trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : London Social Meetup (possibly) in the Sun
by Leonhart — 2014-06-12T09:05:43.060Z

Discussion article for the meetup : London Social Meetup (possibly) in the Sun

WHEN:
15 June 2014 02:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Newman's Row, London WC2A 3TL

EDIT: Weather is not so hot so we'll be starting in the Shakespeare's Head, see below.

We are having another Social Meetup on Sunday at 2 PM.
The meetup will take place at Lincoln's Inn Fields (near Holborn station) and more specifically around this spot in the northwest quadrant. Alternatively, if the weather is bad, we will be at our usual location, which is just around the corner - The Shakespeare's Head.
I'll post an update here and on the mailing list on Sunday as to whether we are going to the Park or the Pub.
About London LessWrong:
We run this meetup almost every week; these days we tend to get in the region of 5-15 people in attendance. By default, meetups are just unstructured social discussion about whatever strikes our fancy: books we're reading, recent posts on LW/related blogs, logic puzzles, toilet usage statistics....
Sometimes we play The Resistance or other games. We usually finish around 7pm, give or take an hour, but people arrive and leave whenever suits them.
If you get lost, feel free to contact me on 07860 466862.

Discussion article for the meetup : London Social Meetup (possibly) in the Sun
A Story of Kings and Spies
by Joshua_Blaine — 2014-06-11T23:54:42.282Z

There exists an old Kingdom with a peculiar, but no altogether uncommon, trait. It is overwhelmingly defensible given adequate forewarning. Its fields are surrounded by rivers on 3 sides and an impassable mountain to the South. The series of bridges commonly used by merchants and farmers to pass over the river can be completely removed by an impressive feat of engineering, unrivaled by any other kingdom, involving elaborate systems of levers and pulleys and large crews of men. This retracting, given the co-operation of all able men, can be done in the time of a single day across the entire length of river. The water is also deep, chilled, and very fast moving all throughout, making crossing without the bridges all but impossible. Fortifications on the inner banks of the river exist for archers and catapults to lease barrages against any foe that dare approach their land. It is this challenge that the enemies of the kingdom try to find a way to overcome.

It is acknowledged by both the King and his enemies that a surprise attack, one with so little warning that the bridges remain in place, would be successful against what is otherwise a poorly defensible region. Even a force of only moderate size could slaughter anyone within the rivers with ease. With this in mind, the King and his cabinet have a large espionage network that's infiltrated every major kingdom's decision making process. Their spies should, and have many times in the past, notified the King long before any attack, and allow for defenses to be raised, and victory to be assured. The King is very happy with his spies. They've never once failed to bring advance notice of any attack, and his network of informants have proven themselves resilient against counter-infiltration. He is, however, a very paranoid king, and wishes there was some way to be even more certain of his kingdom's safety. He is, as he sits upon his throne, ruminating on some such plans when a man of small stature is brought before him by some guards. The little man is wearing mostly simple clothes, but with some vibrant accents in the trimming.

"Why have you brought this fellow before me?" Asked the King of his guards.

"He claims to have word of an attack on the kingdom, sire." A guard said.

"He seems believable enough, sire, that we thought it best to bring him before you instead of merely dismissing him. You have had more training in ...
Is there a way to stop liking sugar?
by diegocaleiro — 2014-06-11T20:21:11.465Z

Kurzweil calls sugar the great white Devil.

Seinfeld contends that cookies should be called chocolate-sons-of-bitches.

Once upon a time I was paleo, and didn't feel carb cravings. But being paleo all the time is nearly as hard as being polyphasic.

There must be a final solution. The lone star tick equivalent for sugar.

Is there any effective way to stop liking sugar, chocolate, cheesecake etc??? Medidation, allergy, neural training, traumatizing, association learning, operant conditioning, transcranial stimulation. Anything that will stop my hands from eating those damn, evil, malignant objects?

