trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Theoretical tools for understanding and aiding dynamic decision making
by lukeprog — 2012-02-14T03:21:30.466Z

This paper includes a very handy review of theoretical tools that help with dynamic decision-making:

Dynamic decisions arise in many applications including military, medical, management, sports, and emergency situations. During the past 50 years, a variety of general and powerful tools have emerged for understanding, analyzing, and aiding humans faced with these decisions. These tools include expected and multi-attribute utility analyses, game theory, Bayesian inference and Bayes nets, decision trees and influence diagrams, stochastic optimal control theory, partially observable Markov decision processes, neural networks and reinforcement learning models, Markov logics, and rule-based cognitive architectures. What are all of these tools, how are they related, when are they most useful, and do these tools match the way humans make decisions? We address all of these questions within a broad overview that is written for an interdisciplinary audience. Each description of a tool introduces the principles upon which it is based, and also reviews empirical research designed to test whether humans actually use these principles to make decisions. We conclude with suggestions for future directions in research.
Subjective expected utility without preferences
by lukeprog — 2012-02-14T03:04:11.240Z

In the latest issue of Journal of Mathematical Psychology, Denis Bouyssou and Thieery Marchant provide a model for subjective expected utility without preferences. Abstract:

This paper proposes a theory of subjective expected utility based on primitives only involving the fact that an act can be judged either ‘‘attractive’’ or ‘‘unattractive’’. We give conditions implying that there are a utility function on the set of consequences and a probability distribution on the set of states such that attractive acts have a subjective expected utility above some threshold. The numerical representation that is obtained has strong uniqueness properties.

PDF.
Meetup : West LA Meetup - Cognitive Biases Round-robin
by  — 2012-02-13T19:36:17.384Z

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup - Cognitive Biases Round-robin

WHEN:
15 February 2012 07:00:00PM (-0800)

WHERE:
10850 West Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90064

When: 7:00pm - 9:00pm Wednesday, February 15th.

Where: The Westside Tavern in the upstairs Wine Bar (all ages welcome), located inside the Westside Pavillion on the second floor, right by the movie theaters.

Parking is free for 3 hours.

Discussion Activity: Cognitive Biases Round-robin. Choose at least one item from Wikipedia's List of Cognitive Biases, and read up on it enough to introduce the topic to the group (LW posts on problematic thinking are also fair game). Then, as a group, we will try to identify real-life situations where the bias would come into play, how it could be harmful, when it doesn't matter (or even helps!), and how to counter or use it.

This is also a good time to browse recent posts, especially those that pertain to our activity!

Don't worry if you don't have time to read anything, or even if you've never read any Less Wrong! Bring a friend! The atmosphere is casual, and good, intelligent conversation with friendly people is guaranteed.

I will bring a whiteboard with Bayes' Theorem written on it.

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup - Cognitive Biases Round-robin
[SEQ RERUN] Perpetual Motion Beliefs
by MinibearRex — 2012-02-13T04:58:20.926Z

Today's post, Perpetual Motion Beliefs was originally published on 27 February 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

People learn under the traditional school regimen that the teacher tells you certain things, and you must believe them and recite them back; but if a mere student suggests a belief, you do not have to obey it. They map the domain of belief onto the domain of authority, and think that a certain belief is like an order that must be obeyed, but a probabilistic belief is like a mere suggestion.

And when half-trained or tenth-trained rationalists abandon their art and try to believe without evidence just this once, they often build vast edifices of justification, confusing themselves just enough to conceal the magical steps. It can be quite a pain to nail down where the magic occurs - their structure of argument tends to morph and squirm away as you interrogate them. But there's always some step where a tiny probability turns into a large one - where they try to believe without evidence - where they step into the unknown, thinking, "No one can prove me wrong".

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 The Second Law of Thermodynamics, and Engines of Cognition, 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.
Meetup : Atlanta
by hankx7787 — 2012-02-13T00:30:24.091Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Atlanta

WHEN:
18 February 2012 06:30:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
2094 North Decatur Road, Decatur, GA 30033-5367

All,

The next meetup will be Saturday, February 18th at 6:30pm at Chocolate Coffee in Decatur:

http://www.mychocolatecoffee.com/
2094 North Decatur Road, Decatur, GA 30033-5367
(404) 982-0790

Here is the official agenda of our next meeting:
http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Mysterious_Answers_to_Mysterious_Questions
1.21 Positive Bias: Look Into the Dark
1.22 My Wild and Reckless Youth
1.23 Failing to Learn from History
1.24 Making History Available
1.25 Explain/Worship/Ignore?

