trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Rationalist Aikido Trick
by  — 2010-10-10T16:45:38.487Z

I once met a guy who practiced aikido and explained a little about it to me. Aikido is a martial art, but it focuses in particular on what I'd think of as "body hacking." There are ways to make your opponent trip and fall, or use his strength against himself; there are ways to pick up and throw a much heavier and stronger opponent. Of course, because of this, there's often a lot of mystery and hokum surrounding aikido, but this guy said he belonged to a particular branch where, instead of venerating tradition, they try to come up with new "body hacks" and have worldwide meetings to test and compare them.

The relevance to LessWrong is tangiential, except that this seems like a model of rationalism applied to things that seem like magic: it's a good example of how one should behave when faced with the inexplicable.

This dude demonstrated (and taught me to perform) a "trick" that I would not have believed possible.

First, hold out your arm straight and stiff and ask someone to push it down. You can offer resistance, but if your opponent is strong enough, or if enough people are pushing down on your arm, you'll eventually fail.

Now, instead of holding your arm out stiff, make it as loose and floppy as you can. Then hold it out, but think of "reaching" through the air, but without moving. (As a visual aid, Aikido Guy held out a Coke bottle and asked me to hold my arm out while thinking of reaching for the bottle.) Now get someone to push your arm down. You are much, much stronger. And you don't feel like you're expending any effort. Nobody could push my arm down. Aikido Guy, who is very small, told me that he'd once gotten three varsity football players hanging off his arm without budging it.

Aikido Guy was curious about this mystery, and luckily he was on a university campus, so he asked to be wired up to an MRI while he tried holding his arm out both ways. Apparently there was a real difference in the way the neurons fired. When he was trying to hold his arm out "stiffly," his brain stimulated all the muscle fibers in his arm, but intermittently (compared to the timescale of neuronal activity.) When he was "reaching," his brain stimulated a smaller fraction of the arm muscles, but continuously. Apparently the former kind of muscle stimulation is more tiring and weaker than the latte...
Where else are you posting?
by NancyLebovitz — 2010-10-10T16:28:37.969Z

As a result of XiXiDu's massive Resources and References post, I just found out about Katja Grace's very pleasant Meteuphoric blog.

I'm curious about what else LessWrongians are posting at other sites, and if there's interest, I'll make this into a top-level post.

I also post at Input Junkie.
Where else are you posting?
by NancyLebovitz — 2010-10-10T16:22:25.727Z

As a result of XiXiDu's massive Resources and References post, I just found out about Katja Grace's very pleasant Meteuphoric blog.

I'm curious about what else LessWrongians are posting at other sites, and if there's interest, I'll make this into a top-level post.

I also post at Input Junkie.
References & Resources for LessWrong
by XiXiDu — 2010-10-10T14:54:13.514Z

A list of references and resources for LW

Updated: 2011-05-24

F = Free

E = Easy (adequate for a low educational background)

M = Memetic Hazard (controversial ideas or works of fiction)

Summary

Do not flinch, most of LessWrong can be read and understood by people with a previous level of education less than secondary school. (And Khan Academy followed by BetterExplained plus the help of Google and Wikipedia ought to be enough to let anyone read anything directed at the scientifically literate.) Most of these references aren't prerequisite, and only a small fraction are pertinent to any particular post on LessWrong. Do not be intimidated, just go ahead and start reading the Sequences if all this sounds too long. It's much easier to understand than this list makes it look like.

Nevertheless, as it says in the Twelve Virtues of Rationality, scholarship is a virtue, and in particular:

It is especially important to eat math and science which impinges upon rationality: Evolutionary psychology, heuristics and biases, social psychology, probability theory, decision theory.

Contents

LessWrong.com

Overview

Why read Less Wrong?

