trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Less Wrong on Twitter
by Grognor — 2012-06-22T15:51:08.521Z

List of members of Less Wrong who are on Twitter:

Eliezer Yudkowsky

Steven Kaas

Vladimir Nesov

So8res

Alex Vermeer

Robby Bensinger

Roman Yampolskiy

atucker

Peter de Blanc

Nick Tarleton

Michael Vassar (alt)

Frank Adamek

Kaj Sotala

Zvi Moshowitz

Katja Grace

Michael Curzi

HonoreDB

kevin

Michael Anissimov

ciphergoth

Shannon Friedman

ggreer

fiddlemath

quanticle

patrissimo

William Eden

Divia Eden

P.J. Eby

Julia Galef

Sniffnoy

John Maxwell IV

lukeprog

paper-machine

lsparrish

Morendil

Will Newsome (alt)

Gabriel Duquette

MBlume

thomblake

Silas Barta

mindspillage

Johnicholas

RobertLumley

TGGP

Paulovsk

arundelo

GuySrinivasan

Nic_Smith

Chris Hallquist

Karmakaiser

Konkvistador

Alicorn

gwern

aaronsw (deceased)

Eric Herboso

Michelle_Z

Paul F. Christiano

Carl Shulman

Marcello

khafra

atucker

Caspian

NoisyEmpire

ata

Liron

peter_hurford

drethelin

Rubix

apophenia (alt)

Cyan

simplicio

Yvain

Hariant

Davidmanheim

James_Miller

nickernst

Louie

Valentine

amywilley

Andrew Rettek

Pablo_Stafforini

David_Chapman

malo

juliawise

abramdemski

rhollerith_dot_com

Jayson_Virissimo

nyan_sandwich

pwno

Alex Mennen

Brienne Strohl

Twitter accounts by people who aren't really "LWers" but recommended for LWers anyway:

"Weird Sun Twitter"

Robin Hanson

MIRI

Paul Graham

kenzo

Alexander Poddubny

j.

Kim Kierkegaardashian

Gate of Heavens and Gap of Gods (erstwhile Catharine Evans)

St_Rev

Aaron Haspel

Instance of Class

Member of Species

nydwracu

Shreeda

Razib Khan

Jenny Holzer

Jason Roy

Peter Norvig

Sark Julian

muflax (pbuh)

Robert Wiblin

Sister Y, sarahdoingthings

Anders Sandberg

Geoffrey Miller

admittedlyhuman, fakeysaysthings

Possible Views

whales

Silas Dogood

Max Tegmark

Byrne Hobart

Steve Omohundro

Bret Victor

Grognor

If I missed anyone in either category, let me know. I'll keep this updated.

Last update: May 18, 2015.
Meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup Thursday 7pm *New Day*
by EvelynM — 2012-06-22T14:42:55.010Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup Thursday 7pm *New Day*

WHEN:
28 June 2012 07:00:00PM (-0600)

WHERE:
144 North College Avenue, Fort Collins, CO 80524

We're trying a new day, Thursday.

Sign up at the Google Group for announcements:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/less-wrong-fort-collins-co

Discussion article for the meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup Thursday 7pm *New Day*
IJMC Mind Uploading Special Issue published
by Kaj_Sotala — 2012-06-22T11:58:33.616Z

The International Journal of Machine Consciousness recently published its special issue on mind uploading. The papers are paywalled, but as the editor of the issue, Ben Goertzel has put together a page that links to the authors' preprints of the papers. Preprint versions are available for most of the papers.

Below is a copy of the preprint page as it was at the time that this post was made. Note though that I'll be away for a couple of days, and thus be unable to update this page if new links get added.

In June 2012 the International Journal of Machine Consciousness (edited by Antonio Chella) published a Special Issue on Mind Uploading, edited by Ben Goertzel and Matthew Ikle’.

This page gathers links to informal, “preprint” versions of the papers in that Special Issue, hosted on the paper authors’ websites. These preprint versions are not guaranteed to be identical to the final published versions, but the content should be essentially the same. The list below contains the whole table of contents of the Special Issue; at the moment links to preprints are still being added to the list items as authors post them on their sites.

