trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Short Talks
by rocurley — 2017-03-29T01:07:44.571Z

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Short Talks

WHEN:
03 April 2017 06:15:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
1655 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94103-2413, United States

We’ll be meeting to give and listen to very short talks!

We’ll do 7-minute lightning talks with 3 additional minutes allowed for questions. We’ll also limit the number of programming-related talks to no more than half of all talks, in order to promote variety.

A talk doesn’t have to be formal, planned, or even something that you’d expect someone to Give A Talk About; it can be as simple as telling the group about something you find interesting or cool. In the past, we’ve had people talk about topics like: how complicated the process of organizing fresh food for airplane flights is, their experience volunteering for a local political campaign, a video game they were designing and writing, and many others.

We don't expect any sort of preparation or practice for these kinds of talks. They're very casual and the expectations are low. If your talk isn't great, it's okay because we'll just move on to another one in a few minutes. If it helps, think of it this way: you're just being given the conversational floor for a few minutes, in a slightly more organized way than usual.

For help getting into the building, please call (or text, with a likely-somewhat-slower response rate): 301-458-0764.

Format:

We meet and start hanging out at 6:15, but don’t officially start doing the meetup topic until 6:45-7 to accommodate stragglers. Usually there is a food order that goes out before we start the meetup topic.

About these meetups:

The mission of the SF LessWrong meetup is to provide a fun, low-key social space with some structured interaction, where new and non-new community members can mingle and have interesting conversations. Everyone is welcome.

We explicitly encourage people to split off from the main conversation or diverge from the topic if that would be more fun for them (moving side conversations into a separate part of the space if appropriate). Meetup topics are here as a tool to facilitate fun interaction, and we certainly don’t want them to inhibit it.

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Short Talks
Meetup : Meetup #15 - Trigger-Action Patterns
by  — 2017-03-29T00:55:10.507Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Meetup #15 - Trigger-Action Patterns

WHEN:
02 April 2017 03:10:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
meester treublaan 18 Amsterdam, Netherlands

How do we do things on the most instinctive level? Understanding this helps us take better control over our behavior.

Discussion article for the meetup : Meetup #15 - Trigger-Action Patterns
IQ and Magnus Carlsen, Leo Messi and the Decathlon
by ragintumbleweed — 2017-03-28T22:37:01.702Z

[Epistemic Status: I suspect that this is at least partially wrong. But I don’t know why yet, and so I figured I’d write it up and let people tell me. First post on Less Wrong, for what that’s worth.]

First thesis: IQ is more akin to a composite measure of performance such as the decathlon than it is to a single characteristic such as height or speed.

Second thesis: When looking at extraordinary performance in any specific field, IQ will usually be highly correlated with success, but it will not fully explain or predict top-end performance, because extraordinary performance in a specific field is a result of extraordinary talent in a sub-category of intelligence (or even a sub-category of a sub-category), rather than truly top-end achievement in the composite metric.

Before we go too far, here are some of the things I’m not arguing:

IQ is largely immutable (though perhaps not totally immutable).

IQ is a heritable, polygenic trait.

IQ is highly correlated with a variety of achievement measures, including academic performance, longevity, wealth, happiness, and health.

That parenting and schooling matter far less than IQ in predicting performance.

That IQ matters more than “grit” and “mindset” when explaining performance.

Most extraordinary performers, from billionaire tech founders to chess prodigies, to writers and artists and musicians, will possess well-above-average IQ.[1]

Here is one area why I’m certain I’m in the minority:

I believe that Spearman’s G is a reification. At least one smart person has also expressed this opinion, but most experts disagree with him (this ties in with the First Thesis).

Here is the issue where I’m not sure if my opinion is controversial, and thus why I’m writing to get feedback:

While IQ is almost certainly highly correlated with high-end performance, IQ fails a metric to explain or, more importantly, to predict top-end individual performance (the Second Thesis).

Why IQ Isn’t Like Height

Height is a single, measurable characteristic. Speed over any distance is a single, measurable characteristic. Ability to bench-press is a single, measurable characteristic.

