trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Entangled with Reality: The Shoelace Example
by lukeprog — 2011-06-25T04:50:11.689Z

Less Wrong veterans be warned: this is an exercise in going back to the basics of rationality.

Yudkowsky once wrote:

What is evidence? It is an event entangled, by links of cause and effect, with whatever you want to know about. If the target of your inquiry is your shoelaces, for example, then the light entering your pupils is evidence entangled with your shoelaces. This should not be confused with the technical sense of "entanglement" used in physics - here I'm just talking about "entanglement" in the sense of two things that end up in correlated states because of the links of cause and effect between them.

And:

Here is the secret of deliberate rationality - this whole entanglement process is not magic, and you can understand it. You can understand how you see your shoelaces. You can think about which sort of thinking processes will create beliefs which mirror reality, and which thinking processes will not.

Much of the heuristics and biases literature is helpful, here. It tells us which sorts of thinking processes tend to create beliefs that mirror reality, and which ones don't.

Still, not everyone understands just how much we know about exactly how the brain becomes entangled with reality by chains of cause and effect. Because "Be specific" is an important rationalist skill, and because concrete physical knowledge is important for technical understanding (as opposed to merely verbal understanding), I would like to summarize1 some of how your beliefs become entangled with reality when a photon bounces off your shoelaces into your eye.

Vision

When a photon bounces off your shoelace and hits your eye, it passes through a lens whose curvature is adjusted by muscles that flatten the lens when they relax, allowing the eye to focus on more distant objects. The lens guides incoming photons such that a reverse image of the light patterns outside are projected on the back of the retina, which is populated largely by rod cells and cone cells.

Rod cells are the most sensitive to light, and are the only photoreceptors used in low-light conditions (e.g., starlight). In lighter conditions (e.g. moonlight), both rods and cones contribute to vision. In daylight, rod responses saturate and only cones contribute to vision. Because the center of the retina (the fovea) contrains few rod cells, we have a foveal blind spot in ...
Exclude the supernatural? My worldview is up for grabs.
by r_claypool — 2011-06-25T03:46:15.421Z

Background

I was raised in the Churches of Christ and my family is all very serious about Christianity. About 3 years ago, I started to ask some hard questions, and the answers from other Christians were very unsatisfying. I used to believe that the Bible was, you know, inspired by a loving God, but its endorsement of genocide, the abuse of slaves, and the mistreatment of women and children really started to bother me.

I set out to study these issues as much as I could. I stayed up past midnight for weeks reading what Christians have to say, and this process triggered a real crisis of faith. What started out as a search for answers on Biblical genocide led me to places like commonsenseatheism.com. I learned that the Bible has serious credibility problems on lots of issues that no one ever told me about. Wow.

My Question

Now I'm pretty sure that the God of the Bible is man-made and Jesus of Nazareth was probably a failed prophet, but I don't have good reasons to reject the supernatural all together. I'm working through the sequences, but this process is slow. I will probably struggle with this question for months, maybe longer.

Excluding the Supernatural was interesting, but it left me wanting a more thorough explanation. Where do you think I should go from here? Should I just continue reading the sequences, and re-read them until the ideas gel? I'm coming from 30 years of Sunday School level thinking. It's not like I grew up with words like "epistemology" and "epiphenomenalism". If there is no supernatural, and I can be confident about that, I will need to re-evaluate a lot of things. My worldview is up for grabs.
Background material for reading Judgment Under Uncertainty?
by Tesseract — 2011-06-25T02:24:41.353Z

After seeing it constantly referenced in the Sequences and elsewhere, I've picked up Kahneman and Tversky's book/collection of papers Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. I was wondering if anyone here who's read it or knows the subject would recommend any prefatory material so that it makes more sense/is more meaningful.

Personal background: [Personal information deleted] From that and from this site, I'm passingly familiar with e.g. the representativeness heuristic and Bayesian probability, but I've never had to use it much in any academic setting.