We will also be discussing The Prisoner's Dilemma and Newcomb's paradox.

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments! I hope to see ALL of you there!

-Hank
404 384 9776

Discussion article for the meetup : Atlanta
[SEQ RERUN] The Second Law of Thermodynamics, and Engines of Cognition
by MinibearRex — 2012-02-12T20:19:10.636Z

Today's post, The Second Law of Thermodynamics, and Engines of Cognition was originally published on 27 February 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

To form accurate beliefs about something, you really do have to observe it. It's a very physical, very real process: any rational mind does "work" in the thermodynamic sense, not just the sense of mental effort. Engines of cognition are not so different from heat engines, though they manipulate entropy in a more subtle form than burning gasoline. So unless you can tell me which specific step in your argument violates the laws of physics by giving you true knowledge of the unseen, don't expect me to believe that a big, elaborate clever argument can do it either.

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 Leave a Line of Retreat, 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.
Type 2 as an aggregation of Type 1 processes
by Khaled — 2012-02-12T15:07:21.875Z

This post assumes basic knowledge of Type 1/Type 2 (System 1/System 2) categorization of mental processes.

Background (safe to skip)

After my first reaction of surprise (consuming perhaps a few months) to the topic of heuristics and biases, and after a few more readings on neuropsychology, I started re-visiting my first reaction in more detail. Should it really be surprising to learn that humans are not rational? Anyone with a basic connection with humans should easily see that we act irrationally in many situations – snap decisions, impulses, etc. – so what was the source of my surprise?

My best guess (knowing my limits of interpolation) was that my surprise was not a result of discovering that we’re irrational, but rather that there was a scientific approach in existence aiming at finding more about those irrationalities, and that results of predictable irrationality were appearing; that might eventually lead to unifying different biases under the same theory or source.

The notion of Type 1 and Type 2 thinking (or System 1 and System 2) is for me a theory that has the power to unify most of the biases and perhaps predict others. Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow adopts such an approach, attempting to explain many biases in terms of Type 2 thought.

Now, this connected with a question I had back in college when I first learned about Artificial Neural Networks (I was lucky to chose this as a topic to research and give a lecture to my colleagues on): “if this is how the brain works, how does logical/rational thought emerge?”

To my understanding, Connectionism and the self-organizing patterning system that is the brain would naturally result in Type 1 thought as a direct consequence. The question that I had persistently is how can Type 2 thought emerge from this hardware? Jonah Lehrer’s The Decisive Point suggests that different brain areas are (more) associated with each type of thought, but essentially (until proven otherwise), I assume that they all rely on essence on a patterning process, a connectionist model.

Migration of Skills

We know that many skills start in Type 2 and migrate to Type 1 as we get more “experienced” in them. When we first learn driving, we need to consciously think of every move, and the sequence of steps to perform, etc. We consciously engage in executing a known sequence before changing l...
Rational philosophies
by katydee — 2012-02-12T06:19:31.727Z

Hello all,

I'm working on a top-level post about how Stoicism is an instrumentally useful philosophy to adopt, and figured I should give other philosophies a fair shake as well. Does anyone know of any other philosophies out there that seem to be practically useful or otherwise provide strategies and thought patterns that have practical value? A solid grounding in experimental research is of course desirable.
[Link] Cooking for people who don't
by NancyLebovitz — 2012-02-11T21:45:53.714Z

Links about elementary cooking, food storage, etc.

Here's the premise:

Write a post to pass on something[s] you know that you feel is useful to anyone who wants to increase their level of food security by increasing their level of skill, knowledge, comfort around getting, storing, or preparing food. How-tos are good, recipes are good, linkspams are good. Reflective essays are good too, even if not of a strictly practically useful nature. You are your own best judge of what's on-topic. On February 2nd, come back and post a link to it in the comments of the Carnival Round Up Post.
Topics from "Procedural Knowledge Gaps"
by NancyLebovitz — 2012-02-11T21:38:36.438Z

About a year ago, we had a major discussion about procedural knowledge gaps. Here's what was covered....

How to tell whether food is fresh

pjeby claims that eating raw chicken is safe because the gag reflex identifies it fast

How to buy investments

Memorizing the alphabet and other arbitrary lists

Comparison of various how-to sites

General discussion of making things (including Less Wrong) easier to use

How jump start a stalled car.

How to use the Yellow Pages.

Cheap and easy healthy food.

Questions about preparing a simple soup.

