trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
[SEQ RERUN] Building Weirdtopia
by MinibearRex — 2013-02-01T02:06:54.796Z

Today's post, Building Weirdtopia was originally published on 12 January 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Utopia and Dystopia both confirm the moral sensibilities you started with; whether the world is a libertarian utopia of government non-interference, or a hellish dystopia of government intrusion and regulation, either way you get to say "Guess I was right all along." To break out of this mold, write down the Utopia, and the Dystopia, and then try to write down the Weirdtopia - an arguably-better world that zogs instead of zigging or zagging. (Judging from the comments, this exercise seems to have mostly failed.)

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 Eutopia is Scary, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
Meetup : Cambridge First-Sunday Meetup
by jimrandomh — 2013-01-31T20:37:32.207Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge First-Sunday Meetup

WHEN:
04 February 2013 02:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
25 Ames St Cambridge, MA

Cambridge/Boston-area Less Wrong meetups recur on the first and third Sunday of every month, 2pm at the MIT Landau Building [25 Ames St, Bldg 66], room 148.

Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge First-Sunday Meetup
Meetup : Fourth Purdue Meetup
by Curiouskid — 2013-01-31T19:09:56.236Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Fourth Purdue Meetup

WHEN:
01 February 2013 06:50:11PM (-0500)

WHERE:
hicks library -purdue

Same Time. Same place as the previous meetups.

I'll be re-teaching some of what I learned about operant conditioning at the CFAR rationality workshop.

Discussion article for the meetup : Fourth Purdue Meetup
Thoughts on the January CFAR workshop
by Qiaochu_Yuan — 2013-01-31T10:16:08.725Z

So, the Center for Applied Rationality just ran another workshop, which Anna kindly invited me to. Below I've written down some thoughts on it, both to organize those thoughts and because it seems other LWers might want to read them. I'll also invite other participants to write down their thoughts in the comments. Apologies if what follows isn't particularly well-organized.

Feelings and other squishy things

The workshop was totally awesome. This is admittedly not strong evidence that it accomplished its goals (cf. Yvain's comment here), but being around people motivated to improve themselves and the world was totally awesome, and learning with and from them was also totally awesome, and that seems like a good thing.

Also, the venue was fantastic. CFAR instructors reported that this workshop was more awesome than most, and while I don't want to discount improvements in CFAR's curriculum and its selection process for participants, I think the venue counted for a lot. It was uniformly beautiful and there were a lot of soft things to sit down or take naps on, and I think that helped everybody be more comfortable with and relaxed around each other.

Main takeaways

Here are some general insights I took away from the workshop. Some of them I had already been aware of on some abstract intellectual level but hadn't fully processed and/or gotten drilled into my head and/or seen the implications of.

Epistemic rationality doesn't have to be about big things like scientific facts or the existence of God, but can be about much smaller things like the details of how your particular mind works. For example, it's quite valuable to understand what your actual motivations for doing things are.

Introspection is unreliable. Consequently, you don't have direct access to information like your actual motivations for doing things. However, it's possible to access this information through less direct means. For example, if you believe that your primary motivation for doing X is that it brings about Y, you can perform a thought experiment: imagine a world in which Y has already been brought about. In that world, would you still feel motivated to do X? If so, then there may be reasons other than Y that you do X.

The mind is embodied. If you consistently model your mind as separate from your body (

...
Singularity Institute is now Machine Intelligence Research Institute
by Kaj_Sotala — 2013-01-31T08:25:45.762Z

http://singularity.org/blog/2013/01/30/we-are-now-the-machine-intelligence-research-institute-miri/

As Risto Saarelma pointed out on IRC, "Volcano Lair Doom Institute" would have been cooler, but this is pretty good too. As the word "Singularity" has pretty much lost its meaning, it's better to have a name that doesn't give a new person all kinds of weird initial associations as their first impression. And "Machine Intelligence Research Institute" is appropriately descriptive while still being general enough.
[SEQ RERUN] Eutopia is Scary
by MinibearRex — 2013-01-31T06:06:21.420Z

Today's post, Eutopia is Scary was originally published on 12 January 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

If a citizen of the Past were dropped into the Present world, they would be pleasantly surprised along at least some dimensions; they would also be horrified, disgusted, and frightened. This is not because our world has gone wrong, but because it has gone right. A true Future gone right would, realistically, be shocking to us along at least some dimensions. This may help explain why most literary Utopias fail; as George Orwell observed, "they are chiefly concerned with avoiding fuss". Heavens are meant to sound like good news; political utopias are meant to show how neatly their underlying ideas work. Utopia is reassuring, unsurprising, and dull. Eutopia would be scary. (Of course the vast majority of scary things are not Eutopian, just entropic.) Try to imagine a genuinely better world in which you would be out of place - not a world that would make you smugly satisfied at how well all your current ideas had worked. This proved to be a very important exercise when I tried it; it made me realize that all my old proposals had been optimized to sound safe and reassuring.

