trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
August 2014 Media Thread
by ArisKatsaris — 2014-08-01T20:42:11.698Z

This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.

If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.

Please post only under one of the already created subthreads, and never directly under the parent media thread.

Use the "Other Media" thread if you believe the piece of media you want to discuss doesn't fit under any of the established categories.

Use the "Meta" thread if you want to discuss about the monthly media thread itself (e.g. to propose adding/removing/splitting/merging subthreads, or to discuss the type of content properly belonging to each subthread) or for any other question or issue you may have about the thread or the rules.

NOTE: The rules this month have been edited slightly, for the purpose of greater clarity. Their intended meaning hasn't changed, just the wording. Please discuss any disagreement/objection under the "Meta" thread.
Prediction of the Internet
by Jan_Rzymkowski — 2014-08-01T18:06:49.733Z

The internet is quite a special invention. It had huge impact on the way we live in number of ways. And yet, it is mainly a conceptual breakthrough. While for most of history, humanity didn't have the technology needed for its creation, the internet wasn't even imagined shortly until its emergence. Many other technologies had no such problem (flight, audiovisual long-distance communication, audiovisual recording, death rays a.k.a. lasers or teleportation - as an example of a phenomenon we can easily conceive even though we're nowhere near the technology needed for it)

My question is when was the Internet predicted for the first time, when the idea of the Internet was uttered for the first time?

Let me clarify, what I mean by the Internet. I don't mean global communication. This is achieved by telephone networks, (was by) telegrams or by e-mails or Skype. But those are not the Internet, they are just part of it. Nor do I mean the global library - while this is closer to what I find essential about the Internet, it doesn't encompass the whole idea. Global library means one-way communication, analogous to a real library. It also emphasises the special status of authors, professionals, not ordinary folk. And even before the advent of Web 2.0, the internet was in great part created by amateurs. The internet is more of a form of huge advertising column, to which access is easy and which is not a curated repository of knowledge, but rather a mix of ads, telephone book, practical information about shops and services, information published by amateurs in a subject, personal diaries, a medium of exchange of goods, etc. - and on top of that, a tool for interpersonal communication. Eventually, it is a clearly a new form of communication, encompassing both two-way communication of casual chat and one-way communication between reader and author.

This is the idea I mean by the Internet. When was the first time this specific idea came to existence? When had people realised that global network of PCs and servers will result in that form of communication, creating its own space - cyberspace, rather than just a tool for communication and a form of a library?
New LW Meetup: Perth
by FrankAdamek — 2014-08-01T16:16:06.438Z

This summary was posted to LW main on July 25th. The following week's summary is here.

New meetups (or meetups with a hiatus of more than a year) are happening in:

Perth, Australia: 27 July 2014 01:30PM

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

Bratislava Meetup XV.: 28 July 2014 06:00PM

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

Brussels - August (topic TBD): 09 August 2014 01:00PM

Houston, TX: 09 August 2014 12:16AM

London social meetup - possibly in a park: 27 July 2014 02:00PM
Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games: 27 July 2014 03:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buffalo, Cambridge UK, Canberra, Columbus, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Mountain View, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Sydney, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, Waterloo, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers.

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 is posted on the front page every Friday. These are an attempt to collect information on all the meetups happening in upcoming weeks. The best way to get your meetup featured is still to use the Add New Meetup feature, but you'll also have the benefit of having your meetup mentioned in a weekly overview. These overview posts are 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, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Marin CA, Ottawa, Pittsburgh, Portland, Southern California (Los Angeles/Orange County area), St. Louis, Tel Aviv, Vancouver.

Whether or not there's currently a meetup in your area, you can sign up to be notified automatica...
Saving the World - Progress Report
by  — 2014-08-01T14:51:10.522Z

How are you saving the world? Please, let us know!

Whether it is solving the problem of death or teaching rationality, one of the correlated phenomena of being less wrong is making things better. Given the value many of us place on altruism, this extends beyond just ourselves and into that question of, “How can I make The Rest better?” The rest of my community. The rest of my country. The rest of my species. The rest of my world. To word it in a less other-optimizing way: How can I save the world?

So, tell us how you are saving the world. Not how you want to save the world. Not how you plan to. How you are, actively, saving the world. It doesn’t have to be “I invented a friendly AI,” or “I reformed a nation’s gender politics” or “I perfected a cryonics reviving process.” It can be a simple goal (“I taught a child how to recognize when they use ad hominen” or "I stopped using as much water to shower") or a simple action as part of a larger plan (such as “I helped with a breakthrough on reducing gas emissions in cars by five percent”).

