trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Is this evidence for the Simulation hypothesis?
by Fivehundred — 2015-06-28T23:45:29.939Z

I haven't come across this particular argument before, so I hope I'm not just rehashing a well-known problem.

"The universe displays some very strong signs that it is a simulation.
As has been mentioned in some other answers, one way to efficiently achieve a high fidelity simulation is to design it in such a way that you only need to compute as much detail as is needed. If someone takes a cursory glance at something you should only compute its rough details and only when someone looks at it closely, with a microscope say, do you need to fill in the details.
This puts a big constraint on the kind of physics you can have in a simulation. You need this property: suppose some physical system starts in state x. The system evolves over time to a new state y which is now observed to accuracy ε. As the simulation only needs to display the system to accuracy ε the implementor doesn't want to have to compute x to arbitrary precision. They'd like only have to compute x to some limited degree of accuracy. In other words, demanding y to some limited degree of accuracy should only require computing x to a limited degree of accuracy.
Let's spell this out. Write y as a function of x, y = f(x). We want that for all ε there is a δ such that for all x-δ<y<x+δ, |f(y)-f(x)|<ε. This is just a restatement in mathematical notation of what I said in English. But do you recognise it?
It's the standard textbook definition of a Continuous function. We humans invented the notion of continuity because it was an ubiquitous property of functions in the physical world. But it's precisely the property you need to implement a simulation with demand-driven level of detail. All of our fundamental physics is based on equations that evolve continuously over time and so are optimised for demand-driven implementation.
One way of looking at this is that if y=f(x), then if you want to compute n digits of y you only need a finite number of digits of x. This has another amazing advantage: if you only ever display things to a given accuracy you only ever need to compute your real numbers to a finite accuracy. Nature could have chosen to use any number of arbitrarily complicated functions on the reals. But in fact we only find functions with the special property that they need only be computed to finite precision. This is precisely what a smart program...
Goal setting journal (GSJ) - 28/06/15 -> 05/07/15
by  — 2015-06-28T06:24:09.353Z

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

If you have goals worth setting that are not worth their own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Here are mine, to illustrate:

11.Go to Centrelink to collect Youth Allowance and complain that you didn't get an SMS notification for reporting.
12. Ask Centrelink to setup SMS notifications for reporting
13. Find out how to report online, or by phone...and mention technical difficulties

26. apply neosporin nightly

28. review pre readings for subjects

Notes for future GSJ posters:

1. Please add the 'goal_setting_journal' tag.

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

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

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

5. No one is in charge of posting these threads. If it's time for a new thread, and you want a new thread, just create it.
Rest in motion
by So8res — 2015-06-28T03:00:00.000Z
Link: https://mindingourway.com/rest-in-motion/

Many people seem to think the 'good' state of being, the 'ground' state, is a relaxed state, a state with lots of rest and very little action. Because they think the ground state is the relaxed state, they act like maintaining any other state requires effort, requires suffering.

This is a failure mode that I used to fall into pretty regularly. I would model my work as a finite stream of tasks that needed doing. I'd think "once I've done the laundry and bought new shoes and finished the grocery shopping and fixed the bugs in my code and finished the big refactor, everything will be in order, and I'll be able to rest." And in that state of mind, every new email that hit my inbox, every new bug discovered in my code, every tool of mine that wore down and needed repair, would deal me damage.

I was modeling my work as finite, with the rest state being the state where all tasks were completed, and so every new task would push me further from that precious rest state and wear me down.

But the work that needs to be done is not a finite list of tasks, it is a neverending stream. Clothes are always getting worn down, food is always getting eaten, code is always in motion. The goal is not to finish all the work before you; for that is impossible. The goal is simply to move through the work. Instead of struggling to reach the end of the stream, simply focus on moving along it.

Advertisements and media often push the narrative that the purpose of all our toil is to win a chance at relaxation. We're supposed to work hard at boring jobs in order to earn our vacations. We're supposed to work hard for decades so that we can retire. (We're supposed to conceive of heaven as a place where nobody does anything except lounge on clouds.)

I call bullshit. For almost everybody, inaction is boring. That's why we pick up books, go exploring, and take up hobbies. The ground state is an active state, not a passive one.

The actual reward state is not one where you're lazing around doing nothing. It's one where you're keeping busy, where you're doing things that stimulate you, and where you're resting only a fraction of the time. The preferred ground state is not one where you have no activity to partake in, it's one where you're managing the streams of activity precisely, and moving through them at the right pace: not too fast, but also not too slow. For that would be boring.