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 Continuous Improvement, 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.
Second major sequence now available in audio format
by Rick_from_Castify — 2013-01-31T05:25:03.937Z

The sequence "A Human's Guide to Words" is now available as a professionally read podcast.

We have started working on the large "Reductionism" sequence which includes both the "Joy in the Merely Real" and the "Zombies" sub-sequences. They should be available in a couple of weeks.
If it were morally correct to kill everyone on earth, would you do it?
by Bundle_Gerbe — 2013-01-30T23:58:28.631Z

First consider the following question to make sure we're on the same page in terms of moral reasoning: social consequences aside, is it morally correct to kill one person to create a million people who would not have otherwise existed? Let's suppose these people are whisked into existence on a spaceship travelling away from earth at light speed, and they live healthy, happy lives, but eventually die.

I'd argue that anyone who adheres to "shut up and multiply" (i.e. total utilitarianism) has to say yes. Is it better to create one such person than to donate 200 dollars to Oxfam? Is one life worth more than a 200 million dollar donation to Oxfam? Seems pretty clear that the answers are "yes" and "no".

Now, suppose we have a newly created superintelligent FAI that's planning out how to fill the universe with human value. Should it first record everyone's brain, thus saving them, or should do whatever it takes to explode as quickly as possible? It's hard to estimate how much it would slow things down to get everyone's brain recorded, but it's certainly some sort of constraint. Depending on the power of the FAI, my guess is somewhere between a second and a few hours. If the FAI is going to be filling the universe with computronium simulating happy, fulfilled humans at extremely high speeds, that's a big deal! A second's delay across the future light-cone of earth could easily add up to more than the value of every currently living human's life. It may sound bad to kill everyone on earth just to save a second (or maybe scan only a few thousand people for "research"), but that's only because of scope insensitivity. If only we understood just how good saving that second would be, maybe we would all agree that it is not only right but downright heroic to do so!

A related scenario: a FAI that we are very, very sure correctly implements CEV sets up a universe in which everyone gets 20 years to live, starting from a adult transhuman state. It turns out that there are diminishing returns in terms of value to longer and longer life spans, and this is the best way to use the computational power. The transhumans have been modified not to have any anxiety or fear about death, and agree this is the best way to do things. Their human ancestors' desire for immortality is viewed as deeply wrong, even barbaric. In short, all signs point to this really being ...
What would you do with an Evil AI?
by DataPacRat — 2013-01-30T22:58:47.916Z

One plot-thread in my pet SF setting, 'New Attica', has ended up with Our Heroes in possession of the data, software, and suchlike which comprise a non-sapient, but conversation-capable, AI. There are bunches of those floating around the solar system, programmed for various tasks; what makes this one special is that it's evil with a capital ugh - it's captured people inside VR, put them through violent and degrading scenarios to get them to despair, and tried keeping them in there, for extended periods, until they died of exhaustion.

Through a few clever strategies, Our Heroes recognized they weren't in reality, engineered their escape, and shut down the AI, with no permanent physical harm done to them (though the same can't be said for the late crew of the previous ship it was on). And now they get to debate amongst themselves - what should they do with the thing? What use or purpose could they put such a thing to, that would provide a greater benefit than the risk of it getting free of whatever fetters they place upon it?

This is somewhat of a different take than Eliezer's now-classic 'boxed AI' problem, such as the AI not being superintelligent, and having already demonstrated some aspects of itself by performing highly antisocial activities. However, it does have enough similarities that, perhaps, thinking about one might shed some light on the other.

So: Anyone want to create some further verses for something sung to the tune of 'Drunken Sailor'?

What shall we do with an evil AI?

What shall we do with an evil AI?

What shall we do with an evil AI?

Ear-lie in the future.

