trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Mark Manson and Rationality
by casebash — 2015-11-25T03:34:44.116Z

As those of you on the Less Wrong chat may know, Mark Manson is my favourite personal development author. I thought I'd share those articles that are most related to rationality, as I figured that they would have the greatest chance of being appreciated.

Immediately after writing this article, I realised that I left one thing unclear, so I'll explain it now. Why have I included articles discussing the terms "life purpose" and "finding yourself"? The reason is that I think that it is very important to provide linguistic bridges between some of the vague everyday language that people often use and the more precise language expected by rationalists.

Why I’m wrong about everything (and so are you):

“When looked at from this perspective, personal development can actually be quite scientific. The hypotheses are our beliefs. Our actions and behaviors are the experiments. The resulting internal emotions and thought patterns are our data. We can then take those and compare them to our original beliefs and then integrate them into our overall understanding of our needs and emotional make-up for the future.”

…

“You test those beliefs out in the real world and get real-world feedback and emotional data from them. You may find that you, in fact, don’t enjoy writing every day as much as you thought you would. You may discover that you actually have a lot of trouble expressing some of your more exquisite thoughts than you first assumed. You realize that there’s a lot of failure and rejection involved in writing and that kind of takes the fun out of it. You also find that you spend more time on your site’s design and presentation than you do on the writing itself, that that is what you actually seem to be enjoying. And so you integrate that new information and adjust your goals and behaviors accordingly.”

7 strange questions that can help you find your life purpose:

Mark Manson deconstructs the notion of “life purpose”, replacing it with a question that is much more tractable:

“Part of the problem is the concept of “life purpose” itself. The idea that we were each born for some higher purpose and it’s now our cosmic mission to find it. This is the same kind of shitty logic used to justify things like spirit crystals or that your lucky number is 34 (but ...
Is it sensible for an ambitious nonsmoker to use e-cigarettes?
by hg00 — 2015-11-24T22:48:52.998Z

Many of you have already seen Gwern's page on the topic of nicotine use. Nicotine is interesting because it's a stimulant, it may increase intelligence (I believe Daniel Kahneman said he was smarter back when he used to smoke), and it may be useful for habit formation.

However, the Cleveland Clinic thinks they put your heart at risk. This site covers some of the same research, and counterpoint is offered:

Elaine Keller, president of the CASAA, pointed to other recently published research that she said shows outcomes in the “real world” as opposed to a laboratory. One study showed that smokers put on nicotine replacement therapy after suffering an acute coronary event like a heart attack or stroke had no greater risk of a second incident within one year than those who were not.

I managed to get ahold of the study in question, and it seems to me that it damns e-cigarettes by faint praise. Based on a quick skim, researchers studied smokers who recently suffered an acute coronary syndrome (ACS). The treatment group was given e-cigarettes for nicotine replacement therapy, while the control group was left alone. Given that baseline success rates in quitting smoking are on the order of 10-20%, it seems safe to say that the control group mostly continued smoking as they had previously. (The study authors say "tobacco use during follow-up could not be accurately assessed because of the variability in documentation and, therefore, was not included in the present analysis", so we are left guessing.)

29% of the nicotine replacement group suffered an adverse event in the year following the intervention, and 31% of the control group did--similar numbers. So one interpretation of this study is that if you are a smoker in your fifties and you have already experienced an acute coronary syndrome, switching from cigarettes to e-cigs will do little to help you avoid further health issues in the next year. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

Another more recent article states that older smokers should see health gains from quitting cigarettes, which hammers the nail in further for e-cigarettes. It also states:

More conclusive answers about how e-cigarettes affect the body long-term are forthcoming, Rose said. Millions in research dollars are being funneled toward this topic.

“There is some poor science,” Rose said. “Everybody is trying to g

...
The Winding Path
by OrphanWilde — 2015-11-24T21:23:54.682Z

The First Step

The first step on the path to truth is superstition. We all start there, and should acknowledge that we start there.

Superstition is, contrary to our immediate feelings about the word, the first stage of understanding. Superstition is the attribution of unrelated events to a common (generally unknown or unspecified) cause - it could be called pattern recognition. The "supernatural" component generally included in the definition is superfluous, because supernatural merely refers to that which isn't part of nature - which means reality -, which is an elaborate way of saying something whose relationship to nature is not yet understood, or else nonexistent. If we discovered that ghosts are real, and identified an explanation - overlapping entities in a many-worlds universe, say - they'd cease to be supernatural and merely be natural.

