trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
As a Washed Up Former Data Scientist and Machine Learning Researcher What Direction Should I Go In Now?
by Darklight — 2020-10-19T20:13:44.993Z

Some background, I was interested in AI before the hype, back when neural networks were just an impractical curiosity in our textbooks. I went through an undergrad in Cognitive Science and decided that there was something to the idea of connectionist bottom up AI having tremendous untapped potential because I saw the working example of the human mind. So I embarked on a Masters in Computer Science focused on ML and eventually graduated at just about the perfect time (2014) to jump into industry and make a splash. It helped that I'd been ambitious and tried to create crazy things like the Music-RNN and the Earthquake Predictor Neural Network, which, though not technically effective, showed surprising amounts of promise. The Music-RNN could at least generate sounds that vaguely resembled the audio data, and the Earthquake Predictor predicted the Ring of Fire: low magnitude, high frequency quakes that weren't important, but hey, it was better than random...

I also had earlier published two mediocre papers on stuff like occluded object recognition in some fairly inconsequential conferences, but combined with my projects and the AI hype, a Canadian startup called Maluuba (which would later be bought by Microsoft) took a chance on me and hired me as a Data Scientist for a few months doing NLP. Later my somewhat helpful posts on the Machine Learning Reddit attracted the attention of a recruiter from Huawei, and I ended up spending a few years as a Research Scientist at their Canadian subsidiary (specifically in Noah's Ark Lab), working both on NLP and later Computer Vision. Unfortunately, I was foolish and got into some unfortunate office politics that basically derailed my career within the company and I eventually requested a buyout package to avoid being stuck on projects I didn't think were relevant under a manager I didn't agree with.

Alas, I found myself unemployed right when COVID-19 hit. Despite still interviewing at places like Amazon, Facebook, and Deloitte, my lack of a PhD and so-so engineering ability hampered my efforts to get back into the industry, and made me question if I could still compete in a market that seemed a lot more saturated than before.

So recently I started to read some books that had been on my todo list for a while, like Bostrom's Superintelligence and Russell's Human Compatible. Before I...
It's hard to use utility maximization to justify creating new sentient beings
by dynomight — 2020-10-19T19:45:39.858Z
Link: https://dynomight.net/2020/10/19/its-hard-to-use-utility-maximization-to-justify-creating-new-sentient-beings/

Cedric and Bertrand want to see a movie. Bertrand wants to see Muscled Duded Blow Stuff Up. Cedric wants to see Quiet Remembrances: Time as Allegory. There's also Middlebrow Space Fantasy. They are rational but not selfish - they care about the other's happiness as much as their own. What should they see?
Group debugging guidelines & thoughts
by Kaj_Sotala — 2020-10-19T11:02:32.883Z

This post is a response to the request for a post with a "thorough description of how to do pair debugging"; I'm also having this post double as a retrospective on my attitude towards pair debugging in general.

As described by Vaniver,

At CFAR, one of the exercises is 'pair debugging'; one person is the protagonist exploring one of their problems, and the other person is the helper, helping them understand and solve the problem. (Like many things at CFAR, this is a deliberate and distilled version of something that already happens frequently in normal life.)

Starting from late 2014 (when I visited my first CFAR workshop), I ran an in-person rationality/self-development group which was inspired by CFAR's practices but also went in its own directions. One of the activities we had were regular debugging circles: people would split into small groups and then take turns where one person at a time would explain a problem that they were having and others would then attempt to help them out with it.

As I've understood CFAR's debugging circles, they are relatively free-form by design; the main focus is on exploring the problem together, and also notice opportunities where various rationality techniques could be applied. As such, they avoid having too much explicit structure in order to allow many different approaches. Yet as there still seems to be something like "the skill of doing good debugging", in 2015 I wrote the following guidelines for us that seemed to distill some best practices.

