trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : Longmont Colorado Meetup
by EvelynM — 2012-09-05T13:27:23.623Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Longmont Colorado Meetup

WHEN:
06 September 2012 07:00:00PM (-0600)

WHERE:
Ziggis, 400 Main Street, Longmont, CO

South for 2 weeks.
What's up for the fall.

Discussion article for the meetup : Longmont Colorado Meetup
Meetup : Brussels meetup
by Axel — 2012-09-05T12:01:21.859Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Brussels meetup

WHEN:
15 September 2012 12:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Rue des Alexiens 55 1000 Bruxelles

We are once again meeting at 'la fleur en papier doré' close to the Brussels Central station. If you feel like an intelligent discussion and are in the neighborhood, consider dropping by. As always, I'll have a sign.

Discussion article for the meetup : Brussels meetup
“Pickled Stewberries!” in HPMoR, Omake #3
by Jost — 2012-09-05T11:59:52.173Z

We're currently translating chapter 11 into German. It's going along fine, but

“PICKLED STEWBERRIES!”

is still puzzling us. No dictionary entries, no HPMoR-unrelated search hits, nothing…

Is this some kind of dadaist joke by Eliezer? Or are we missing something?
Politics Discussion Thread September 2012
by Multiheaded — 2012-09-05T11:27:33.449Z

The last thread didn't fare too badly, I think; let's make it a monthly tradition. (Me, I'm more interested in thinking about real-world policies or philosophies, actual and possible, rather than AI design or physics, and I suspect that many fine, non-mind-killed folks reading LW also are - but might be ashamed to admit it!)

Quoth OrphanWilde:

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.

Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.

A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.

In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

Let's try to stick to those rules - and maybe make some more if sorely needed.

Oh, and I think that the "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also belongs here.
[SEQ RERUN] That Tiny Note of Discord
by MinibearRex — 2012-09-05T04:51:51.642Z

Today's post, That Tiny Note of Discord was originally published on 23 September 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Eliezer started to dig himself out of his philosophical hole when he noticed a tiny inconsistency.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Horrible LHC Inconsistency, 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 here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
How to Find a Personal Assistant to Produce More? Transhumanism
by diegocaleiro — 2012-09-04T18:54:47.231Z

I want to be stronger.

I want to outsource my weaknesses to those who are strong at them, and intake the workload that my strengths can take.

Like Tim Ferriss and A.J. Jacobs, I'd like to have someone working in synergy with me, to increase our productivity a lot.

....and I funded and direct an institute in Brazil (www.ierfh.org google chrome for translation) which aims in the general direction of Less Wrong folk orientation. Institute Ethics Rationality and Future of Humanity.

We work mostly in two broad areas: Transhumanism and Effective Altruism. We are currently outreaching and filtering people who are motivated smart and altruistic (it is ok to be altruistic only towards one future self). Some are researching and lecturing. Since February last, we grew to 31 members, more than I'd expect be interested on topics in the whole of Brazil, so that was great!

Here is the catch, because I live in Brazil, the assistant does not need to be in India! Nor cost as much as in the US!

But then which are the best places to find someone with this set of characteristics that Luke Muelhauser was looking for in his assistants? (link to my portuguese facebook share http://www.facebook.com/gdiego.vichutilitarian/posts/349182458498891)

Ultrasummary of abilities: Very good English command, goals that either pro-technology or pro-effective giving, minimally rational, somewhat rich (there is a niche of people who work to feel fulfilled more than for money, in Brazil, this correlates strongly with good english skills and all the abilities social class can buy), able to think by themselves when given tasks as abstract as "Find contact info of 5 researchers on happiness who published in 2010-2012, ask them whether they would like to jointly publish on topic x, tell me their thoughts."

How would you go about finding yourself/your institute an assistant? How to optimize for above-mentioned criteria?

Suppose my current strategy is posting job positions in undergrad walls. Can you improve it?