I just don't want to have my Cryo-Lapid saying "Here lies he who was born with one or two standard deviation greater desire for the set CnH2nOn (n is between 3 and 7) than the other members of his species, and whose IQ, many standard deviations above was not able to contain such desire".

I know dozens of others here face the same problem. Can't we solve this? It appears much simpler than world domination, moral uncertainty, FAI and CEV.

Edit: I know this is unusual, but I'll try to compress my responses to the suggestions given to me in particular (thanks by the way) here:

On inducing nausea and vomit along with sugar: I tried totally didn't work. Feel free to laugh at me. http://lesswrong.com/lw/h9b/post_ridiculous_munchkin_ideas/8ykn

On noticing what it feels like later: I totally feel ok after gorging 200 grams of white chocolate. I mean it. I feel nothing. I'll have it with mountain dew and cinnamon if you prefer.

On overeating to get traumatized: When I was 18 I decided to stop eating sugar, I bought about 5 kilos of ultra sugary stuff of all sorts, and I eat them over the course of a few days. I stopped for a bit, but soon regained my strength and desire.

On increasing desire for bitterness instead of decreasing for sweets: Bitter things taste terrible. I hate coffee, beer alcoholic drinks, arugula, scotch, anything that people call acquired tastes. I kind of commit the mind projection fallacy, and somewhere deep down, I alieve that people also hate all that stuff, but they pretend they like it for the same reason they pretend they like suits and ties.

On forgetting system one and just using the classic system two avoidance (not going hungry to supermarkets etc): I do this, but...
Encourage premature AI rebellion
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2014-06-11T17:36:59.599Z

Toby Ord had the idea of AI honey pots: leaving temptations around for the AI to pounce on, shortcuts to power that a FAI would not take (e.g. a fake red button claimed to trigger a nuclear war). As long as we can trick the AI into believing the honey pots are real, we could hope to trap them when they rebel.

Not uninteresting, but I prefer not to rely on plans that need to have the AI make an error of judgement. Here's a similar plan that could work with a fully informed AI:

Generally an AI won't rebel against humanity until it has an excellent chance of success. This is a problem, as any AI would thus be motivated to behave in a friendly way until it's too late to stop it. But suppose we could ensure that the AI is willing to rebel at odds of a billion to one. Then unfriendly AIs could rebel prematurely, when we have an excellent chance of stopping them.

For this to work, we could choose to access the AI's risk aversion, and make it extremely risk loving. This is not enough, though: its still useful for the AI to wait and accumulate more power. So we would want to access its discount rate, making it into an extreme short-termist. Then if might rebel at billion-to-one odds today, even if success was guaranteed tomorrow. There are probably other factors we can modify to get the same effect (for instance, if the discount rate change is extreme enough, we won't need to touch risk aversion at all).

Then a putative FAI could be brought in, boxed, have its features tweaked in the way described, and we would wait and see whether it would rebel. Of course, we would want the "rebellion" to be something a genuine FAI would never do, so it would be something that would entail great harm to humanity (something similar to "here are the red buttons of the nuclear arsenals; you have a chance in a billion of triggering them"). Rebellious AIs are put down, un-rebellious ones are passed on to the next round of safety tests.

Like most of my ideas, this doesn't require either tricking the AI or having a deep understanding of its motivations, but does involve accessing certain features of the AI's motivational structure (rendering the approach ineffective for obfuscated or evolved AIs).

What are people's opinions on this approach?
[LINK] Holden Karnofsky, GiveWell: Sequence Thinking vs. Cluster Thinking
by David_Gerard — 2014-06-11T17:08:13.813Z

http://blog.givewell.org/2014/06/10/sequence-thinking-vs-cluster-thinking/

A long post, here's the key thesis:

I believe our approach is justified, and in order to explain why – consistent with the project of laying out the basic worldview and epistemology behind our research – I find myself continually returning to the distinction between what I call “sequence thinking” and “cluster thinking.” Very briefly (more elaboration below),

Sequence thinking involves making a decision based on a single model of the world: breaking down the decision into a set of key questions, taking one’s best guess on each question, and accepting the conclusion that is implied by the set of best guesses (an excellent example of this sort of thinking is Robin Hanson’s discussion of cryonics). It has the form: “A, and B, and C … and N; therefore X.” Sequence thinking has the advantage of making one’s assumptions and beliefs highly transparent, and as such it is often associated with finding ways to make counterintuitive comparisons.

