trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
The Inner Ring by C. S. Lewis
by Saul Munn — 2024-04-24T22:48:09.228Z
Link: https://www.lewissociety.org/innerring/

Note: In @Nathan Young's words "It seems like great essays should go here and be fed through the standard LessWrong algorithm. There is possibly a copyright issue here, but we aren't making any money off it either."

What follows is a full copy of the C. S. Lewis essay "The Inner Ring" the 1944 Memorial Lecture at King’s College, University of London.

May I read you a few lines from Tolstoy’s War and Peace?

When Boris entered the room, Prince Andrey was listening to an old general, wearing his decorations, who was reporting something to Prince Andrey, with an expression of soldierly servility on his purple face. “Alright. Please wait!” he said to the general, speaking in Russian with the French accent which he used when he spoke with contempt. The moment he noticed Boris he stopped listening to the general who trotted imploringly after him and begged to be heard, while Prince Andrey turned to Boris with a cheerful smile and a nod of the head. Boris now clearly understood—what he had already guessed—that side by side with the system of discipline and subordination which were laid down in the Army Regulations, there existed a different and more real system—the system which compelled a tightly laced general with a purple face to wait respectfully for his turn while a mere captain like Prince Andrey chatted with a mere second lieutenant like Boris. Boris decided at once that he would be guided not by the official system but by this other unwritten system.

When you invite a middle-aged moralist to address you, I suppose I must conclude, however unlikely the conclusion seems, that you have a taste for middle-aged moralising. I shall do my best to gratify it. I shall in fact, give you advice about the world in which you are going to live. I do not mean by this that I am going to talk on what are called current affairs. You probably know quite as much about them as I do. I am not going to tell you—except in a form so general that you will hardly recognise it—what part you ought to play in post-war reconstruction.

It is not, in fact, very likely that any of you will be able, in the next ten years, to make any direct contribution to the peace or prosperity of Europe. You will be busy finding jobs, getting married, acquiring facts. I am going to do something more old-fashioned than you perhaps expected. I am going to give advice. I am going to issue warnings. Advi...
This is Water by David Foster Wallace
by Nathan Young — 2024-04-24T21:21:09.445Z
Link: https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/

Note: It seems like great essays should go here and be fed through the standard LessWrong algorithm. There is possibly a copyright issue here, but we aren't making any money off it either. What follows is a full copy of "This is Water" by David Foster Wallace his 2005 commencement speech to the graduating class at Kenyon College.

Greetings parents and congratulations to Kenyon’s graduating class of 2005. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story thing turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you’re worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don’t be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning.

Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I’m supposed to talk about your liberal arts education’s meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff. So let’s talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about “teaching you how to think.” If you’re like me as a student, you’ve never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think. But I’m going to posit to you that the liberal arts cliché turns out not to be insulting at all, because the really significant education in thinking that we’re suppose...
Betadine oral rinses for covid and other viral infections
by Elizabeth — 2024-04-24T17:50:03.347Z

Before we get started, this is your quarterly reminder that I have no medical credentials and my highest academic credential is a BA in a different part of biology (with a double major in computer science). In a world with a functional medical system no one would listen to me.

Tl;dr povidone iodine probably reduces viral load when used in the mouth or nose, with corresponding decreases in symptoms and infectivity. The effect size could be as high as 90% for prophylactic use (and as low as 0% when used in late illness), but is probably much smaller. There is a long tail of side-effects. No study I read reported side effects at clinically significant levels, but I don’t think they looked hard enough. There are other gargle formulas that may have similar benefits without the risk of side effects, which are in my queue to research.

Benefits

Math

One paper found a 90% decrease in salivary viral load after mouthwash use (which probably overestimates the effect). Another found a 90% reduction in bad outcomes, with treatment (in mouth, nose, and eyes) starting soon after diagnosis. I suspect both of these are overestimates but 1. 90% reduction is a fantastic upper bound to have 2. Neither of these looked at prophylactic use. A third study found a significant reduction in viral DNA after usage, but did not quantify that by viral load or outcomes.

I feel like if povidone iodine was actually that good we’d have heard about it before. OTOH mouthwash formulations are barely available in the US, and most of these studies were in Asia, so maybe it went to fixation there years ago and the west is just catching up.

So I’m going to call this 9-45% reduction in illness timeXintensity when used after symptom onset. Before onset ought to be higher, my wild ass guess is up to 90%.

One reason I think earlier use is better is that, at least with covid, most of the real damage happens when the virus reaches the lungs. If iodine gargles can form a firewall that prevents an upper respiratory infection from becoming a lower respiratory infection, you’ve prevented most (although not all) of the worst outcomes.