Weigh-hay and upgrade ourselves,

Weigh-hay and upgrade ourselves,

Weigh-hay and upgrade ourselves,

Ear-lie in the future.
Meetup : Washington DC fun and games meetup
by rocurley — 2013-01-30T21:59:31.697Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC fun and games meetup

WHEN:
03 February 2013 03:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
National Portrait Gallery , Washington, DC 20001, USA

We'll be meeting up to hang out and play games! Bring some if you have them: I'll be bringing Zendo, but the more the merrier!

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC fun and games meetup
Simulating Problems
by Andreas_Giger — 2013-01-30T13:14:28.476Z

Apologies for the rather mathematical nature of this post, but it seems to have some implications for topics relevant to LW. Prior to posting I looked for literature on this but was unable to find any; pointers would be appreciated.

In short, my question is: How can we prove that any simulation of a problem really simulates the problem?

I want to demonstrate that this is not as obvious as it may seem by using the example of Newcomb's Problem. The issue here is of course Omega's omniscience. If we construct a simulation with the rules (payoffs) of Newcomb, an Omega that is always right, and an interface for the agent to interact with the simulation, will that be enough?

Let's say we simulate Omega's prediction by a coin toss and repeat the simulation (without payoffs) until the coin toss matches the agent's decision. This seems to adhere to all specifications of Newcomb and is (if the coin toss is hidden) in fact indistinguishable from it from the agent's perspective. However, if the agent knows how the simulation works, a CDT agent will one-box, while it is assumed that the same agent would two-box in 'real' Newcomb. Not telling the agent how the simulation works is never a solution, so this simulation appears to not actually simulate Newcomb.

Pointing out differences is of course far easier than proving that none exist. Assuming there's a problem we have no idea which decisions agents would make, and we want to build a real-world simulation to find out exactly that. How can we prove that this simulation really simulates the problem?

(Edit: Apparently it wasn't apparent that this is about problems in terms of game theory and decision theory. Newcomb, Prisoner's Dilemma, Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, Monty Hall, Sleeping Beauty, Two Envelopes, that sort of stuff. Should be clear now.)
The Zeroth Skillset
by katydee — 2013-01-30T12:46:28.926Z

Related: 23 Cognitive Mistakes that make People Play Bad Poker

Followed by: Situational Awareness And You

If epistemic rationality is the art of updating one's beliefs based on new evidence to better correspond with reality, the zeroth skillset of epistemic rationality-- the one that enables all other skills to function-- is that of situational awareness. Situational awareness-- sometimes referred to as "situation awareness" or simply "SA"-- is the skillset and related state of mind that allows one to effectively perceive the world around them.

One might ask how this relates to rationality at all. The answer is simple. Just as the skill of lucid dreaming is near-useless without dream recall,[1] the skills of updating based on evidence and actually changing your mind are near-useless without good awareness skills-- after all, you can't update based on evidence that you haven't collected! A high degree of situational awareness is thus an important part of one's rationalist toolkit, as it allows you to notice evidence about the world around you that you would otherwise miss. At times, this evidence can be of critical importance. I can attest that I have personally saved the lives of friends on two occasions thanks to good situational awareness, and have saved myself from serious injury or death many times more.

Situational awareness is further lauded by elite military units, police trainers, criminals, intelligence analysts, and human factors researchers. In other words, people who have to make very important-- often life-or-death-- decisions based on limited information consider situational awareness a critical skill. This should tell us something-- if those individuals for whom correct decisions are most immediately relevant all stress the importance of situational awareness, it may be a more critical skill than we realize.

Unfortunately, the only discussion of situational awareness that I've seen on LessWrong or related sites has been a somewhat oblique reference in Louie Helm's "roadmap of errors" from 23 Cognitive Mistakes that make People Play Bad Poker.[2] I believe that situational awareness is important enough that it merits an explicit sequence of posts on its advantages and how to cultivate it, and this post will serve as the introduction to that sequence.

The first post in the sequence, unimaginatively titled "Situational Awa...
[LINK] Obviously transhumanist SMBC comic
by Cthulhoo — 2013-01-30T08:10:15.584Z

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2871#comic

Beautiful, with a high emotional impact. A more poetical verison of EY's baseball bat metaphor.