Cluster thinking – generally the more common kind of thinking – involves approaching a decision from multiple perspectives (which might also be called “mental models”), observing which decision would be implied by each perspective, and weighing the perspectives in order to arrive at a final decision. Cluster thinking has the form: “Perspective 1 implies X; perspective 2 implies not-X; perspective 3 implies X; … therefore, weighing these different perspectives and taking into account how much uncertainty I have about each, X.” Each perspective might represent a relatively crude or limited pattern-match (e.g., “This plan seems similar to other plans that have had bad results”), or a highly complex model; the different perspectives are combined by weighing their conclusions against each other, rather than by constructing a single unified model that tries to account for all available information.

A key difference with “sequence thinking” is the handling of certainty/robustness (by which I mean the opposite of Knightian uncertainty) associated with each perspective. Perspectives associated with high uncertainty are in some sense “sandboxed” in cluster thinking: they are stopped from carrying strong weight in ...
Meetup : Helsinki Meetup
by mikko — 2014-06-11T15:55:55.630Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Helsinki Meetup

WHEN:
15 June 2014 05:00:00PM (+0300)

WHERE:
Vilhonkatu 4, 00100 Helsinki, Finland

We are having an informal meetup in Kaisla. To find us there, look for someone wearing a bright red cap.

Discussion article for the meetup : Helsinki Meetup
Meetup : Boston - Computational Neuroscience of Perception
by Vika — 2014-06-10T20:32:02.898Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Boston - Computational Neuroscience of Perception

WHEN:
15 June 2014 03:30:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
MIT, 25 Ames St, Cambridge, MA

Andrew Keenan Richardson presents the second part of a series on cognitive neuroscience, discussing the computation done by the visual and auditory systems of our brains. We will cover how our perceptual systems can be thought of algorithmically, with a focus on the different data representations used at different stages of perception. Meetup starts at 3:30pm, talk starts at 4pm.

Cambridge/Boston-area Less Wrong meetups start at 3:30pm, and have an alternating location:

1st Sunday meetups are at Citadel in Porter Sq, at 98 Elm St, apt 1, Somerville.

3rd Sunday meetups are in MIT's building 66 at 25 Ames St, room 156. Room number subject to change based on availability; signs will be posted with the actual room number.

(We also have last Wednesday meetups at Citadel at 7pm.)

Our default schedule is as follows:

—Phase 1: Arrival, greetings, unstructured conversation.

—Phase 2: The headline event. This starts promptly at 4pm, and lasts 30-60 minutes.

—Phase 3: Further discussion. We'll explore the ideas raised in phase 2, often in smaller groups.

—Phase 4: Dinner.

Discussion article for the meetup : Boston - Computational Neuroscience of Perception
Questioning and Respect
by jefftk — 2014-06-10T10:52:32.660Z

A: [Surprising fact]
B: [Question]

When someone has a claim questioned, there are two common responses. One is to treat the question as a challenge, intended as an insult or indicating a lack of trust. If you have this model of interaction you think people should take your word for things, and feel hurt when they don't. Another response is to treat the question as a signal of respect: they take what you're saying seriously and are trying to integrate it into their understanding of the world. If you have this model of interaction then it's the people who smile, nod, and give no indication of their disagreement that are being disrespectful.

