trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
How to tell apart science from pseudo-science in a field you don't know ?
by kilobug — 2012-09-02T10:25:41.694Z

First, a short personal note to make you understand why this is important to me. To make a long story short, the son of a friend has some atypical form of autism and language troubles. And that kid matters a lot to me, so I want to become stronger in helping him, to be able to better interact with him and help him overcome his troubles.

But I don't know much about psychology. I'm a computer scientist, with a general background of maths and physics. I'm kind of a nerd, social skills aren't my strength. I did read some of the basic books advised on Less Wrong, like Cialdini, Wright or Wiseman, but those just give me a very small background on which to build.

And psychology in general, autism/language troubles in particular, are fields in which there is a lot of pseudo-science. I'm very sceptical of Freud and psychoanalysis, for example, which I consider (but maybe I am wrong?) to be more like alchemy than like chemistry. There are a lot of mysticism and sect-like gurus related to autism, too.

So I'm bit unsure on how from my position of having a general scientific and rationality background I can dive into a completely unrelated field. Research papers are probably above my current level in psychology, so I think books (textbooks or popular science) are the way to go. But how to find which books on the hundreds that were written on the topic I should buy and read? Books that are evidence-based science, not pseudo-science, I mean. What is a general method to select which books to start in a field you don't really know? I would welcome any advise from the community.

Disclaimer: this is a personal "call for help", but since I think the answers/advices may matter outside my own personal case, I hope you don't mind.
SI is looking to hire someone to finish a Decision Theory FAQ
by Malo — 2012-09-02T04:48:08.553Z

The Singularity Institute is looking to hire someone familiar with decision theory to help finish Luke's Decision Theory FAQ (with the possibility of working on other projects afterwards). The first task of this individual will be to expand on section 11 by explaining each of the Newcomblike problems and showing how EDT, CDT, CDT+, and TDT perform on each of them.

Pay will be hourly and starts at $15/hr, but will increase if you produce a good product. You must be able to commit an average of 20+hrs/wk.

Those applying for the position should be generally familliar with most of the following:

Axiomatic decision theory (VNM, Savage)

EDT, CDT, CDT + causal graphs (CDT+), and TDT

Newcomb's problem, medical Newcomb's problem, Parfit's hitchhiker, etc.

Working remotely for SI can be pretty great, here are some of the perks:

Work flexible hours: Complete your work in few large chunks or many small ones—at 03:00 or 18:00—it's up to you.

Work from wherever you please: your home (maybe even in bed), your local coffee shop, a row boat in the middle of a lake, whatever.

Age and credentials are irrelevant; only product matters.

Make money while contributing to the Singularity Institute.

If you are interested in the position, apply here!
[SEQ RERUN] Say It Loud
by MinibearRex — 2012-09-02T04:09:11.386Z

Today's post, Say It Loud was originally published on 19 September 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

If you're uncertain about something, communicate that uncertainty. Do so as clearly as you can. You don't help yourself by hiding how confused you are.

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 Sheer Folly of Callow Youth, 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.
Preventing discussion from being watered down by an "endless September" user influx.
by Epiphany — 2012-09-02T03:46:30.574Z

In the thread "LessWrong could grow a lot, but we're doing it wrong.", I explained why LessWrong has the potential to grow quite a lot faster in my opinion, and volunteered to help LessWrong grow. Of course, a lot of people were concerned about the fact that a large quantity of new members will not directly translate to higher quality contributions or beneficial learning and social experiences in discussions, so I realized it would be better to help protect LessWrong first. I do not assume that fast growth has to cause a lowering of standards. I think fast growth can be good if the right people are joining and all goes well (specifics herein). However, if LessWrong grows carelessly, we could be inviting an "Endless September", a term used to describe a never ending deluge of newbies that "degraded standards of discourse and behavior on Usenet and the wider Internet" (named after a phenomenon caused by an influx of college freshmen). My perspective on this is that it could happen at any time, regardless of whether any of us does anything. Why do I think that? LessWrong is growing very fast and could snowball on it's own. I've seen that happen, I saw it ruin a forum. That site wasn't even doing anything special to advertise the forum that I am aware of. The forum was just popular and growth went exponential. For this reason, I asked for a complete list of LessWrong registration dates in order to make a growth chart. I received it on 08-23-2012. The data shows that LessWrong has 13,727 total users, not including spammers and accounts that were deleted. From these, I have created a LessWrong growth bar graph:

Each bar represents a one month long total of registration dates (the last bar is a little short, being that it only goes up until the 23rd). The number of pixels in each bar is equal to the number of registrations each month. The first (leftmost) bar that hits the top of the picture (it actually goes waaaay off the page) mostly represents the transfer of over 2000 accounts from Overcoming Bias. The right bar that goes off the page is so far unexplained for me - 921 users joined in September 2011, more than three times the number in the months before and after it. If you happen to know what caused that, I would be very i...
Meetup : Madison: Cached Selves
by fiddlemath — 2012-09-01T23:38:02.472Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Madison: Cached Selves

WHEN:
02 September 2012 07:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
114 State St., Madison, WI

Cached Selves is a really good post! There's time yet before tomorrow evening, and it's not very long. I think this gives a plausible, partial reduction of the idea that "labels of identity" are "dangerous". Also, the post makes some suggestions about how to avoid having this effect twist your beliefs. Any other ideas that might work?

Anyhow, for tomorrow, let's read this and discuss. (Also, I'll bring some games. I like games!)

Discussion article for the meetup : Madison: Cached Selves
Meta: What do you think of a karma vote checklist?
by NancyLebovitz — 2012-09-01T09:02:15.512Z

I'm imagining an optional checklist offered if you downvote, with the list possibly including troll, poor spelling/grammar, false, redundant....

For that matter, if an optional checklist for downvotes makes sense, then perhaps there should also be one for upvotes: sensible, informative, funny, caused an update....

I'm imagining a little chart appearing if your cursor is on a karma number, the way the proportions of stars do for amazon reviews.

I don't know how much trouble this would be to program-- I'm just floating the idea.
[SEQ RERUN] The Sheer Folly of Callow Youth
by MinibearRex — 2012-09-01T06:26:52.167Z

Today's post, The Sheer Folly of Callow Youth was originally published on 19 September 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Eliezer's big mistake was when he took a mysterious view of morality.

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 A Prodigy of Refutation, 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.
How do we really escape Prisoners' Dilemmas?
by drnickbone — 2012-08-31T23:36:57.618Z

This discussion article was provoked in part by Yvain's post on Main a few weeks ago, and some of the follow-up comments.

EDIT: I've also just noticed that there was a recent sequence rerun on the point about finite iterations. My bad: I simply didn't see the rerun article, as it had already slipped down a couple of pages when I posted. If you down-voted (or didn't read) out of a feeling of "Didn't we just do this?" then sorry.

In any case, one of my main motivations for running this article was point 5 (Does an environment of commitment and reputation create the background against which TDT - or something like it - can easily evolve?) I didn't get any responses on that point, so might try to run it again in a future article.

END EDIT

It is well-known that in a one-shot prisoner's dilemma, the only stable solution (Nash equilibrium) is for both parties to defect. But, perhaps less well-known, this is true for any finite-shot version of the dilemma, or any version where there is a finite upper bound on the number of iterations. For instance, a more sophisticated strategy than Tit For Tat (TFT) would determine when it has reached the last iteration, and then defect. Call this TFT-1. But then once TFT-1 has established itself, a strategy which detects and defects the last two iterations (TFT-2) would establish itself, and so on.

Since prisoners' dilemmas are always finite in practice, and always have been (we are mortal, and the Sun will blow up at some point), this raises the question of why we actually co-operate in practice. Why is TFT, or something very like it, still around?

Somehow, evolution (biological, cultural or both) has managed to engineer into us a strategy which is not a Nash equilibrium. Because any "evolutionarily stable strategy" (as usually defined) is a Nash equilibrium, somehow we have evolved a strategy which is not strictly evolutionarily stable. How could that have happened?

I can think of a few possibilities, and have a view about which of these are more realistic. I'm also wondering if other Less Wrong contributors have seriously thought through the problem, and have alternative suggestions.