But intelligence is more...
Meetup : Test%20meetup%20please%20ignore
by rocurley — 2017-03-28T19:11:08.968Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Test%20meetup%20please%20ignore

WHEN:
27 March 2017 11:18:40AM (-0700)

WHERE:
antartica

sorry

Discussion article for the meetup : Test%20meetup%20please%20ignore
Meetup : Superintelligence chapter 4
by pepe_prime — 2017-03-28T18:55:13.005Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Superintelligence chapter 4

WHEN:
28 April 2017 05:45:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Lindstedtsvägen 3, room 1537, SE-114 28 Stockholm, Sverige

The kinetics of an intelligence explosion

Timing and speed of the takeoff

Recalcitrance

Non-machine intelligence paths

Emulation and AI paths

Optimization power and explosivity

We'll have a presentation on the above topics, with opportunities for discussion. We'll repeat this with later chapters every 2 weeks. You don't have to have read the book, though it will probably help to read chapters 1-3.

Format:

We meet and start hanging out at 5:45, but don't officially start doing the meetup topic until 6:00 to acommadate stragglers. We often go out for dinner after the meetup.

Influence future meetups:

Times - http://www.when2meet.com/?5723551-cJBhD

Topics - https://druthe.rs/dockets/-KcCvpn97vUhg3tQRrKn

Discussion article for the meetup : Superintelligence chapter 4
What Value Epicycles?
by Gordon Seidoh Worley — 2017-03-27T21:03:54.479Z
Link: https://mapandterritory.org/what-value-epicycles-f8358678a23a

A couple months ago Ben Hoffman wrote an article laying out much of his worldview. I responded to him in the comments that it allowed me to see what I had always found “off” about his writing:

To my reading, you seem to prefer in sense making explanations that are interesting all else equal, and to my mind this matches a pattern I and many other have been guilty of where we end up preferring what is interesting to what is parsimonious and thus less likely to be as broadly useful in explaining and predicting the world.

After some back in forth, it turns out what I was really trying to say is that Ben seems to prefer adding epicycles to make models more complete while I prefer to avoid them.

Epicycles come from Ptolemaic astronomy which puts the Earth at the center of the universe with everything, including the Sun, orbiting around it. To make this geocentric model fit with observations of retrograde motion, though, required the introduction of epicycles, imagined spheres in orbit around Earth on which the planets rotated. It’s now part of the mythology of science that over time extra epicycles had to be added to correct additional observational anomalies until it became so complex that epicycles had to be thrown out in favor of the simpler heliocentric model. And although it seems this story is more misunderstanding than truth, “epicycle” has become the metonym for adding parts to a theory to make it work.

Epicycles of the moon

Epicycles have a bad rap. After all, they proved to be part of an incorrect model and are now associated with anti-scientific adherence to maintaining tradition because they were needed to support the cosmology backed by the Catholic church. But I mean to use “epicycle” here in a neutral rather than pejorative way to simply mean making a theory more complete by adding complexity to it. It’s not necessarily bad to “add epicycles” to a model, and in fact doing so has its uses.

Epicycles let you immediately make an existing theory more complete. For example, if you have a unified theory of psyche, adopting something like dual process theory instantly gives you additional explanatory power by allowing the model to decompose concepts that may have been confused in a unified psyche. In turn, 3-part and 4-part psyche models add more epicycles in the form of more parts or sub...
Open thread, Mar. 27 - Apr. 02, 2017
by username2 — 2017-03-27T08:29:31.872Z

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 start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

4. Unflag the two options "Notify me of new top level comments on this article" and "Make this post available under..." before submitting.
Some problems with making induction benign, and approaches to them
by jessicata — 2017-03-27T06:49:54.000Z

The universal prior is malign. I'll talk about sequence of problems causing it to be malign and possible solutions.

(this post came out of conversations with Scott, Critch, and Paul)

Here's the basic setup of how an inductor might be used.
At some point humans use the universal prior to make an important prediction that influences our actions. Say that humans construct an inductor, give it a sequence of bits s from some sensor, and ask it to predict the next k bits. Those k bits are actually (in a way inferrable from s) going to be generated by a human in a sealed room who thinks for a year. After the human thinks for a year, the k bits are fed into the inductor. This way, the humans can use the inductor to predict what the human who thinks for a year will say ahead of time. (This probably isn't the best way to use an inductor but it serves as a good demonstration).

The anthropic update is a problem for Solomonoff induction

The original problem Paul talks about in his post is that consequentialist agents can make an "anthropic update" on the fact that the string s is fed into a Solomonoff inductor with a specific prior, while Solomonoff induction can't make this update on its own.
Interestingly, this problem with Solomonoff induction is also a problem with sufficiently large convolutional neural networks (capable of simulating e.g. game of life).

Possibly, this could be solved by inventing a naturalized variant of Solomonoff induction that makes this anthropic update.