Papers

I livetweeted every paper I read, collected here. I don’t want to brag, but those tweets were very popular among ladies with large boobs and 10 numbers in their twitter handles. So if that’s your type you should definitely check out those ...
At last! ChatGPT does, shall we say, interesting imitations of “Kubla Khan”
by Bill Benzon — 2024-04-24T14:56:07.328Z

Cross-posted from New Savanna.

As you may know, I have a long-term interest in Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” and have written a lot of posts about it. If you scan through those posts you’ll find that some of the more recent one’s involve ChatGPT. Here’s my first attempt to have ChatGPT parody the poem:

How ChatGPT parodied “Kubla Khan” and pwned DJT45 at the same time

While the Chatster’s performance is not without interest, the parodies were not very good. A month and a half later I decided to give it another try:

Let’s give ChatGPT another crack at “Kubla Khan.”

Again, not without interest, but no cigar.

Meanwhile, I have managed to prompt ChatGPT into imitations of Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” I did it by using the technique I’d used to investigate story-telling. I’d give it a story and then ask ChatGPT to use that as the basis for a new story where I specified that the new story have a different protagonist. ChatGPT could do whatever it wanted to do with the rest. That worked well for stories, and it worked will with Stevens as well. A month ago I asked ChatGPT to substitute “A.I.” for “blackbirds.” Just the other day I had it produce a poem about irises.

Perhaps it will work with “Kubla Khan.” I decided to restrict the exercise to the first 36 lines. First, I had it substitute “Elon Musk” for “Kubla Khan,” and then “FDR.” The results? Good poetry, no. Some of it is silly. But it’s more interesting than the earlier tries. Three cigars and a pop tart.

As always, I set my prompts in boldface and ChatGPT’s response in plain-face.

From Kubla Khan to Elon Musk

I’m going to give you the first 36 lines of “Kubla Khan.” I want you to base a new poem on that, using “Elon Musk” instead of “Kubla Khan.”

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns meaureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover!
And fr...
Magic by forgetting
by avturchin — 2024-04-24T14:32:20.753Z

Epistemic – this post is more suitable for LW as it was 10 years ago

Thought experiment with curing a disease by forgetting

Imagine I have a bad but rare disease X. I may try to escape it in the following way:

1. I enter the blank state of mind and forget that I had X.

2. Now I in some sense merge with a very large number of my (semi)copies in parallel worlds who do the same. I will be in the same state of mind as other my copies, some of them have disease X, but most don’t.

3. Now I can use self-sampling assumption for observer-moments (Strong SSA) and think that I am randomly selected from all these exactly the same observer-moments.

4. Based on this, the chances that my next observer-moment after the blank state of mind will have the disease X are small and equal to the statistical probability of having disease X. Let’s say there are 1000 times more my copies which do not have disease X. Therefore after I return from the meditation, there will be only 0.001 chance that I will have this disease X, as the next state will be randomly selected from all those that can logically follow from the current state. Thus, I will be almost for sure cured!

There are several caveats for such a line of reasoning

1. Obviously, I must forget not only about the disease but even about the fact that I was trying to forget something. I have to forget that I tried to forget about X and even used meditation as a magic tool. Therefore, after waking up, I will not know if it works. Also, it will work if not-ill people are often also entering the blank state of mind without attempts to forget something (and accept the risk of getting something bad). Meditation is in some sense such a blank state of mind, and many people meditate just for relaxation or enlightenment.

2. The state-based, not path-based identity theory must be valid. Not continuity of consciousness, but “I am randomly selected from the same minds”. Note that path-dependent identity also has its own paradoxes: two copies can have different ‘weights” depending on how they were created while having the same measure. For example, if in sleep two copies of me will be created and one of the copies will be copied again – when there will be 3 copies in the morning in the same world, but if we calculate chances to be one of them based on paths, they will be ½ and ¼ and ¼. Path...
Changes in College Admissions
by Zvi — 2024-04-24T13:50:03.487Z

This post brings together various questions about the college application process, as well as practical considerations of where to apply and go. We are seeing some encouraging developments, but mostly the situation remains rather terrible for all concerned.

Application Strategy and Difficulty

Paul Graham: Colleges that weren’t hard to get into when I was in HS are hard to get into now. The population has increased by 43%, but competition for elite colleges seems to have increased more. I think the reason is that there are more smart kids. If so that’s fortunate for America.

Are college applications getting more competitive over time?

Yes and no.

The population size is up, but the cohort size is roughly the same.