My 2015 debugging manual

Etiquette

Only bring up something if you actually want a solution for it. Everyone has times when they just need to vent and want sympathy rather than solutions, but debugging circles aren't the place for that. This doesn't mean that you would need to accept any suggestion that the others bring up, but it does mean that that you should be open to others offering suggestions in general. Once the session ends, you're free to just ignore and forget anything that didn't seem to make sense to you.

Be courteous of others and their time. Do your best to make sure that everyone, both you and the others, get a roughly equal share of the group's attention. If you have lots of problems in your life, don't dump all of them on the group at once, but rather focus on one or a small set of related ones. If it starts looking like the discussion has gotten stuck on one p...
What colour were the shadows?
by Mary Chernyshenko — 2020-10-19T09:11:18.411Z

The lawn I used to pass on my way to work

(Of course, this isn't any serious question.)

I used to walk to my job along a small park area. It is not fenced off, but there are these strange teeth-like posts around it to keep out cars in the rush hours. I liked to watch the plants and how they changed, knowing I'd spend the rest of the day inside.

The sun had not risen high, and the shadows of the posts were long and stark on the lawn on that morning in late October; the air was still crisp, there was a nip in it, even though it promised to be a warm day.

What colour were the shadows?
Retain flexibility with habits?
by vroomerify — 2020-10-18T22:58:51.054Z

I've recently been using habits to increase my productivity.
However, I've noticed a downside. If I start the day off by failing
my morning routine (wake up early, exercise) the entire rest
of the day is wasted since I feel off track.
Before habits I was much more flexible. Is there a way to avoid the mental state of
giving up when, for example, I wake up late?
PredictIt: Presidential Market is Increasingly Wrong
by Zvi — 2020-10-18T22:40:00.968Z

Previously about PredictIt this election cycle: Free Money at PredictIt: 2020 General Election,

Free Money at PredictIt?

It is important, on occasion, to state the obvious, on the record, at the proper time.

The prediction (alternatively, read: gambling) markets on the 2020 Presidential Election increasingly do not make sense.

In particular, their movements over time do not make any sense.

Nate Silver’s model at 538, which puts Trump at 12.5% or so, does not take into account the possibility of anyone taking extraordinary measures to distort who is physically able to vote or to have their vote counted, or attempts to set aside the vote and appoint alternate electors or remain in office anyway, or anything like that. It is very reasonable to thus assign some probability to ‘Trump would lose an election with only a historically typical amount of shenanigans, but wins because of an ahistorically highly impactful level of shenanigans.’ You could also use different assumptions than Nate, and think the baseline situation is closer to even.

I even can imagine a world in which, right now, Donald Trump is currently 37% or so to win the Presidency – and I observe all the same things I’ve observed this year. In isolation, it’s possible.

What I cannot explain, at all, is how this can be true if on June 20, three months ago, the market was 63-39, and now it’s 65-40, all but unchanged. Trump improved a bit, then got worse again, with Biden’s low being at 55.

Note that on June 20, the 538 model had Trump at 22% to win (it began at 30% on June 1). The progression he offers makes sense and is consistent. The market’s doesn’t, and isn’t.

You cannot tell me that Trump’s situation is about as good as his situation at that time, at the start PredictIt’s longest quick lookback option.

Seriously, what the hell, market?

If you want to be super generous to Trump and assume that the market was correct because he has a fixed chance of winning ‘despite everything’ then we can put him at 38% on June 20, then put him at 29% to win now. That’s the hard upper bound, and I don’t think that’s reasonable – winning ‘despite everything’ gets harder as winning the regular way gets harder, so I think the ‘be afraid of shenanigans’ case caps out around 25%.

This is why I seriously considered betting on Trump months ago. The theory was, if things went well for him, I’d have a good bet. If things we...
You have recovered from SARS-CoV-2. Now what?
by Annapurna — 2020-10-18T17:52:52.074Z

October 2020 Edition

On October 15, I became one of the

~30 million confirmed cases

that has recovered from SARS-CoV-2. There is a great deal of comfort knowing that I was able to beat this virus that has killed over 1 million people worldwide. Naturally, my attention shifted to what’s next. What are my risks now? I have narrowed it down to two questions:

What is the risk of reinfection?