Any advice before I delve into it?
Reductionism reading list
by lukeprog — 2011-06-24T23:53:35.938Z

Yudkowsky, Reductionism sequence (2008)

Ladyman et al., Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized (2007)

Bickle, Philosophy and Neuroscience: A Ruthlessly Reductive Account (2003)

Bickle, 'Real Reduction in Real Neuroscience' (2008)

Glimcher, Foundations of Neuroeconomic Analysis (2010)

Ney, 'Reductionism' [for Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy] (2008)

Hohwy & Kallestrup (eds.), Being Reduced (2008)

Drescher, Good and Real (2006)

I can't endorse everything in all these works, but they each provide insights into understanding reduction.

What else do ya'll recommend?
Meetup : West LA Meetup 06-28-2011
by  — 2011-06-24T23:12:23.035Z

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup 06-28-2011

WHEN:
28 June 2011 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
10800 West Pico Blvd, Suite 312, Los Angeles, CA 90064

When: 7pm - 9pm June 28th.

Where: The Westside Pavillion - on the bridge, which connects Nordstrom 3rd floor with Barnes & Noble / Landmark Theatres 3rd floor.

Parking is free for 3 hours.

Whether you're a regular reader or totally new, here for the theoretical musings or the practical things, come by and say hello! If enough people want to change the time or place for future meetups, we will - send me a message.

I will be the guy with the map.

See also: West LA Biweekly Meetups

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup 06-28-2011
Meetup : Weekly Berkeley Meetup
by FrankAdamek — 2011-06-24T19:21:56.749Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Weekly Berkeley Meetup

WHEN:
29 June 2011 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
2128 Oxford Street, Berkeley, CA 94704

We'll meet at 7 and depart for a nearby restaurant at 7:20.

Discussion article for the meetup : Weekly Berkeley Meetup
Question about Large Utilities and Low Probabilities
by sark — 2011-06-24T18:33:07.708Z

Advanced apologies if this has been discussed before.

Question: Philosophy and Mathematics are fields in which we employ abstract reasoning to arrive at conclusions. Can the relative success of philosophy versus mathematics provide empirical evidence for how robust our arguments must be before we can even hope to have a non-negligible chance of arriving at correct conclusions? Considering how bad philosophy has been at arriving at correct conclusions, must they not be essentially as robust as mathematical proof, or correct virtually with probability 1? If so, should this not cast severe doubt on arguments showing how, in expected utility calculations, outcomes with vast sums of utility can easily swamp a low probability of their coming to pass? Won't our estimates of such probabilities be severely inflated?

Related: http://lesswrong.com/lw/673/model_uncertainty_pascalian_reasoning_and/
SIAI’s Short-Term Research Program
by XiXiDu — 2011-06-24T11:43:04.500Z

One of the reasons that I am skeptical of contributing money to the SIAI is that I simply don't know what they would do with more money. The SIAI currently seems to be viable. Another reason is that I believe that an empirical approach is required, that we need to learn more about the nature of intelligence before we can even attempt to solve something like friendly AI.

I bring this up because I just came across an old post (2007) on the SIAI blog:

We aim to resolve this crucial question by simultaneously proceeding on two fronts:

1. Experimentation with practical, contemporary AI systems that modify and improve their own source code.
2. Extension and refinement of mathematical tools to enable rigorous formal analysis of advanced self-improving AI’s.

[...]

For the practical aspect of the SIAI Research Program, we intend to take the MOSES probabilistic evolutionary learning system, which exists in the public domain and was developed by Dr. Moshe Looks in his PhD work at Washington University in 2006, and deploy it self-referentially, in a manner that allows MOSES to improve its own learning methodology.

[...]

Applying MOSES self-referentially will give us a fascinating concrete example of self-modifying AI software – far short of human-level general intelligence initially, but nevertheless with many lessons to teach us about the more ambitious self-modifying AI’s that may be possible.

[...]

