trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
AI Safety Discussion Days
by Linda Linsefors — 2020-05-27T16:54:47.875Z

AI Safety Discussion Days

I’m going to organise an online AI Safety discussion day, roughly once per month. This is a space to discuss anything you want related to preventing catastrophic risk from AI, including governance, strategy, all technical AI Safety research, and also trying to understand humans better for the purpose of alignment. The goal of these days is to learn from each other, exchange perspectives and get feedback on your ideas.
The discussion days are primarily for people who are actively working on preventing AI related X-risk, or plan to do so in the near future. However, because there is no limit of space on the internet, anyone who is interested is allowed to listen in, as long as you’re not disrupting any conversations

The first one will be on Sunday the 7th of June. To be inclusive to everyone in every timezone, the discussion day will last from midnight to midnight, as defined by UTC.

Here’s the information for the first discussion day.

To stay informed about future discussion days, you can

sign up for my newsletter

.

If you just want to participate and not worry about anything else, you can stop reading here. Well done.

Background and thoughts about this project

Two weeks ago, I organised

Web-TAISU

, a four day unconference about AI Safety. This event seemed both useful and appreciated, so I will see whether I can keep the discussion going.

I will prioritise making sure that each month’s discussion day is high quality and worth your time to attend. But I will also experiment with different event structures, so you should expect this event to be somewhat different each time

The first discussion day will be a simple unconference structure, with an open schedule where you can add sessions you want to run: talks, discussions, workshops, etc. This is the same structure as Web-TAISU, except there won’t be any session pitches at the start. Instead the

schedule

is already open for you to add what you want to do.

If you have some activity you would like to run during a future discussion day, or if you have ideas or suggestions for something I should try out, or if you would like to try organising one of these events yourself, then let me know. I don’t promise to try your idea, but I will consider it. If you would like to run some activity as part of a discussion day, I will most likely be up for working out how to...
[Job ad] Lead an ambitious COVID-19 forecasting project [Deadline extended: June 10th]
by Bird Concept — 2020-05-27T16:38:04.084Z

In brief: I’m hiring for a project manager for Epidemic Forecasting, an independent project spun off from the Future of Humanity Institute that provides forecasting information to governments and other decision-makers during the covid pandemic. [Application deadline extended to June 10th]. You need to have good judgement, the ability to work fast and hard leading a team, and references from people I trust. You need to be able to commit to 3 months of full-time paid work, and there’s the potential to scale up afterwards to a full-time organisation if you find traction.

Private message me to talk more. For the rest of the post, I’ll give more info on the project, what’s involved and why you might want to work on this.

What is the state of this project?

Since the beginning of March, I've led the Epidemic Forecasting project which spun off from the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford.

So far we've:

Provided policy analyses for senior health officials of regions with tens of millions inhabitants
Advised a major vaccine candidate on where to locate trials with as many as 100,000 participants
Built the interactive tools at EpidemicForecasting.org, which served 10k users/day at its peak
Worked with an in-house team of expert forecasters to produce >3000 forecasts on questions of improvements to testing capacity and contact tracing, herd immunity, further lockdown, and more
Built software infrastructure to integrate those forecasts into epidemiological modelling software like GleamViz and run simulations at scale
Built one of the most thoroughly validated Bayesian models of the effects of countermeasures we are aware of

Over the last 3 months we've found that this project has real traction and demand, and I think it's time for a focused team to commit to at least another 3-12 months on this, and either wrap up once opportunities go away, or build it into a non-profit/for-profit that serves an important long-term function for mitigating pandemics.

This post is an invitation for a new project manager to step up. I’m going to pursue other projects that I think have more long-term potential for me personally. If I find someone who can do the management work, can deliver output fast, and has the sound judgment needed to take over, then I will help you get started with the team, introduce you to major relationships (gove...
Obsidian: A Mind Mapping Markdown Editor
by  — 2020-05-27T16:26:31.824Z
Link: https://obsidian.md/

I just saw this app today. It's made by the same people behind Dynalist, which is similar to Workflowy. I know other people on here have been on a big Roam kick, and I think Obsidian allows importing for Roam tags (or something, I haven't used Roam before.)

I think Eli previously asked for some mind-mapping software. This seems relevant to people who want a new way to do their note organization in a mind-mapping way.

