trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Wasteful qualifiers
by KatjaGrace — 2013-04-17T20:44:43.000Z

Users of languages improve them by adding new words. Often languages would also be improved by taking away words – not so much such that nobody ever uses the word, but just so it is not necessary to convey a certain meaning. For instance since it is very rare for a claim to be meant with one hundred percent certainty, it would be more efficient if a speaker had to add ‘certainly’ in that case, rather than adding ‘probably’ or ‘I think’ for every other case where they are only claiming a best guess.

Robin Hanson explains the retention of such extra words by people being stuck in a signaling game: if you don’t add the extra words in the normal cases, then people mistake you for those who really are making extreme claims, since everyone else adds the extra words when they are making the ordinary claim.

That seems correct. But why would this begin? How did everyone ever come to use the long, complicated sentences for saying ordinary things and the succinct ones for claims that almost nobody ever wants to make? Perhaps we just especially notice the half of times when the signals are assigned the inconvenient way around?

Another plausible theory is that the usual cases are complicated, whereas simple cases are unusual and extreme. Adding qualifications allows you to say something much more specific and nuanced. And we usually want to refer to specific, nuanced state of affairs. However for uncontroversial issues nobody seems to have much trouble interpreting simple statements as the obvious more complex ones. If you say ‘roofs in England have steeper slopes than roofs in Australia’ most people would interpret this as indicating some sort of general tendency for steeper roofs in England. If you want to say the extreme thing, you have to say something like ‘literally every roof in England is steeper than every roof in Australia – no, I mean it literally. I know, it sounds insane! Look, I’ll send you these seven review articles summarizing the research.’ Whereas if a person says ‘women are less interested in engineering than men’, listeners seem to often interpret this in such a way as to make raising counterexamples a reasonable response.

So it seems closely connected with controversy. It appears that people making uncontroversial claims are much more scared of being misunder...
Cryocrastinating? Send me (or someone else) money!
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2013-04-17T13:08:35.630Z

I know from personal experience how hard it is to actually go through the final process to sign up for cryonics - no matter how theoretically in favour one is. For me, it was Robin Hanson's offer of an hour of chat that sealed the deal - it seemed much easier to focus on getting to that interview, than on potentially saving the whole of my future :-)

Anyway, I'm offering my services to help out others who might want to get that final push over the line. What am I offering? Well, the opportunity to send me money! Simply pledge something like "if I don't get signed up for cryonics by such and such a date, I will send Stuart Armstrong $X".

This sounds incredibly mercenary - I'm offering you the possibility of sending me money? This seems to be a misunderstanding of the whole meaning of the word "offering". Well, for a start, I'm certain that I will never receive that money - if someone pledges "in a year's time, I will have signed up for cryonics, or I will send Stuart Armstrong $200", then I read that as "in a year's time, I will have signed up for cryonics". Because no-one likes losing money they could keep by doing something they want to (want to) do. So what I'm offering is the possibility to make yourself sign up for cryonics.

In fact, I'll do it this way: if I ever get any money from such a pledge, I'll redistribute that money to other people who took the pledge and did sign up. If it's not too many people, I can probably offer one hour chats as well, for those interested.

Of course, this works just as well if you pledge to give money to someone else, not just me, so I encourage you to pledge to whoever you like! Just make sure that:

You don't pledge the money to a charity you approve of - you should have no justification for avoiding signing up. Failure is a failure, not an act of generosity.

You pledge the money to someone who will take the money from you if you fail - or else the whole thing doesn't work at all. I promise to do so!

You bear in mind that these things take longer than you expect (planning fallacy and all that). Pledge a year, aim to have it done in six months.

I already have one person pledged for £100 in a year's time, and I'm fully confident they'll be signed up before that. If I have their permission, I'll let you know as soon as it happens.
Ritual Report: Schelling Day
by ModusPonies — 2013-04-17T03:46:53.809Z

On Sunday, April 14th, the Boston group held our first Schelling Day celebration. The idea was to open up and share our private selves. It was a rousing success.

That doesn't do it justice. Let me try again.

By all the stars, you guys. This was beautiful.

About fifteen people showed up. Most of us were from the hard core of Boston's rationalist community. Two of us were new to the group. (I'm hopeful this will convince them to start attending our regular meetups.) There was a brief explanation and a few vital clarifying questions before we began the ritual, which went for maybe 90-120 minutes, including a couple of short breaks. All of us spoke at least once.