If we accept this challenge of saving the world, then let us be open and honest with our progress. Let us put our successes on display and our shortcomings as well, so that both can be recognized, recommended, and, if need be, repaired.

If you are not doing anything to save the world, even something as simple as “learning about global risks” or “encouraging others to research a topic before deciding on it”? Then find something. Find a goal and work for it. Find an act that needs doing and do it.

Then tell us about it.
Meetup : London - Index Funds and Other Fun Stuff
by sixes_and_sevens — 2014-08-01T13:52:02.092Z

Discussion article for the meetup : London - Index Funds and Other Fun Stuff

WHEN:
10 August 2014 02:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Shakespeare's Head, Holborn, WC2B 6BG

The next London meetup will be on Sunday August 10th, from 2pm at the Shakespeare's Head in Holborn.

Several regulars have expressed an interest in setting up passive investment in an index fund. Towards the beginning of the meetup, I'll be presenting a short how-to on index fund investments and answering questions on the subject. (I have no broader finance and investment expertise, but did a lot of research into UK index tracker products a few years ago, which I'm happy to share).

This obviously isn't everybody's discussion topic of choice, but there's room for simultaneous discussion on another table, so come along anyway even if you're not interested in index funds, and talk about unicorns / sci-fi plausibility / infinite torture scenarios, etc. instead. The whole thing will probably revert to unstructured discussion after the first hour or so.
We normally have some sort of sign identifying us as a LessWrong meetup, and typically try to get one or more of the large round tables near the back of the pub. If you can't find us, call or text 07887 718458.

About London LessWrong:

We're currently running meetups every other Sunday, and tend to get between 5 and 15 attendees. Most of our meetups default to unstructured social discussion on LessWrongy subjects, though we occasionally have special topics, events or activities. Sometimes we play games.

We have a Google Group and a Facebook group where we plan and discuss stuff. We would be extraordinarily pleased if you joined them.

Discussion article for the meetup : London - Index Funds and Other Fun Stuff
Connection Theory Has Less Than No Evidence
by WilliamJames — 2014-08-01T10:17:00.892Z

I’m a member of the Bay Area Effective Altruist movement. I wanted to make my first post here to share some concerns I have about Leverage Research.

At parties, I often hear Leverage folks claiming they've pretty much solved psychology. They assign credit to their central research project: Connection Theory.

Amazingly, Connection Theory is never something I find endorsed by even a single conventionally educated person with knowledge of psychology. Yet some of my most intelligent friends end up deciding that Connection Theory seems promising enough to be given the benefit of the doubt. They usually give black-box reasons for supporting it, like, “I don’t feel confident assigning less than a 1% chance that it’s correct — and if it works, it would be super valuable. Therefore it’s very high EV!”. They do this sort of hedging as though psychology were a field that couldn’t be probed by science or understood in any level of detail. I would argue that this approach is too forgiving and charitable in situations when you can instead just analyze the theory using standard scientific reasoning. You could also assess its credibility based on standard quality markers or even the perceived quality of the work going into developing the theory.

To start, here’s some warning signs for Connection Theory:

Invented by amateurs without knowledge of psychology

Never published for scrutiny in any peer-reviewed venue, conference, open access journal, or even a non peer-reviewed venue of any type

Unknown outside of the research community that created it

Vaguely specified

Cites no references

Created in a vacuum from first principles

Contains disproven cartesian assumptions about mental processes

Unaware of the frontier of current psychology research

Consists entirely of poorly conducted, unpublished case studies

Unusually lax methodology... even for psychology experiments

Data from early studies shows a "100% success rate" -- the way only a grade-schooler would forge their results

In a 2013 talk at Leverage Research, the creator of Connection Theory refused to acknowledge the possibility that his techniques could ever fail to produce correct answers.