Just as the supernatural refers to unexplained or imaginary phenomena, superstition refers to unexplained or imaginary relationships, without the necessity of cause. If you designed an AI in a game which, after five rounds of being killed whenever it went into rooms with green-colored walls, started avoiding rooms with green-colored walls, you've developed a good AI. It is engaging in superstition, it has developed an incorrect understanding of the issue. But it hasn't gone down the wrong path - there is no wrong path in understanding, there is only the mistake of stopping. Superstition, like all belief, is only useful if you're willing to discard it.

The Next Step

Incorrect understanding is the first - and necessary - step to correct understanding. It is, indeed, every step towards correct understanding. Correct understanding is a path, not an achievement, and it is pursued, not by arriving at the correct conclusion in the first place, but by testing your ideas and discarding those which are incorrect.

No matter how much intelligent you are, you cannot skip the "incorrect understanding" step of knowledge, because that is every step of knowledge. You must come up with wrong ideas in order to get at the right ones - which will always be one step further. You must test your ideas. And again, the only mistake is stopping, in assuming that you have it right now.

Intelligence is never your bottleneck. The ability to think faster isn't necessarily the...
One misuse of the efficient Katja hypothesis
by KatjaGrace — 2015-11-24T16:11:16.000Z

Sometimes I have bad, longstanding problems. Sometimes other people know about them, but probably assume I have done everything I can to solve them, because I’m a reasonable person. So they don’t try to help me to solve them, because the problems are presumably incredibly intractable. They especially don’t try to help me solve them by checking I’ve tried easy things, because that would be rude. Reasonable people don’t go around having terrible problems that are easy to solve.

Unfortunately, sometimes I do the same thing. I know I have some substantial problem, and since it has been there forever, I assume I’ve tried pretty hard to solve it, because I’m a reasonable person. I don’t explicitly think this, or the argument would look suspicious to me. But if there’s just some terrible thing that is a permanent fixture of my life, presumably that’s because it’s pretty damn hard to fix.

Sometimes though, past-Katja was assuming something similar. Sometimes a problem has been around forever from the first time a person even notices it. You won’t necessarily notice yourself truly noticing it for the first time, and then rapidly take concrete actions to resolve it. It is already familiar. Or perhaps you have had it since before you were reasonable at all, but at every point you implicitly assumed it was beyond your capabilities, since apparently it was yesterday.

At any rate, sometimes I end up with longstanding problems that I have never actually tried that hard to solve. And unless I actually stare at them and ask myself what it was I did to try to solve them, I don’t notice. This is similar to the error I labeled ‘I like therefore I am’, in which approving of a virtue is mistaken for having it. Here disapproving of a problem is mistaken for fighting it. I am not sure if this is a pattern for other people. If so, I suggest actually trying to solve it.
Meetup : LW-cologne meetup
by EGI — 2015-11-23T21:50:11.726Z

Discussion article for the meetup : LW-cologne meetup

WHEN:
28 November 2015 05:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Marienweg 43, 50858

Monthly Cologne meetup

Discussion article for the meetup : LW-cologne meetup
Open thread, Nov. 23 - Nov. 29, 2015
by MrMind — 2015-11-23T07:59:52.370Z

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.
Some thoughts on decentralised prediction markets
by  — 2015-11-23T04:35:05.814Z

**Thought experiment 1 – arbitrage opportunities in prediction market**

You’re Mitt Romney, biding your time before riding in on your white horse to win the US republican presidential preselection (bear with me, I’m Australian and don’t know US politics). Anyway, you’ve had your run and you’re not too fussed, but some of the old guard want you back in the fight.

Playing out like a XKCD comic strip ‘Okay’, you scheme. ‘Maybe I can trump Trump at his own game and make a bit of dosh on the election’.

A data-scientist you keep on retainer sometimes talks about LessWrong and other dry things. One day she mentions that decentralised prediction markets are being developed, one of which is Augur. She says one can bet on the outcome of events such as elections.

You’ve made a fair few bucks in your day. You read the odd Investopedia page and a couple of random forum blog posts. And there’s that financial institute you run. Arbitrage opportunity, you think.

