trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
A limit-computable, self-reflective distribution
by TsviBT — 2015-11-15T21:43:59.000Z

We present a Δ2-definable probability distribution Ψ that satisfies Christiano's reflection schema for its own defining formula. The strategy is analogous to the chicken step
employed by modal decision theory to obfuscate itself from the eyes of PA; we will prevent the base theory T from knowing much about Ψ, so that
Ψ can be coherent over T and also consistently believe in reflection statements. So, the method used here is technical and not fundamental, but it does at
least show that limit-computable and reflective distributions exist. These results are due to Sam Eisenstat and me, and this post benefited greatly from
extensive notes from Sam; any remaining errors are probably mine.

Prerequisites: we assume familiarity with Christiano's original result and the methods used there. In particular, we will freely use Kakutani's fixed point
theorem. See Christiano et al.'s paper.

Outline

Section 1. Introduction and problem statement

Section 2. A definable, self-reflective distribution Ψ

Section 3. A Δ2-definable, self-reflective distribution Λ

Section 4. Discussion and open problems

Section 1. Problem statement

Probabilistic reflection

We have some base theory T in a language L, where T is able to talk about arithmetic (e.g. PA or ZFC). We
wish to find probability distributions over completions of T, or equivalently functions P:L→[0,1]
satisfying ϕ∈T implies P(ϕ)=1 and probabilistic coherence conditions like P(¬ϕ)=1−P(ϕ). In particular, we want P to
have accurate beliefs about itself:

∀ϕ∈L:∀a,b∈Q:P(ϕ)∈(a,b)⇒P(P(┌ϕ┐)∈(a,b))=1 ,

where P is a symbol in L. Christiano showed that there exists such a distribution P. In other words, taking an additional symbol P in the
metalanguage, writing CohT(P) for the
statement that P is a coherent distribution over T, and for the statement that P is reflective, we have that the theory

ZFC+CohT(P)+Refl(P)

is consistent. That consistency of this theory is equivalent to the existence of a reflective P requires an argument due to Fallenstein, wherein we take
the standard part of P according to some completion of this theory. We will use this idea in Section 3 and explain it there.

Definable reflection

Christiano asked: Can we find a distribution that is definable, and furthermore reflective about its own defining formula?

This is different from the original reflective P because we had a sy

...
[Link] Lifehack Article Promoting LessWrong, Rationality Dojo, and Rationality: From AI to Zombies
by Gleb_Tsipursky — 2015-11-14T20:34:12.030Z

Nice to get this list-style article promoting LessWrong, Rationality Dojo, and Rationality: From AI to Zombies, as part of a series of strategies for growing mentally stronger, published on Lifehack, a very popular self-improvement website. It's part of my broader project of promoting rationality and effective altruism to a broad audience, Intentional Insights.

EDIT: To be clear, based on my exchange with gjm below, the article does not promote these heavily and links more to Intentional Insights. I was excited to be able to get links to LessWrong, Rationality Dojo, and Rationality: From AI to Zombies included in the Lifehack article, as previously editors had cut out such links. I pushed back against them this time, and made a case for including them as a way of growing mentally stronger, and thus was able to get them in.
Meetup : San Antonio Meetup!
by Bryan-san — 2015-11-14T05:40:52.742Z

Discussion article for the meetup : San Antonio Meetup!

WHEN:
29 November 2015 02:00:00PM (-0600)

WHERE:
12651 Vance Jackson Rd #118, San Antonio, TX 78230

Bubble tea, frozen yogurt, and discussion at Yumi Berry! All are welcome!
New Meetup to discuss rationality and all things LessWrong and meet the local community. Look for the sign that says Less Wrong!

Discussion article for the meetup : San Antonio Meetup!
Meetup : San Antonio Meetup!
by Bryan-san — 2015-11-14T05:40:10.829Z

Discussion article for the meetup : San Antonio Meetup!

WHEN:
15 November 2015 12:30:00PM (-0600)

WHERE:
12651 Vance Jackson Rd #118, San Antonio, TX 78230

Bubble tea, frozen yogurt, and discussion at Yumi Berry! All are welcome!

