trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
[Book Review] Destiny Disrupted
by lsusr — 2021-03-21T07:09:51.734Z

Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes by Tamin Ansary is written for an audience that knows nothing about Islamic history. It is among my favorite history books. If you grew up on Eurocentric world history then Destiny Disrupted is like an speculative alternate history of the world that really happened. There is tons of cool stuff in it, like the world's first assassins.

In Persia, Sabbah developed his own power base. He took control of a fortress called Alamut (“the eagle’s nest”), situated high in the Elburz mountains of northern Iran. No one could touch him there because the only approach to the fortress was a footpath too narrow to accommodate an army. How Sabbah conquered it, no one knows. Some legends say trickery was involved, some that he used supernatural means, some that he converted the staff of the fortress and then simply bought the place from its master for a small sum. Whatever the case, there at Alamut, Sabbah got busy organizing the Assassins.

Did his cult adopt this name because they were devoted to political murder? Quite the opposite: political murder is now called assassination because it was a tactic practiced by this cult….

Sabbah was the archetypal prototerrorist, using murder largely for its propaganda value. Since he lacked the resources and troops to fight battles or conquer cities, he sent individuals, or at most small groups, to assassinate carefully targeted figures chosen for the shock their death would spark. The Assassins plotted their killings for months or even years, sometimes contriving to make friends with the victim or enter his service and work their way up to a position of trust.

⋮

The Assassins were organized as the ultimate secret society. Out in the world, they gave no indication of their identity or their real beliefs. No one knew, therefore, how many Assassins there were or which of the people in the bazaar, or the mosque, or anywhere else was actually an Assassin. Recruits went through intensive indoctrination and training, but once accepted into the sect, each member had a rank reflecting his level of knowledge. Initiates moved from stage to stage as they presumably plumbed ever deeper levels of meaning in the Qur’an, until they reached the foundation upon which all was built, whereupon they were admitted to Sabbah’s innermost circle.

Although they crafted their plots in utmost secrecy, the

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A dashboard for progress
by jasoncrawford — 2021-03-21T03:51:20.855Z
Link: https://rootsofprogress.org/metrics-for-progress

Is progress slowing down? In a previous post I explained why I got convinced that it is. Some people making this argument point to quantitative evidence, such as GDP or total factor productivity. I gave more qualitative evidence, or perhaps very crude quantitative evidence, by counting technological breakthroughs/revolutions: five in the Second Industrial Revolution, versus only one so far in the Third.

But this approach has its own difficulties:

It is sensitive to the granularity of technological revolutions. Are the automobile and the airplane two revolutions, or are these just part of a single revolution attributed to the internal combustion engine? Are the light bulb and electric motor two revolutions, or are these just part of the electricity revolution? Are computers and the Internet two revolutions, or one?
It’s sensitive to the choice of threshold for “revolution.” Is the assembly line a revolution in manufacturing? Is containerization a revolution in transportation?
It runs the risk of focusing on impressive breakthroughs and neglecting unglamorous iterative improvement. Agriculture has been using combine harvesters pulled by gas tractors for around a century now, but today’s combines are much better than the ones in use a century ago.

So maybe we need something more objective, and more focused on outputs. Here’s a half-baked idea.

It’s easy to measure progress in specific domains. For instance, we have a very good handle on the progression of Moore’s Law. The problem is that no one narrow metric captures all of economic progress.

So instead of trying for a single metric, what if we look at a dashboard comprising a handful of metrics. Make them as broad as possible while keeping them objective and well-defined, and deliberately choose a variety from across the breadth of the economy. These won’t capture everything, but together they might capture enough to give us a picture of progress.

Here’s a candidate list:

Per-capita consumption of:

metals
concrete
plastics
energy
bandwidth

Per-capita transport (all modes):

passenger-miles
freight ton-miles

Agricultural productivity, in kcal per worker
Mortality rate from all causes (age-adjusted)

Most of these are just consumption metrics, based on a simple theory that consumption is good and is closely correlated with material well-being. For agriculture, I chose a productivity metric, because of the nature of the market: we onl...
“Meditation for skeptics” – a review of two books, and some thoughts
by Sherrinford — 2021-03-20T23:35:23.037Z

I.