Exercise.

Starting relationships, especially for heterosexual men.

Cooking in general.

Browning meat.

How to become bisexual.

How to transfer money from one electronic account to another.

How to buy a used car.

Interacting with police. (Don't talk to US police! The rules are different in the UK.)

How to speak clearly, slowly, etc..

How to fold a fitted sheet.

How to make a will.

How to order at a bar. Also, some cookbook recommendations.

Tipping in the US.

Tipping in the UK and France.

Spacial orientation.

Personal hygiene-- washing, soap, shampoo.

Haircuts for men.

Haircuts for women.

Growing and maintaining long hair.

Putting a cover on a duvet.

Telling the difference between flirting and friendliness.

Choosing shirts that fit.

Left vs. Right (which hand, not political).

Shaving one's face.

How to end conversations politely.

How to make people laugh.

Mailing large objects in the US.

How to format comments at Less Wrong.

How to declutter.

E readers.

Touch typing.

Dvorak, etc.

How often to see a doctor.

Remembering to be polite.

Tying shoes.

Home maintenance.

What might melt in a dishwasher.

Kitchen knives.

Sorting laundry.

Does cranking up the thermostat heat the house faster?.

More about investment

How to not stutter.

How to be a good manager.

Scrubbing.

How to use Google.

How to talk to strangers.

Potential topics:

How to give clear instructions.

How to see things from other people's point of view

Cool sidetrack: Fish and lightning

Links and quotes:

Why grad school in the humanities is a bad choice One probably could not devise a better system for keeping people with humanistic values away from power than by confining them to decade-long graduate programs with a long future of transient adjunct positions making less than the minimum wage. From Part 2. The first article is a nice example of applying the far view (look at how things are in general) to a personal deci...
Meetup : Monthly Bay Area meetup: Berkeley
by Nisan — 2012-02-11T21:37:13.860Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Monthly Bay Area meetup: Berkeley

WHEN:
18 February 2012 07:00:00PM (-0800)

WHERE:
2128 Oxford St., Berkeley, CA

The next monthly Bay Area meetup will be Saturday, 18 February, in Berkeley. We'll gather as usual at 7:00pm at the Starbucks on 2128 Oxford Street, and then move to the Free Speech Cafe on campus. I look forward to seeing all of your faces!

-Nisan

Discussion article for the meetup : Monthly Bay Area meetup: Berkeley
[SEQ RERUN] "Can't Say No" Spending
by  — 2012-02-11T09:47:03.148Z

Today's post, "Can't say no" Spending was originally published on 18 October 2007. I decided to include it based on feedback in the open thread. It is a very short entry so there is no real need for a summary:

The remarkable observation that medical spending has zero net marginal effect is shocking, but not completely unprecedented.

According to Spiegel in "Too Much of a Good Thing: Choking on Aid Money in Africa", the Washington Center for Global Development calculated that it would require $3,521 of marginal development aid invested, per person, in order to increase per capita yearly income by $3.65 (one penny per day).

The Kenyan economist James Shikwati is even more pessimistic in "For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!": The net effect of Western aid to Africa is actively destructive (even when it isn't stolen to prop up corrupt regimes), a chaotic flux of money and goods that destroys local industry.

What does aid to Africa have in common with healthcare spending? Besides, of course, that it's heartbreaking to just say no -

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 Superexponential Conceptspace, and Simple Words, 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.
Meetup : Cambridge UK
by rebellionkid — 2012-02-11T04:12:22.416Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge UK

WHEN:
19 February 2012 11:00:00AM (+0000)

WHERE:
JCR, Trinity College, Cambridge, CB2 1TQ, UK

Meet at the Great Gate if you dont know where the JCR is. Great Gate is on St. John's Street opposite the bookshop "Heffers". Join the google group at http://groups.google.com/group/cambridgelesswrong

Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge UK
On Journaling
by RobertLumley — 2012-02-10T21:43:39.317Z

(Warning: Intermittent gooey personal details inside)

I'm surprised I haven't seen this topic brought up before, but I haven't, and cursory searches of "diary" and "journal" came up with nothing, albeit largely because the latter got a bunch of hits for scientific journals. But I digress. I have recently started a journal. So recently, in fact, that there are only two entries. There were a number of motivating factors that went into this decision, which correlate rather directly with the number of goals I have for this project.