Artificial Intelligence

General

Friendly AI

Machine Learning

The Technological Singularity

Heuristics and Biases

Mathematics

Learning Mathematics

Basics

General

Probability

Logic

Foundations

Miscellaneous

Decision theory

Game Theory

Programming

Python

Haskell

General

Computer science

(Algorithmic) Information Theory

Physics

General

General relativity

Quantum physics

Foundations

Evolution

Philosophy

General

The Mind

Epistemology

Linguistics

Neuroscience

General Education

Miscellaneous

Concepts

Websites

Fun & Fiction

Fiction

Fun

Go

LessWrong.com

This list is hosted on LessWrong.com, a community blog devoted to refining the art of human rationality - the art of thinking. If you follow the links below you'll learn more about this community. It is one of the most important resources you'll ever come across if your aim is to get what you want, if you want to win. It shows you that there is more to most things than meets the eye, but more often than not much less than you think. It shows you that even smart people can be completely wrong but that most people are not even wrong. It teaches you to be careful in what you emit and to be skeptical of what you receive. It doesn't tell y...
Strategies for dealing with emotional nihilism
by  — 2010-10-10T13:31:08.675Z

I asked a question in the discussion section a little bit ago and got very productive responses. What follows is mostly a paraphrase of people's comments.

From time to time, like Pierre, I don't care. I get emotionally nihilistic. I find myself doing things that are morally awful in the conventional meaning of the word: procrastinating, sneaking other people's food out of the communal fridge, being casually unkind and unhelpful, breaking promises. I don't doubt that these are awful things to do. I figure any moral theory worth its salt will condemn them -- except the moral theory "I don't care," which sometimes seems strangely compelling.

What I want to know is: what goes through people's heads when they're motivated not to be awful? What could you tell someone as a reason not to be awful? If you are, in fact, not awful, why aren't you awful? What do you think, or feel, when you care about things? What would you tell someone who claims "I just don't care" if you wanted to get her to care? What would you tell yourself, in your nihilistic moments?

The (more) trivial utility function

Nihilism feels like a utility function where everything is set to the value zero. Landing that job offer or school admission letter? That's worth nothing. Making someone smile? Worth nothing. Being in good physical shape? Worth nothing. Living according to moral values? Worth nothing. Nothing is fun, or appealing, or worth looking forward to.

The thing about a nihilistic mindset is that you can't really argue your way out of it (at least, I've never succeeded.) It's perfectly logically coherent. A function that's constant at zero is still a function. You can have a function where all the best things in life, all the "peaks," matter much less to you.

Edit: Vladimir_Nesov comments that it's not really a zero utility function because even a nihilistic person doesn't behave totally at random, and can usually keep up some minimal degree of self maintenance. This is a fair point. It's more accurate to say that it feels like nothing matters, or at least that the desire for goal-directed behavior is significantly diminished. Maybe it's not a flat function, but a flatter function, where the things you used to value...
Free Hard SF Novels & Short Stories
by XiXiDu — 2010-10-10T12:12:06.166Z

Novels

Blindsight, Peter Watts

Eighty years in the future, Earth becomes aware of an alien presence when thousands of micro-satellites surveil the Earth; through good luck, the incoming alien vessel is detected, and the ship Theseus, with its artificial intelligence captain and crew of five, are sent out to engage in first contact with the huge alien vessel called Rorschach. As they explore the vessel and attempt to analyze it and its inhabitants, the narrator considers his life and strives to understand himself and ponders the nature of intelligence and consciousness, their utility, and what an alien mind might be like. Eventually the crew realizes that they are greatly outmatched by the vessel and its unconscious but extremely capable inhabitants.

When the level of this threat becomes clear, Theseus runs a kamikaze mission using its antimatter as a payload, while Siri returns to Earth, which, as he grows nearer, it is apparent has been overrun by vampires. Non-sapient creatures are beginning to exterminate what may be the only bright spark on consciousness in the universe.

Ventus, Karl Schroeder

Ventus is well-written and fun, as well as having IME the most realistic treatment of nanotech I've yet encountered in SF. Schroeder is definitely an author to watch (this is his first novel). The setup is that some agents from the local galactic civilization have come to an off-limits world hunting a powerful cyborg who may be carrying the last copy of an extremely dangerous AI god. The tough part is that the world is off-limits because the nanotech on that world is controlled by AIs that destroy all technology not made by them, and aren't terribly human-friendly.