INTRODUCTION

BEN GOERTZEL and MATTHEW IKLE’

FUNDAMENTALS OF WHOLE BRAIN EMULATION: STATE, TRANSITION AND UPDATE REPRESENTATIONS

RANDAL A. KOENE

A FRAMEWORK FOR APPROACHES TO TRANSFER OF A MIND’S SUBSTRATE

SIM BAMFORD

EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH IN WHOLE BRAIN EMULATION: THE NEED FOR INNOVATIVE IN VIVO MEASUREMENT TECHNIQUES

RANDAL A. KOENE

AVAILABLE TOOLS FOR WHOLE BRAIN EMULATION

DIANA DECA

ELECTRON IMAGING TECHNOLOGY FOR WHOLE BRAIN NEURAL CIRCUIT MAPPING

KENNETH J. HAYWORTH

NON-DESTRUCTIVE WHOLE-BRAIN MONITORING USING NANOROBOTS: NEURAL ELECTRICAL DATA RATE REQUIREMENTS

NUNO R. B. MARTINS, WOLFRAM ERLHAGEN and ROBERT A. FREITAS, JR.

THE TERASEM MIND UPLOADING EXPERIMENT

MARTINE ROTHBLATT

WHOLE-PERSONALITY EMULATION

WILLIAM SIMS BAINBRIDGE

WHEN SHOULD TWO MINDS BE CONSIDERED VERSIONS OF ONE ANOTHER?

BEN GOERTZEL

MY BRAIN, MY MIND, AND I: SOME PHILOSOPHICAL ASSUMPTIONS OF MIND-UPLOADING

MICHAEL HAUSKELLER

SEEKING NORMATIVE GUIDELINES FOR NOVEL FUTURE FORMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

BRANDON OTO

TRANS-HUMAN COGNITIVE ENHANCEMENT, PHENOMENAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE EXTENDED MIND

TADEUSZ WIESLAW ZAWIDZKI

WHY UPLOADING WILL NOT WORK, O

...
Blogs by LWers
by  — 2012-06-22T08:53:07.068Z

Related to: Wikifying the Blog List

LessWrong posters and readers are generally pretty cool people. Maybe they are interesting bloggers too. And I'm not just talking about rationalist material, that we'd ideally like to be cross posted on LessWrong, no gardening blogs are also fair game. I'm making this a discussion level post so more people can see the list. Please share links to blogs by former or current LWers. Surely the authors wouldn't mind, who wouldn't like more readers? Original list here.

Anyone who wants to suggest a new blog for the list please follow this link.

Blogs by LWers:

RobinHanson --- Overcoming Bias (Katja Grace and Robert Wiblin post here as well)

Katja Grace --- Meteuphoric (very cool old posts and summaries)

muflax --- muflax' mindstream, daily

TGGP --- Entitled To An Opinion

Yvain --- Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz

juliawise --- Giving Gladly, Radiant Things

James_G --- Writings

steven0461 --- Black Belt Bayesian

James Miller --- Singluarity Notes

Jsalvati --- Good Morning, Economics

Will Newsome --- Computational Theology

clarissethorn --- Clarrise Thorn

Zack M. Davis --- An Algorithmic Lucidity

Kaj_Sotala --- A view to the gallery of my mind

SilasBarta --- Setting Things Straight

tommcabe --- The Rationalist Conspiracy

Alicorn --- Irregular Updates By An Irregular Person

MBlume --- Baby, check this out; I've got something to say.

ciphergoth --- Paul Crowley's blog (mostly about cryonics), Paul Crowley

XiXiDu --- Alexander Kruel

Aurini --- Stares At The World

jkaufman --- Jeff Kaufman

Bill_McGrath --- billmcgrathmusic

Sister Y --- the view from hell

PaulWright --- Paul Wright's blog

_ozymandias --- http://ozyfrantz.com/

mstevens --- stdout

HughRistik --- Feminist Critics

Julia_Galef --- Measure of Doubt

NancyLebovitz --- Input Junkie

David Gerard --- a bunch of them

Jayson_Virissimo --- Jay, Quantified

kpreid --- Kevin Reid's blog

hegemonicon --- Coarse Grained

Villiam_Bur --- bur.sk

Emile --- The Rational Parent

lukeprog --- Common Sense Atheism

Grognor --- Grognor's Blog

CarlShulman --- Reflective Disequilibrium

OrphanWilde --- Aretae

Alexei --- Bent Spoon Games Blog

TimS --- Georgia Special Education Law Blog

loup-valliant --- @ Loup's

RolfAndreaseen --- Yngling Saga

arundelo --- Aaron Brown

peter_hurtford --- Greatplay.net

brilee --- Modern Descartes

gwern --- gwern.net

erratio --- The merry-go-round of lif

...
[SEQ RERUN] The Bedrock of Fairness
by MinibearRex — 2012-06-22T04:23:26.400Z

Today's post, The Bedrock of Fairness was originally published on 03 July 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

What does "fairness" actually refer to? Why is it "fair" to divide a pie into three equal pieces for three different people?