The standard ‘effort level’ of putting in work and sacrificing one’s childhood and gaming the process is dramatically up. So you have to do it to stay in place.

There is a shift in what is valued on several fronts.

I do not think kids are obviously smarter or dumber.

Spray and Pray and Optimal Admissions Strategy

This section covers the first two considerations.

Admission percentages are down, but additional applications per student, fueled by both lower transaction costs and lower acceptance rates, mostly explains this.

This means you have to do more work and more life distortion to stay in place in the Red Queen’s Race. Everyone is gaming the system, and paying higher costs to do so.

If you match that in relative terms, for a generic value of ‘you,’ your ultimate success rate, in terms of where you end up, will be unchanged from these factors.

The bad news for you is that previously a lot of students really dropped the ball on the admissions process and paid a heavy price. Now ‘drop the ball’ means something a lot less severe.

This is distinct from considerations three and four.

It is also distinct from the question of whether the sacrifices are worthwhile. I will return to that question later on, this for now is purely the admission process itself.

The size of our age cohorts has not changed. The American population has risen, but so has its age. The number of 17-year-olds is essentially unchanged in the last 40 years.

GPT-4 says typical behavior for an applicant was to send in 1-3 applications before 1990, 4-7 in the 1990s-2000s, 7-10 in the late 2000s or later, perhaps more now. Claude said it was 3-5 in the 1990s, 5-7 ...
1-page outline of Carlsmith's otherness and control series
by Nathan Young — 2024-04-24T11:25:36.106Z

Joe’s summary is

here

, these are my condensed takeaways in my own words. All links in this section are to the essays.

Outline

Carlsmith tackles two linked questions:

How should we behave towards future beings (future humans, AIs etc)?
What should our priors be about how AIs will behave towards us?

So the first question:
We worry about value in the future, how should we behave towards the future and future beings?

(1)

We could trust in some base goodness - the universe, god, AIs being good

(2) We could accept that all future beings will be alien to us and stop worrying (

here

and

here

)
(3)

We could have moral systems or concepts of goodness/niceness

(4) We could seize power over the future (

here

and

here

)
(5) We could adopt a different poise which centred around notions like growth/harmony/ “attunement” (

here

and

here

)

(1)

Yudkowskians don’t tend to trust in god or the universe

. That’s part of their schtick.

They don’t trust AIs will be good

(2)

This is perhaps what Hanson argue for

[1]
Yudkowskians do not buy this

Are they avoiding how alien future people will be?

How can they justify a notion of good that’s robust over time? (

eg often Yudkowsky pushes against this notion

)

Are they avoiding discomfort?

[2]

(3)

Moral systems vary wildly at edge cases

On the scale of the whole future, even good people controlling it might be a moral disaster. The notion of paperclipping elides this, because it is involuntary and aesthetically dull.

But the arguments also extend to law abiding and even relatively joyful beings

(4)

This powerseeking is hard to distinguish from the power seeking of AIs

[3] (also (

here

and

here

)

(5)

There is some notion of attunement/ trust/ growth/ balance

which

rationalists and EAs are quite inimical to

[4]

There seems some way of being

which navigates how to interact with complex systems, letting them grow, tending to them without being able to dominate the or being dominated by them
What might this look like?

Second question.

How might AIs treat us

?

If we assume that we cannot trust (not 1,3) think it’s a problem (not 2) and ignore (5) then

it’s very easy to see AI as a tool while it is weaker than us and a competitor if it becomes stronger
Even if AI may be others ways than this, the safe option is to assume the competitor frame

Under (5) AI might be

Something go

...
AI Generated Music as a Method of Installing Essential Rationalist Skills
by keltan — 2024-04-24T07:48:44.537Z

On April Fools the LW team released an album under the name of the Fooming Shoggoths. Ever since the amount that I think about rationality has skyrocketed.

That's because I've been listening exclusively to it when I'd usually be listening to other music. Especially Thought That Faster (feat. Eliezer Yudkowsky). I now find that when I come to a problem's conclusion I often do look back and think, "how could I have thought that faster?"

So, I've started attempting to add to the rationalist musical cannon using Udio. Here are two attempts I think turned out well. I especially like the first one.

When I hear phrases from a song in everyday life I complete the pattern, for example.

and I would walk...
Just let it go
What can I say?

I feel like there is potential to install actions to common phrase triggers. For example, a way to make confusion phrases easier to remember, and act on.

If you think "Hu, that's weird" I predict that you're more likely to notice you are confused if your brain rhythmically autocompletes for you.

I encourage others to use Udio to create more rationalist music.