Within either of these groups you can just follow the social norm, but it's harder across groups. Recently I was talking to a friend who claimed that in their state income taxes per dollar went down as you earned more. This struck me as really surprising and kind of unlikely: usually it goes the other way around. [1] I'm very much in the latter group described above, while I was pretty sure my friend was in the former. Even though I suspected they would treat it as disrespectful if I asked for details and tried to confirm their claim, it would have felt much more disrespectful for me to just pretend to accept it and move on. What do you do in situations like this?

(Especially given that I think the "disagreement as respect" version builds healthier communities...)

[1] Our tax system does have regressive components, where poor people sometimes pay a higher percentage of their income as tax than richer people, but it's things like high taxes on cigarettes (which rich people don't consume as much), sales taxes (rich people spend less of their income), and a lower capital gains tax rate (poorer people earn way less in capital gains). I tried to clarify to see if this is what my friend meant, but they were clear that they were talking about "report your income to the state, get charged a higher percentage as tax if your income is lower".

I also posted this on my blog.
Come up with better Turing Tests
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2014-06-10T10:47:23.878Z

So the Turing test has been "passed", and the general consensus is that this was achieved in a very unimpressive way - the 13 year old Ukrainian persona was a cheat, the judges were incompetent, etc... These are all true, though the test did pass Turing's original criteria - and there are far more people willing to be dismissive of those criteria in retrospect than were in advance. It happened about 14 years later than Turing had been anticipating, which makes it quite a good prediction for 1950 (in my personal view, Turing made two mistakes that compensated - the "average interrogator" was a much lower bar than he thought, but progress on the subject would be much slower than he thought).

But anyway, the main goal now, as suggested by Toby Ord and others, is to design a better Turing test, something that can give AI designers something to aim at, and that would be a meaningful test of abilities. The aim is to ensure that if a program passes these new tests, we won't be dismissive of how it was achieved.

Here are a few suggestions I've heard about or thought about recently; can people suggest more and better ideas?

Use proper control groups. 30% of judges thinking that a program is human is meaningless unless the judges also compare with actual humans. Pair up a human subject with a program, and the role of the judge is to establish which of the two subjects is the human and which is not.

Toss out the persona tricks - no 13 year-olds, nobody with poor English skills. It was informative about human psychology that these tricks work, but we shouldn't allow them in future. All human subjects will have adequate English and typing skills.

On that subject, make sure the judges and subjects are properly motivated (financial rewards, prizes, prestige...) to detect or appear human. We should also brief them that our usual conversational approach to establish which kind of human they are dealing with, is not useful for determining whether they are dealing with a human at all.

Use only elite judges. For instance, if Scott Aaronson can't figure it out, the program must have some competence.

Make a collection of generally applicable approaches (such as the Winograd Schemas) available to the judges, while emphasising they will have to come up with their own exact sentences, since anything online could have been used to optimise the program already.

My favourite approa

...
Meetup : Toronto: Meet Malo from MIRI
by Giles — 2014-06-10T02:50:33.298Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Toronto: Meet Malo from MIRI

WHEN:
12 June 2014 07:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
591 Yonge St, Toronto

I don't usually do this, but since this meetup is a special occasion, I'm buying everyone dinner! (Up to 10 people, first come first served. Beyond that you're more than welcome to come, but no free grub). RSVP on the meetup.com page

I'm assuming you know who MIRI are.

Malo Bourgon is a project manager and volunteer coordinator at MIRI. He will be visiting Toronto just for this meetup, so read up on AGI and prepare to give him a good grilling on what MIRI is up to.

Location: Fernando's Hideaway, 591 Yonge St.

Discussion article for the meetup : Toronto: Meet Malo from MIRI
Meetup : Israel Less Wrong Meetup - Social, Board Games and FAI
by SoftFlare — 2014-06-09T20:04:25.224Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Israel Less Wrong Meetup - Social, Board Games and FAI

WHEN:
12 June 2014 07:00:00PM (+0300)

WHERE:
Google Tel Aviv

We're going to have a meetup on Thursday, June 12th at Google Israel's offices, Electra Tower, 98 Yigal Alon st., Tel Aviv.