The screenshot looks pretty clean:

I'm also trying this out, and I'll try to post my personal thoughts later. They have a public roadmap you can follow. I've been using Typora as my editor of choice for a while now because it supports inline LaTEX and a nice markdown styler, but it looks like adding support for these two things is on the way.
Predicted Land Value Tax: a better tax than an unimproved land value tax
by michaelcohen — 2020-05-27T13:40:04.092Z

Epistemic status: I'm not an economist. Please look carefully for errors in my reasoning.

Weaknesses of unimproved land value tax

Unimproved land value is hard to assess.
If someone has a lot of wealth stored in land that has been significantly improved, they could bear a larger tax burden than they would be paying under an unimproved land value tax.

Version 1

All real estate is constantly up for auction on a centralized website. If anyone enters a bid on a property, they need to have money stored in a special account tied the website that is ready to be paid to the owner if the owner accepts the bid (and their bids on other properties are immediately recalled if someone’s balance then drops too much). The highest bid on each property is considered the value of that property.

The government offers an open challenge for people to submit computer programs that predict the value of a property given:

the coordinates of the vertices of the polygon forming the boundary of the property (the “property coordinates”)
the property coordinates and the history of property values, going back 10 years, of every other property within a circle that is N times the area of the property itself.

The objective for the program submissions is to minimize is the squared error of predictions. The program must be within a capped file size. Programs that people submit are tested as time goes on, and the ones that do the best are awarded prizes.

People pay tax on the predicted value of their property, using an aggregated version of the best submissions. Unlike the unimproved land value, this value is easy to assess. Improving the value of one’s property does not increase one’s tax burden (unless it increases the value of neighbors’ properties, in which case the increase in the tax burden should still be fairly small.) And the taxable value of the property is closer to the true value than it would be if unimproved land value were taxed.

Problems with Version 1

Two identical neighboring properties could stabilize to different values; the low value one remains low value because it has a higher property tax because the neighbor’s property is higher value, and vice versa.
A speculator could buy up properties in a neighborhood, then sell them to himself at an arbitrarily large price. This could drive up the tax on neighboring properties, and drive down

...
Your abstraction isn't wrong, it's just really bad
by George3d6 — 2020-05-26T20:14:04.534Z
Link: https://blog.cerebralab.com/Your_abstraction_isn't_wrong,_it's_just_really_bad

Epistemtic status: pretty sure

For a programming language to qualify as such, the only thing it needs is Turing Completeness. That means, at least in principle, it can be used to solve any (solvable) computational problem.

There are features besides Turing Completeness which make it desirable, but if you tried hard enough, all of those features could be implemented as part of any Turing complete language.

Let's take a maximally perverse theory of abstraction-making that says:

An abstraction is sufficiently good if, in principle, it can yield answers to all questions that it's designed to solve.

Under this definition, the assembly language (ASM) of virtually any computer is sufficient abstraction for writing code.

The only "problem" with ASM is that writing something simple like quicksort ends up being monstrously large and hard to read (and this implementation is written for clarity, not speed).

Compare that to a quicksort implementation written in, C. It's only 13 lines of code and about as equally efficient as the ASM one above. Even better, it would work on virtually all machines, while the above ASM wouldn't and would have to be rewritten for a bunch of architectures.

C might not be the best abstraction one can use for low-level programming, e.g. writing sorting algorithms, but it's better than ASM.

However the ASM implementation is far from being the maximally perverse version one can get under our naive abstraction-choosing constraints. The prize for that would currently go to something like the brainfuck implementation:

>>+>>>>>,[>+>>,]>+[--[+<<<-]<[<+>-]<[<[->[<<<+>>>>+<-]<<[>>+>[->]<<[<] <-]>]>>>+<[[-]<[>+<-]<]>[[>>>]+<<<-<[<<[<<<]>>+>[>>>]<-]<<[<<<]>[>>[>> >]<+<<[<<<]>-]]+<<<]+[->>>]>>]>>[.>>>]

Now that, that is what I call seriously fucked up.

But brainfuck is Turing complete, so under the above definition, it is no worse than ASM or C.

How we avoid bad languages?

So C, C++, Javascript, Python, Julia, any given ASM, Fortran, Lua, Elm, Clojure, CLISP, Rust, Forth, Elixir, Erlang, Go, Nim, Scala, Ada, Cobolt, Brainfuck, and, ...
Why We Age, Part 2: Non-adaptive theories
by willbradshaw — 2020-05-26T17:41:19.142Z
Link: https://apomorphic.com/2020/01/12/why-we-age-2-nonadaptive

Follows from: Why We Age, Part 1; Evolution is Sampling Error; An addendum on effective population size

Partially redundant with Highlights of Comparative and Evolutionary Aging.