There are two books on the German book market whose cover contains the words “Meditation für Skeptiker” (meditation for skeptics). In 2010, Ulrich Ott, a psychologist specialized in meditation research publish a book with exactly this title. In february of 2016, the German translation of “10 % Happier” by Dan Harris was published, where the original title was extended to “Wie ich die entscheidenden 10 % glücklicher wurde” (“How I got that crucial 10 % happier”) and the American subtitle “How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Really Works - a True Story” was replaced by “Meditation für Skeptiker”. The “skeptics” target readership raised my interest.

Both books aim at making meditation accessible to an audience that would not have touched meditation books some years ago – for example, people who are put off by religious vocabulary. Both books represent something like manuals on the one hand and low-threshold introductions to the topic on the other hand, for which it is not necessary to accept spiritual accessories. It is important to both authors that the positive effects of meditation can be scientifically proven, and they give an overview to the state of knowledge about the topic (of course at the moment you read this, both books are some years old, so you should consider them as ancient wisdom; also, meditation books aimed at a non-esoteric readership are not so spectacular anymore). So the books have common ground, although the authors' backgrounds and the approach of the books are very different. In the following, I briefly review these books, and afterwards, I will discuss some questions inspired by them.

II.

Let us start with Ott’s book, which will be the lesser-known of the two, both globally but also in this forum. As far as I know, there is no English translation of the book. Ulrich Ott is a psychologist who has been researching meditation and its effects visible in a brain scan for years. He has been meditating since his youth (M. Hubert, 2008: Neuronen und Nirwana. Deutschlandfunk), so of course it wasn't science that convinced him to meditate. However, he not only contributes to research on the topic, but also places great emphasis on portraying it in the book. His book is based “on scientific findings, rational considerations and an open spirit of research”. In addition to the MRI a...
Conspicuous saving
by Matthew Barnett — 2021-03-20T20:59:50.749Z
Link: https://matthewbarnett.substack.com/p/conspicuous-saving

It's well known that people around the world can be really bad at saving money. Pre-pandemic, Americans saved an average of 7.6% of their income, electing to spend the rest. If people saved more money and invested it, then they'd be able to retire earlier, be wealthier, and therefore probably be better off. Yet, people visibly aren't choosing to do that, so what's going on here?

One possibility is that most Americans are just scraping by, and can't afford to drop their spending without something really bad happening to them, like starving to death. That hypothesis may be true for some, but it can't possibly be the case for most. The savings rate does rise with income, but not nearly as much as you'd expect if there was some baseline standard of living that most people try to meet while saving the rest.

The ultimate explanation for the low savings rate seems to be that people are myopic. In other words, people implicitly care more about having stuff now, rather than later. But saying that the problem is just myopia leaves some important details out.

Omer Moav and Zvika Neeman have a neat story (predictably: signaling), and it goes something like this. Assume that all people desire high status, and the arbiter of your status is how other people perceive your wealth. If you conspicuously spend money on a fancy car, people will readily see that, and assume that you are wealthy. By contrast, if you lock your money away in a vault, no one will observe it, and therefore will not raise your status. The result is that people will spend their money frivolously rather than investing it, even though if they invested their money everyone would have more wealth.

To introduce their case, they present some anecdotes that highlight just how absurd this problem might get,

A recent New York Times article (Moonshine or the Kids), illustrates the magnitude of such spending. It describes the financial situation and spending habits of a poor family from the Republic of the Congo. According to the article, the Obamza family is eight months behind on the $6 per month rent and is in danger of being evicted, they have no mosquito nets, even though they have already lost two of their eight children to malaria, and they cannot afford the $2.50 per month tuition for each of their three school-age children. Yet, Mr and Mrs Obamza spend $10 per month on cell phones, and Mr Obamza drinks several

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Trust status sigmoidally
by DirectedEvolution — 2021-03-20T19:50:21.567Z

Status, at its finest, makes it easy to find out who the crowd believes is the most skilled, experienced, and capable. It helps us know who we should follow, collaborate with, bet on.

As a proxy metric, it's vulnerable to Goodhart's law and hacking. Sometimes we can detect and fix these issues; other times we can't.

One of the most obvious and pervasive status markers on social media is upvotes.

I just got an RSS service (Feedly), and it helped me find a lot of blogs I wouldn't have otherwise discovered. Yay, abundance! I merrily subscribed. But how to choose from among them? And without a second thought, I picked out the ones with over 100 followers, because that's a big-looking number.

And if upvotes are a good proxy for the wisdom of a crowd, that's actually not a bad strategy.

But whether that's true or not is an open question. I think it's wise to start by assuming they're not. The way that evolved embodied culture functions as a good proxy for status is complex. How likely is it that some random RSS service that's just trying to get users is going to replicate it?