I don't want to go into specifics about what people said, but it was powerful. I learned about sides of my friends I would never have guessed at. People went into depth about issues I had only seen from the surface. I heard things that will make me change my behavior towards my friends. I saw angst and guilt and hope and pain and wild joy. I saw compassion and uncertainty and courage. People said things they had never said before, things I might not have been brave enough even to think in their position. I had tears in my eyes more than once.

Speaking went remarkably smoothly. I set a timer for five minutes for each speaker, but it never ran out. (Five minutes is a surprisingly long time.) Partway through, Julia suggested we leave a long moment of silence between speakers, which was a very good idea and I wish I'd done a better job of enforcing it.

Afterwards, we had a potluck and mingled in small groups. At first we talked about our revelations, but over time our conversation started drifting towards our usual topics. Next time, in order to keep us on topic, I'll probably try adding more structure to this stage.

The other area I wanted to improve was the ritual with the snacks. We had five categories: Struggles, Confessions, Hopes, Joys, and Other. There weren't many Hopes, and there wasn't much distinction between Struggles and Confessions. I'll change this for next time, possibly to Hardships, Joys, Histories, and Other. There's room for improvement in the specific snacks I picked, too.

This celebration was the most powerful thing I've experienced since the Solstice megameetup. I don't think I want to do this again soon—it...
Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation  (link)
by D_Alex — 2013-04-17T02:23:23.804Z

If it is... I hope they do not crash the system with the test.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/12/12/physicists-universe-simulation-test-university-of-washington-matrix_n_2282745.html

Be sure to check out the actual reseach papers linked in the article! I would have linked to them directly, but the article is full of follow-on links of considerable interest.
Meetup : Washington DC books meetup
by rocurley — 2013-04-17T01:39:22.722Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC books meetup

WHEN:
21 April 2013 03:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC 20001, USA (courtyard)

We'll be meeting to talk about books we've found interesting, exchange books (so bring some!) and decide if/how we want to have a book club.

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC books meetup
What truths are actually taboo?
by sunflowers — 2013-04-16T23:40:36.065Z

LessWrong has been having fun lately with posts about sexism, racism, and academic openness. And here just like everywhere else, somebody inevitably claims taboo status for any number of entirely obvious truths, e.g. "top level mathematicians and physicists are almost invariably male," "black people have lower IQ scores than white people," and "black people are statistically more criminal than whites." In my experience, these are not actually taboo, and I think my experience is generalizable. I'll illustrate.

You're at a bar and you meet a fellow named Bill. Bill's a nice guy, but somehow the conversation strayed Hitler-game style to World War II. Bill thinks the war was avoidable. Bill thinks the Holocaust would not have happened were it not for the war, and that some of the Holocaust was a reaction to actual Jewish subterfuge and abuse. Bill thinks that the Holocaust was not an essential, early plan of the Nazis, because it only happened after the war began. Bill thinks that the number of casualties has been overestimated. Bill claims that Allied abuses, e.g. the bombing of Dresden, have been glossed over and ignored, while fantastic lies about Jews being systematically turned into soap have propagated. Bill thinks that the Holocaust has become a sort of national religion, abused by self-interested Jews and defenders of Zionist foreign policy, and that the freedom of those who doubt it is under serious attack. Bill starts listing other things he's not allowed to say. Bill doesn't think that the end of slavery was all that good for "the blacks," and that the negatives of busing and forced integration have often outweighed the positives. Bill has personally been the victim of black-on-white crimes and racism. Bill is a hereditarian. Bill doesn't think that dropping an n-bomb should ruin a public career.

Here's the problem: everything Bill has said is either true, a matter of serious debate, or otherwise a matter of high likelihood and reasonableness. Yet you feel nervous. Perhaps you're upset. That's the power of taboo, right? Society is punishing truth-telling! First they came for the realists... Rationalists, to arms!

Or.

We can recognize that statements like these correlate with certain false beliefs and nasty sentiments of the sort that act...
Meetup : Berlin Social Meetup
by blob — 2013-04-16T16:27:40.931Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Berlin Social Meetup

WHEN:
15 June 2013 05:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Wuhletal, 12621 Berlin

This is a long-term announcement, we are actually meeting biweekly! The intervening meetups aren't planned as far in advance, please use the mailing list!