Simulation warfare is a problem for naturalized induction

Suppose alien civilizations devote some percentage of their resources to (a) coming up with plausible values for the prefix s and (b) constructing naturalized inductors that are fed the string s followed by k bits such that the aliens would be able to take over the humans' system if these bits were the prediction of the humans' inductor. (For example, these k bits could be a manipulative message).

Under this supposition, a large percentage of naturalized inductors in the universe are of this form. In particular, if the aliens are good at guessing s, then a large percentage of naturalized inductors that are fed a string staring with the prefix s will be of this form. So the naturalized inductor used by the humans will, under reasonable anthropic theories, predict a message chosen by some alien civilization with high probability.

Si

...
Meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Meta
by rocurley — 2017-03-26T17:40:20.941Z

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Meta

WHEN:
27 March 2017 06:15:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
1045 Mission St., SF

It's been a while since we've reflected on questions like: What is this meetup for? What are we getting out of it, and what do we want to get out of it? How could we do better? What are new formats or topics we could try?

This meetup will be partly collection of feedback, partly brainstorming, and partly putting together concrete plans for the future. (And as usual, I expect there will be some casual conversations, too.)

For help getting into the building, please call (or text, with a likely-somewhat-slower response rate): 301-458-0764.

Format:

We meet and start hanging out at 6:15, but don’t officially start doing the meetup topic until 6:45-7 to accommodate stragglers. Usually there is a food order that goes out before we start the meetup topic.

About these meetups:

The mission of the SF LessWrong meetup is to provide a fun, low-key social space with some structured interaction, where new and non-new community members can mingle and have interesting conversations. Everyone is welcome.

We explicitly encourage people to split off from the main conversation or diverge from the topic if that would be more fun for them (moving side conversations into a separate part of the space if appropriate). Meetup topics are here as a tool to facilitate fun interaction, and we certainly don’t want them to inhibit it.

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Meta
Who watches?
by KatjaGrace — 2017-03-26T13:29:06.000Z

It is hard for humans to escape caring what other humans think of them. Arguably, it is hard for humans to escape caring about about what other humans would think of them, were other humans to ever learn the fascinating truth of what they put in their sandwich today, or how stylish the sweatpants they wear to eat it will be.

This attention to ‘what people think’ is usually seen as regrettable but unavoidable, so we encourage one another not to do it, and leave it at that.

Yet how good or bad ‘caring what people think’ is must surely depend a lot on who ‘people’ are. And I think this actually differs substantially between different self-conscious minds, and can be altered. Which is to say, even if you are beholden to the thoughts of ‘people’, the nature of this is flexible.

In the extreme, arbitrary imaginary observers could applaud any kind of behavior, so it’s flexible in the sense that there isn’t really any behavior this couldn’t lead to. But also in practice, with the particular set of people who exist (and the ones who could, and will, and did), I suspect an individual person can come to quite different conclusions about what ‘people’ think by aggregating the people and their thoughts differently.

Some variation I suspect exists among people’s imaginary observers:

Real vs. ideal: if everyone in the world prefers policy X but you are confident that a rational agent would prefer policy Y, which do you feel less ashamed carrying out?

Actual vs. hypothetical: if two people are aware of your behavior and everyone else isn’t, how do you weigh what those two actually think of it relative to what everyone else would think of it if they knew? e.g. How shameful would it feel to partake in bestiality in front of other enthusiasts?

Local vs. global: do you feel better doing something that the people around you approve of if you think that most people in the world or in time would disagree, or doing something locally unpopular, confident that most people ever would applaud?

Informed vs. uninformed: if given all of the information P is a good action and Q is a stupid action, but with less information Q looks better, which do you feel less ashamed to do? (Supposing that in practice nobody is looking).

Sympathetic vs. critical: do you have to really make a strong case to persuade the imaginary onlookers, or are they itching to approve

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Meetup : Baltimore / UMBC Meetup - general discussion
by iarwain1 — 2017-03-26T13:27:51.229Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Baltimore / UMBC Meetup - general discussion

WHEN:
26 March 2017 08:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
Performing Arts and Humanities Bldg 4th floor, 1000 Hilltop Cir, Baltimore, MD 21250

No parking restrictions on weekends, so park wherever you want.

Discussion article for the meetup : Baltimore / UMBC Meetup - general discussion
Unethical Human Behavior Incentivised by Existence of AGI and Mind-Uploading
by RedMan — 2017-03-25T19:29:42.499Z

I need help getting out of a logical trap I've found myself in after reading The Age of Em.