I think that the utility of an upvote button as a proxy for status is probably best evaluated in specific circumstances, by specific people. After a couple years on LessWrong, I've developed a sense both globally and for some specific users about how much their upvote count (and time since posting) makes me want to read/trust their article. In that sense, an upvote feature is context-dependent and an investment.

But if you're using a new platform (i.e. Feedly), to look at new people/communities (i.e. blogs also followed by people who follow LessWrong), and you're doing that for the first time, the number of follows is extremely difficult to interpret, to the point you're best off interpreting it as noise.

The key lesson is that it takes a lot of time and energy to learn how to extract skill-signal from the noisiness of a particular platform or community's status markers. It's an investment. I think this is what's going on when you're at a party with a bunch of new people and come away from it feeling bewildered and exhausted. It's like being at a loud rock concert, but it's status-noise that your brain has been desperately trying to make sense of for a couple of hours. Sometimes, some people are able to switch that off (I think I've gotten better at this over the years), but other times it's just imp...
Unnecessary Boredom Bias
by Mathisco — 2021-03-20T19:29:27.816Z

Crossposted from my own blog FunctionalNoise

Boredom has felt like an enemy to me for a long time. When I am bored it seems like I am wasting my time, being useless and inefficient and meaningless. I hate being bored and I've tried fighting boredom, avoiding boredom and ignoring boredom. But in recent years I've come to appreciate boredom more and more. It's a potential source of ideas. So I'm updating my beliefs on the uselessness of boredom and beginning to accept it as an ally. (If you can't beat them, then join them.)

When I'm bored and I don't pay attention, here is what happens. I go through roughly these phases:

Take my phone
Read my email
Read social media
Read blogs
Find a book to read
Or find some other passive activity; watch Netflix, gaming, etc.

This approach keeps you busy and keeps boredom away, but it also keeps ideas away. The easy access to entertainment might be destroying our collective creativity. How many of us are constantly being distracted by today's well designed entertainment? Trillions of dollars and euros of value might be lost, because we are systematically glued to our screens. What if Edison and Einstein and others were born today, would they be gaming addicts?

Once I ignore the desire to avoid boredom, I can reach a place of creativity, where my mind starts to wander and think of other things to do:

Reflect on life/work
Think of something meaningful to do
Write a short post
Write a (part of a) longer blog post
Work on a side project
Find a new idea

These activities are a much better form of entertainment, since they focus on - thinking about - creation, rather than on consumption of information. After having creative thoughts I am more likely to actually go out and create something valuable.

On Pressure

There is another way to get ideas. That is to apply temporary pressure to yourself or others. See if you can come up with a solution under the stress of the situation. This is more often used at work. It definitely helps to get creative under pressure, but I'm having diminishing returns from it, since we overuse it. Work harder! Think harder! Solve this problem by tomorrow! It can help to find solutions in the heat of the moment, find new ways to automate or delegate your work. But be careful to apply it all the time. You need slack.

What also doesn't work is creating a very safe space for people. It puts you in a calm, busy mode. It's the typica...
On LessWrong/Rationality and Political Debates
by sophia_xu — 2021-03-20T18:26:48.963Z

Epistemic status: rough ideas. Very open to criticism and will try to respond to every reply.

First and foremost, I, like many people here, agree with the sentiments and rationales of Politics is the Mind-Killer. A central reason why I like this place is that discussions are not just bogged down to blind tribalism like most places on the internet - and I'm satisfied with the current way things are.

What motivated me to post this is my reflection on this comment. It leads to realization departing from the Politics is the Mind-Killer article 14 years ago:

People in the English world has appearing to be more and more divided. This can be a positive - at least I believe the appearance of increasing divisiveness means that our range of accepted debates have been increasing: we have previously-fringe ideas like UBI or decentralized journalism (?) being put out in the open, and I believe that most people would consider it a net positive.
However, being more divided would also unfortunately mean people can agree on less and less common priors in discussions. This is problematic because we can't not talk about politics since we can't just start a discussion with common knowledge expecting the readers would agree anymore - the best we can do is to not explicitly talk about politics, but even if we aren't talking about politics, our System 1 still process these information (like wording or the way one choose examples) and apply internal tribalistic biases to them (a context would be the comment linked above).
In the American (or North American if you count Canada, which is pretty polluted by the US as well) context, the past couple of years has caused a lot of things to change drastically, but I feel the most important change is that the line between political and non-political debates have become more and more fuzzy: one less triggering example is the handling of the pandemic (although not as good as evidence since the last time the US had a pandemic was a hundred years ago), or the connotations of this very community by the recent NYT article.