Our next regular social meetup will be held on Saturday 15th June. It will likely take place at my house, check our mailing list for details.

The social meetup is intended as an informal and relaxed event for chats and games. Everyone is welcome!

Discussion article for the meetup : Berlin Social Meetup
Meetup : Berlin Social Meetup
by blob — 2013-04-16T16:24:32.302Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Berlin Social Meetup

WHEN:
20 April 2013 07:30:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
U Leinestr, 12049 Berlin, Germany

Our next regular social meetup will be held on Saturday 20th April. We're meeting at John's place: If you're interested in coming, join our mailing list to get the exact location.

The social meetup is intended as an informal and relaxed event for chats and games. Everyone is welcome!

Discussion article for the meetup : Berlin Social Meetup
Meetup : Vancouver CFAR Materials: Bayes practice!
by  — 2013-04-16T14:57:12.629Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Vancouver CFAR Materials: Bayes practice!

WHEN:
20 April 2013 03:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
2505 W broadway, vancouver

CFAR's core materials have become organized to the point of being print-out-and-teachable, so I'm going to print out their book and practice from it. I encourage you to do this with me; it will be valuable and at least a little bit fun.

The first unit, besides preamble and and such about rationality checklist, scavenger hunt, and the prediction "markets" game, is a collection of Bayesian exercises to teach the basics of applying probability theory.

There's two sets of quantitative word problems, and some qualitative analysis problems. It should take us a couple hours to work through it all.

I'll be doing this at Benny's Bagels in Kitsilano, starting at 15:00 on Saturday. This will probably be an ongoing thing; every week until we are done, which is like 24 weeks at about one unit per week. We can probably compress that, but Wow.

See our mailing list for reminders about future meetups and such.

See you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : Vancouver CFAR Materials: Bayes practice!
Meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup
by Maelin — 2013-04-16T13:56:51.113Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup

WHEN:
19 April 2013 06:30:00PM (+1000)

WHERE:
Carlton, Melbourne

Melbourne's next regular social meetup will be held on Friday 15th March at our usual venue (Ben's house) in Carlton. All are welcome from 6:30pm.

Our social meetups are informal events held on the third Friday of each month, where we lounge about playing boardgames and chatting, with occasional group parlour games such as Mafia/Werewolf, Resistance, or Zendo if people are interested. If you haven't been to a Melbourne meetup before/recently, the social meetup can be an unintimidating way to meet us as it's very informal and relaxed.

Some snacks will be provided and we'll probably arrange some form of delivered food for dinner. BYO drinks and games.

For the address or any other questions, please see the Melbourne Less Wrong google group, or feel free to SMS me (Richard) on 0421 231 789.

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup
Time turners, Energy Conservation and General Relativity
by Shmi — 2013-04-16T07:23:13.411Z

This post is a bit of entertainment for scientifically inclined Harry Potter fans.

Time turner from the Harry Potter series (and from the Eliezer Yudkowsky's venerable HPMoR fanfic) is a very useful device if you have some unfinished business in the recent past, like attending an extra class or saving a friend from a certain death. However, General Relativity has a few words to say about them, and they are not very flattering. I will only address one issue here: Energy conservation. TL;DR: if you use a time turner to vanish into the past, those around you will see you blown to tiny bits of Merlin-knows-what, quickly disappearing from view. When you appear in the past, this explosion appears in reverse.

Before we get to the time turners, however, let us consider an aside.

Let us start with a common question: if the Sun stop shining this instant, when would we notice? The common answer: it takes light 8.5 minutes to travel the distance of 150,000,000 km between the Sun and the Earth, so that's how long it will take. This glosses over the issue of what does "this instant" mean exactly at two different points in space, which is not so trivial given the relativity of simultaneity in Special Relativity. It is easily patched up, however, once we fix a global frame of reference. The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is a natural one to use, and both the Earth and the Sun travel with a negligible fraction of the speed of light relative to the CMB. Anyway, the answer is still very close to 8.5 min.

Now another, deceptively similar question: if the Sun disappears this instant, how long before the Earth will stop orbiting the point where it used to be? The common answer: gravity travels with the speed of light, so also 8.5 min. This answer is obvious, simple and wrong. Yes, dead wrong. Why? because static gravity is not like light, it's more like electric field, only worse.