1. Strategies like TFT succeed because they are very simple, and the alternatives are too complicated to replace them.

The argument here is that there are big costs to...
[Link] Quantity Always Trumps Quality
by  — 2012-08-31T17:15:56.446Z

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/08/quantity-always-trumps-quality.html

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an "A".

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

For some reason it just seems we in particular could learn something from this anecdote.

Iterate more. The practice effect is your friend as is mining out positive outliers in really huge sets. I wanted to also mention something about using going meta as a way to procrastinate but I feared I would summon a Newsome.

Edit: This has been mentioned before. I think it is good to remind people of it. Desrtopa writes:

Not only has it been mentioned before, last time it came up I searched and failed to find corroboration of the claim that it actually happened. Since applying a deliberately inconsistent grading rubric is not something professors are normally allowed to do, I strongly suspect that the anecdote is fictional.

It is therefore best to assume this is a parable.
Weekly LW Meetups: Austin, Dorset, Ohio
by FrankAdamek — 2012-08-31T14:54:28.586Z

This summary was posted to LW main on August 24th, and has been moved to discussion.

There are upcoming irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups in:

Dorset Meetup: 29 August 2012 02:00PM
Paris Meetup: 01 September 2012 02:00PM
Berlin Meetup: 04 September 2012 07:30PM

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:

Austin, TX: 25 August 2018 01:30PM
Meetup: Southwestern Ohio: 26 August 2012 04:00PM
Rational-Humanist Open Mic, NYC September 5th: 05 September 2012 07:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Cambridge, MA, Cambridge UK, Chicago, Madison WI, Melbourne, Mountain View, New York, Ohio, Oxford, Portland, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Toronto, 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, build community, 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, Berlin, Helsinki, London, Marin CA, Ottawa, Pittsburgh, Southern California (Los Angeles/Orange County area), St. Louis, Vancouver, Washington, DC.

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!

Want to help out the common good? If one of the meetups listed as regular has become inactive, let me know so we can present more accurate information to newcomers.
Dealing with trolling and the signal to noise ratio
by JoshuaZ — 2012-08-31T13:26:13.809Z

The recent implementation of a -5 karma penalty for replying to comments that are at -3 or below has clearly met with some disagreement and controversy. See http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/eb9/meta_karma_for_last_30_days/7aon . However, at the same time, it seems that Eliezer's observation that trolling and related problems have over time gotten worse here may be correct. It may be that this an inevitable consequence of growth, but it may be that it can be handled or reduced with some solution or set of solutions. I'm starting this discussion thread for people to propose possible solutions. To minimize anchoring bias and related problems, I'm not going to include my ideas in this header but in a comment below. People should think about the problem before reading proposed solutions (again to minimize anchoring issues).
Whole Brain Emulation : the gentleman's choice for Friendly AI.  Feedback needed, editing's a mess.
by GeraldMonroe — 2012-08-31T07:20:03.393Z

Eliezer Yudkowsky made the following statement "All of this makes it rather implausible that the first human being would be scanned into a computer and sanely upgraded before anyone anywhere first built an Artificial Intelligence. At the point where technology first becomes capable of uploading, this implies overwhelmingly more computing power, and probably far better cognitive science, than is required to build an AI.

From the title, it is apparent that I disagree with this statement, and the point of this article is to iterate over my reasons for reaching this conclusion. I hope to hear plenty of feedback from this wonderful community as to whether or not my conclusion is a rational one and is or is not the most probable conclusion to reach based on current knowledge.

My primary reference source is this paper and my own educational background.

The human mind uses approximately 100 trillion synapatic connections, each of which is sensitive to several state variables. There are at least 300 different substances that affect or modulate activity, though of course most synapses are sensitive to only a subset of these variables. Most of the functions of the human mind happen at a level that no human alive is aware of or able to monitor. Only the highest level, rational thoughts as expressed in language are available for inspection and possible duplication.

Furthermore, the brain depends completely on inputs from the body to even start, and through a complex series of interactions taking place over decades, if everything goes correctly, a person can develop into a sentient being capable of creative thought, self reflection, and so on.