New Meetup to discuss rationality and all things LessWrong and meet the local community. Look for the sign that says Less Wrong!

Note: bi-weekly meetup moved one week forward

Discussion article for the meetup : San Antonio Meetup!
Meetup : Washington, D.C.: Why Ad Hominem Works
by RobinZ — 2015-11-14T03:53:12.722Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Why Ad Hominem Works

WHEN:
15 November 2015 03:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
Navy Memorial

Note: meetup location has changed! Courtyard is closed today, meetup will happen at the Navy Memorial.

We'll be talking this week about how internal states like emotions affect beliefs, and how this can support fallacies and biases like ad hominem arguments and the halo effect.

Naturally, side conversations are allowed and encouraged.

Upcoming meetups:

Nov. 22: Fun & Games

Nov. 29: no meetup

Dec. 6: Create & Complete

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Why Ad Hominem Works
Mental minimalism
by KatjaGrace — 2015-11-13T22:43:17.000Z

Hypothesis:

It is nice to work in other people’s spaces relative to mine, because I am not supposed to interact with their stuff. Having fewer affordances reduces mental noise, in the same way that minimalism does. You can have something like the mental effects of minimalism even in a pigsty, just by firmly refusing to believe that pigs can be interacted with. Objects become scenery.

This suggests that instead of picking up my things, I could just make a solemn promise that I will not pick up my things. I am yet to run the experiments.

If this hypothesis is true, it might have implications beyond optimal tidying schedules. For many things in the world, I wish I felt more affordances. I wish they didn’t feel like wallpaper. Also, the world seems extremely noisy and cluttered. Maybe these things are related. Maybe if you can only cope with so much noise and clutter, then you have to demote affordances, to make the world livable. In that case, maybe there are other ways to increase clutter-tolerance, that would allow more affordances.
Wanting the destination in a journey-based community
by KatjaGrace — 2015-11-13T22:06:10.000Z

In a relationship centered around helping one another improve, there is a risk that after both have improved, one person becomes unable to be helped by the other.

Similarly, in a community centered around helping one another improve, there is a risk of succeeding enough that self-improvement is no longer a dominant concern in one’s life. In fact, hopefully everyone will at some point be sufficiently improved that it is time to get on to the actual project they were improving for. At least on a model where the self-improvement was partly instrumental. Maybe object level work and improvement will be mixed together for a long while. But by the last week of your life, it is unlikely that you should be building much infrastructure for yourself. Yet if self-improvement were no longer a dominant concern, then a self-improvement based community could not help you, and you would be of little interest to the community.

Furthermore, in a community centered around particular styles of growth—such as having deep insights about one’s soul—there is an even more plausible risk that that will cease to be the most effective route to becoming strong, and again you will lose your community if your path of improvement were to take you through a place like that.

Relatedly, in a community where much connection derives from people offering each other a particular kind of help, there is a risk that you will learn to help yourself in that way, severing the flow of other social benefits, unless you are somehow hampered. One kind of help this is particularly likely for is ‘easy help’. If you learn to solve the easy problems, fewer people can help you.

This should all be a disincentive to improving. Or to interpreting your current state as being good enough to be getting on with saving the world, for instance. In the same way as one might be tempted to interpret oneself as weak to be helped by one’s partner, one might be tempted to interpret oneself as hampered by deep and fascinating psychological maladaptations to be able to bond over them with other self-improvement fanatics.

Is this a problem for self-improvement based communities you are familiar with? Are the most popular or interesting people in these communities the ones who get on with object level work in an efficient and psychologically uneventful fashion? Or the people who have breakthroughs and trajectory chang...
Meetup : Cambridge, MA Sunday meetup: The Contrarian Positions Game
by jimrandomh — 2015-11-13T18:08:19.666Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge, MA Sunday meetup: The Contrarian Positions Game

WHEN:
15 November 2015 03:30:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
98 Elm St Somerville, MA 02144