And yet, most peop...
Praising the Constitution
by dragonfiremalus — 2015-06-27T16:55:03.124Z

I am sure the majority of the discussion surrounding the Unites States recent Supreme Court ruling will be on the topic of same-sex marriage and marriage equality. And while there is a lot of good discussion to be had, I thought I would take the opportunity to bring up another topic that seems often to be glossed over, but is yet very important to the discussion. That is the idea in the USA of praising the United States Constitution and holding it to an often unquestioning level of devotion.

Before I really get going I would like to take a quick moment to say I do support the US Constitution and think it is important to have a very strong document that provides rights for the people and guidelines for government. The entire structure of the government is defined by the Constitution, and some form of constitution or charter is necessary for the establishment of any type of governing body. Also, in the arguments I use as examples I am not in any way saying which side I am on. I am simply using them as examples, and no attempt should be made to infer my political stances from how I treat the arguments themselves.

But now the other way. I often hear in political discussions people, particularly Libertarians, trying to tie their position back to being based on the Constitution. The buck stops there. The Constitution says it, therefore it must be right. End of discussion. To me this often sounds eerily similar to arguing the semantics of a religious text to support your position.

A great example is in the debate over gun control laws. Without espousing one side or the other, I can fairly safely and definitively say the US Constitution does support citizens' rights to own guns. For many a Libertarian, the discussion ends there. This is not something only Libertarians are guilty of. The other side of the debate often resorts to arguing context and semantics in an attempt to make the Constitution support their side. This clearly is just a case of people trying to win the argument rather than discuss and discover the best solution.

Similarly in the topic of marriage equality, a lot of the discussion has been focused on whether or not the US supreme court ruling was, in fact, constitutional. Extending that further, the topic goes on to "does the Constitution give the federal government the right to demand that the fifty states all allow same-sex marriage?" To me, this is n...
4 days left in Giving What We Can's 2015 fundraiser - £34k to go
by RobertWiblin — 2015-06-27T02:16:22.956Z

We at Giving What We Can have been running a fundraiser to raise £150,000 by the end of June, so that we can make our budget through the end of 2015. We are really keen to keep the team focussed on their job of growing the movement behind effective giving, and ensure they aren't distracted worrying about fundraising and paying the bills.

With 4 days to go, we are now short just £34,000!

We also still have £6,000 worth of matching funds available for those who haven't given more than £1,000 to GWWC before and donate £1,000-£5,000 before next Tuesday! (For those who are asking, 2 of the matchers I think wouldn't have given otherwise and 2 I would guess would have.)

If you've been one of those holding out to see if we would easily reach the goal, now's the time to pitch in to ensure Giving What We Can can continue to achieve its vision of making effective giving the societal default and move millions more to GiveWell-recommended and other high impact organisations.

So please give now or email me for our bank details: robert [dot] wiblin [at] centreforeffectivealtruism [dot] org.

If you want to learn more, please see this more complete explanation for why we might be the highest impact place you can donate. This fundraiser has also been discussed on LessWrong before, as well as the Effective Altruist forum.

Thanks so much!
New LW Meetups: Maine, San Antonio
by FrankAdamek — 2015-06-26T14:59:26.086Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on June 19th. The following week's summary is here.

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

Maine: Automatic Cognition: 29 June 2015 06:30PM
San Antonio New Meetup: 28 June 2015 03:00PM
São Paulo, Brazil - Meetup at Base Sociedade Colaborativa: 27 June 2015 01:00PM

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

Australian Less Wrong Mega Meetup #2: 17 July 2015 07:00PM
Australia-wide Mega-Camp!: 17 July 2015 07:00PM
[Edinburgh] LessWrong Scotland: 28 June 2015 02:00PM
Munich June Meetup: 20 June 2015 03:00PM
[Prague] Rationality meetup in Prague #3: 30 June 2015 06:30PM

The remaining meetups take place in cities with regular scheduling, but involve a change in time or location, special meeting content, or simply a helpful reminder about the meetup:

Austin, TX - Caffe Medici: 20 June 2015 01:30PM
Boston: Trigger action planning: 21 June 2015 03:30PM
Sydney Meetup - June: 24 June 2015 06:30PM
Sydney Meetup - July: 22 July 2015 06:30PM
Sydney Meetup - August: 26 August 2015 06:30PM
Sydney Meetup - September: 23 September 2015 06:30PM
Vienna: 20 June 2015 03:00PM
Washington, D.C.: Create and Complete: 21 June 2015 03:00PM

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

If you'd like to talk with other LW-ers face to face, and there is no meetup in your area, consider starting your own meetup; it's easy (more resources here). Check one out, stretch your rationality skills, build community, and have fun!