Last time, I introduced three puzzles in the evolution of ageing:

This, then, is the threefold puzzle of ageing. Why should a process that appears to be so deleterious to the individuals experiencing it have evolved to be so widespread in nature? Given this ubiquity, which implies there is some compelling evolutionary reason for ageing to exist, why do different animals vary so much in their lifespans? And how, when ageing has either evolved or been retained in so many different lineages, have some animals evolved to escape it?

I divided existing theories of the evolution of ageing into two groups, adaptive and nonadaptive, and discussed why one commonly believed nonadaptive theory – namely, simple wear and tear – could not adequately answer these questions.

In this post I'll discuss other, more sophisticated non-adaptive theories. These theories are characterised by their assertion that ageing provides no fitness benefit to organisms, but rather evolves despite being deleterious to reproductive success. Despite the apparent paradoxicality of this notion, these theories are probably the most widely-believed family of explanations for the evolution of ageing among academics in the field; they're also the group of theories I personally put the most credence in at present.

How can this be? How can something non-adaptive – even deleterious – have evolved and persisted in so many species across the animal kingdom? To answer this question, we need to understand a few important concepts from evolutionary biology, including genetic drift, relaxed purifying selection, and pleiotropy. First, though, we need to clarify some important terminology.

Mortality, survivorship, and fecundity

For the purposes of this post, a cohort is a group of individuals from the same population who were all born at the same time, i.e. they are of the same age. The survivorship of a cohort at a given age is the percentage of individuals surviving to that age, or equivalently the probability of any given individual surviving at least that long. Conversely, the mortality of a cohort at a given age is the probability of an individual from that cohort dying at that age, and not before or after.

Survivorship and mortality

...
Is fake news bullshit or lying?
by HarperSachs — 2020-05-26T16:55:31.953Z

New strategies for combating misinformation

A layperson-friendly view. Cross-posted from my personal blog, First Principles.

Fake news is on the rise. We know this from Facebook shares, WhatsApp forwards, Twitter trolls, and Potemkin news sites. We see it in elections across the world, novel coronavirus guidance, and nation-state posturing.

We’ve known about the issue for a while, and technology companies — in their role as the primary distributors — have taken action. This action has not stemmed the tide, and meanwhile the techniques of misinformation evolve and proliferate: bot armies and Deep Fakes being only a few recent innovations.

Why is it so difficult to define what fake news is? Why does calling out lies have little impact on those already deceived? And crucially, what can we do to restore trust and reason to public and social media?

What is fake news?

Fake news is deliberate, targeted, misinformation. It’s not necessarily wholly false: perpetrators are as willing to utilize truths that fit their narrative as they are to concoct falsehoods to construct it. They’re necessarily indifferent to the truth, and attached solely to the outcome: the beliefs they wish to plant within the minds of their targets. From Harry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit:

[The bullshitter’s] eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.

Fake news, therefore, isn’t lying, but bullshit.

Why is fake news so hard to fight?

Fake news, being an extension of bullshit, inherits much of its traits:

It’s hard to refute

The claims within bullshit are many, nebulous, and often not even wrong. Fact-checking alone isn’t adequate to this task, and neither is reliance upon a trustworthy set of sources.

It’s normalized

As Frankfurt points out:

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. […] The realms of advertising and of public relations, and the nowadays closely related realm of politics, are replete with instances of bullshit so unmitigated that they can serve among the most indisputable and classic paradigms of

...
Why aren’t we testing general intelligence distribution?
by B Jacobs — 2020-05-26T16:07:30.833Z

IQ supposedly measures general intelligence. Assuming the g-factor exists, why are we using IQ to measure it? IQ tests get tweaked so the end result will always form a normal distribution. I checked wikipedia to figure out why, but while it said some people claim that LCT is a good reason to believe the g-factor will have a normal distribution, it didn’t seem terribly confident (and it also didn’t give a source). Even “The Bell Curve” used an intelligence test that didn’t return a bell curve at all. They said they had to turn it into a bell curve to prevent 'skew':

But isn’t this putting the cart before the horse? Surely it would be interesting to see what distributions we would get if we did intelligence testing without a result in mind? I get that it is really difficult to measure, but if a test consistently gave us a different distribution, we could learn valuable insights into how human minds work. So is there a reason why we aren’t testing the hypothesis that general intelligence will follow a normal distribution?
Spoiler-Free Review: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
by Zvi — 2020-05-26T14:10:01.401Z

Also see: Plague in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was my (first?) quarantine game. For about a hundred hours, I’ve wandered around ancient Greece. The game is lengthy, expansive and huge. Perhaps too much!