PS: technically this is not exactly an offer, because I know all Brazilians in Less Wrong, but if you feel like moving to São Paulo and would like to take the job, please do tell me! I recently met a Less Wrong couple going to Australia to optimize for beautiful landscapes. Coming here means optimizing for social relaxing environment, cuddly happy huggy people, and delicious ...
September 2012 Media Thread
by RobertLumley — 2012-09-04T18:46:50.440Z

This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. I find that exposure to LW ideas makes me less likely to enjoy some entertainment media that is otherwise quite popular, and finding media recommended by LWers is a good way to mitigate this. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.

If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.

Please use the comment trees for genres. There is a meta thread for comments about future threads.

If you have a thread to add, such as a video game thread or an Anime thread, please post it to the Other Media thread for now, and add a poll to the Meta thread asking if it should be a thread every month.
Fiction recommendation: "Spur" by Phil Geusz
by DataPacRat — 2012-09-04T16:01:31.492Z

Our protagonist has accepted being cursed into the shape of a horse, taking the place of a wealthy man in exchange for luxuries and lots of monthly cash. The wealthy man dies - and to his horror, our hero finds he is still a horse. Events escalate, secrets are revealed, personal growth happens. While not exactly dedicated to Bayesianism or even just rationality, the climax involves the expression of a sentiment familiar to any reader of HPMoR who's gotten to the bits about dementors, and seems to express it quite well in terms readers more familiar with fantasy than science-fiction can appreciate, which could form a stepping-stone to dealing with the idea of existential risks in the real world.

Discovered through this review. Available through Lulu or Amazon for $15, or as a PDF or HTML ebook for $6.
Group rationality diary, 9/3/12
by cata — 2012-09-04T09:42:59.884Z

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of September 3rd. It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:

Established a useful new habit

Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief

Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations

Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior

Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something

Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life

Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you

Tried doing any of the above and failed

Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.

Thanks to everyone who contributes!

Previous diary; archive of prior diaries.
Illustration proposal for Methods of Rationality
by Yuu — 2012-09-04T06:21:49.057Z

Which scenes in the book should be illustrated, according to your point of view? Could you share your opinion, because it can help potential illustrators to choose theme and to draw something. It would be great if you can propose several scenes from the book. I believe we should find at least one good moment to be illustrated in the each chapter with combined efforts.

I think the book will get more illustrations if people can simply choose from the list of proposed scenes, and not from the whole book.

If you notice someone with the same proposal you are thinking about, please support this proposal by commenting it with quoting. In this case I can later make a list of proposals with the number of people supporting each one. However, if someone have made several proposals, but you want to support only some of them, please cite only appropriate proposals.

Please also make new proposals as first level comments. Thank you in advance.
[SEQ RERUN] Horrible LHC Inconsistency
by MinibearRex — 2012-09-04T04:41:01.382Z

Today's post, Horrible LHC Inconsistency was originally published on 22 September 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

An illustration of inconsistent probability assignments.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was How Many LHC Failures Is Too Many?, 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 here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
How To Actually Change Your Mind eBook (In Order)
by Elec0 — 2012-09-03T21:53:12.668Z

Firstly, if this has already been created, then I apologize, but I couldn't find it and I looked.

I wanted to read the how to change your mind sequence on my eBook reader, but when I looked around the site I couldn't find any eBooks other than large ones with the blog posts in order of post date, which isn't really how the sequences are arranged. So I decided to copy and paste everything from the how to change your mind sequence into an eBook. Primarily for my personal use, but I figured that other people might be interested in it as well.

My version is in epub format, Calibre can convert to others, but if you'd like another format, let me know and I'll convert it.

I believe that I got all the basic HTML formatting down, like indention where was it in the main article and bullet points and suchlike. I didn't include hyperlinks, as most eReaders can't open them.

The table of contents is arranged exactly like the subsequences are in the sequence.

I've tested it in Calibre and on my Sony PRS 505 (which is quite old at this point), but everything seemed to work everywhere I tested it.

