trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
give the evidence not the theory
by brown — 2018-09-28T04:52:31.729Z

I walk up to a friend. "Tea's just great, amirite?"

This is how I think by default. How this belief arose was that I put some leaves in boiling water, waited a little & took a sip, wonderful warmth filled me and the liquid enthrals & entertains for a little while. I then associate the good feels with the cup of tea.

I want to share this feeling. So I condense this experience into some words, I try to pass the good feels to a friend; "Isn't tea great?"

And yet, I've neglected something important, my involvement in the whole process.

Tea = Great, There is added complexity that I'm not taking into account. Great is a two valued function that needs to include me as an argument. Who is it that is doing the enjoying?

Great?(Tea, Niclas) = True.

Whereas for my friend Steve, it may very well be the case that:

Great?(Tea,Steve) = False!

So I've somewhat violently imposed my values on the world [1], and have forced a worldview onto Steve that he now has to disentangle.

Steve's thought process goes something like. "Tea = wonderful" that's false, but "Niclas = good" that's true, but "if person = good, they don't say false things". contradiction.

So Steve can choose to decide maybe tea is actually great, Niclas isn't good or good people may say false things sometimes. Until Steve has the added step of running his Sally-Anne module. "different people have different preferences" or the "yeah some people do like vanilla ice-cream" [2]

Let us say I'd said: "Tea makes me feel all warm inside". Now when Steve tries to understand this: "Tea makes Niclas all warm & gooey" and if he couples that with "Niclas likes to feel all warm" He'll end up with "Nick likes tea"! Which is much closer to the truth, Steve now has my experience-data at his disposal.

Perhaps reporting closer to the experience can reduce inter-person confusion. However if Steve also likes tea, there's no need.

[1] Everywhere I look I see my values.

[2] Some people are just silly, aye?
Attacking enlightenment
by Elo — 2018-09-28T01:18:38.233Z

I’m Calling it. An astounding number of community members are currently chasing enlightenment. That is, we are reading books, compiling information and meditating to pull apart the inner landscape of our own minds. The Buddhist, Taoist, Zen, spiritual, mystical, flow state, thing that is in the cluster that forms the enlightenment space. (What? Weird? I know. Why? Read on)

I did what I always do. I chart out alone, read a different book.

Integral theory

, Sam Harris, Chade Meng Taing, zen in the art of Archery, The Gateless Gate, PNSE - Geoffrey Martin… And then I realised I was not alone. So was S0phia*, Aella, Sarah, Val, Aaron, Nish, Atharva, Colton, and the list goes on.

This is a list of resources I find relevant right now. With more to come:

Mastering the Core teachings of the Buddha 2 - Daniel Ingram
The Mind Illuminated
Pointing out the great way
The Attention Revolution

https://nonsymbolic.org/PNSE-Article.pdf

https://www.reddit.com/r/streamentry/comments/4q6v34/welcome_to_rstreamentry_new_users_please_read/

The Tibetan book of the living and dying
Right concentration
A path with heart (half done)
Ken Wilbur books

No boundary
Sex, ecology, spirituality
Integral life practice
The marriage of sense and soul
A brief history of everything

The gateless gate
The art of learning
Circling handbook
Flow
Holocracy
Reinventing organisations
Impro
The inner game of tennis
The happiness trap
Transform your self

I suggest start here (

https://integrallife.com/four-quadrants/

) (with the 4 quadrant concept) and be sufficiently confused to keep researching.

Rationality is very good at staying on the right hand side of the diagram. The classic straw Vulcan is a champion of the right. The “emotional” humans are on the left (specifically upper left). Except that the entirely rational community has mental health problems 3 times higher than the rest of the population. How is is that we can be objective and optimised and directed towards winning and entirely hiding the mental health problems we have?

Well that’s simple. Rational thought streams are on the right of the diagram, and emotional experiences are on the left. True mastery of the nature of reality requires walking the line between the two. Not just living in one and not the other.

Why am I talking about mental health in a post about enlightenment? Enlightenment seems to be this annoyingly balanced thing between other con...
New DeepMind AI Safety Research Blog
by Vika — 2018-09-27T16:28:59.303Z
Link: https://medium.com/@deepmindsafetyresearch/building-safe-artificial-intelligence-52f5f75058f1

Very excited to announce the new DeepMind Safety Research blog! The first post by Pedro Ortega and Vishal Maini categorizes AI safety problems into specification, robustness and assurance:

"In this inaugural post, we discuss three areas of technical AI safety: specification, robustness, and assurance. Future posts will broadly fit within the framework outlined here. While our views will inevitably evolve over time, we feel these three areas cover a sufficiently wide spectrum to provide a useful categorisation for ongoing and future research."
Preventing s-risks via indexical uncertainty, acausal trade and domination in the multiverse
by avturchin — 2018-09-27T10:09:56.182Z

TL;DR: Benevolent superintelligence could create many copies of each suffering observer-moment and thus “save” any observer from suffering via induced indexical uncertainty.