You don’t fancy your chance of winning the election. 40% chance, you reckon. So, you bet against yourself. Win the election, lose the bet. Lose the bet, win the election. Losing the election doesn’t mean much to you, losing the bet doesn’t mean much to you, winning the election means a lot of to you and winning the bet doesn’t mean much to you. There ya go. Perhaps if you put

Let’s turn this into a probability weighted decision table (game theory):

Not participating in prediction market:

Election win (+2 value)

Election lose (-1 value)

40%

60%

Cumulative probability weighted value: (0.4*2) + (0.6*-1)=+0.2 value

participating in prediction market::

Election win +2

Election lose -1

Bet win (0)

0

60%

Bet lose (0)

40%

0

Cumulative probability weighted value: (0.4*2) + (0.6*-1)=+0.2 value

They’re the same outcome!
Looks like my intuitions were wrong. Unless you value winning more than losing, then placing an additional bet, even in a different form of capital (cash v.s. political capital for instance), then taking on additional risks isn’t an arbitrage opportunity.

For the record, Mitt Romney probably wouldn’t make this mistake, but what does post suggest I know about prediction?

**Thought experiment 2 – insider trading**

Say you&rs...
[Link] A rational response to the Paris attacks and ISIS
by Gleb_Tsipursky — 2015-11-23T01:47:00.221Z

Here's my op-ed that uses long-term orientation, probabilistic thinking, numeracy, consider the alternative, reaching our actual goals, avoiding intuitive emotional reactions and attention bias, and other rationality techniques to suggest more rational responses to the Paris attacks and the ISIS threat. It's published in the Sunday edition of The Plain Dealer​, a major newspaper (16th in the US). This is part of my broader project, Intentional Insights, of conveying rational thinking, including about politics, to a broad audience to raise the sanity waterline.
Meetup : Less Wrong NH Meet-up
by Tuk — 2015-11-22T18:38:43.566Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong NH Meet-up

WHEN:
24 November 2015 07:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
269 Pearl St Manchester NH 03104

The eighth NH meet-up is Tuesday, 11/24, in Manchester, NH at 7 pm at a private residence. Light refreshments will be provided.

Have you read Rationality: from AI to Zombies, or any of the Sequences on Less Wrong? Maybe you're just a fan of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Come hang out with us and discuss optimization of whatever it is you want to optimize.

Agenda: Propagating Urges technique

You may want to bring a notebook.

https://www.facebook.com/events/989482047779770/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/695201067251306/

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong NH Meet-up
[Link] Less Wrong Wiki article with very long summary of Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow
by Gleb_Tsipursky — 2015-11-22T16:32:44.105Z

I've made very extensive notes, along with my assessment, of Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow, and have passed it around to aspiring rationalist friends who found my notes very useful. So I though I would share these with the Less Wrong community by creating a Less Wrong Wiki article with these notes. Feel free to optimize the article based on your own notes as well. Hope this proves as helpful to you as it did to those others whom I shared my notes with.
Stop trying to try and try
by So8res — 2015-11-21T08:00:00.000Z

Imagine a graduate student of mathematics as they interact with a professor, attempting to understand something in the professor's area of expertise. They're working hard to wrap their head around the basic formalism. They're in "learning mode" — they're a student in the presence of a master, expected to try to understand the math but not necessarily expected to succeed. Even if they're doing quite well, they're still reminded of how math is big and they are small; they encounter wide swaths of knowledge that they do not yet have, and often feel humbled. They use their tools tentatively, aware that they may be using them inappropriately, and wonder when they'll become a master.

Now imagine the same student tutoring an undergraduate in linear algebra, a topic they know quite well. Now they're in "teaching mode." Math is still large; the graduate student is still small; but the context is very different. The focus is no longer drawn repeatedly to all the things they don't know yet — but it's not drawn to all the things they do know, either. The focus simply isn't on them, or their abilities. It's on the undergrad. The grad student, in the back of their mind is not thinking "wow math is so large I don't know enough yet I'm not sure I'll ever know enough", and they're also not thinking "wow I know so much this is great!" — they're thinking about how to help the undergrad understand a complex concept.

I think that many people who are in learning mode expect that mastery feels like learning mode, except that instead of feeling like they know very little, they feel like they know quite a bit. By contrast, I think mastery looks much more like teaching mode — it looks like someone operating in a context where their knowledge and their skills are not the focus, but are just unconscious assumptions in the background.

Consider the grad student in teaching mode. Their approach to answering questions in teaching mode is very different than their approach in learning mode. That's not because all the questions they encounter in teaching-mode are simple — if you've ever been a tutor you know that tutors are commonly asked questions they can't answer in the moment. Rather, they approach questions differently because context is different. When the professor asks them questions, they're Expected To Do Their Best; when the undergrad asks them questions, they're just expected to ans...
New LW Meetup: Cambridge UK
by FrankAdamek — 2015-11-20T16:52:00.015Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on November 13th. The following week's summary is here.