If you find any errors, or have any suggestions, please let me know.

epub (9/3/2012)

mobi (9/3/2012)

pdf (9/3/2012)
Meetup : Berkeley meetup: board game night
by AlexMennen — 2012-09-03T17:27:47.017Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley meetup: board game night

WHEN:
05 September 2012 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
Berkeley, CA

Nisan is out of town, so I will be hosting Wednesday's meetup at Zendo. We will be having a board game night. Zendo's game library has Robo Rally, Smallworld, Dominion, Ticket to Ride, Settlers of Catan, Tigris & Euphrates, Set, and some others. If you have a game that you'd like to play, bring it along! Doors open at 7pm, and games start at 7:30. For directions to Zendo, see the mailing list http://groups.google.com/group/bayarealesswrong or call me at four-zero-eight-nine-six-six-nine-two-seven-four.

Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley meetup: board game night
What's your "rationalist arguing" origin story?
by Manfred — 2012-09-03T06:51:49.598Z

By rationalist arguing, I mean the sort of argument where you'd rather have the right belief at the end than "win." This is quite different from the usual rationalization competition style of argument, and is pretty rare. But somehow, it happens on LessWrong a lot. It goes by other names too, but I am contractually obligated to put the word "rationalist" before as many other words as I can.

Back when I was a teenager, and I mean like 13-16, I frequented an online political forum, which shall remain unnamed. It was about as rational as one might expect, which is to say awful. And eventually, after three years visiting there, I stopped. The first mover of me moving out was that I'd figured out the moves on the rhetorical chessboard - if I make an appeal to intuition here, they can make an ad hominem there, and so on and so on. And once this arguing became transparent, it also became boring - instead I started actually asking the question "how can I figure out what's true?" And so I stopped arguing politics, which had been a pretty big habit of mine a week before.

Cut forward some years. I'm a LessWrong reader. And somewhere after my first few months of posting I figure out that I really shouldn't be trying to "win arguments" here - after all, I stopped doing that when I was 16, right? Instead, I decide, I should practice "cooperative arguing," where the goal is to work together (dialectically, though I wouldn't have known to call it that at the time). And if you're doing it really right, you should be able to "lose" (in quotes because you're learning from it and don't give a crap) about half the time. Don't "try to lose," but "try to be able to lose." There's a reflection of HPMOR in there, but it's in a funhouse mirror.

Since then I've advanced a bit, so I can look at creating environments that help this happen, but this post was titled "origin story" and that's what I'm curious about. For me, getting familiar with rhetoric and then getting fed up with it was necessary before I could go on to actually try to be able to lose. But it seems a little specific - there seem (perhaps) to be plenty of other people who follow the same rules as me on here, and you can't all have frequented political forums during your forumative years (sorry). Or can you?

Was LW key in germinating this "rationalist arguing," or did we have the seeds already within us? M

...
Call For Agreement: Should LessWrong have better protection against cultural collapse?
by Epiphany — 2012-09-03T05:35:38.144Z

As you are probably already aware, many internet forums experience a phenomenon known as "eternal September". Named after a temporary effect where the influx of college freshmen would throw off a group's culture every September, eternal September is essentially what happens when standards of discourse and behavior degrade in a group to the point where the group loses it's original culture. I began focusing on solving this problem and offered to volunteer my professional web services to get it done because:

- When I explained that LessWrong could grow a lot and volunteered to help with growth, various users expressed concerns about growth not always being good because having too many new users at once can degrade the culture.

- There has been concern from Eliezer about the site "going to hell" because of trolling.

- Eliezer has documented a phenomenon that subcultures know as infiltration by "poseurs" happening in the rationalist community. He explains that rationalists are beginning to be inundated by "undiscriminating skeptics" and has stated that it's bad enough that he needed to change his method of determining who is a rationalist. The appearance of poseurs doesn't guarantee that a culture will be washed away by main-streamers, but may signal that a culture is headed in that direction, and it does confirm that a loss of culture is a possibility - especially if there got to be so many undiscriminating skeptics as to form their own culture and become the new majority at LessWrong.

My plan to prevent eternal September sparked a debate about whether eternal September protection is warranted. Lukeprog, being the decision maker whose decision is needed for me to be allowed to do this as a volunteer, requested that I debate this with him because he was not convinced but might change his mind.