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Created Already In Motion, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
Meetup : Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne, practical rationality
by spiral_shell — 2012-06-22T04:08:34.364Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne, practical rationality

WHEN:
06 July 2012 07:00:00PM (+1000)

WHERE:
Carlton VIC 3053, Australia

WHEN: 06 July 2012 07:00:00PM (+1000)

WHERE: Bens House : See the mailing list for the address - or you can call or text 0432 862 932 for the address. Alternatively, you can email shokwave.sf@gmail.com or even message User:shokwave on LessWrong.

Practical rationality is on the 1st friday of each month, as distinct from the social and rationality outreach meetups. Look for a social meetup on the 3rd Friday of each month.

Discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/melbourne-less-wrong

This meetup repeats on the 1st Friday of each month.

All welcome from 6:30pm. Call the phone number on the door and I'll let you in.
Discussion article for the meetup :Melbourne, practical rationality

Contact Scott 0432 862 932

Discussion article for the meetup : Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne, practical rationality
Leading Discussions: Addressing Time Monopolizers
by SwingDancerMike — 2012-06-21T16:44:26.218Z

"Having been that monologuist, I fully endorse this article." -David Gerard

This is part of a series on leading discussions, aimed at teachers and event organizers.

Have you ever been in a discussion (in a class or a workshop) when another attendee delivered a monolog? It lasts for several minutes, drains the energy from the group, and gets the whole event off schedule.
As the meetup / workshop / class leader, it's your responsibility to address these time monopolizers and keep everything moving. This article will give you some tips on identifying when you should intervene, and on how to intervene politely.

Identifying Time Monopolizers

If one person is talking for an extended period, they are probably monopolizing the conversation. Here are some specific signs to look out for:

The person has covered multiple topics without anyone else speaking. If they are moving from topic to topic without other people chiming in, it's a monolog, not a discussion.

You (the leader) feel bored or annoyed. Most of the time, everyone else will feel it 10x as much, because they are already less engaged in the conversation than you are. Tip: Don't wait until you're going to snap. Instead, as soon as you notice yourself getting bored / annoyed, shut the monolog down. (Note: I mean "annoyed they are taking up so much time," not "annoyed they disagree with me.")

Other attendees are disengaged. This often manifests in reading handouts or emails, looking out the window or down at their hands, and otherwise not paying attention to the speaker.

If only one of these items is true -- if the person is crossing multiple topics, but you and the class are engaged, for example -- then feel free to let them speak. But if two or more of these items are true, you should probably intervene. (See the next section for how to do that.)

If the event ends and you're not sure if someone was monopolizing the conversation, ask the quiet people how it went, and ask them if anyone in the group slowed the class down or monopolized the conversation. They might be too polite to bring the issue up, but once you ask directly, they'll let you know what's going on. Make sure to thank them for their honesty, and keep their feedback anonymous when you talk to the time monopolizer.
One note: While a monolog that covers multiple topics is usually bad, a discussion where multiple people cover multiple topics is usuall...
The Power of Reinforcement
by lukeprog — 2012-06-21T13:42:29.475Z

Part of the sequence: The Science of Winning at Life

Also see: Basics of Animal Reinforcement, Basics of Human Reinforcement, Physical and Mental Behavior, Wanting vs. Liking Revisited, Approving reinforces low-effort behaviors, Applying Behavioral Psychology on Myself.

Story 1:

On Skype with Eliezer, I said: "Eliezer, you've been unusually pleasant these past three weeks. I'm really happy to see that, and moreover, it increases my probability than an Eliezer-led FAI research team will work. What caused this change, do you think?"

Eliezer replied: "Well, three weeks ago I was working with Anna and Alicorn, and every time I said something nice they fed me an M&M."