This meetup is about pulling ropes sideways. We'll be practicing the mental motion of noticing when a question has been incorrectly polarized into two options, and breaking out of the framing to get more alternatives. After a brief discussion of the concept and the mindset, we'll practice by playing the Contrarian Positions Game. In the Contrarian Positions Game, the group gets a topic and everyone has two minutes to come up with answers to it. In each round, you score a point for each answer which matches an answer at least one other persons gave, minus one point for each answer which two-thirds of the group gave but which you didn't, to a minimum of zero (your overall score is the sum of your scores in each round where you got a positive number of points).
Cambridge/Boston-area Less Wrong meetups start at 3:30pm on the 1st and 3rd Sunday at the Citadel in Porter Sq, at 98 Elm St, apt 1, Somerville.
Our default schedule is as follows:

—Phase 1: Arrival, greetings, unstructured conversation. This starts at 3:30; before then, Citadel residents will be busy. Looking forward to seeing you at 3:30!

—Phase 2: The headline event. This starts promptly at 4pm, and lasts 30-60 minutes.

—Phase 3: Further discussion. We'll explore the ideas raised in phase 2, often in smaller groups.

—Phase 4: Dinner.

Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge, MA Sunday meetup: The Contrarian Positions Game
Request for comments: introductory research guide
by danieldewey — 2015-11-13T18:07:33.000Z

I'm not sure this is on-topic for this forum -- if it's too far from the forum's purpose, let me know and I'll take it down!

I've recently published an introduction to research on superintelligence risk, with the aim of making it easier for students to get into this area. It can be found here:

Three areas of research on the superintelligence control problem

I'd love to hear any comments from people on this forum on the content and format -- you're all researchers who have gotten involved in this area, so your impressions are important!
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2015-11-13T16:31:05.744Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on November 6th. The following week's summary is here.

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

San Antonio Meetup: 08 November 2015 12:30PM
San Francisco Meetup: Fun and Games: 09 November 2015 06:15PM
Warsaw November Meetup: 14 November 2015 04:00PM

The remaining meetups take place in cities with regular scheduling, but involve a change in time or location, special meeting content, or simply a helpful reminder about the meetup:

Austin, TX - Flightpath Coffee House: 07 November 2015 01:30PM
[Moscow] FallacyMania game in Kocherga club: 25 November 2015 07:30PM
NH Meet-up: 10 November 2015 07:00PM
NYC Solstice: 19 November 2015 06:30PM
Seattle Rationality Reading Group: 109-114: 09 November 2015 06:30PM
Tel Aviv: Black Holes after Jacob Bekenstein: 24 November 2015 08:00AM
Vienna: 21 November 2015 04:00PM
[Vienna] Five Worlds Collide - Vienna: 04 December 2015 08:00PM
Washington, D.C.: Book Swap: 08 November 2015 03:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buffalo, Canberra, Columbus, Denver, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Moscow, Mountain View, New Hampshire, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, Seattle, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers and a Slack channel for daily discussion and online meetups on Sunday night US time.

If you'd like to talk with other LW-ers face to face, and there is no meetup in your area, consider starting your own meetup; it's easy (more resources here). Check one out, stretch your rationality skills, build community, and have fun!

In addition to the handy sidebar of upcoming meetups, a meetup overview is posted on the front page every Friday. These are an attempt to collect information on all the meetups happening in upcoming weeks. The best way to get your meetup featured is still to use the Add New Meetup feature, but you'll also have the benefit of having your meetup mentioned in a weekly overview. These overview posts are moved to the discussion section when the new post goes up.

Please note that for your meetup to appear in the weekly meetups feature, you need to post your meetup before the Friday before your meetup!

If you check Less Wrong irregularly, consider su...
Meetup : Scrum: A Philosophy of Life?
by AvivaLasVegas — 2015-11-13T00:52:49.919Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Scrum: A Philosophy of Life?

WHEN:
18 November 2015 07:00:00PM (-0800)

WHERE:
10850 West Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90064, USA

How to Find Us: Go into the Westside Pavillion. The Landmark Theater has an adjacent Wine Bar (all ages welcome), located inside the Westside Pavillion on the second floor, right by the movie theaters. The entrance sign says "Lounge". We will be in the back room if possible.

Parking: Free for three hours.

