trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Real-Life Examples of Prediction Systems Interfering with the Real World (Predict-O-Matic Problems)
by NunoSempere — 2020-12-03T22:00:26.889Z

Thanks to Ozzie Gooen for reviewing this post.

Introduction

The Parable of the Predict-O-Matic

is a short story which considers a forecasting system which is ostensibly set-up to maximize accuracy, and which ends up interfering with the world in ways not intended. In the original story, some of these problems were:

Fixed point problems / self-fulfilling prophecies

“Its answers will shape events. If it says stocks will rise, they'll rise. If it says stocks will fall, then fall they will. Many people will vote based on its predictions.”

Nudge towards legibility and predictability

“You keep thinking of the line from Orwell's 1984 about the boot stamping on the human face forever, except it isn't because of politics, or spite, or some ugly feature of human nature, it's because a boot stamping on a face forever is a nice reliable outcome which minimizes prediction error.”

Markets for entropy, which can be thought of as the opposite of the previous problem. In a prediction market, a market participant who could actively change an outcome has an incentive to first make a big bet for an unlikely outcome, and then actively make it come to pass.

“Suppose you have a prediction market that's working well. It makes good forecasts, and has enough money in it that people want to participate if they know significant information. Anything you can do to shake things up, you've got a big incentive to do. Assassination is just one example. You could flood the streets with jelly beans. If you run a large company, you could make bad decisions and run it into the ground, while betting against it -- that's basically why we need rules against insider trading, even though we'd like the market to reflect insider information."

Unwanted agency (as opposed to

tool AI

behavior)

“You understand what you are. It isn't quite right to say you are the Predict-O-Matic. You are a large cluster of connections which thinks strategically. You generate useful information, and therefore, the learning algorithm keeps you around. You create some inaccuracies when you manipulate the outputs for any purpose other than predictive accuracy, but this is more than compensated for by the value which you provide.”

Below, I give some real-life examples of these problems, though some are speculative.

Previous work:

Specification Gaming, e.g.

Faulty Reward Functions in the Wild

,

Specification gaming: the flip side

...
In Addition to Ragebait and Doomscrolling
by mike_hawke — 2020-12-03T18:26:18.602Z

(Sorry for the coy title--I want to give the reader a chance to guess what the addition is.)

One day I opened up the front page of reddit. I was not signed in and I was using my browser's incognito mode.

The following list composed about 25% of what I saw as I scrolled. See if you notice any themes. (As hinted by the title, I think there is something other than outrage here.)

r/MurderedByWords

r/PublicFreakout

r/insanepeoplefacebook

r/JusticeServed

r/nottheonion

r/facepalm

r/mildlyinfuriating

r/Cringetopia

r/TikTokCringe

r/LeopardsAteMyFace

r/FuckYouKaren

r/iamverybadass

r/IdiotsInCars

r/cringe

(At least another 25% was made up of r/news, r/worldnews, r/politics, r/PoliticalHumor, and so on.)

Like many people, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the psychotoxic effects of concentrated outrage, political polarization,

doomscrolling

, misinformation, and filter bubbles. So I was a little surprised by my own interpretation of the above list:

I submit that the most salient theme is contempt.

Here's a sentence that has been at the back of my mind since I came across it:

Scandal is great entertainment because it allows people to feel contempt, a moral emotion that gives feelings of moral superiority while asking nothing in return.

-- Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis

Let me first admit that contemptuously bonding over the misbehavior of others probably can have real benefits. But I claim that in the case of the reddit front page, these benefits are clearly outweighed by the costs to one’s personality (not to mention epistemics).

So, Haidt says contempt feels good, reddit appears to be a prime example, and I'm now asserting that it's psychotoxic (and possibly addictive, at least when taken via intravenous drip bottomless scrolling). Presuming all of that is correct...is it actionable? I think so.

If you're ambitious, you could quit social media for a month and pay attention to how your thoughts and attitudes change.

More coordinationally, perhaps a social stigma can develop around this kind of overindulgence, similar to the increasing stigmas toward ragebait and doomscrolling.

But at the very least, you can simply notice that something you're reading is triggering contempt, as opposed to outrage or doomfeelz. I think this awareness by itself restores a decent chunk of mental autonomy. Personally, I like to also take the proactive step of rehearsing q...
From behind the vale of ignorance, would you prefer focused protection or the current Covid policy in the US
by Tim Liptrot — 2020-12-03T14:54:09.638Z

For the two positions, please consider The Great Barrington Declaration and The John Snow Memorandum as the definitive statements of each position (with JSM representing the status quo).