What are the long term consequences of SARS-CoV-2?

This post is my attempt at trying to get close to an answer to those two questions. A little bit about myself: I am not a virologist, immunologist, or epidemiologist. I’m just a regular guy who trusts science. Everything in this post aside from my conclusions will be backed up by publications and case studies from reputable sources. My goal is to sort through the vast amount of information out there, find reliable research, and arrive at a rational conclusion.

One last thing: There is a large amount of ongoing studies and research on this subject. If you’re reading this post in February 2021, it is likely that the information presented is stale. I might do a monthly post on this subject to keep things fresh.

What is the risk of reinfection?

Doing some Googling online about SARS-CoV-2 reinfections leads to a plethora of anecdotal cases of potential reinfections. I was more interested in how scientists arrive at the conclusion that there is a confirmed case of reinfection. Right now, in order for a reinfection case to be considered as confirmed, there must be two positive tests with different

genome sequencing

. This proves that the host was indeed infected with two different strains of SARS-CoV-2. Why is this important? Because there is always a probability that your body never truly beat the original strain, and the virus lays dormant for a period of time before it resurfaces.

OK, so the next question is: Does every confirmed positive PCR-RT test get sequenced? The answer is sadly, no. Sequencing is time consuming and expensive, so it is only being done in studies. The largest repository of SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences that I found was the

GISAID

. According to their website, there have been over 147,000 viral genomic sequences shared with them. Not a small number, but far less than the ~40 million confirmed positive cases today.

So how many confirmed cases of reinfection are there today?

Twenty-four, with one reinfection leading to deat

...
A tale from Communist China
by Wei Dai — 2020-10-18T17:37:42.228Z

Judging from the upvotes, it seems like people are quite interested in my grandparents' failure to emigrate from Communist China before it was too late, so I thought I'd elaborate here with more details and for greater visibility. They were all actually supporters of the Communist Party at the beginning, and saw it as potential saviors/liberators of the Chinese people and nation. They were also treated well at the beginning - one of them (being one of few people in China with a higher education) was given a high official post, and another retained a manager position at the factory that he used to own and operate.

The latter side of the family considered moving away from China prior to the Communist victory since they would be classified as "capitalists" under the new regime, but were reassured by high level party members that they would be treated well if they stayed and helped to build the "new China". They actually did relatively ok, aside from most of their property being confiscated/nationalized early on and their living standards deteriorating steadily until they were forced to share the house that they used to own with something like 4 other families, and them being left with a single room in which to live.

The other side were more straightforward "true believers" who supported Communism at an early stage, as they were part of the educated class who generally saw it as the right side of history, something that would help China leapfrog the West in terms of both social and economic progress. My grandmother on that side even tried to run away from her family to join the revolution after graduating from the equivalent of high school. Just before the Communists took power, my grandmother changed her mind, and wanted to move away from China and even got the required visas. (I asked my father why, and he said "women's intuition" which I'm not sure is really accurate but he couldn't provide further details.) But my grandfather still believed in the cause so they stayed. After the Communist victory, there was still about a year before the borders were fully shut, but it seemed like things were moving in a good direction and disproved my grandmother's worries. My grandfather was given an important post and went around making important speeches and so on.

Unfortunately he was not very good at playing politics, as his background was in physics (although plenty of na...
Bet On Biden
by sapphire — 2020-10-17T22:03:19.144Z

At this point, for many tax situations, you cannot rationally believe both 'Nate Silver is credible' and 'I should not be betting on Biden'. If you have any trust in Nate you cannot think Biden is below ~80% to win. You can get 'Biden' for 65-66c on Predictit. Notably, there are several de facto copies of the same bet (Female VP, Dems win presidency). Even with fees, you are making a lot of stochastic money. Your capital will probably not be held up that long.

If you are outside the USA or [wink wink] you can get even better odds. There are many places you can get implied odds of 62-63%. Many sportsbook offer election odds. You can also use bet with crypto on sites like Polymarket. This bet gets worse if you are paying tons of income tax and cannot offset losses. But this is a very good bet for lots of people.