Discussion: Agile Project Development has been gaining traction as a project management approach in the world of software development, and Scrum is one of the more popular frameworks for agile development.

This week, we will discuss Scrum, not just as a process for more efficient software development, but as a broader-strokes framework for solving real-life logistical issues and for addressing issues in our daily life.

Recommended Reading:

The Scrum Guide - A basic introduction to Scrum

How Scrum Can Change Your Life

A good blog post explaining Scrum and Agile philosophy

No prior exposure to Less Wrong is required; this will be generally accessible.

Discussion article for the meetup : Scrum: A Philosophy of Life?
Optimizing Rationality T-shirts
by Gleb_Tsipursky — 2015-11-12T22:15:22.751Z

Thanks again for all the feedback on the first set of Rationality slogan t-shirts, which Intentional Insights developed as part of our broader project of promoting rationality to a wide audience. As a reminder, the t-shirts are meant for aspiring rationalists to show their affiliation with rationality, to remind themselves and other aspiring rationalists to improve, and to spread positive memes broadly. All profits go to promoting rationality widely.

For the first set, we went with a clear and minimal style that conveyed the messages clearly and had an institutional affiliation, based on the advice Less Wrongers gave earlier. While some liked and bought these, plenty wanted something more stylish and designed. As an aspiring rationalist, I am glad to update my beliefs. So we are going back to the drawing board, and trying to design something more stylish.

Now, we are facing the limitation of working with a print on demand service. We need to go with POD as we can't afford to buy shirts and then sell them, it would cost way too much to do so. We decided on CafePress as the most popular and well-known service with the most variety of options. It does limit our ability to design things, though.

So for the next step, we got some aspiring rationalist volunteers for Intentional Insights to find a number of t-shirt designs they liked, and we will create t-shirts that use designs of that style, but with rationality slogans. I'd like to poll fellow Less Wrongers for which designs they like most among the ones found by our volunteers. I will list links below associated with numbers, and in comments, please indicate the t-shirt numbers that you liked best, so that we can make those. Also please link to other shirts you like, or make any other comments on t-shirt designs and styles.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17

Thanks all for collaborating on optimizing rationality t-shirts!
Post-doctoral Fellowships at METRICS
by Anders_H — 2015-11-12T19:13:12.419Z

The Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS) is hiring post-docs for 2016/2017. The full announcement is available at http://metrics.stanford.edu/education/postdoctoral-fellowships. Feel free to contact me with any questions; I am currently a post-doc in this position.

METRICS is a research center within Stanford Medical School. It was set up to study the conditions under which the scientific process can be expected to generate accurate beliefs, for instance about the validity of evidence for the effect of interventions.

METRICS was founded by Stanford Professors Steve Goodman and John Ioannidis in 2014, after Givewell connected them with the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, who provided the initial funding. See http://blog.givewell.org/2014/04/23/meta-research-innovation-centre-at-stanford-metrics/ for more details.
Meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Projects
by rocurley — 2015-11-12T04:48:27.166Z

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Projects

WHEN:
16 November 2015 06:15:00PM (-0800)

WHERE:
1390 Market St. San Francisco, CA

(NOTE: This previously said it was on Howard St. It's been moved.)

We'll be meeting to work on projects. Bring something to work on, come up with something there, or help other people out!
As always, I can be reached at 301-458-0764 if you need to be let in.

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Projects
Meetup: Cambridge UK
by Salokin — 2015-11-11T20:08:56.791Z

(Apparently just posting a new meetup doesn't provide much visibility, so I'm posting a discussion article too.)

WHEN: 15 November 2015 05:00:00PM (+0000)

WHERE: JCR Trinity College, Cambridge, UK

First Cambridge meetup in a long time! Hopefully of many. Come to Trinity's JCR at 17 next sunday and get to know all the other aspiring rationalists around and have a good time! (Place and time are only provisional, they might change depending on your availability so comment here to see how we can arrange it properly)
Meetup : Prague Less Wrong Meetup
by kotrfa — 2015-11-11T19:15:24.502Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Prague Less Wrong Meetup

WHEN:
02 December 2015 07:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Peckova 15 182 00 Praha 8

I would like to announce our next Prague Less Wrong meetup. It will be held in a tea-room at Karlinske square on December 2nd starting at 7 p.m. (http://www.dharmasala.cz/wp/teahouse-dharmasala/)

We are a small group of people interested in topics around rationality, artificial general intelligence, self-improvement, technology, philosophy. We invite everyone interested to join our discussions!