Crisis in Zefra, Karl Schroeder

In spring 2005, the Directorate of Land Strategic Concepts of National Defense Canada (that is to say, the army) hired me to write a dramatized future military scenario. The book-length work, Crisis in Zefra, was set in a mythical African city-state, about 20 years in the future, and concerned a group of Canadian peacekeepers who are trying to ready the city for its first democratic vote while fighting an insurgency. The project ran to 27,000 words and was published by the army as a bound paperback book.

Accelerando, Charles Stross

The first three stories follow the character of "venture altruist" Manfred Macx starting in the early 21st century, the

...
Sleeping Beauty as a decision problem (solved)
by Bongo — 2010-10-10T03:15:08.755Z

EDIT: User:Misha solved it

First, here's the Sleeping Beauty problem, from Wikipedia:

The paradox imagines that Sleeping Beauty volunteers to undergo the following experiment. On Sunday she is given a drug that sends her to sleep. A fair coin is then tossed just once in the course of the experiment to determine which experimental procedure is undertaken. If the coin comes up heads, Beauty is awakened and interviewed on Monday, and then the experiment ends. If the coin comes up tails, she is awakened and interviewed on Monday, given a second dose of the sleeping drug, and awakened and interviewed again on Tuesday. The experiment then ends on Tuesday, without flipping the coin again. The sleeping drug induces a mild amnesia, so that she cannot remember any previous awakenings during the course of the experiment (if any). During the experiment, she has no access to anything that would give a clue as to the day of the week. However, she knows all the details of the experiment.

Each interview consists of one question, "What is your credence now for the proposition that our coin landed heads?"

I was looking at AlephNeil's old post about UDT and encountered this diagram depicting the Sleeping Beauty problem as a decision problem.

This diagram is underspecified, though. There are no specific payoffs in the boxes and it's not obvious what actions the arrows mean. So I tried to figure out some ways to transform the Sleeping Beauty problem into a concrete decision problem. I also made edited versions of AlephNeil's diagram for versions 1 and 2.

The gamemaster puts Sleeping Beauty to sleep on Sunday. He uses a sleeping drug that causes mild amnesia such that upon waking she won't be able to remember any previous awakenings that may have taken place during the course of the game. The gamemaster flips a coin. If heads, he wakes her up on monday only. If tails, he wakes her up on monday and tuesday.

Version 1

Upon each awakening, the gamemaster asks Sleeping Beauty to guess which way the coin landed. For each correct guess, she's awarded $1000 at the end of the game. diagram

Version 2

Upon each awakening, the gamemaster asks Sleeping Beauty to guess which way the coin landed. If she all of her guesses are correct, she's awarded $1000 at the end of the game. diagram

Version 3

Upon each awakening, the gamemaster asks Sleeping Beauty for her credence as to whether th...
Resveratrol continues to be useless
by gwern — 2010-10-10T00:19:08.012Z

From the more-bad-news-for-those-who-want-to-live-forever department: http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/10/08/does_resveratrol_really_work_and_does_srt1720.php

The current study dials that back to levels that could be reached in human dosing. What they saw was no effect on lifespan at 0.5 micromolar, which would be a realistic blood level for humans. When they turned up the concentration to 5 micromolar, there was a slight but apparently real effect of just under 4%. Now, 5 micromolar is a pretty heroic level of resveratrol - I think you could hit that as a peak concentration, but surely not hold it.

Nor is the bad news just for resveratrol:

Oh, and there's another interesting part to this paper. The authors also looked at SRT1720, the resveratrol follow-up from Sirtris that has been the subject of all kinds of arguing in the recent literature. This compound is supposed to be several hundred times more potent than resveratrol itself at SIRT1, although if you've been following the story, you'll know that those numbers are widely believed to be artifacts of the assay conditions. And sure enough, the authors saw no effect on C. elegans lifespan when dosing with physiological concentrations of SRT1720.
Four Ways to Do Good (and four fallacies)
by  — 2010-10-09T23:46:16.583Z

I was thinking about ways people "do good" (or otherwise achieve their values) and it occurred to me that it makes sense to organize these along two axes: humble/mighty and cooperation/conflict.