Some statements needed to set the trap:

If mind-uploading is possible, then a mind can theoretically exist for an arbitrary length of time.

If a mind is contained in software, it can be copied, and therefore can be stolen.

An uploaded mind can retain human attributes indefinitely.

Some subset of humans are sadistic jerks, many of these humans have temporal power.

All humans, under certain circumstances, can behave like sadistic jerks.

Human power relationships will not simply disappear with the advent of mind uploading.

Some minor negative implications:

Torture becomes embarrassingly parallel.

US states with the death penalty may adopt death plus simulation as a penalty for some offenses.

The trap:

Over a long enough timeline, the probability of a copy of any given uploaded mind falling into the power of a sadistic jerk approaches unity. Once an uploaded mind has fallen under the power of a sadistic jerk, there is no guarantee that it will ever be 'free', and the quantity of experienced sufferring could be arbitrarily large, due in part to the embarrassingly parallel nature of torture enabled by running multiple copies of a captive mind.

Therefore! If you believe that mind uploading will become possible in a given individual's lifetime, the most ethical thing you can do from the utilitarian standpoint of minimizing aggregate suffering, is to ensure that the person's mind is securely deleted before it can be uploaded.

Imagine the heroism of a soldier, who faced with capture by an enemy capable of uploading minds and willing to parallelize torture spends his time ensuring that his buddies' brains are unrecoverable at the cost of his own capture.

I believe that mind uploading will become possible in my lifetime, please convince me that running through the streets with a blender screaming for brains is not an example of effective altruism.

On a more serious note, can anyone else think of examples of really terrible human decisions that would be incentivised by the development of AGI or mind uploading? This problem appears related to AI safety.
survey about biases in the investment context
by -necate- — 2017-03-25T14:24:12.053Z

Hello guys, I am currently writing my master's thesis on biases in the investment context. One sub-sample that I am studying is people who are educated about biases in a general context, but not in the investment context. I guess LW is the right place to find some of those so I would be very happy if some of you would participate, especially since people who are aware about biases are hard to come by elsewhere. Also I explicitly ask for activity in the LW community in the survey, so if enough of LWers participate I could analyse them as an individual sub-sample. It would be interesting to know how LWers perform compared to psychology students for example.The link to the survey is: https://survey.deadcrab.de/
Meetup : Sydney Rationality Dojo - April 2017
by luminosity — 2017-03-25T01:02:11.216Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Rationality Dojo - April 2017

WHEN:
02 April 2017 04:00:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
10 Shepherd Street, Chippendale

Join us from 4 - 6 to sharpen your planning, motivation and other rationality skills. Afterwards there'll be a social dinner for those who want to stick around.

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Rationality Dojo - April 2017
You Heard It Here First
by Jacob Falkovich — 2017-03-24T21:38:33.000Z

I haven’t done link posts on Putanumonit for two main reasons. I waste enough hours reading stuff on the internet, I hardly need extra encouragement to do so. Also, when I come across a great idea I want to analyze and write about it, not just post a link with a blurb.

But in the last few weeks, I’ve come across a lot of good writing on topics I already covered on this blog. This means either that every important writer on the internet is inspired by Putanumonit, or that I need to diversify my reading. I’d say it’s fifty-fifty which one it is.

I’ll take this opportunity to compile a few links with extended quotes, and see how they relate to my previous posts. External links are green as usual, links to the Putanumonit posts that inspired them are in orange.

My own plan to get rich slowly involves passive index investing, so I don’t read a whole lot about finance. I do however read Matt Levine because every paragraph he writes is a gem, especially when he writes about passive index investing:

A central fact of markets is that “after costs, the return on the average actively managed dollar will be less than the return on the average passively managed dollar.” There are some caveats, but this is basically a matter of arithmetic, and doesn’t rely on any assumptions about market efficiency.

But that is not in itself a reason to choose passive management. You could just invest in an above-average active fund, and still do better than passive funds after costs. The problem is not just that the average active fund will underperform the average passive fund, but also that it’s very hard to tell in advance which active funds will outperform: Most top funds one year aren’t top funds the next. So how can you pick one that will be?

The trick for an active manager who wants to be successful in this age of skeptical and scientific investing is to have a compelling answer to that question: not blather about its tradition of stewardship or its commitment to investors, but rather to lay out a set of objectively observable criteria for how to pick an active fund, show that those criteria repeatably predict outperformance, and show that it meets those criteria. And Capital [Group]… kind of does that?

Capital’s analysis of historic fund performance — research that has been corroborated by Morningstar, an indust

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