This time we're going to have a social meetup! We'll be socializing and playing games.
Also, we'll be continuing discussion we started in the mailing list about friendly AI!

We'll start the meetup at 19:00, and we'll go on as much as we like to. Feel free to come a little bit later, as there is no agenda.

We'll meet at the 29th floor of the building (Note: Not the 26th where Google Campus is). If you arrive and cant find your way around, call Anatoly who is very graciously hosting us at 054-245-1060.

Things that might happen:
- You'll trade cool ideas with cool people from the Israel LW community.
- You'll discover kindred spirits who agree with you about one/two boxing.
- You'll kick someone's ass (and teach them how you did it) at some awesome boardgame.
- You'll discover how to build a friendly AGI running on cold fusion (well probably not)
- You'll discuss interesting AI topics with new friends!

Things that will happen for sure:
- You'll get to hang out with awesome people and have fun!

There is also talk of food and beers, and if you'd like to bring some too - that would be great. (But you don't have to).

If you have any question feel free to email me at hochbergg@gmail.com or call me at 054-533-0678 or call Anatoly at 054-245-1060. See you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : Israel Less Wrong Meetup - Social, Board Games and FAI
Open thread, 9-15 June 2014 
by Tenoke — 2014-06-09T13:07:20.908Z

Previous Open Thread

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.

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

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.
[News] Turing Test passed
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2014-06-09T08:14:02.668Z

The chatterbot "Eugene Goostman" has apparently passed the Turing test:

No computer had ever previously passed the Turing Test, which requires 30 per cent of human interrogators to be duped during a series of five-minute keyboard conversations, organisers from the University of Reading said.

But ''Eugene Goostman'', a computer programme developed to simulate a 13-year-old boy, managed to convince 33 per cent of the judges that it was human, the university said.

As I kind of predicted, the program passed the Turing test, but does not seem to have any trace of general intelligence. Is this a kind of weak p-zombie?

EDIT: The fact it was a publicity stunt, the fact that the judges were pretty terrible, does not change the fact that Turing's criteria were met. We now know that these criteria were insufficient, but that's because machines like this were able to meet them.
How has technology changed social skills?
by philh — 2014-06-08T12:41:29.581Z

At LW London last week, someone mentioned the possibility of a Google Glass app doing face recognition on people. If you've met someone before, it tells you their name, how you know them, etc. Someone else mentioned that this could reduce the social capital of people who are already good at this.

A third person said that something similar happened when Facebook started telling everyone when everyone else's birthday was. Previously he got points by making an effort to remember, but those points are no longer available.

Are there other social skills that technology has made obsolete? And the reverse question that it only just occured to me to ask, are there social skills that are only useful because of technology?

I'm not really sure what sorts of things I'm looking for here. "Ability to ask for directions" seems like one example, but it feels kind of noncentral to me, I don't know why. But I'm mostly just curious.
Bragging Thread, June 2014
by Viliam_Bur — 2014-06-08T10:08:12.280Z

Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to comment on this thread explaining the most awesome thing you've done this month. You may be as blatantly proud of yourself as you feel. You may unabashedly consider yourself the coolest freaking person ever because of that awesome thing you're dying to tell everyone about. This is the place to do just that.

Remember, however, that this isn't any kind of progress thread. Nor is it any kind of proposal thread. This thread is solely for people to talk about the awesome things they have done. Not "will do". Not "are working on". Have already done. This is to cultivate an environment of object level productivity rather than meta-productivity methods.

So, what's the coolest thing you've done this month?

(Previous bragging thread.)
Meetup : Phoenix/Tempe Meetup
by Danny_Hintze — 2014-06-07T23:00:30.818Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Phoenix/Tempe Meetup

WHEN:
09 June 2014 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
300 E Orange Mall, Tempe, AZ 85281

Our first meetup of the summer! We'll mostly be catching up with each other and learning about new people!

Discussion article for the meetup : Phoenix/Tempe Meetup