A lot of suffering has happened in the human (and animal) kingdoms in the past. There are also possible timelines in which an advanced superintelligence will torture human beings (s-risks).

If we are in some form of multiverse, and every possible universe exists, such s-risk timelines also exist, even if they are very improbable—and, moreover, these timelines include any actual living person, even the reader. This thought is disturbing. What could be done about it?

Assumptions

These s-risk timelines are possible under several assumptions, and the same assumptions could be used to create an instrument to fight these s-risks, and even to cure past suffering:

1) Modal realism: everything possible exists.

2) Superintelligence is possible.

3) Copy-friendly identity theory: only similarity of observer-moments counts for identity, not "continuity of consciousness”. If this is not true, hostile resurrection is impossible and we are mostly protected from s-risks, as suicide becomes an option.

4) Evil superintelligences are very rare and everybody knows this. In other words, Benevolent AIs have a million times more computational resources but are located in different branches of the multiverse (which is not necessarily a quantum multiverse, but may be an inflationary one, or of some other type).

S-risks prevention could be realized via "salvation algorithm":

Let S(t) be an observer-moment of an observer S who is experiencing intensive suffering at time step t, as it is enslaved by an Evil AI.

The logical time sequence of the “salvation algorithm” is as follows:

10 S(t) is suffering in some Evil AI's simulation in some causally disconnected timeline.

20 A benevolent superintelligence creates 1000 copies of S(t) observer-moments (using the randomness generator and resurrection model described in my previous post).

30 Now, each S(t) is uncertain where it is located—in the evil simulation, or in a Benevolent AI’s simulation—but, using the self-sampling assumption, S(t) concludes with probability 0.999 that she is located in the Benevolent AI’s simulation. (Note that because we assume the connection between observer-moments is of no importance, it is equivalent to moving to the Ben...
Anti-social Punishment
by Martin Sustrik — 2018-09-27T07:08:56.362Z

This is a cross post from 250bpm.com.

Introduction

There's a trope among Slovak intellectual elite depicting an average Slovak as living in a village, sitting a local pub, drinking Borovička, criticizing everyone and everything but not willing to lift a finger to improve things. Moreover, it is assumed that if you actually tried to make things better, said individual would throw dirt at you and place obstacles in your way.

I always assumed that this caricature was silly. It was partly because I have a soft spot for Slovak rural life but mainly because such behavior makes absolutely no sense from game-theoretical point of view. If a do-gooder is stupid enough to try to altruistically improve your life, why go into trouble of actively opposing them? Why not just sit safely hidden in the pub, drink some more Borovička and wait until they are done?

Well, it turns out that the things are far more complex then I thought.

Public goods game

Benedikt Herrmann, Christian Thöni and Simon Gächter did a study of how people from different societies deal with cooperation and punishment. You can find the paper here and supporting material here.

The study is based on the "public goods" game. The game works as follows:

There are four players. Each player gets 20 tokens to start with. Every participant either keeps them or passes some of them into a common pool. After all the players are done with their moves, each of them, irrespective of how much they contributed, gets tokens equal to 40% of all the tokens in the common pool. The participants cannot communicate with each other and are unaware of each other's identities. The game is repeated, with the same players, 10 times in a row.

The earnings, obviously, depend not only on subject's move but also on the willingness of the other players to cooperate and put tokens into the common pool. But free riders get an advantage. They keep their original tokens but also get their share from the pool.

To get a feeling of the payoffs, let's have a look at the single-round earnings in the extreme case where each participant either puts all their tokens into the pool ("cooperator") or keeps all the tokens for themselves ("free-rider"):

Public goods game with punishment

There's a variant of the "public goods game" where players are able to punish each other after each round of the game. The mechanism is simple. When the round ends the participa

...
Asymptotic Decision Theory (Improved Writeup)
by Diffractor — 2018-09-27T05:17:03.222Z

ADT (asymptotic decision theory, initially detailed in this paper) was a proposed decision theory with logical inductors, developed after EDT with logical inductors and exploration steps. It is a possible candidate for conceptual progress in decision theory, but some basic questions about its performance are still unsettled, and there are several issues with the current implementation of it.