This begs the question: when should we talk (and not talk) about politics in a place that discourages tribalism?

I've read previously about a heuristic to only talk about politics when absolutely necessary and use historical or culturally insulated examples when doing so, but I still wonder what can be done in the receivin...
Vows & Declaration
by Ruby — 2021-03-20T17:21:52.866Z

This is the eighth and final section of the wedding ceremony of Ruby & Miranda. See the Sequence introduction for more info.

IMAGE 7 PROJECTED ON PLANETARIUM

Brienne: We’ve spoken of the darkness, and of our hope to overcome it. We’ve spoken of the light that will come when we do, and of our commitment to become stronger. We’ve spoken of the community that acts together toward this goal, of the purpose of a new partnership within it, and of why those partners have chosen each other.

I now ask them to proclaim their bond, crystallizing their promises before us, beneath the stars.

Ruby and Miranda recite their vows in unison.

I vow to love you, always and forever. To make your joy my joy, your sorrow my sorrow. To keep your flourishing foremost among my concerns. To stand by you in vigor and frailty, in abundance and famine. To accept you when you are strong and when you are weak, when you prevail and when you falter. To care for you, especially when you forget to care for yourself.

I vow to be proud of you, to respect you, and to always remind you how dear you are to me. To listen to you and to understand you; to give you my attention when you request it, and silence when you request that. To share my thoughts with you and to cultivate our closeness.

I vow to become worthy of your love and dedication. To never ask of you more than you are able, but also never less. To help you grow, so that you can help me, so that I can help you, ad infinitum.

I vow always to be faithful to our values, visions, and goals.

I vow to be your spouse, your companion, your closest friend.

Brienne: You’ve chosen rings of meteorite as symbols of your dedication to fulfill your promises to each other, and to fulfill the promise of the night sky. Exchange these symbols now.

Miranda gives Ruby ring. (Kenzi gives it to her.)

Ruby gives Miranda ring. (Brayden gives it to him.)

Brienne: I would like all of you here to repeat after me.

"Ruben Michael Bloom and Miranda Irene Dixon-Luinenburg,"

(guests repeat)

*pause*

"We now pronounce you husband and wife."

*pause*

Brienne: You may embrace.

*applause*

PLAY SONG 3: FUTURE - REAL AND TRUE BY MILEY CYRUS
Open, Free, Safe: Choose Two
by jaspax — 2021-03-20T16:42:33.306Z

Epistemic status: More of a heuristic than an iron-clad law. Hopefully useful for decision-making, even if it's not a full gears-level model.

Related: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vHSrtmr3EBohcw6t8/norms-of-membership-for-voluntary-groups

In software engineering, there is a famous dictum which Wikipedia knows as the Project Management Triangle, which takes the following form:

Good, fast, cheap. Choose two.

The essence of the triangle is to point out that while good, fast, and cheap are all potentially desirable traits for a project, you cannot usually (or ever) get all of them at once. If you want something good and fast, it will not be cheap; if you want something fast and cheap, it will not be good.

I have observed that a similar triangle seems to govern communities, especially online communities. I phrase my triangle in a similar fashion:

Open, free, safe. Choose two.

Let's consider what this means.

The three vertices of the triangle

These words indicate something specific in the context of online communities:

Open means that anyone who wishes to may join the group. There are no requirements of expertise, professionalism, or documentation. You don't have to pay to get in. Joining does not require arcane technical knowledge beyond knowing how to visit a webpage.
Free means that you are allowed to post about whatever you want, in whatever posting style suits you. A variety of interaction styles are allowed. The group may have a "topic", but the borders of that topic are broad, and off-topic chatter is tolerated.
Safe means that you are unlikely to be verbally attacked, ostracised, mocked, or shunned for your behaviour. A safe community is one with low levels of conflict, or one on which conflict is carefully channeled and handled in a mild and congenial fashion. Safety means that you can let your guard down, and you can trust that other community members are not out to get you.

It should be obvious that all three of these traits are a spectrum rather than a simple binary. No group is entirely open (there's always some kind of requirement to get in, even if that requirement is "you know how to use a keyboard'), and no group is completely closed once it has more than one member. Freedom exists on a scale, as even the freest groups ban outright spam. Safety, too, is never absolute, as interpersonal conflict is always possible even if the local culture discourages it.

Cas

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