In addition to the handy sidebar of upcoming meetups, a meetup overview is posted on the front page every Friday. These are an attempt to collect information on all the meetups happening in upcoming weeks. The best way to get your meetup featured is still to use the Add New Meetup feature, but you'll also have the benefit of having your meetup mentioned in a weekly overview. These overview posts are moved to the discussion section when the new post goes up.

Please note that for your meetup to ap...
Beyond Statistics 101
by JonahS — 2015-06-26T10:24:41.919Z

Is statistics beyond introductory statistics important for general reasoning?

Ideas such as regression to the mean, that correlation does not imply causation and base rate fallacy are very important for reasoning about the world in general. One gets these from a deep understanding of statistics 101, and the basics of the Bayesian statistical paradigm. Up until one year ago, I was under the impression that more advanced statistics is technical elaboration that doesn't offer major additional insights into thinking about the world in general.

Nothing could be further from the truth: ideas from advanced statistics are essential for reasoning about the world, even on a day-to-day level. In hindsight my prior belief seems very naive – as far as I can tell, my only reason for holding it is that I hadn't heard anyone say otherwise. But I hadn't actually looked advanced statistics to see whether or not my impression was justified :D.

Since then, I've learned some advanced statistics and machine learning, and the ideas that I've learned have radically altered my worldview. The "official" prerequisites for this material are calculus, differential multivariable calculus, and linear algebra. But one doesn't actually need to have detailed knowledge of these to understand ideas from advanced statistics well enough to benefit from them. The problem is pedagogical: I need to figure out how how to communicate them in an accessible way.

Advanced statistics enables one to reach nonobvious conclusions

To give a bird's eye view of the perspective that I've arrived at, in practice, the ideas from "basic" statistics are generally useful primarily for disproving hypotheses. This pushes in the direction of a state of radical agnosticism: the idea that one can't really know anything for sure about lots of important questions. More advanced statistics enables one to become justifiably confident in nonobvious conclusions, often even in the absence of formal evidence coming from the standard scientific practice.

IQ research and PCA as a case study

In the early 20th century, the psychologist and statistician Charles Spearman discovered the the g-factor, which is what IQ tests are designed to measure. The g-factor is one of the most powerful constructs that's come out of psychology research. There are many factors that played a role in enab

...
[link] Essay on AI Safety
by jsteinhardt — 2015-06-26T07:42:11.581Z

I recently wrote an essay about AI risk, targeted at other academics:

Long-Term and Short-Term Challenges to Ensuring the Safety of AI Systems

I think it might be interesting to some of you, so I am sharing it here. I would appreciate any feedback any of you have, especially from others who do AI / machine learning research.
Meetup : LessWrong Hamburg 
by Gunnar_Zarncke — 2015-06-25T23:40:50.966Z

Discussion article for the meetup : LessWrong Hamburg

WHEN:
17 July 2015 06:30:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Hamburg, Steindamm 80

After a long hiatus the LW Hamburg Meetup restarts in full force. The energy of the LW Berlin Community Event has brought some of us together and motivated us to try something lager this time. And we hope to attract old and new people who want to help improve each other lives with talk, games and fun.

We have a fine location neer Hamburg main station. Reachable via U1 Lohmühlenstraße. You have to arrive between 6 and 7 PM (or else contact me) to be let in (the janitor will be informed).

See alse the announcement on Meetup.com

Discussion article for the meetup : LessWrong Hamburg
Can You Give Support or Feedback for My Program to Alleviate Poverty?
by Brendon_Wong — 2015-06-25T23:18:11.130Z

Hi LessWrong,

Two years ago, when I travelled to Belize, I came up with an idea for a self-sufficient scalable program to address poverty. I saw how many people in Belize were unemployed or getting paid very low wages, but I also saw how skilled they were, a result of English being the national language and a mandatory education system. Many Belizeans have a secondary/high school education in Belize, and the vast majority have at least a primary school education and can speak English. I thought to myself, "it's too bad I can't teleport Belizeans to the United States, because in the U.S., they would automatically be able to earn many times more the minimum wage in Belize with their existing skills."

But I knew there was a way to do it: "virtual teleportation." My solution involves using computer and internet access in conjunction with training and support to connect the poor with high paying international work opportunities. My tests of virtual employment using Upwork and Amazon Mechanical Turk show that it is possible to earn at least twice the minimum wage in Belize, around $3 an hour, working with flexible hours. This solution is scalable because there is a consistent international demand for very low wage work (relatively speaking) from competent English speakers, and in other countries around the world like South Africa, many people matching that description can be found and lifted out of poverty. The solution could become self-sufficient because running a virtual employment enterprise or taking a cut of the earnings of members using virtual employment services (as bad as that sounds) can generate enough income to pay for the relatively low costs of monthly internet and the one-time costs of technology upgrades.