I define the ultimate goal of AI as this : to create an entity that functions completely on human designed hardware, and possesses all of the necessary human faculties to creatively design and solve any and all engineering problems that world class engineers are able to solve. It also is able to pass the Turing test, and to perform most other known human skills at a proficient level.

Only an entity with this level of development is truly useful because if it possesses the same engineering skills used to create it, it can potentially design improved versions of itself, and so on. Anything short of this g...
[SEQ RERUN] A Prodigy of Refutation
by MinibearRex — 2012-08-31T05:15:25.205Z

Today's post, A Prodigy of Refutation was originally published on 18 September 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Eliezer's skills at defeating other people's ideas led him to believe that his own (mistaken) ideas must have been correct.

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 Raised in Technophilia, 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 : Washigton DC (probably) minicamp meetup
by rocurley — 2012-08-31T04:37:43.710Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washigton DC (probably) minicamp meetup

WHEN:
02 September 2012 03:00:00AM (-0400)

WHERE:
Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Sorry about the late notice, but the next meetup will be this Sunday, September 2 at 3 pm. Tentative plan is to talk about minicamp stuff again.

Unless someone volunteers a place, we're going to meet at the Portrait Gallary plaza, near the Chinatown Metro stop.

Discussion article for the meetup : Washigton DC (probably) minicamp meetup
Utility functions and quantum mechanics
by Manfred — 2012-08-31T03:41:37.267Z

Interpreting quantum mechanics throws an interesting wrench into utility calculation.

Utility functions, according to the interpretation typical in these parts, are a function of the state of the world, and an agent with consistent goals acts to maximize the expected value of their utility function. Within the many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics (QM), things become interesting because "the state of the world" refers to a wavefunction which contains all possibilities, merely in differing amounts. With an inherently probabilistic interpretation of QM, flipping a quantum coin has to be treated linearly by our rational agent - that is, when calculating expected utility, they have to average the expected utilities from each half. But if flipping a quantum coin is just an operation on the state of the world, then you can use any function you want when calculating expected utility.

And all coins, when you get down to it, are quantum. At the extreme, this leads to the possible rationality of quantum suicide - since you're alive in the quantum state somewhere, just claim that your utility function non-linearly focuses on the part where you're alive.

As you may have heard, there have been several papers in the quantum mechanics literature that claim to recover ordinary rules for calculating expected utility in MWI - how does that work?

Well, when they're not simply wrong (for example, by replacing a state labeled by the number a+b with the state |a> + |b>), they usually go about it with the Von Neumann-Morgenstern axioms, modified to refer to quantum mechanics:

Completeness: Every state can be compared to every other, preferencewise.

Transitivity: If you prefer |A> to |B> and |B> to |C>, you also prefer |A> to |C>.

Continuity: If you prefer |A> to |B> and |B> to |C>, there's some quantum-mechanical measure (note that this is a change from "probability") X such that you're indifferent between (1-X)|A> + X|C> and |B>.

Independence: If you prefer |A> to |B>, then you also prefer (1-X)|A> + X|C> to (1-X)|B> + X|C>, where |C> can be anything and X isn't 1.

In classical cases, these four axioms are easy to accept, and lead directly to utility functions with X as a probability. In quantum mechanical cases, the axioms are harder to accept, but the only measure available is indeed the o...
Do you BayesBlog?  Richard Carrier is looking for links
by palladias — 2012-08-30T21:12:22.690Z

Richard Carrier is a naturalist philosopher, a blogger for FreeThought Blogs (an atheist portal), and the creator of a Bayesian calculator website. He's looking for more places to read people noodling about Bayes (and he already knows about LW).

This is a request to all fans of Bayes’ Theorem out there: I’m looking for the best blogs and websites substantially devoted to discussing all things Bayesian.

[He lists a few Bayes links that don't match his criteria]

But none of these are blogs or websites that regularly produce discussion and articles about Bayesian reasoning. And I’m looking for the best of the latter. I’m looking for more stuff like Less Wrong or Maximum Entropy. If there is any. It can be basic intro level stuff, or advanced, but it should be good reading either way, the kind of place a general Bayesian might want to visit monthly to see what’s going down.

Pop on over if you have recommendations, and feel free to crosspost here. Looking for a tighter filter than just Blogs by LWers.