders Lane.

Our social meetups are relaxed, informal events where we chat and often play games. The start and finish times are very loose - people will be coming and going throughout the night, so don't worry if you are coming later or have to leave early.

Where? The Bull & Bear Tavern, 347 Flinders Lane, Melbourne (on Flinders Lane between Queen and Elizabeth)

When? From 6:30pm until late, Friday March 20th.

Contact? If you have any questions, just text or call Richard on 0421231789

Dinner? The Bull & Bear serve typical pub food until 9pm. Some of us will most likely go for our traditional post-meetup souvlakis at Stalactites, some time around 11-12.

Games? We will have our own section of the Bull & Bear with tables and chairs, and can bring board games to play. If you'd like to play something, bring it along and you should be able to rustle up a group easily.

Feel free to join our Facebook event: [https://www.facebook.com/events/435539709954167/]

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup
Open thread, Mar. 16 - Mar. 22, 2015
by MrMind — 2015-03-16T08:13:20.453Z

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.