In that same talk, when someone pointed out a hypothetical way that an incorrect answer could be produced by Connection Theory, the creator countered that if that case occurred, C

...
[link] Why Psychologists' Food Fight Matters
by Pablo — 2014-08-01T07:52:38.604Z

Why Psychologists’ Food Fight Matters: Important findings” haven’t been replicated, and science may have to change its ways. By Michelle N. Meyer and Christopher Chabris. Slate, July 31, 2014. [Via Steven Pinker's Twitter account, who adds: "Lesson for sci journalists: Stop reporting single studies, no matter how sexy (these are probably false). Report lit reviews, meta-analyses."] Some excerpts:

Psychologists are up in arms over, of all things, the editorial process that led to the recent publication of a special issue of the journal Social Psychology. This may seem like a classic case of ivory tower navel gazing, but its impact extends far beyond academia. The issue attempts to replicate 27 “important findings in social psychology.” Replication—repeating an experiment as closely as possible to see whether you get the same results—is a cornerstone of the scientific method. Replication of experiments is vital not only because it can detect the rare cases of outright fraud, but also because it guards against uncritical acceptance of findings that were actually inadvertent false positives, helps researchers refine experimental techniques, and affirms the existence of new facts that scientific theories must be able to explain.

One of the articles in the special issue reported a failure to replicate a widely publicized 2008 study by Simone Schnall, now tenured at Cambridge University, and her colleagues. In the original study, two experiments measured the effects of people’s thoughts or feelings of cleanliness on the harshness of their moral judgments. In the first experiment, 40 undergraduates were asked to unscramble sentences, with one-half assigned words related to cleanliness (like pure or pristine) and one-half assigned neutral words. In the second experiment, 43 undergraduates watched the truly revolting bathroom scene from the movie Trainspotting, after which one-half were told to wash their hands while the other one-half were not. All subjects in both experiments were then asked to rate the moral wrongness of six hypothetical scenarios, such as falsifying one’s résumé and keeping money from a lost wallet. The researchers found that priming subjects to think about cleanliness had a “substantial” effect on moral judgment: The hand washers and those who unscrambled senten

...
Meetup : Canberra: Effective Altruism
by DanielFilan — 2014-08-01T03:39:53.433Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Canberra: Effective Altruism

WHEN:
09 August 2014 06:00:00PM (+1000)

WHERE:
108 North Road, Acton, ACT

Buck spent the first half of 2014 in San Francisco, spending a lot of time with the Effective Altruism community there. He learned a lot from this experience. In his talk, he'll provide an introduction to effective altruism, its history and its major cause areas, the biggest things that are happening in it at the moment, and the coolest things which are coming up for the movement in the future.

As always, vegan snacks will be provided.

General meetup info:

If you use Facebook, please join our group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/lwcanberra/

Structured meetups are held on the second Saturday and fourth Friday of each month from 6 pm until late in the CSIT building, room N101.

There will be LWers at the Computer Science Students Association's weekly board games night, held on Wednesdays from 7 pm in the same location.

Discussion article for the meetup : Canberra: Effective Altruism
Alternative to Campaign Finance Reform?
by HalMorris — 2014-08-01T01:32:49.854Z

I'd like to throw this out as a test project, in case there are any takers, or rather for now, mostly throw it out for comment and criticism to see if it can be taken any further.

Take a small town, say about 4000 pop., where people generally know each other, and can nearly all agree that the way we run elections is very dysfunctional compared to a normal hiring process. This would have to be a very unusual town for such a conversation to take place; maybe it would be a very small suburb of Redmond Washington. Liberals, libertarians, and conservatives would hold a town hall type conversation and almost all agree that the current prototype of an election is dysfunctional. They might then agree to tell the candidates "Save your money, no ads, signs, etc. We're providing a different forum for you to represent yourselves, and whoever ignores this will forfeit our respect for sabotaging the experiment we want to carry out."

Townspeople would spend a period of time, with face to face meetings and online debating forums figuring out what questions they'd want answered. Maybe a few of the sort of people who would normally become activists for one or the other party would supply the drive, looking into what was done by the town under the last mayor. Discoveries would be made like "Oh, here's one thing the mayor does that I never thought of, hiring concrete contractors; I wonder how he/she would decide which one to use."

Then candidates are interviewed one at a time in a town hall type setting with web and/or local cable broadcast. Each candidate will be called individually on one or more evenings partly to avoid time-wasting put-downs of the other candidates.

I think this would get national news attention and provoke discussion. There are plenty of stories of unusual situations in small town elections just because a man and his ex-wife are running against each other, or the (male) mayor goes trans-gender and has large breast implants (and to warm our hearts, the town chases off out of town demonstrators against such an "abomination" -- this one I actually heard about recently).