Here are some theories about why eternal September happens:

1. New to old user ratio imbalance:

New users need time to adjust to a forum's culture. Getting too many new users too fast will throw off the ratio of new to old users, meaning that most new users will interact with each other rather than with older users, changing the culture permanently.

2. Groups tend to trend toward the mainstream:

Imagine some people want to start a group. Why are they breaking away from the mainstream? Because their needs are...
Rationality Quotes September 2012
by Jayson_Virissimo — 2012-09-03T05:18:17.003Z

Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)

Do not quote yourself

Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB

No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
[SEQ RERUN] How Many LHC Failures Is Too Many?
by MinibearRex — 2012-09-03T03:10:18.308Z

Today's post, How Many LHC Failures Is Too Many? was originally published on 20 September 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

If the LHC, or some sort of similar project, continually seemed to fail right before it did something we thought might destroy the world, this is something we should notice.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Say It Loud, 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 here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
Less Wrong articles categorized by reading difficulty
by lukeprog — 2012-09-03T00:45:59.996Z

One thing that could help new users dive into Less Wrong would be to make some reading recommendations based on reading difficulty. (I'm including some things not hosted on LessWrong.com when they're very LessWrong-ish and written by leading LessWrong authors.) For example:

For everyone

Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

Yudkowsky, Twelve Virtues of Rationality

Yvain, The Worst Argument in the World

Yudkowsky, Reductionism

Lukeprog, How to Beat Procrastination

For those with some math and statistics

Yudkowsky, Technical Explanation of Technical Explanation

Yudkowsky, Timeless Causality

Yudkowsky, Bell's Theorem

For mathgods

Nisan, Formulas of arithmetic that behave like decision agents

Benja, A model of UDT with a concrete prior over logical statements

cousin_it, Bounded versions of Gödel's and Löb's theorems

Now, I ask: What are some of your favorite articles in each of these categories?
Dragon Ball's Hyperbolic Time Chamber
by gwern — 2012-09-02T23:49:50.925Z

A time dilation tool from an anime is discussed for its practical use on Earth; there seem surprisingly few uses and none that will change the world, due to the severe penalties humans would incur while using it, and basic constraints like Amdahl's law limit the scientific uses. A comparison with the position of an Artificial Intelligence such as an emulated human brain seems fair, except most of the time dilation disadvantages do not apply or can be ameliorated and hence any speedups could be quite effectively exploited. I suggest that skeptics of the idea that speedups give advantages are implicitly working off the crippled time dilation tool and not making allowance for the disanalogies.

Master version on gwern.net
Meetup : Cambridge (MA) third-Sundays Meetup
by chronophasiac — 2012-09-02T17:25:05.727Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge (MA) third-Sundays Meetup

WHEN:
21 October 2012 02:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
25 Ames St, Cambridge, MA 02139

Cambridge/Boston-area Less Wrong meetups on the first and third Sunday of every month, 2pm at the MIT Landau Building [25 Ames St, Bldg 66], room 148. Room number subject to change based on availability, signs will be posted with the actual room number.

Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge (MA) third-Sundays Meetup
Meetup : Cambridge (MA) first-Sundays meetup
by chronophasiac — 2012-09-02T17:23:35.050Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge (MA) first-Sundays meetup

WHEN:
07 October 2012 02:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
25 Ames St, Cambridge, MA 02139

Cambridge/Boston-area Less Wrong meetups on the first and third Sunday of every month, 2pm at the MIT Landau Building [25 Ames St, Bldg 66], room 148. Room number subject to change based on availability, signs will be posted with the actual room number.

Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge (MA) first-Sundays meetup
Meetup : Cambridge (MA) third-Sundays meetup
by chronophasiac — 2012-09-02T17:21:30.282Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge (MA) third-Sundays meetup

WHEN:
16 September 2012 02:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
25 Ames St, Cambridge, MA 02139

Cambridge/Boston-area Less Wrong meetups on the first and third Sunday of every month, 2pm at the MIT Landau Building [25 Ames St, Bldg 66], room 148. Room number subject to change based on availability, signs will be posted with the actual room number.

Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge (MA) third-Sundays meetup