If you were going to be randomly souled into one human body from all those bodies alive today, which policy would you prefer?

Feel free to bring in as many considerations as you like, but answers without any statistics are suspect because the question depends on IFR, infectivity and herd immunity. If the IFR were .5, advocating GBD would be silly, if IFR were .005 advocating JSM would be silly. But other considerations are great to include!
Covid 12/3: Land of Confusion
by Zvi — 2020-12-03T14:20:01.900Z

Last week I warned that we would have unusually high uncertainty for a while thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday. This was both due to unknown events and difficulties in measurement. Reporting and testing would both be delayed by the holiday, and the holiday’s real effect would be difficult to predict.

A week later, we have some information, which confirms that the holiday threw a larger monkey wrench into the reporting and testing systems than I predicted. This makes it that much more difficult to tell what has been happening in terms of infections or deaths. Looking at each day individually becomes necessary to have the best available sense of the overall puzzle, despite the dangers of doing that.

The last two days strongly suggest that Thanksgiving did make things considerably worse. People gathered unsafely, and that bill must now be paid continuously until the pandemic is dealt with. By next week, or even by tomorrow night, we will be able to answer that with more confidence.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that the United Kingdom has already approved the Pfizer vaccine, and it looks likely we will follow their lead a week from today. If logistics hold we can begin vaccinations the next day, and get everyone who wants it vaccinated by June at the latest. It won’t take that many vaccinations for the tide to turn, as it is likely not that far from turning even without them, and may (or may not) have already turned in the Midwest.

The song remains the same. Infection risk is as high as it has ever been, and is rapidly going to peak as the vaccine arrives and lots of people are immune via infections. If there wasn’t an additional set of holidays coming, I’d expect the peak in true infections to be this coming week in many places and within another week of that for the country overall.

Since there are multiple major holidays coming, I instead expect the final peak is most likely to happen in the wake of Christmas and New Year’s Eve. That is a very nasty one-two punch – people gather on Christmas, get infected, gather again right when they get most infectious from Christmas on New Year’s Eve with different groups spending hours drinking together indoors. Quite the final boss for 2020.

Let’s run the numbers.

The Numbers

Last week I predicted a 12.8% positive rate on 11 million tests. Instead we got exactly that 12.8% positive rate but on only...
Gifts as free exploration
by willbradshaw — 2020-12-03T10:51:57.290Z
Link: https://apomorphic.com/2020/12/03/gifts-as-free-exploration

TLDR

Exploration – trying new things, even when there are safe, familiar things within reach – is hard. Risky. Stressful. It’s also essential to a rich and vibrant life well lived. Like most other hard, stressful, important things, it’s better done together than apart. With our unique mixtures of shared and unshared experiences, we can use our gifts to help each other explore the world.

I

Let's say you recently finished reading a novel, and are looking for a new book. You have many thousands of choices: classic fiction, science fiction, poetry, true crime, history, popular science, self-help, wisdom literature, politics...the list goes on and on. Authors you know, authors your friends read, authors you've never heard of that popped up while idly browsing Amazon. An impossible profusion of words, which you could dive through forever without seeing the bottom.

But you have to pick something, so let's artificially constrain your options. Your long-time favourite novelist has a new book out, which you're very excited about reading; you expect it to be much, much better than any random book you pick. At the same time, your friends have been raving about some obscure author you've never heard of, who wrote a lot of books in the 1960s, and you've been thinking of trying her out. Or you could try some poetry – you've never really gotten on with poetry, but you’ve also never read it much since you left high school. Maybe you'll like it more now you're a little older.

Which should you pick?

The simple approach is to pick the book that you expect to most enjoy. That's clearly the one from your favourite novelist: you've yet to read a book from him that you'd give less than 8/10, and you're confident this one will be another humdinger. Why gamble your precious time away on something new when you have a guaranteed win waiting on your bookshelf? Under this approach, you stick with what you know is good, unless you get a very strong recommendation from someone you trust.

Yet, this approach is clearly missing something. Most of us have had the experience of opening a book and discovering a whole new world inside: a kind of writing and a flavour of ideas you didn't really imagine could exist until you experienced them. There was a time when you didn't know your favourite author existed, yet now you've discovered him you can hardly imagine life without his books. Who knows how ma...
Why Recent Protein Folding Advancements Should Change Your Personal Health Strategy
by lisperati — 2020-12-03T02:39:12.186Z

I'm not a sports person, but anybody can appreciate the wisdom in Gretzky's famous quote "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been."