Whenever you organize things into categories, you open yourself up to people questioning whether these are the "right" categories, whether they carve reality at the joints; I don't have statistical evidence that these are good categories, only salient examples and a general sense that this "fits." If you don't think it fits, say so, and I'll have learned something new.

Four Quadrants

Quadrant 1: Help

The humble/cooperation quadrant refers to small acts of helpfulness. The prototypical action is giving to charity, or comforting a friend. The mindset in this quadrant is an attitude of kindness, gentleness, or benevolence, with great attention to not being presumptuous and accidentally doing more harm than good. The humble/cooperation attitude doesn't expect great victories, but a lifetime of dedication. The humble/cooperative person isn't interested in antagonism, but tries to listen to others and understand their point of view.

Quadrant 2: Invent

The mighty/cooperation quadrant refers to creating brilliant, win/win solutions. The prototypical mighty/cooperation action is inventing a hugely beneficial new technology, or negotiating a mutually beneficial agreement. The mindset in this quadrant is a an attitude of can-do, creativity, and innovation; it's associated with exchange, trade, and collaboration. This attitude does expect great victories. It's focused on fixing problems instead of managing them.1 The mighty/cooperative person thinks antagonism is mostly unnecessary if you come up with good enough solutions.

Quadrant 3: Fight

The mighty/conflict quadrant refers to fighting malicious opponents. The prototypical mighty/conflict action is, of course, fighting in a war or defending yourself against attack, but it can also refer to non-violent actions: a moderator who bans a troll, for instance, or someone who speaks out against a bully. The salient point is that this is a way of doing good by stopping the people who mean to do harm. The mindset in this quadrant is determination, courage, and will to win. The mighty/conflict person thinks that evil (or at leas...
When is investment procrastination?
by KatjaGrace — 2010-10-09T19:00:03.000Z

I suggested recently that the link between procrastination and perfectionism has to do with construal level theory:

When you picture getting started straight away the close temporal distance puts you in near mode, where you see all the detailed impediments to doing a perfect job. When you think of doing the task in the future some time, trade-offs and barriers vanish and the glorious final goal becomes more vivid. So it always seems like you will do a great job in the future, whereas right now progress is depressingly slow and complicated.

This set of thoughts reminds me of those generally present when I consider the likely outcomes of getting further qualifications vs. employment, and of giving my altruistically intended savings to the best cause I can find now vs. accruing interest and spending them later. In general the effect could apply to any question of how long to prepare for something before you go out and do it. Do procrastinators invest more?
Boobies and the lottery
by araneae — 2010-10-09T18:18:49.371Z

So, in the past I have "donated" boobie pictures to boobiethon, a online fundraising event for breast cancer research. This year I entered into a drawing for a free custom WordPress theme. And I won it!

You might think that I'm lucky, but actually when I enter lotteries I'm very calculating. Once when I was 10, there was a Beanie Baby lottery at the local library. You could see the jars with the tickets in them for each Beanie Baby. There was one Beanie Baby that had very few tickets in the jar, so I bought exactly one ticket for it. And I won the Beanie Baby.
I saw that for this contest, there were 5 WordPress prizes to be awarded total. For other contests there were only one. And I correctly surmised that others would try to win the more desirable prizes. I also submitted 5 pictures of my boobies, and you got one ticket per boobie picture with a maximum of 5 pictures. That's 5 entries. Donating $10 only got you one ticket. And it cost me nothing :).
It's human nature to go for the lottery item of the thing you actually want. I don't do that. I enter the lotteries for things I think no one else wants and that have multiple awards and that have a low-to-no cost. You're never going to win the monetary prize, because the odds are against you. You CAN win things if the odds are in your favor.
Recommended Reading for Friendly AI Research
by Vladimir_Nesov — 2010-10-09T13:46:24.677Z

This post enumerates texts that I consider (potentially) useful training for making progress on Friendly AI/decision theory/metaethics.