We are seeking additional funding so as to enable, initially, the hiring of two doctoral or post-doctoral Research Fellows to focus on the above two areas (practical and theoretical exploration of self-modifying AI).

[...]

Part of our goal is to make progress on these issues ourselves, in-house within SIAI; and part of our goal is to, by demonstrating this progress, interest the wider AI R&D community in these foundational issues. Either way: the goal is to move toward a deeper understanding of these incredibly important issues.

[...]

SIAI must boot-strap into existence a scientific field and research community for the study of safe, recursively self-improving systems; this field and community doesn’t exist yet.

Some questions:

Has any progress been made on the points mentioned in the announcement above?

Is the SIAI still willing to pursue experimental AI research or does it solely focus on hypothetical aspects?

What would the SIAI do give

...
SMBC: dystopian objective function
by Jonathan_Graehl — 2011-06-24T04:03:16.806Z

Cartoon: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2286 evokes the horror you should feel imagining your values being modified arbitrarily, although in the comic there's slippery-slope consent at each step.

This reminds me of a sci-fi novel where the participants are playing a game where points are awarded for "traditional" early 20th century behavior (the original records are lost, and some virus has infected the teleportation gates). Unfortunately I can't remember the author or name; it was pretty decent. Anyone recall it?
Recent site changes
by matt — 2011-06-24T03:50:40.802Z

Recent site changes have generated more unhappiness than I expected. This post is a brief note to share resources that will make it easier for concerned site users to track what's happening and what we intend.

First, know that we're listening. We'll make further site changes next week that will likely include some reversions.

The official site issue tracker remains unchanged, but for the next week or so we'll work from this public Google Doc (just because it's lighter weight). Nothing on that document is a promise - just evidence of our current thinking. We'll strike out items on that list as we deliver them to our (private) staging server, and will roll them out onto the live site soon after.

I've reached out to a small handful of SIAI and LessWrong heavyweights to track my balance as we make these changes. My feed should make it clear that I'm trying to act with calm rationality, but I'm obviously invested in the work we've shared to date and asking for some external help seems prudent.

I'll track discussion on this post.

Some reflections:

On what we did wrong

We didn't predict the unhappiness our changes caused.

We didn't make it clear that we were listening for feedback, and that changes were not final.

On what many of you did right

Calmly and politely voiced your concerns about some of our changes.

Where you liked some of our changes, said so where we could see it. Thank you.

On what many of you could have done differently, that would have increased average happiness (particularly mine)

Calmly and politely voiced your concerns about some of our changes.

Checked the very common assumption that the recent changes were final and would not be discussed. (Please note that I've first admitted fault in not making this clearer.)

A bare fact of this episode is that I'm feeling shellshocked, and have not enjoyed the experience of spending significant time and money trying to make LessWrong better. Unless my brain is built differently than others of my species this experience is likely to lead to spending less on projects like this in the future.

Please feel free to add to these lists in the comments, and please feel free to other-optimize me. Tsuyoku Naritai.
… but try to be polite.
Poll for next article
by Mass_Driver — 2011-06-24T03:23:30.575Z

Hi everyone,

I am planning to write one or more full-length articles for the main page soon, and I thought I'd take an informal poll to see what people would find most useful.

Possible articles include:

A three-part series on how to calibrate (how to know how much you know), and how to apply your newfound powers of calibration to make successful plans under extreme uncertainty

A three-part series on the frontiers of reductionism (the theory that all interesting phenomena can be fully explained in terms of ordinary physics), with arguments suggesting that consciousness, free will, and/or narrative truths might be both interesting and irreducible.

A solo article listing procedural heuristics which suggest that we should be skeptical of claims about cryonics and Friendly AI.

A solo article examining ways that liberal Jewish memes have personally increased and decreased my rationality, and exploring possible strategies for designing memes or rituals that would achieve the benefits without the costs.

A four-part series providing a brief overview of the American legal system (contracts, torts, criminal law, administrative law) along with analysis of the extent to which various features of the system are likely to achieve any of the system's apparent goals.