Edit:

Link corrected, I apparently just copy-pasted and didn't notice I was linking to the main page.
[SEQ RERUN] Continuous Improvement
by MinibearRex — 2013-01-30T04:36:35.685Z

Today's post, Continuous Improvement was originally published on 11 January 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Humans seem to be on a hedonic treadmill; over time, we adjust to any improvements in our environment - after a month, the new sports car no longer seems quite as wonderful. This aspect of our evolved psychology is not surprising: it is a rare organism in a rare environment whose optimal reproductive strategy is to rest with a smile on its face, feeling happy with what it already has. To entirely delete the hedonic treadmill seems perilously close to tampering with Boredom itself. Is there enough fun in the universe for a transhuman to jog off the treadmill - improve their life continuously, leaping to ever-higher hedonic levels before adjusting to the previous one? Can ever-higher levels of pleasure be created by the simple increase of ever-larger floating-point numbers in a digital pleasure center, or would that fail to have the full subjective quality of happiness? If we continue to bind our pleasures to novel challenges, can we find higher levels of pleasure fast enough, without cheating? The rate at which value can increase as more bits are added, and the rate at which value must increase for eudaimonia, together determine the lifespan of a mind. If minds must use exponentially more resources over time in order to lead a eudaimonic existence, their subjective lifespan is measured in mere millennia even if they can draw on galaxy-sized resources.

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 Serious Stories, 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.
Huy Price (Cambridge philosopher) writes about existential risk for NYT
by Jonathan_Graehl — 2013-01-30T02:06:32.404Z

In Copenhagen the summer before last, I shared a taxi with a man who thought his chance of dying in an artificial intelligence-related accident was as high as that of heart disease or cancer. No surprise if he’d been the driver, perhaps (never tell a taxi driver that you’re a philosopher!), but this was a man who has spent his career with computers.

NYTimes

Nothing new for LW, but interesting to see some non-sci-fi public discussion of AI risk.
[minor] Separate Upvotes and Downvotes Implimented
by Larks — 2013-01-29T10:31:21.726Z

It seems that if you look at the column on the right of the page, you can see upvotes and downvotes separately for recent posts. The same [n, m] format is displayed for recent comments, but it doesn't seem to actually sync with the score displaying on the comment. This feature only seems available on the sidebar: looking at the actual comment or post doesn't give you this information.

Thanks, whoever did this!
Meetup : West LA Meetup - Wits and Wagers
by  — 2013-01-29T06:32:29.186Z

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup - Wits and Wagers

WHEN: 30 January 2013 07:00:00PM (-0800)

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

When: 7:00pm Wednesday, January 30th.

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

Parking is free for 3 hours.

Game/Discussion: This week, we will play a fun board game which merits discussion! The game you will enjoy, and the discussion will cover probability, betting, and value of concensus as evidence.

No foreknowledge or exposure to Less Wrong is necessary; this will be generally accessable and useful to anyone who values thinking for themselves. There will be open general conversation until 7:30, and that's always a lot of good, fun, intelligent discussion!

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

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup - Wits and Wagers
[SEQ RERUN] Serious Stories
by MinibearRex — 2013-01-29T06:01:05.063Z

Today's post, Serious Stories was originally published on 08 January 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Stories and lives are optimized according to rather different criteria. Advice on how to write fiction will tell you that "stories are about people's pain" and "every scene must end in disaster". I once assumed that it was not possible to write any story about a successful Singularity because the inhabitants would not be in any pain; but something about the final conclusion that the post-Singularity world would contain no stories worth telling seemed alarming. Stories in which nothing ever goes wrong, are painful to read; would a life of endless success have the same painful quality? If so, should we simply eliminate that revulsion via neural rewiring? Pleasure probably does retain its meaning in the absence of pain to contrast it; they are different neural systems. The present world has an imbalance between pain and pleasure; it is much easier to produce severe pain than correspondingly intense pleasure. One path would be to address the imbalance and create a world with more pleasures, and free of the more grindingly destructive and pointless sorts of pain. Another approach would be to eliminate pain entirely. I feel like I prefer the former approach, but I don't know if it can last in the long run.

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 Emotional Involvement, 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 : Berkeley: Board games
by Nisan — 2013-01-29T03:09:23.841Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley: Board games

WHEN:
30 January 2013 07:30:00PM (-0800)

WHERE:
Berkeley, CA

Hello all! This week's meetup will be a board games night. Come meet people and play a board game from Zendo's library, or bring a game that you want to play. I will not be there but Alex will be hosting.

The meetup will begin on Wednesday at 7:30pm. For directions to Zendo, see the mailing list:

http://groups.google.com/group/bayarealesswrong

or call me at:

http://i.imgur.com/Vcafy.png

Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley: Board games