Polling Averages

I edited in an image of the rolling polling averages so people can judge this for themselves.

Here is another good analysis of why we should be confident in Biden.

In general, I think Rationalists should be a lot 'louder' about their advice when they are sure. For many tax situations, this is a complete slam dunk. I really wish rationalists had been louder about similar advice in the past when I could benefit.

Contest Entrants Think Trump is Going to Lose

Of the 98 entries, only six said that the Democratic candidate was under 50c to win the presidency. In fact, the median predicted probability for the Democratic candidate (hereafter Biden, for brevity) among contest entrants was 87%; notably, the median probability given by the models out there is also 87% (though Nate Silver has yet to release his and based on his fights with G. Elliott Morris it’s probably not going to come in very high).

This confidence in Biden (he is “Likely” to win the presidency, in the parlance of verbal handicappers) isn’t shared by the markets. Both BetFair and PredictIt price Joe in the low 60s, suggesting that the presidency “Leans” Biden (the price ranges on PI depending on the market you’re looking at). Even Silver thinks that’s too low: “I don’t think people realize how dumb and sometimes even irrational the prices are at political betting markets as compared to almost every other type of market (which is not to say other markets are always rational, either).” and “Too low on Biden.”

Note: My claims are completely orthogonal to whether Biden should win. Ra...
[Link] "Where are all the successful rationalists?"
by ioannes — 2020-10-17T19:58:33.560Z

https://applieddivinitystudies.com/2020/09/05/rationality-winning

From near the end:

The primary impacts of reading rationalist blogs are that 1) I have been frequently distracted at work, and 2) my conversations have gotten much worse. Talking to non-rationalists, I am perpetually holding myself back from saying "oh yes, that’s just the thing where no one has coherent meta-principles" or "that’s the thing where facts are purpose-dependent". Talking to rationalists is not much better, since it feels less like a free exchange of ideas, and more like an exchange of "have you read post?"

There are some specific areas where rationality might help, like using Yudkowsky’s Inadequate Equilibria to know when it’s plausible to think I have an original insight that is not already "priced into the market", but even here, I’m not convinced these beat out specific knowledge. If you want to start a defensible monopoly, reading about business strategy or startup-specific strategy will probably be more useful than trying to reason about "efficiency" in a totally abstract sense.

And yet, I will continue reading these blogs, and if Slate Star Codex ever releases a new post, I will likely drop whatever I am doing to read it. This has nothing to do with self-improvement or "systematized winning.

It’s solely because weird blogs on the internet make me feel less alone.
Sunday October 18, 12:00PM (PT) — Garden Party
by Ben Pace — 2020-10-17T19:36:52.829Z

This Sunday noon (12:00PM PT) we're having a party in the LessWrong Walled Garden.

It can always be Spring if we really want it to be.

This is a private space that the LessWrong team has been working on (and coworking in) for the past couple weeks. Tomorrow we'll be hosting our first public event. Come chat with fellow LessWrong folk and explore the Garden grounds.

The Garden will be open from 12 noon to 4pm Pacific Time.

Details

When? Sunday October 18, 12:00PM (PT) to 16:00PM (PT)

Where? https://gather.town/app/aPVfK3G76UukgiHx/lesswrong-campus

How? Gather.Town is a 2D space where you are connected (by video call) to people who are near you in the 2D space. You can turn off your video and your audio at will. There's also a bunch of further features available for communication.

Advice for video calls? Aim for these three things:

Be in a space without other people (to reduce background noise)
Use headphones (so there's no audio feedback)
Use a headset mic (to help block out ambient noise)

For more advice see Ben Kuhn's Tips for the most immersive video calls.

The LessWrong Walled Garden.
Things are allowed to be good and bad at the same time
by Kaj_Sotala — 2020-10-17T08:00:06.742Z

I’ve found it useful to sometimes remind myself that things are allowed to be good and bad at the same time.