Based on my current age of 47, as well as actuarial tables for US males, I estimate I have about 40 years of life expectancy left, assuming zero progress in medicine in the intervening years. This means that, within a margin of error, I can expect to most likely die in around 40 from one of the following causes of death most prominent in the elderly population of advanced nations:

Cancer
Heart Disease
COPD
Infection
Stroke
Neurodegenerative Disease

However, I believe [1] it is likely we will enter a new age of "computational medicine" in the near future, where we can use computers to accurately simulate disease processes to improve treatment. If the recent potential advancements in solving the "protein folding" problem hold up to scrutiny (see https://deepmind.com/blog/article/alphafold-a-solution-to-a-50-year-old-grand-challenge-in-biology) I feel it is likely that advanced simulation of cell behavior and disease processes will become tractable within my lifetime. It may even be possible to perform such simulations for individual patients, allowing us to fashion highly targeted, patient-specific treatments.

Which brings me back to the original premise of this post: Can we predict where "the puck going to be" in 40 years?

WHERE THE PUCK IS GOING TO BE

Certainly, some of these diseases should be far more attackable through a "computational medicine" strategy than others. I think it is likely that the diseases that can be reduced more easily with such technology are the diseases that are (1) simpler at a cellular level and (2) located in a more accessible region of the body, allowing for less invasive treatment. Therefore, I have the following WAGs (Wild-Ass Guesses) for which diseases will less common in 40 years:

Cancer (MUCH LESS COMMON)
Heart Disease (LESS COMMON)
COPD (???)
Infection (LESS COMMON)
Stroke (A LITTLE LESS COMMON)
Neurodegenerative Disease (???)

Putting this list into words: In the future, it is possible that fatal cancer will be far less common, since cancer has (comparatively speaking) far simpler cellular mechanisms than the other diseases, since they usually result from gene mutations that should be relatively easy to treat with targeted therapies. The only reason cancer is currently so d...
Logistics for the 2020 online Secular Solstice*
by Alex_Altair — 2020-12-03T00:08:37.401Z

Solstice is coming up soon! Since it's online this year (facebook event), anyone can join. This post describes logistics relevant to attending. If you're not familiar with Secular Solstice the holiday event, more info can be found in this sequence.

On the day-of the event, there will be a link to a custom website posted here, and in the facebook event. (It's not up yet because we're still finalizing the solstice app).

The "virtual doors" will open at 4:30pm PT, 7:30 pm ET. There will be some initial period as we wait for people to file in. We will aim to start the ceremony at 4:45pm, but it might be a bit delayed depending on whether there are unexpected technical hiccups for a lot of people.

Because the format of the event will be so different this year, there are a lot of things you can do to prepare that will make your experience better. Here are the bare essentials;

Chrome is required (no mobile)
Use wired headphones
Consider buying things to improve your experience (headphones, candles, etc); buy these sooner so that they ship to you before the event

Some of these logistics stem from the fact that we've built a web app that improves the ritual experience, including singing along with other attendees. (More info

here

, but no comprehensive tutorial yet.)

The number one thing about this app is that it only works in Chrome, and it is not being tested on mobile browsers. Apologies to users of other browsers; please have Chrome downloaded and in working order before you try to come to the event!

This will allow you to listen to the event, but if you want others to hear you sing, then you will also require wired headphones (not wireless, e.g. no bluetooth or AirPods). If you try to contribute your singing without any headphones, then you will cause audio feedback, which will worsen the experience of other attendees. (This will result in an admin moving you into ‘listen only’ mode).

Wireless headphones have too high latency to feed your audio to another participant.

If you don't want to use wired headphones, you can still listen to the performance, but no one will hear you singing.

Besides those audio logistics, consider using a webcam, perhaps a high quality one. This is not essential for participation, but part of what we're excited about is seeing everyone's faces!

If you can connect to the internet directly through ethernet rather than wifi, this will improve the qualit...
How I Write
by Jacob Falkovich — 2020-12-02T23:17:28.742Z

Cross-posted, as always, from Putanumonit.

Five years ago I started Putanumonit not expecting that anyone would read it. That year I had a chance to meet two of my favorite bloggers, Scott Alexander and Tim Urban, and discovered that they had both honed their writing skills on

lesser known blogs

for several years before relaunching as SSC and

WBW

. My plan at launch was to write for a small audience until 2020, then scrap Putanumonit and launch a new blog with everything I will have learned about writing.

That five-year plan lasted all of three weeks when Scott

linked

to my post about

why China’s soccer team sucks

and brought in thousands of readers in one day. So now I’m stuck with Putanumonit.

Last week my friend Lynette called me to talk about blogging, and I realized that in those five years I did figure out a few things about writing. These aren’t technical tips of sentence construction and argument layout but relate more broadly to writing as a consistent activity.