Find your favourite sequence post, LW Post, etc
Take the more beautiful or poetic lines and dump them into a note
Write lyrics that connect those ideas together trying to explain the concept, or install activation phrases that make someone aware of the potential to use that specific rationalist skill at that time.
Dump it into Udio
Slowly raise the sanity waterline

I would also love to see entire sequences have accompanying albums. Something like Hammertime might really benefit, if you would unlock a new song for each day you complete. Then those songs come with you in your day to day.

Edit: I can’t stop making them! It’s so fun. Here are some more. If you’ve got Rationalist material you’d like turned into a song let me know!
Electronic Harp Mandolin Prototype
by jefftk — 2024-04-24T02:20:03.423Z

While I'm not really at a clear stopping point, I wanted to write up
my recent progress with the electronic harp mandolin project. If I go
too much further without writing anything up I'm going to start
forgetting things. First, a demo:

Or, if you're prefer a different model:

Since last time, I:

Fixed my interference
issues by:

Grounding the piezo input instead of putting it at +1.65v.

Shielding my longer wires.

Soldering my ground and power pins that I'd missed initially (!!)

Got the software
working reasonably reliably.

Designed and 3D printed a case, with lots of help from my
MAS.837 TA, Lancelot.

Dumped epoxy all over the back of the metal plate to make it
less likely the little piezo wires will break off.

Revived the Mac version of my MIDI mapper and made a cut down
version that is designed to drive a wind instrument synth (code).

While this works, it's a little bulky for attaching to the mandolin.
I also don't like having a bunch of wires running from the teeth to
the computer and that I only have thirteen of the eighteen inputs
hooked up. I've also been enjoying playing it with my fingers, in
more of a piano orientation. I decided to make a new version that's
all a single board:

The squares show where the "teeth" will go.

I've prepared a new batch of eighteen pluck sensors:

Sanding them smooth was a good fit for watching the kids at the park.

I'm a bit nervous with this design that something will break and it
will be hard to repair because it's all on one board, but it's got to
be better than the giant blob of epoxy in the v1 design.

If this works well I might make a case for it where only the teeth
poke out?

Comment via: facebook, mastodon
Examples of Highly Counterfactual Discoveries?
by johnswentworth — 2024-04-23T22:19:19.399Z

The history of science has tons of examples of the same thing being discovered multiple time independently; wikipedia has a whole list of examples here. If your goal in studying the history of science is to extract the predictable/overdetermined component of humanity's trajectory, then it makes sense to focus on such examples.

But if your goal is to achieve high counterfactual impact in your own research, then you should probably draw inspiration from the opposite: "singular" discoveries, i.e. discoveries which nobody else was anywhere close to figuring out. After all, if someone else would have figured it out shortly after anyways, then the discovery probably wasn't very counterfactually impactful.

Alas, nobody seems to have made a list of highly counterfactual scientific discoveries, to complement wikipedia's list of multiple discoveries.

To that end: what are some examples of discoveries which nobody else was anywhere close to figuring out?

A few tentative examples to kick things off:

Shannon's information theory. The closest work I know of (notably Nyquist) was 20 years earlier, and had none of the core ideas of the theorems on fungibility of transmission. In the intervening 20 years, it seems nobody else got importantly closer to the core ideas of information theory.
Einstein's special relativity. Poincaré and Lorentz had the math 20 years earlier IIRC, but nobody understood what the heck that math meant. Einstein brought the interpretation, and it seems nobody else got importantly closer to that interpretation in the intervening two decades.
Penicillin. Gemini tells me that the antibiotic effects of mold had been noted 30 years earlier, but nobody investigated it as a medicine in all that time.
Pasteur's work on the germ theory of disease. There had been both speculative theories and scattered empirical results as precedent decades earlier, but Pasteur was the first to bring together the microscope observations, theory, highly compelling empirical results, and successful applications. I don't know of anyone else who was close to putting all the pieces together, despite the obvious prerequisite technology (the microscope) having been available for two centuries by then.

(Feel free to debate any of these, as well as others' examples.)
Is there software to practice reading expressions?
by lsusr — 2024-04-23T21:53:00.679Z

I took the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test test today. I got 27/36. Jessica Livingston got 36/36.

Reading expressions is almost mind reading. Practicing reading expressions should be easy with the right software. All you need is software that shows a random photo from a large database, asks the user to guess what it is, and then informs the user what the correct answer is. I felt myself getting noticeably better just from the 36 images on the test.

Short standardized tests exist to test this skill, but is there good software for training it? It needs to have lots of examples, so the user learns to recognize expressions instead of overfitting on specific pictures.

Paul Ekman has a product, but I don't know how good it is.