I realize the "normal hiring process" analogy has to be stretched and squeezed to fit the very different situation, but I think it's worth an experiment, at least, to see if we could capture some of the virtues of a process that has worked (and ...
Announcing the 2014 program equilibrium iterated PD tournament
by tetronian2 — 2014-07-31T12:24:07.544Z

Last year, AlexMennen ran a prisoner's dilemma tournament with bots that could see each other's source code, which was dubbed a "program equilibrium" tournament. This year, I will be running a similar tournament. Here's how it's going to work: Anyone can submit a bot that plays the iterated PD against other bots. Bots can not only remember previous rounds, as in the standard iterated PD, but also run perfect simulations of their opponent before making a move. Please see the github repo for the full list of rules and a brief tutorial.

There are a few key differences this year:

1) The tournament is in Haskell rather than Scheme.

2) The time limit for each round is shorter (5 seconds rather than 10) but the penalty for not outputting Cooperate or Defect within the time limit has been reduced.

3) Bots cannot directly see each other's source code, but they can run their opponent, specifying the initial conditions of the simulation, and then observe the output.

All submissions should be emailed to pdtournament@gmail.com or PM'd to me here on LessWrong by September 15th, 2014. LW users with 50+ karma who want to participate but do not know Haskell can PM me with an algorithm/psuedocode, and I will translate it into a bot for them. (If there is a flood of such requests, I would appreciate some volunteers to help me out.)
Meetup : West LA—Behold Moloch! Beware of Moloch!
by OpenThreadGuy — 2014-07-31T08:57:29.882Z

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA—Behold Moloch! Beware of Moloch!

WHEN:
06 August 2014 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
11066 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA

How to Find Us: Go into this Del Taco. We will be in the back room.

Parking is free in the lot out front or on the street nearby.

Discussion: Yvain has done it. He has gone beyond the impossible and kicked reason to the curb! He has written Peak Essay, a persuasive epic, a poem in prose of hope and despair. For there is an Enemy; its name is Moloch, the Creator, Moloch the Destroyer, Moloch the Devious Maw! We will be discussing his post Meditations on Moloch.

Recommended Reading:

Meditations on Moloch.

Meditations on Moloch again. Read it four times.

Update: Misperceptions on Moloch, a follow-up post intended to dispel illusions caused by the original essay.

Read everything Yvain has ever written, on his old blog, on Less Wrong, on his current blog.

Don't read the comments.

No prior exposure to Less Wrong is required; this will be generally accessible. But you may be changed beyond repair, and the better for it.

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA—Behold Moloch! Beware of Moloch!
Causal Inference Sequence Part 1: Basic Terminology and the Assumptions of Causal Inference
by Anders_H — 2014-07-30T20:56:31.866Z

(Part 1 of the Sequence on Applied Causal Inference)

In this sequence, I am going to present a theory on how we can learn about causal effects using observational data. As an example, we will imagine that you have collected information on a large number of Swedes - let us call them Sven, Olof, Göran, Gustaf, Annica, Lill-Babs, Elsa and Astrid. For every Swede, you have recorded data on their gender, whether they smoked or not, and on whether they got cancer during the 10-years of follow-up. Your goal is to use this dataset to figure out whether smoking causes cancer.

We are going to use the letter A as a random variable to represent whether they smoked. A can take the value 0 (did not smoke) or 1 (smoked). When we need to talk about the specific values that A can take, we sometimes use lower case a as a placeholder for 0 or 1. We use the letter Y as a random variable that represents whether they got cancer, and L to represent their gender.

The data-generating mechanism and the joint distribution of variables

Imagine you are looking at this data set:

This table records information about the joint distribution of the variables L, A and Y. By looking at it, you can tell that 1/4 of the Swedes were men who smoked and got cancer, 1/8 were men who did not smoke and got cancer, 1/8 were men who did not smoke and did not get cancer etc.

You can make all sorts of statistics that summarize aspects of the joint distribution. One such statistic is the correlation between two variables. If "sex" is correlated with "smoking", it means that if you know somebody's sex, this gives you information that makes it easier to predict whether they smoke. If knowing about an individual's sex gives no information about whether they smoked, we say that sex and smoking are independent. We use the symbol ∐ to mean independence.

When we are interested in causal effects, we are asking what would happen to the joint distribution if we intervened to change the value of a variable. For example, how many Swedes would get cancer in a hypothetical world where you intervened to make sure they all quit smoking?

In order to answer this, we have to ask questions about the data generating mechanism. The data generating mechanism is the algorithm that assigns value to the variables, and therefore creates the joint distribution. We will think...