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

Reviving Cambridge Meetups : 15 November 2015 05:00PM

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

Prague Less Wrong Meetup: 02 December 2015 07:00PM
San Francisco Meetup: Projects: 16 November 2015 06:15PM
Warsaw November Meetup: 14 November 2015 04:00PM

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:

[Moscow] FallacyMania game in Kocherga club: 25 November 2015 07:30PM
NYC Solstice: 19 November 2015 06:30PM
Seattle Solstice: 19 December 2015 05:00PM
Tel Aviv: Black Holes after Jacob Bekenstein: 24 November 2015 08:00AM
Vienna: 21 November 2015 04:00PM
[Vienna] Five Worlds Collide - Vienna: 04 December 2015 08:00PM
[West LA] Scrum: A Philosophy of Life?: 18 November 2015 07:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buffalo, Canberra, Columbus, Denver, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Moscow, Mountain View, New Hampshire, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, Seattle, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers and a Slack channel for daily discussion and online meetups on Sunday night US time.

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...
Systems Theory Terms
by ScottL — 2015-11-20T12:50:02.067Z

Below are some notes that I took while trying to understanding what exactly Systems theory is all about.

System

There is no universally agreed upon definition of ‘system’, but in general systems are seen as at least two elements that are interconnected. It is also common for systems to be talked about as if all of the components in the system work together to achieve some overall purpose or goal. The primary goal is often survival. A commonly accepted definition is below (note that the word ‘element’ is often replaced with ‘component’ for generality purposes):

a system is a set of two or more interrelated elements with the following properties (Ackoff, 1981, p. 15-16):

Each element has an effect on the functioning of the whole.

Each element is affected by at least one other element in the system.

All possible subgroups of elements also have the first two properties.

Non-systems are generally considered to be single instances or a set of elements that lack interconnections, although these may be part of a system.

Sand scattered on a road by happenstance is not, itself, a system. You can add sand or take away sand and you still have just sand on the road. Arbitrarily add or take away football players, or pieces of your digestive system, and you quickly no longer have the same system. (Meadows, 2009, p. 12)

Environment

A systems environment consists of all variables which can affect its state. External elements which affect irrelevant properties of a system are not part of its environment. [...] A closed system is one that has no environment. An open system is one that does. (Ackoff, 1971, p. 663)

The environment is often referred to as the context in which the system is found or as its surroundings. Systems are considered closed if they have no interaction with their environment. It is often the case that systems are considered closed for practicality reasons even though they may not technically be absolutely closed, but just have limited interaction with their environment.

Boundary

The boundary is the separation between the system and environment. The actual point at which the system meets its environment is called an 'interface'. It is often the case that the boundary is not sharply defined and that boundaries are conceptual rather than existing in nature.

As any poet knows, a system is a way of looking at

...
Goal setting journal (November)
by  — 2015-11-20T07:54:33.586Z

Inspired by the group rationality diary and open thread, this is the second goal setting journal (GSJ) thread.

If you have a goal worth setting then it goes here.

Notes for future GSJ posters:

1. Please add the 'gsj' tag.

2. Check if there is an active GSJ thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. GSJ Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. GSJ Threads should run for no longer than 1 week, but you may set goals, subgoals and tasks for as distant into the future as you please.

5. No one is in charge of posting these threads. If it's time for a new thread, and you want a new thread, just create it.
Stupid Questions November 2015
by Tem42 — 2015-11-19T22:36:49.793Z

This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.

Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.

To any future monthly posters of SQ threads, please remember to add the "stupid_questions" tag.
Stupid Questions August 2015
by Tem42 — 2015-11-19T22:35:27.412Z

This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.

Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.

To any future monthly posters of SQ threads, please remember to add the "stupid_questions" tag.
Meetup : Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games
by RobinZ — 2015-11-19T19:10:41.275Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games

WHEN:
22 November 2015 03:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
Reynolds Center

x-posted from list. Gathering in courtyard from 3:00pm, hard start 3:30pm - until closing (7:00 pm).

We'll be hanging out, playing games, and engaging in fun conversation.

Note: Feel free to send an email to the Google Group if you have a game you wish to recruit people to play in advance.

Upcoming meetups:

Nov. 29: no meetup

Dec. 6: Create & Complete

Dec. 13: Sharing Book Excerpts

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games