Rationality and Friendly AI

Eliezer Yudkowsky's sequences and this blog can provide solid introduction to the problem statement of Friendly AI, giving concepts useful for understanding motivation for the problem, and disarming endless failure modes that people often fall into when trying to consider the problem.

For a shorter introduction, see

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (2008). "Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk". Global Catastrophic Risks. Oxford University Press.

Decision theory

The following book introduces an approach to decision theory that seems to be closer to what's needed for FAI than the traditional treatments in philosophy or game theory:

G. L. Drescher (2006). Good and Real: Demystifying Paradoxes from Physics to Ethics (Bradford Books). The MIT Press, 1 edn.

Another (more technical) treatment of decision theory from the same cluster of ideas:

E. Yudkowsky. Timeless Decision Theory (draft, Sep 2010)

Following posts on Less Wrong present ideas relevant to this development of decision theory:

A Priori

Newcomb's Problem and Regret of Rationality

The True Prisoner's Dilemma

Counterfactual Mugging

Timeless Decision Theory: Problems I Can't Solve

Towards a New Decision Theory

Ingredients of Timeless Decision Theory

Decision theory: Why Pearl helps reduce "could" and "would", but still leaves us with at least three alternatives

The Absent-Minded Driver

AI cooperation in practice

What a reduction of "could" could look like

Controlling Constant Programs

Notion of Preference in Ambient Control

Mathematics

The most relevant tool for thinking about FAI seems to be mathematics, where it teaches to work with precise ideas (in particular, mathematical logic). Starting from a rusty technical background, the following reading list is one way to start:

[Edit Nov 2011: I no longer endorse scope/emphasis, gaps between entries, and some specific entries on this list.]

F. W. Lawvere & S. H. Schanuel (1991). Conceptual mathematics: a first introduction to categories. Buffalo Workshop Press, Buffalo, NY, USA.

B. Mendelson (1962). Introduction to Topology. College Mathematics. Allyn & Bacon Inc., Boston.

P. R. Halmos (1960). Naive Set Theory. Spring

...
Quixey Engineering Screening Questions
by Liron — 2010-10-09T10:33:23.188Z

My startup, Quixey, is looking to hire a couple top-notch software engineers. Quixey is an early-stage stealth startup founded in October 2009. We are launching our beta product this month: An all-platform app directory and "functional search" engine that lets users query for software by answering the question: What do you want to do?

We are confident that Quixey's functional search will be qualitatively better than all existing solutions for finding web apps, mobile phone apps, desktop apps, browser extensions, etc. Our prototype returns significantly more relevant search results in head-to-head comparisons with all the iPhone and Android app search solutions that currently exist(!)

Our office is on University Ave in Palo Alto. If you live in the Bay Area and want to join a hot tech startup extremely early (employee #1, high-equity compensation package), and you're better than the average Google engineer, then please try our screening questions. If you're the kind of person we're looking for, the questions shouldn't take you more than a few minutes each.

Questions

1. Write a Python function findInSorted(arr, x). It’s supposed to return the smallest index of a value x in an array arr which, as a precondition, must be sorted from least to greatest. Or, if arr doesn’t contain an element equal to x, the function returns -1. Make the code as beautiful as possible (without sacrificing asymptotically optimal performance characteristics).

2. Write a JavaScript function countTo(n) that counts from 1 to n and pops up an alert for each number (i.e. alert(1), alert(2), ..., alert(n)). Easy, right? Except you're not allowed to use while- or for-loops. (And you're not allowed to trick the interpreter using "eval", or dynamically generated <script> elements appended to the DOM tree, or anything like that.)

For problem 2, the time and space requirements of your function should be as good as those of the asymptotically optimal algorithm, even without tail call optimization.

Email your answers to liron@quixey.com and I'll get back to you right away. Please don't post your answers in this thread because that will make my filter really noisy. If you do well on the screening questions, we will want to bring you in for an interview.