A solo article proposing various strategies for using board games to achieve social change, and seeking feedback on how to improve these strategies as well as on which strategies are most likely to succeed.

I am also open to requests, if you would like to see something slightly different from one of these articles, or if you know me well enough to suggest something that I would be good at writing about.

Thanks for your input!

EDIT: Thanks for all the comments! 3 seems to be in highest demand, so I will start with that. If I have any karma remaining after it gets chewed to pieces, I'll move on to 2 and 4.
HP:MoR: request for Reliable Sources
by gwern — 2011-06-24T01:36:44.671Z

For the last few weeks, I have been engaged in a slow motion edit war on the Wikipedia Eliezer Yudkowsky article, about including discussion of HP:MoR. The specific text being removed, to my eyes, well-sourced and germane to the article. But it may be that only 2 reviews of it is not enough and the other editor will respite if I can add in another RS or two.

Of course, I don't know of any besides the ones I have. That's where you all come in. What can I add to bolster the case for inclusion?

(If this seems trivial to you, I will note that the WP article gets around 2000 readers a month, and will continue to do so indefinitely; the WP article is also ranked #3-4 in Google for "Eliezer Yudkowsky". My impression is also that people reading WP articles tend to be 'high-quality' visitors, who spend time reading it and whose opinions are molded by it. At least, I've noticed this with Evangelion articles - points and quotes I've spent time referencing and highlighting tend to show up in reviews and other mainstream coverage...)
Meetup : Southern Arizona meetup
by jschulter — 2011-06-24T01:21:08.958Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Southern Arizona meetup

WHEN:
05 July 2011 06:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
Coffee X Change 2443 North Campbell Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85719

I've decided to try and put together a stronger rationalist community here in Arizona; I know there have already been a few meetups up in Phoenix, and I'm hoping some of the attendees will be willing to migrate a bit. I managed to learn a few useful things at the rationality minicamp Singinst. held that I hope can make this community more enjoyable and connected. Date, time and exact location are still very adjustable, so tell me if you can make it, or if you would like to but need the details changed.

Discussion article for the meetup : Southern Arizona meetup
Meetup : Ottawa LessWrong Weekly Meetup
by XFrequentist — 2011-06-23T20:01:03.920Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Ottawa LessWrong Weekly Meetup

WHEN:
23 June 2011 07:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
Fox and Feather Pub, 283 Elgin Street, Ottawa, Ontario

Fox and Feather Pub, upstairs, possibly in back room #1 if it's free. Look for the LW sign.

7pm EDT, obviously!

Discussion article for the meetup : Ottawa LessWrong Weekly Meetup
The "Stick Test" - useful tool or just pointless amusement?
by DataPacRat — 2011-06-23T18:31:43.045Z

After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, 'I refute it thus.' -- Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson

Sometimes, when discussing philosophy (or anything based on philosophy), the person you're talking with will defend their point by taking refuge under the shield of the undisprovable - that there's no way to prove the universe is real, or that you're real, or that there's any point in doing anything at all.

I've started using a shorthand argument against such positions, which I call the 'Stick Test'. I simply start (virtually) thwapping them repeatedly on the head with a stick, until such time as they can offer a reason for me to stop, with the minor caveat that the reasoning they give can't be self-annulling. For example, if their argument is that it is impossible to judge another culture's activities as being 'evil', I offer up the idea that it's part of my culture to repeatedly thwap people I disagree with on the head with a stick, and thus they have no justification for telling me to stop.

I've both had and inspired a few chuckles with this method... but I'm now throwing it in the fire - is it a *good* technique for pointing out that sort of flaw, or is it a poor tool which should be replaced by some *better* one? Assuming that it's not totally useless, what can be done to apply it most effectively?
Community roles: committees and leadership
by calcsam — 2011-06-23T15:54:31.060Z

Related to: Building rationalist communities, Lessons from Latter-day Saints, Holy Books (Or Rationalist Sequences) Don't Implement Themselves, Designing rationalist projects, Community roles: teachers and auxiliaries.