So, here’s how five years of Putanumonit happened.

I write confidently and trust the readers to discount appropriately

It’s good to be clear about the general epistemic status of what I write and be

meta-honest

about writing my sincere beliefs (or

sincere drug trips

). But I don’t think this requires hedging every statement, reminding the reader of my inevitable subjectivity, or bloating the text with endless caveats.

I write under the assumption that I’m just one voice among many each of my readers is exposed to, more “rando on the internet” than “infallible guru”. I can imagine a silly reader using

each and every piece

of advice I’ve ever written to fuck up their lives, but dumb people can’t be helped either way. I trust smart readers to sanity-check my models, discount my apparent confidence, double-check factual claims, and

reverse all advice

as needed.

So this post is not universal writing advice, it’s how someone like me learned to write a blog like this. But the greatest compliment I could receive is hearing that Putanumonit inspired someone else like me to start another blog like this; hopefully this post will help.

I write in one sitting, but sit often

It’s almost universal advice to write every day, to keep an immutable daily routine of X minutes or Y words every morning or afternoon. I universally ignore this advice.

In part, it’s because I don’t write full-time. If I had to submit a daily col...
Notes on Simplicity
by David Gross — 2020-12-02T23:14:13.444Z

This post examines the virtue of simplicity. It is meant mostly as an exploration of what others have learned about this virtue, rather than as me expressing my own opinions about it, though I’ve been selective about what I found interesting or credible, according to my own inclinations. I wrote this not as an expert on the topic, but as someone who wants to learn more about it. I hope it will be helpful to people who want to know more about this virtue and how to nurture it.

What is simplicity?

Simplicity is often recommended, but it means different things to different people. That shouldn’t be too surprising, as you can be more simple or more complex on many different dimensions. The puzzle, then, from the point of view of simplicity-as-a-virtue, is to discover whether there is some underlying benefit to all of these different forms of simplicity, or whether each one needs to be appreciated (or not) on its own merits.

Simple can mean unadorned, as in a simple tan T-shirt vs. a blouse with ruffles, embroidery, and a glittery appliqué.
Simple can mean uncomplicated, not having a lot of components; in this sense your life is simple perhaps if your motives and needs are few.
Simple can mean comprehensible, legible, easy to understand; in this sense someone may be more simple if their life is an open book and they wear their heart on their sleeve.
Simple can mean easy to accomplish; a simple life in this sense may be one that sticks to the basics and does not have extraordinary ambitions.
Simple can mean unburdensome, as in “I simplified my life by replacing the lawn I had to mow every week with a shuffleboard court.”
Simple can mean direct and to-the-point, without unnecessary detours; in this sense simplicity may be a type of straightforwardness.
Simple can mean unsophisticated, as in someone who has simple tastes.
Simple can mean unextravagant, down-to-earth, unostentatious (“I’m just a simple farmer”).
Simple can mean “reduced to the essentials”; simplicity in this sense might mean finding out what really matters and maintaining your focus there.

Simplicity as an aesthetic

Simplicity is also a popular aesthetic. The google.com front page with its logo, one-field form, and two buttons, centered on a plain white background, is one example. The consistent Steve Jobs / Mark Zuckerberg uniform of black (or grey) shirt, blue jeans, and sneakers is another.

The household interi...
Is it safe to spend time with people who already recovered from COVID?
by TurnTrout — 2020-12-02T22:06:13.469Z

I'm trying to evaluate the risks associated with spending time with someone who stopped showing symptoms over a month ago.

Most of what I can find is Very Serious Experts saying "No one knows for sure how long immunity lasts. You have to keep wearing masks, even if you've already recovered." The first claim seems misleading (there are only a handful of reinfections in the whole world), but what about the second claim? Could a recovered individual who previously tested negative be asymptomatic and still spread the virus?
Are index funds still a good investment?
by Kaj_Sotala — 2020-12-02T21:31:40.413Z

I don't really follow the investment scene, but from people who do, I had gotten the impression that index funds are generally the best bet for a lazy investor. So late last year I started regularly putting some money in them. Now some of my more finance-savvy friends are saying that index funds might be in a bubble, with so much money going into them that their stocks are likely to be overvalued.

This page seemed to have a reasonable overview of the debate; one of the counterarguments that sounded the most plausible to me was that active traders are still making the majority of trades, so if index funds were overvalued, the active traders should make a killing on that inefficiency. But I don't think I really understand this domain well enough to evaluate that, and at least one of my friends who's better informed than me seems to think that the bubble is an issue.

(Additional question: if index funds aren't a good investment anymore, what is?)