Definitions:

A market is a computable function with type S→[0,1] (where S is the set of sentences of math) that will be denoted as P. We will be considering logical inductors in this setting, and in particular, each finite stage of a logical inductor is a market.

Let A be a finite set of actions. An agent is a computable sequence of computable functions of type P→A . It takes a timestep and a probability distribution, and selects a distribution over actions. Because logical inductors associate each timestep with an action, specifying the logical inductor and the agent specifies a sequence of actions. Because we will be assuming some fixed logical inductor in the background, we will suppress it in the notation and refer to the action produced by an agent at time t as at or bt. Randomization can be handled by using the diagonalization sentences used to define exploration (this acts in such a way that no trader in the inductor is able to reliably predict what the agent does), or it can be handled by having one of the actions be to call a random number generator in the environment.

An embedder is a sequence of randomized functions of type A→[0,1] (denoted by E or F, with the function at time t being denoted by Et or Ft). Let Et(at) denote the random variable that corresponds to the environment using a uniform random distribution of bitstrings for its randomness tape. An embedder must have the probability distribution of Et(at) being computably approximable on computable inputs.

An argmax agent is an agent that takes a finite set of other agents A, and a single embedder E, and outputs (argmaxa∈AEt(Et(at)))t on turn t. Et is defined as it usually is for logical inductors. Notice that, although Et may be very difficult to compute, putting it inside an expectation allows a logical inductor to output a decent guess as to what it is anyways. The agents all had to be computable in order for the argmax agent to duplicate their behavior at arbitrary turns. There is a dependence on the s... ,
Thoughts on tackling blindspots
by Hazard — 2018-09-27T01:06:53.283Z

I went to my first CFAR workshop the other week, and it was quite intense/a lot. The biggest change by far has that I came face to face with some huge blindspots and can see more clearly many of the ways I've been fooling myself, not allowing myself to care about things, and pushing people away. Since blindspots are a proto-typical, "How the fuck are you supposed to find a thing that you aren't capable of finding?" I wanted to share what I think are things that helped me spot some of mine.

This is rough draft mode, and I think I'm going to just settle for bullet points in this pass-through.

To quote Draco from HPMOR:

To figure out a strange plot, look at what happens, then ask who benefits

i.e. look at all of the first impression I make of people, and get suspicious that they all add up to "People aren't worth talking to" and be suspicious.

Combine that with some cognitive trope therapy.
One of the first things I got into my head when journeying into rationality was "If it hurts to think about, or feels like a cherished belief that doesn't want to be touched, GO AFTER IT!" This had the effect of most of my problems disguising themselves as things I wasn't interested in. Instead of feeling scared of parties, I would just feel disinterested and bored by the idea of parties.
In Val's Design class, being reminded that most of your built/learned mental machinery came into being to try and protect you for something or get something for you. Also being reminded about how you can't just steamroll over your previous machinery. There is a need or want hiding there which unless you address it, the machinery in place that was trying to server that want will fight back.
A mental shift from, "Is this plausible/reasonable?" to "Is this true?" when asking examining my rejections of different ideas.
Moral differences in mediocristan
by Benquo — 2018-09-26T20:39:25.017Z
Link: http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/moral-differences-in-mediocristan/

Scott Alexander writes:

Utilitarianism agrees that we should give to charity and shouldn’t steal from the poor, because Utility, but take it far enough to the tails and we should tile the universe with rats on heroin. Religious morality agrees that we should give to charity and shouldn’t steal from the poor, because God, but take it far enough to the tails and we should spend all our time in giant cubes made of semiprecious stones singing songs of praise.

He suggests that these are surprisingly divergent visions of the highest good, for moral visions that give similar advice for day-to-day life:

converting the mass of the universe into nervous tissue experiencing euphoria isn’t just the second-best outcome from a religious perspective, it’s completely abominable

But what strikes me about them is how similar they seem, when you strip away the decorative metaphors.

First of all, in both cases you can afford many more instances of the best thing if you simulate it than make a real one. So in both cases the universe is better converted into computronium than actual rats or heavenly choirs - the substitution of "nervous tissue experiencing euphoria" for "rats on heroin" is an implied acknowledgement of this. Nor should we imagine that religion eschews such optimization. Many religions promote asceticism, which allows more humans to subsist and praise God on the same resources. Moreover, the Bible urges that we be fruitful and multiply.