The ultimate question I’m trying to answer is: what should be the roles in a rationalist community?

In the previous post and this one, I outline the roles in Latter-day Saint communities along with some implications for rationalist communities. In the following posts, I will elaborate the analysis of implications.

Good sets of rules resemble programs; once developed, they can be made to run everywhere, with local modifications.[1]

Overview

In the previous post, I discussed the role of teachers and auxiliaries. Teachers are the ones who speak, teach and lead discussions in Sunday church meetings. Auxiliaries are responsible for ensuring the well-being of the various segments of the congregation – men, women, and children.

In this post, I will discuss committees and leadership.

Committees are in charge of specific important tasks – planning activities, giving service, and so on. The general leadership appoints people to each of the positions, provides personal counseling, and plans the curriculum.

In smaller groups, the leaders and more-committed members often wear multiple hats.

Committees

In a Latter-day Saint congregation, where 100 to 150 people come to church every week, there are a lot of committees. Committees are made up of male and female co-chairs and as many members as are necessary and available.

Fellowship Committee. This exists to help church members who move in become integrated into the ward. They follow up with leadership to make sure move-ins meet with church leadership, receive a calling (=responsibility), get home or visiting teachers, get a home or visiting teaching assignment, and so forth.

In family wards, they make sure that half the men’s organization comes over on Sunday after church to load (or unload) the U-Haul. And that the women’s organization brings over desserts, food, etc at some later time.

Missionary Committee. This helps new people start coming to meetings. For example, setting an example by inviting friends, encouraging people to invite their friends, thanking people for bringing their friends, befriending new p...
HPMoR Podcast Over 9000 = New Trailer
by Eneasz — 2011-06-23T14:57:19.928Z

The Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality audiobook/podcast exceeded nine thousand total downloads last night! Over 800 per episode on average. In celebration I put together another trailer. :) This one is taken from Chapter 7, the most popular chapter so far. I like to think it's because it has the speech about the Line of Francis Bacon and the Blood of the Enlightenment (which I personally loved), but maybe it's just because it's the only episode with an Explicit tag and that draws curiosity? Either way, it's the first chapter I truly fell in love with, and I'm glad I'm not the only one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q-fOw-n1CU
Meetup : Edinburgh Grand Meetup
by sark — 2011-06-23T10:23:29.967Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Edinburgh Grand Meetup

WHEN:
25 June 2011 02:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
67 Delhi Cafe, Nicolson Street, Edinburgh

Our once in a month big-meetup! See you there! Map: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ie=UTF8&t=h&cid=1874860554950886070

Discussion article for the meetup : Edinburgh Grand Meetup
Meetup : Houston, TX
by Cog — 2011-06-23T05:33:55.278Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Houston, TX

WHEN:
26 June 2011 03:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
TBA (See below)

The Houston meetup group will be meeting at 3:00PM on Sunday, June 26th. Usually we try to meetup at the local hackerspace, but that may not be an option this weekend. Rather than let another week go by without a Less Wrong meetup, we will tentatively plan to use the usual area, with a backup at a local coffee house/restaraunt called Brasil.

We will be going over the second chapter of ET Jaynes' 'Logic of Science', as well playing a few rounds of paranoid debating. Other than that, it will be a fairly free flowing meetup. The location will be posted below, hopefully within 24 hours.

For more details on how to get to the hackerspace, see my previous posts:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/63k/houston_hackerspace_meetup_sunday_june_12_300pm/

To get to Brasil's, see its google page:
http://maps.google.com/maps?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&oe=utf-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=Brasil+houston&fb=1&gl=us&hq=Brasil&hnear=0x8640b8b4488d8501:0xca0d02def365053b,Houston,+TX&ei=AtACTv2gLojY0QGEtdXbCw&sa=X&oi=local_group&ct=image&ved=0CAQQtgM

Discussion article for the meetup : Houston, TX