You can recognize us by a "LW" sign on our table. See you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : Prague Less Wrong Meetup
[Link] Mainstreaming Tell Culture
by Gleb_Tsipursky — 2015-11-11T18:06:49.530Z

Mainstreaming Tell Culture and other rational relationship strategies in this listicle for Lifehack, a very popular self-improvement website, as part of my broader project, Intentional Insights​, of promoting rationality and science-based thinking to a broad audience. What are your thoughts about this piece?
Link: The Cook and the Chef: Musk's Secret Sauce - Wait But Why
by taygetea — 2015-11-11T05:46:56.413Z

This is the fourth of Tim Urban's series on Elon Musk, and this time it's about some reasoning processes that are made explicit, which LW readers should find very familiar. It's a potentially useful explicit model of how to make decisions for yourself.

http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/11/the-cook-and-the-chef-musks-secret-sauce.html
Bounded Solomonoff induction using optimal predictor schemes
by Vanessa Kosoy — 2015-11-10T13:59:29.000Z

Most of the content of this post was covered by the talk I gave in Los Angeles MIRIx in October, minus the proofs and a minor amendment of Theorem 1 (the role of Δ2sqp,ϕ).

We define variants of the concept of generatable distributional estimation problem and show that these variants also admits a uniformly universal optimal predictor scheme. We show how to use this to implement a form of bounded Solomonoff induction.

Results

We have previously defined a "word ensemble" to be a collection {μk}k∈N of probability measures on {0,1}∗ s.t. for some polynomial p, suppμk⊆{0,1}≤p(k). This was convenient when the formalism was based on Boolean circuits but unnecessary for Turing machines. It is enough to assume that the Turing machine is allowed to read only the beginning of the input and thus halt in time arbitrarily smaller than the length of the input. In the following we will use "word ensemble" to mean an arbitrary sequence of probability measures on {0,1}∗, allow such word ensembles in distributional estimation problems etc.

All proofs are in the Appendix.

We start by defining "Δ(log)-sampler" and "Δ(log)-generator" for Δ an error space of rank 2 (they were previously defined for an error space of rank 1). Fix such an error space.

Definition 1

Consider μ a word ensemble. A (poly,log)-bischeme ^S of signature 1→{0,1}∗ is called a Δ(log)-sampler for μ when

∑x∈{0,1}∗|μk(x)−Pr[^Skj=x]|∈Δ

When ^S has no advice, it is called a Δ-sampler.

μ which admits such ^S is called Δ(log)-sampleable or Δ-sampleable correspondingly.

Definition 2

Consider (f,μ) a distributional estimation problem. A (poly,log)-bischeme ^G of signature 1→{0,1}∗×[0,1] is called a Δ(log)-generator for (f,μ) when

(i) ^G1 is a Δ(log)-sampler for μ.

(ii) EUrG(k,j)[(^Gkj(y)2−f(^Gkj(y)1))2]∈Δ

When ^G has no advice, it is called a Δ-generator.

(f,μ) which admits such ^G is called Δ(log)-generatable or Δ-generatable correspondingly.

We now introduce a variant in which the generator matches f on average but is allowed to have arbitrary variance.

Definition 3

Consider (f,μ) a distributional estimation problem. A (poly,log)-bischeme ^G of signature 1→{0,1}∗×[0,1] is called a weak Δ(log)-generator for (f,μ) when

(i) ^G1 is a Δ(log)-sampler for μ.

(ii) EUrG(k,j)[(EUrG(k,j)[^Gkj(y′)2∣^Gkj(y′)1=^Gkj(y)1]−f(^Gkj(y)1))2]∈Δ

When ^G has no advice, it is called a weak Δ-generator.

(f,μ) which admits such ^G is called weakly

...