First, I think it will help me be less stressed. I estimate that at least 60% of my stress is due to the fact that I refuse to even think about the things I need to do until I actually start on them. Because I haven't actually thought through what I need to do, I often feel swamped and very stressed, even when I have comparatively little that needs done. When I actually start working on it, I realize that I don't have as much as I thought, and worried for nothing. One of the things I want to do in this (and haven't in my first two entries, very well) is briefly mention things I know I am procrastinating on. I haven't done this yet, because I forgot for the first two entries, but I intend to have a section of "What am I procrastinating on" for every entry.

Speaking of which: Secondly, I want to stop procrastinating so much. Stopping to actually think about what I need to do will naturally make me more productive. I've noticed that whenever I actually start thinking about things I need to do, I start doing it immediately. I also want to have a section "Productive things I've done today". This will give me some kind of incentive system to actually be productive, since I won't want to acknowledge when I haven't done anything I didn't have to.

Third, I have a terrible memory for things that don't matter that much. I don't know if this will help that or not, but at least I'll have some record of what I've done. And it only stands to reason that reviewing one's activities in a day would help one remember them. I first got an idea of this when I made this comment. I doubt this would specifically address that problem, but at least I would have a record of something.

Fourth, I want data on what makes me happy. Part of what I'm doing is keeping a companion Excel file to my OneNote folder. For each entry, I assess my emotional levels on a scale of 0-1...
[SEQ RERUN] Leave a Line of Retreat
by MinibearRex — 2012-02-10T15:39:11.586Z

Today's post, Leave a Line of Retreat was originally published on 25 February 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

If you are trying to judge whether some unpleasant idea is true you should visualise what the world would look like if it were true, and what you would do in that situation. This will allow you to be less scared of the idea, and reason about it without immediately trying to reject it.

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 Superexponential Conceptspace, and Simple Words, 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.
Weekly LW Meetups: Salt Lake City, Melbourne, Atlanta, NYC, Cambridge
by FrankAdamek — 2012-02-10T15:23:30.992Z

There are upcoming irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups in:

Salt Lake City Meetup #2: 04 February 2012 03:00PM
Atlanta: 04 February 2012 06:30PM
First Brussels meetup: 11 February 2012 11:00AM
Sydney Rationality meet-up No.2: 15 February 2012 06:00PM
Ongoing Ohio Meetup: 19 February 2012 04:00PM
[Ohio/Washington DC] Interest in Reason Rally meetup?: 24 March 2012 04:14PM

The following meetups take place in cities with regularly scheduled meetups, but involve a change in time or location, special meeting content, or simply a helpful reminder about the meetup:

Melbourne practical rationality meetup: 03 February 2012 07:00PM
[NYC] LessWrong Megameetup: 04 February 2012 12:00PM
Cambridge UK : 05 February 2012 11:00AM

Cities with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Cambridge, MA, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Mountain View, New York, Ohio, Ottawa, Oxford, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, Washington, DC, Waterloo, and West Los Angeles.

If you'd like to talk with other LW-ers face to face, and there is no meetup in your area, consider starting your own meetup; it's easy (more resources here). Check one out, stretch your rationality skills, and have fun!

In addition to the handy sidebar of upcoming meetups, a meetup overview will continue to be posted on the front page every Friday. These will be an attempt to collect information on all the meetups happening in the next weeks. The best way to get your meetup featured is still to use the Add New Meetup feature, but you'll now also have the benefit of having your meetup mentioned in a weekly overview. These overview posts will be moved to the discussion section when the new post goes up.

Please note that for your meetup to appear in the weekly meetups feature, you need to post your meetup before the Friday before your meetup!

If you check Less Wrong irregularly, consider subscribing to one or more city-specific mailing list in order to be notified when an irregular meetup is happening: Atlanta, Chicago, Helsinki, London, Marin CA, Pittsburgh, Southern California (Los Angeles/Orange County area), St. Louis, Vancouver.

If your meetup has a mailing list that you'd like mentioned here or has become regular and isn't listed as such, let me know!
Meetup : Tucson Meetup
by DeevGrape — 2012-02-10T06:44:17.165Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Tucson Meetup

WHEN:
02 March 2012 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
Coffee X Change 2443 North Campbell Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85719

Hi everyone! I was pretty inspired by the Winter Solstice series of posts discussing the benefits and fun of being in an in-person rationalist community (and also lukeprog's Algorithm for Beating Procrastination :)). So, I'm tossing out a line to any rationalists in Tucson or southern Arizona who'd like to meet up and talk about whatever. Time and place are just first suggestions on my part, and if there's interest in changing the details so someone can make it, that could totally happen.

Discussion article for the meetup : Tucson Meetup