Suppose that there was a particular job that I wanted but didn’t get. Afterwards, I find myself thinking:

“Damnit, some of the stuff in that job would have been so cool.”

“But the commute would have killed me, it wouldn’t have been a good fit for me anyway.”

“But some of that stuff would have been so cool!”

“Still, the commute would have killed me.”

“Yeah but…”

It’s as if my mind is trying to decide whether I should be upset at not getting the job, or happy at having dodged a bullet.

And if I pay close attention to what’s happening in my head, I might notice something.

It’s as if my mind is acting in such a way that only one of these options might be true:

Either some of the stuff in the job would been really cool, or the commute would have killed me. When one consideration is brought up, it’s as if it “cancels” the other.

Now if I were trying to decide whether I want the job or not, then this might make some sense: either the work is cool enough to overwhelm the badness of the commute, or the commute is bad enough to overwhelm the coolness.

But I already know that I didn’t get the job, so I don’t need to make a binary decision. And even if I did need to make a binary decision, realistically it’s not that one of the considerations makes the other completely irrelevant. My mind is trying to persuade me that the job is either all good or all bad, and neither of those assumptions is likely to be a healthy basis for a decision.

So there’s a thing where I… let my mind accept that both the good and the bad can be true at the same time, and that that’s all there is to say about it.

Yes, that stuff would have been really cool. And yes, the commute would have killed me. And there doesn’t need to be an “overall goodness” of the job that would be anything else than just the combination of those two facts.

This can feel a bit like there’s an electrifying zap in my mind, the two facts merging together into an overall judgment, and then there’s nothing more to consider. It doesn’t exactly feel good, the way it would have if I’d concluded that I never should have wanted the job anyway. But it also doesn’t feel bad, the way it would if I’d concluded that I actually really would have wanted it.

It just is what it is: a job that would’ve had some really cool aspects, where the com...
What are some beautiful, rationalist artworks? 
by Bird Concept — 2020-10-17T06:32:43.142Z

So you can now drag-and-drop images into comments. (Thanks, LessWrong dev team!)

Hence, this post is an excuse to build a beautiful, inspiring, powerful — and primarily visual — comment section.

Let's celebrate all that is great about the Art of Rationality, with images.

Rules

Each answer must contain a picture. No links!

It should be possible to just scroll through the comments and adore the artwork. There shouldn't be any need to click-through to other pages. (Think of it like a Pinterest board, if you've ever seen those.)

Adding text is fine, but consider doing it in a comment underneath your image, so it can be collapsed.

Pictures should be somehow relate to the Art of Rationality, as practiced on LessWrong.

Allowed: a breathtaking shot of a SpaceX launch; that solemn shot of Petrov deep in thought, gazing out his window; a painting of Galileo spearheading empiricism against the inquisition, ...

Not allowed: a random pretty mountain; the Mona Lisa; abstract expressionism, ...

I'll be liberal with this condition if you can give a good justification for why you chose your piece.

Pictures should be beautiful art independently of their relation to rationality.

Allowed: an exquisite shot of some piece of elegantly engineered machinery; a richly colourful and swirling galaxy, ...

Not allowed: a random picture of Einstein and Gödel hanging out; a low-resolution photo of a galaxy which is cool because it represents an important advance in astronomy, but which in-and-of-itself just looks like some lame computer graphics; Petrov's own tourist photos, ...

Don't be a jerk, but do note if you think something is a major conflict with a virtue.

Probably goes without saying... but don't be a pretentious art critic. The point of this thread is to pay tribute to those virtues that keep us striving to leave this world in a better place than we found it, guided by the Light of Science. Don't shout over the music.

That being said, I do care about pictures actually representing rationality. For example, take that photo of the exhausted surgeon after a 23h heart transplant. If it turned out (hypothetical) to have been the result of really poor utilitarian calculations, and actually is in direct conflict with some of our virtues: I think it's important to note that.

---

Note: I'm certainly not saying that the above rules are all ...