Let's first think of how you would make the Sun disappear. Maybe it turned into a black hole? Well, this would not really mean disappearance of gravity, the mass of the black hole will still be that of the Sun, and the Earth will happily (or unhappily, as the case may be) continue orbiting the Sun's corpse. So, in this case the answer is "it won't stop orbiting".

OK, so black hole was a bad example. How about a wormhole instead? You know, the evil Vogon-like aliens need to clear the room for a hyperspace b...
[SEQ RERUN] Beware of Other-Optimizing
by MinibearRex — 2013-04-16T06:30:20.605Z

Today's post, Beware of Other-Optimizing was originally published on 10 April 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Aspiring rationalists often vastly overestimate their own ability to optimize other people's lives. They read nineteen webpages offering productivity advice that doesn't work for them... and then encounter the twentieth page, or invent a new method themselves, and wow, it really works - they've discovered the true method. Actually, they've just discovered the one method in twenty that works for them, and their confident advice is no better than randomly selecting one of the twenty blog posts. Other-Optimizing is exceptionally dangerous when you have power over the other person - for then you'll just believe that they aren't trying hard enough.

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 Mandatory Secret Identities, 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.
The real difference between Reductionism and Emergentism
by RogerS — 2013-04-15T22:09:43.347Z

After trying to discover why the LW wiki “definition” of Reductionism appeared so biased, I concluded from the responses that it was never really intended as a definition of the Reductionist position itself, but as a summary of what is considered to be wrong with positions critical of Reductionism.

The argument goes like this. “Emergentism”, as the critical view is often called, points out the properties that emerge from a system when it is assembled from its elements, which do not themselves show such a property. From such considerations it points out various ways in which research programmes based on a reductionist approach may distort priorities and underestimate difficulties. So far, this is all a matter of degree and eventually each case must be settled on its merits. However, it gets philosophically sensitive when Emergentists claim that a Reductionist approach may be unable in principle to 'explain' certain emergent properties.

The reponse to this claim (I think) goes like this. (1) The explanatory power of a model is a function of its ingredients. (2) Reductionism includes all the ingredients that actually exist in the real world. Therefore (3) Emergentists must be treating the “emergent properties” as extra ingredients, thereby confusing the “map” with the “territory”. So Reductionism is defined by EY and others as not treating emergent properties as extra ingredients (in effect).

At this point it is important to distinguish “Mind theory” from other fields where Reductionism is debated. In this field, Reductionists apparently regard Emergentism as a form of disguised Vitalism/Dualism - if emergent properties can’t be explained by the physical ingredients, they must exist in some non-physical realm. However, Emergentism can apply equally well to everything from chess playing programs to gearbox vibrations, neither of which involve anything like mysterious spiritual substances, so this can hardly be the whole story. And in fact I would argue that the reverse is the case: Vitalists or “substance Dualists” are actually unconscious Reductionists as well: when they assume an extra ingredient is necessary to account for the things which they believe Physicalism cannot explain, they are still reducing a system to its ingredients. Emergentists by contrast reject premise (1...
Help us name the Sequences ebook
by lukeprog — 2013-04-15T19:59:13.969Z

Quantum Computing Since Democritus got me thinking that we may want a more riveting title for The Sequences, 2006-2009 ebook we're preparing for release (like the FtIE ebook). Maybe it could be something like [Really Catchy Title]: The Less Wrong Sequences, 2006-2009.

The reason for "2006–2009" is that Highly Advanced Epistemology 101 for Beginners will be its own ebook, and future Yudkowskian LW sequences (if there are any) won't be included either.

Example options:

The Craft of Rationality: The Less Wrong Sequences, 2006–2009

The Art of Rationality: The Less Wrong Sequences, 2006–2009

Becoming Less Wrong: The Sequences, 2006–2009

In the end, we might just call it The Sequences, 2006–2009, but I'd like to check whether somebody else can come up with a better name.

Suggestions?

(Update on 5/5/2013 is here.)
Group Rationality Diary, April 15-29
by therufs — 2013-04-15T17:41:04.629Z

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for April 15-29.

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 cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating!

Next diary: May 1-15

Immediate past diary: April 5-14

Rationality Diaries archive