If you have any feedback, comments, suggestions, I would love to hear about it in the comments section. Feedback on my fundraising campaign at igg.me/at/bvep is also greatly appreciated.

If you are thinking about supporting the idea, my team and I need your help to make this possible. It may be difficult for us to reach our goal, but every contribution greatly increases the chances our fundraiser and our program will be successful, especially in the early stages. All donations are tax-deductible, and if you’d like, you can also opt-in for perks like flash drives and t-shirts. It only takes a moment to make a great difference:&nbs...
GiveWell event for SF Bay Area EAs
by Benquo — 2015-06-25T20:27:46.451Z

Passing this announcement along from GiveWell:

GiveWell is holding an event at our offices in San Francisco for Bay Area residents who are interested in Effective Altruism. The evening will be similar to the research events we hold periodically for GiveWell donors: it will include presentations and discussion about GiveWell’s top charity work and the Open Philanthropy Project, as well as a light dinner and time for mingling. We’re tentatively planning to hold the event in the evening of Tuesday July 7th or Wednesday July 8th.

We hope to be able to accommodate everyone who is interested, but may have to limit places depending on demand. If you would be interested in attending, please fill out this form.

We hope to see you there!
Meetup : Oslo Meetup at Bitraf.
by FourFire — 2015-06-25T16:21:19.797Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Oslo Meetup at Bitraf.

WHEN:
18 July 2015 04:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Youngsgate 6, Oslo

Welcome to the second Oslo meetup, at one of the most prominent hackerspaces in town.
We will be discussing a number of topics including:

How did you find lesswrong?

Rational fiction

Effective Altruism

Present and Near Future transhumanism

X-risk

Social engineering

I look forward to seeing people from the last meetup, and those of you who couldn't make it last time.

Discussion article for the meetup : Oslo Meetup at Bitraf.
Meetup : Sydney Rationality Dojo - July
by luminosity — 2015-06-25T12:55:14.794Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Rationality Dojo - July

WHEN:
05 July 2015 04:00:00PM (+1000)

WHERE:
Humanist House, 10 Shepherd St Chippendale

Come join us for July's rationality dojo, the first led by Joseph! After the main event, those who wish to join us can come along for a group dinner.

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Rationality Dojo - July
[link] Choose your (preference) utilitarianism carefully – part 1
by Kaj_Sotala — 2015-06-25T12:06:01.928Z

Summary: Utilitarianism is often ill-defined by supporters and critics alike, preference utilitarianism even more so. I briefly examine some of the axes of utilitarianism common to all popular forms, then look at some axes unique but essential to preference utilitarianism, which seem to have received little to no discussion – at least not this side of a paywall. This way I hope to clarify future discussions between hedonistic and preference utilitarians and perhaps to clarify things for their critics too, though I’m aiming the discussion primarily at utilitarians and utilitarian-sympathisers.

http://valence-utilitarianism.com/?p=8

I like this essay particularly for the way it breaks down different forms of utilitarianism to various axes, which have rarely been discussed on LW much.

For utilitarianism in general:

Many of these axes are well discussed, pertinent to almost any form of utilitarianism, and at least reasonably well understood, and I don’t propose to discuss them here beyond highlighting their salience. These include but probably aren’t restricted to the following:

What is utility? (for the sake of easy reference, I’ll give each axis a simple title – for this, the utility axis); eg happiness, fulfilled preferences, beauty, information(PDF)

How drastically are we trying to adjust it?, aka what if any is the criterion for ‘right’ness? (sufficiency axis); eg satisficing, maximising[2], scalar

How do we balance tradeoffs between positive and negative utility? (weighting axis); eg, negative, negative-leaning, positive (as in fully discounting negative utility – I don’t think anyone actually holds this), ‘middling’ ie ‘normal’ (often called positive, but it would benefit from a distinct adjective)

What’s our primary mentality toward it? (mentality axis); eg act, rule, two-level, global

How do we deal with changing populations? (population axis); eg average, total

To what extent do we discount future utility? (discounting axis); eg zero discount, >0 discount

How do we pinpoint the net zero utility point? (balancing axis); eg Tännsjö’s test, experience tradeoffs

What is a utilon? (utilon axis) [3] – I don’t know of any examples of serious discussion on this (other than generic dismissals of the question), but it’s ultimately a qu

...
Meetup : Rationality Meetup Vienna
by AnnaLeptikon — 2015-06-25T07:31:54.387Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Rationality Meetup Vienna

WHEN:
18 July 2015 03:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Kaisermühlenstraße 24/2

Event with more details on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1580071008920988/ (Have to be part of Rationality Vienna to see it)

Discussion article for the meetup : Rationality Meetup Vienna