A lot of that was working through my Odyssey itself. I also spent a bunch of that enjoyably side questing, both the scripted and generic varieties.

There was also a non-trivial amount of it merely admiring the scenery and enjoying the journey itself, including taking photographs. Some of those photographs might end up printed out on my walls. This is a gorgeous, gorgeous game. If you play it, play it on the largest screen available.

My game review format is typically to divide into sections by level of spoiler contained therein. The first section will be spoiler-free. The second will spoil things.

This is the spoiler-free review. It seeks to answer one question.

Should I Play This Game?

Short Answer

If you’re looking for a relaxing experience that lasts a long time, I highly recommend giving this game a shot. I think it mostly does its jobs exceedingly well, and I am very pleased with the time I spent on it. I have not played previous games in the series or many with similar mechanics, so I can’t fully compare to see if this is better or worse than those games. But my guess is this is near the top.

Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey is an open world, action RPG game set (mostly) in ancient Greece. Battles are real time, with success depending on choosing them wisely, fighting them well, and having the necessary levels and gear. Over the course of the game, you’ll do quests, gain experience and gold (technically drachme), improve your gear, choose new abilities and learn better how the game works.

The game can perhaps best be thought of as a sort of one-player MMO. It copies the core open-world structure and quest structure from such games, with a greater emphasis on the overarching plot.

The closest parallel I’ve played would be the excellent Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. I am not sure which game is better. Skyrim is better at offering an RPG experience, planning in combat and more interesting managing and customization of abilities. Odyssey combat is more viscerally satisfying, but after a while it runs together. Odyssey has stealth and naval elements Skyrim is missing. Odyssey gets to be in Greece, so it has a better world. It also has a better main plot ...
Should I self-variolate to COVID-19
by Eli Tyre — 2020-05-25T20:29:42.714Z

[This is currently in the speculative phase. I am not planning to do anything rash without very careful consideration.

Please do not read this question as an endorsement of the plan described herein.

Please use common sense and don't take dangerous actions without doing due diligence and carefully weighing the costs, benefits, and risks.]

As the coronavirus situation develops, it is becoming more plausible that the pandemic won't meaningfully end for months.

There travel that I would like to do (in the continental US), this year. But, even if I carefully self-isolate, I think it would be socially irresponsible for me to travel from place to place in the country, potentially being a vector for intercity transmission. (Not to mention that I would be visiting committed EAs, who I especially don't want to infect.)

I think the only way that it would be socially responsible for me to travel, is if I knew with very high confidence that I wasn't carrying the virus*. And the only way that I can have that confidence is if I have already caught it, recovered, and now have antibodies against the virus.

I am young (26), healthy, and currently in self isolation. My personal risk of death or disfigurement from catching the virus seems low. (One crux for that is that the risk of developing permanent chronic fatigue is low.)

I'm tempted to intentionally expose myself to (ideally, a controlled dose of) the virus, strictly self-isolate for the contagious period (with careful regular testing of my symptoms), confirm my resistance to the virus with an antibody test, and then travel freely, knowing that I am not a vector for the virus.

I'm wondering if this plane is actually practical.

* - I suppose that another possibility is that, in every city that I visit I could rent an AirBnB and strictly self isolate for 14 days. That seems both expensive and onerous.

The most important question:

Is this a stupid idea?

More specifically,

What is the best up to date information on the fatality risk to different age groups?

I'm still using the 0.2% fatality rate for 20 to 29 year olds, from China, early in the pandemic. Do we have better numbers now? How much does that figure overestimate, because of asymptomatic cases that are not counted among the "number of infected" denominator?

Do we have good information about how much a low initial viral load

...
A Taijitu symbol for Moloch and Slack
by B Jacobs — 2020-05-25T20:03:44.447Z

There is a balance between Moloch (which I think of as the forces of exploitation) and Slack (which I think of as the forces of exploration).

Scott Alexander writes:

Think of slack as a paradox – the Taoist art of winning competitions by not trying too hard at them. Moloch and Slack are opposites and complements, like yin and yang. Neither is stronger than the other, but their interplay creates the ten thousand things.

LW is mostly not a design website, but Scott's post inspired me to make a symbol for this concept. It's a Taijitu of Moloch and Slack as created by the inadequate equilibria and the hillock:

You can find a higher resolution image and a svg-file of this symbol here