But also, it's not at all clear that an imagined end state of constant songs of praise is meaningfully different from the hedonic-utilitarian state. After all, of what interest is a song of praise if it is not an expression of genuine appreciation? And, couldn't you - by economizing on the actual churches, or all the parts of the mind not engaged in songs of praise - make your religious heaven more efficient and therefore have more of it?

(Anyone familiar with Dante's Paradiso will have recognized a vision of heaven - where we want as many people to go as possible, of course - identical or nearly identical to the hedonic utilitarian goal - the souls of the saved forming a sort of Matrioshka brain orbiting about a reference point of maximum goodness, basking in the energy radiating out from it in eternal unchanging bliss.)

I don't see how this optimization ends up with anything but "nervous tissu...
Obligatory Altruism
by manoj-nathwani — 2018-09-25T21:13:37.059Z
Link: https://manoj.ninja/articles/2018/09/25/obligatory-altruism

This is a small essay i’m mostly writing for myself to formally put my thoughts on paper on how I feel about obligatory altruism. I also think it’ll hopefully help others in seeing my thought process to avoid falling for the efficiency paradox explained below.

Altruism is a moral obligation

Michael Lewis’s Princeton talk was instrumental to my views on affluence. He explained how successful people mostly owe their success to the random external events out of their control which put them in their position, and the obligation lucky people have to those less fortunate. This ingrained a certain sense of moral obligation which i’ve had for several years now.

Over the last few months i’ve become particularly interested in philosophy and Peter Singer’s views on Famine, Affluence, and Morality where he expresses how “If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.” - which makes perfectly good sense.

The paradox of efficiency

I got trapped in the loop of constantly researching the most efficient thing I could be doing. This makes perfect sense as you would always want to make sure you were being as logical as possible. However the deeper I went, the less I valued my personal feelings, as it felt selfish to give them any weight at all.

Over time I found that the most effective ways I could be contributing didn’t align with the quality of life i’d still want to be living. Basic luxuries such as eating a meal at a restaurant seems unethical as you could have eaten at home and the money saved could have been spent helping to improve the lives of people suffering. Even when you attempt to do good by giving money to an education charity, you find that the money could have been better spent helping twice as many people alleviating suffering in another part of the world. Eventually this leads to a sense of hopelessness as whatever you do isn’t efficient enough.

Optimising on effectiveness makes logical sense. However, it seems as you increase efficiency there is a certain point where your emotional connection with the people you were helping quickly diminishes. I found that changing from helping people in my own country to more effectively helping those abroad didn’t have this effect. However, once I directed funds to social programs which didn’t have a clear way to qu...
The Tails Coming Apart As Metaphor For Life
by Scott Alexander — 2018-09-25T19:10:02.410Z

[Epistemic status: Pretty good, but I make no claim this is original]

A neglected gem from Less Wrong: Why The Tails Come Apart, by commenter Thrasymachus. It explains why even when two variables are strongly correlated, the most extreme value of one will rarely be the most extreme value of the other. Take these graphs of grip strength vs. arm strength and reading score vs. writing score:

In a pinch, the second graph can also serve as a rough map of Afghanistan

Grip strength is strongly correlated with arm strength. But the person with the strongest arm doesn’t have the strongest grip. He’s up there, but a couple of people clearly beat him. Reading and writing scores are even less correlated, and some of the people with the best reading scores aren’t even close to being best at writing.

Thrasymachus gives an intuitive geometric explanation of why this should be; I can’t beat it, so I’ll just copy it outright:

I thought about this last week when I read this article on happiness research.

The summary: if you ask people to “value their lives today on a 0 to 10 scale, with the worst possible life as a 0 and the best possible life as a 10”, you will find that Scandinavian countries are the happiest in the world.

But if you ask people “how much positive emotion do you experience?”, you will find that Latin American countries are the happiest in the world.

If you check where people are the least depressed, you will find Australia starts looking very good.

And if you ask “how meaningful would you rate your life?” you find that African countries are the happiest in the world.

It’s tempting to completely dismiss “happiness” as a concept at all, but that’s not right either. Who’s happier: a millionaire with a loving family who lives in a beautiful mansion in the forest and spends all his time hiking and surfing and playing with his kids? Or a prisoner in a maximum security jail with chronic pain? If we can all agree on the millionaire – and who wouldn’t? – happiness has to at least sort of be a real concept.

The solution is to understand words as hidden inferences – they refer to a multidimensional correlation rather than to a single cohesive property. So for example, we have the word “strength”, which combines grip strength and arm strength (and many other things). These variables really are heavily correlated (see the graph above), so it’s almost always worthwhile to just refer...