Story 2:

I once witnessed a worker who hated keeping a work log because it was only used "against" him. His supervisor would call to say "Why did you spend so much time on that?" or "Why isn't this done yet?" but never "I saw you handled X, great job!" Not surprisingly, he often "forgot" to fill out his worklog.

Ever since I got everyone at the Singularity Institute to keep work logs, I've tried to avoid connections between "concerned" feedback and staff work logs, and instead take time to comment positively on things I see in those work logs.

Story 3:

Chatting with Eliezer, I said, "Eliezer, I get the sense that I've inadvertently caused you to be slightly averse to talking to me. Maybe because we disagree on so many things, or something?"

Eliezer's reply was: "No, it's much simpler. Our conversations usually run longer than our previously set deadline, so whenever I finish talking with you I feel drained and slightly cranky."

Now I finish our conversations on time.

Story 4:

A major Singularity Institute donor recently said to me: "By the way, I decided that every time I donate to the Singularity Institute, I'll set aside an additional 5% for myself to do fun things with, as a motivation to donate."

The power of reinforcement

It's amazing to me how consistently we fail to take advantage of the power of reinforcement.

Maybe it's because behaviorist techniques like reinforcement feel like they don't respect human agency enough. But if you aren't treating humans more like animals than most people are, then you're modeling humans poorly.

You are not an agenty homunculus "corrupted" by heuristics and biases. You just are heuristics and biases. And you respond ...
Minimum viable workout routine
by RomeoStevens — 2012-06-21T04:19:00.267Z

So you want the longevity benefits of regular exercise but you've hit some snags. Every routine pretty much makes you miserable. In addition, because of all the conflicting information out there, you aren't even sure if you're getting the full benefits. This post is for you. And don't worry about your current physical circumstances. It works equally well for the overweight, the underweight, and women (no you will not turn into a gross she hulk the moment you touch a weight. Those women take steroids and train hard for years)

A sub-optimal plan you stick to is better than the perfect routine you abandon after the first week. This routine is not perfect. This routine is optimized for simplicity and low time/mental effort commitment while still getting excellent results. It is strongly based on the routines from Beyond Brawn by Stuart McRobert, and some of the principles of Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe both of which have much anecdotal evidence of effectiveness in the training logs of various forums. If you're looking for published research to back up my claims I have some bad news for you, the literature on resistance training is basically worthless. A 5 minute perusal of google scholar will show that atrocious methodology such as having "subjects act as their own control" are common, and accepted by the relevant journals. And that's if you're lucky enough to find studies that aren't about diabetics, or elderly japanese women. But I'm not going to spend excessive time trying to justify this routine, anyone can do it for a month and see that the results are significant. (I'm open to arguing about it in the comments however.)

A note about cardio:

Cardiovascular capacity (V02 max) has shown a high degree of correlation to all cause mortality. Why aren't I recommending cardio? Because the only way to increase V02 max is with high intensity exercise. Between high intensity weight lifting and high intensity cardio, high intensity weightlifting easily wins for a newbie. A newbie, especially a significantly out of shape one, will not be capable of a level of cardio exertion that results in a significant adaptation. This can result in a lot of effort with very little in the way of improvement. This is soul-destroyingly frust...
[SEQ RERUN] Created Already In Motion
by MinibearRex — 2012-06-21T03:02:10.907Z

Today's post, Created Already In Motion was originally published on 01 July 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

There is no computer program so persuasive that you can run it on a rock. A mind, in order to be a mind, needs some sort of dynamic rules of inference or action. A mind has to be created already in motion.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was The Moral Void, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
What Would You Like To Read? A Quick Poll
by alyssavance — 2012-06-21T00:38:09.212Z

In our discussion of academic papers, Lukeprog argued that lots of smart people preferred to read ideas in academic paper format. Based on my observations, I mostly disagree. But that's just anecdotal evidence. Let's use Science!

Suppose someone at the Singularity Institute thought up a cool new idea: it could be about rationality, Friendly AI, decision theory, making money, or any of the other topics we discuss here on LW. Explaining it takes about ten pages, and it's nontechnical enough that it can be explained to a general audience of non-mathematicians. Which of the following explanations would you be most likely to actually sit down and read through?

A post on Less Wrong or another friendly blog

A book chapter, available both on Kindle and in physical book form

A mailing list post, made available through a public archive

An academic paper, downloadable over the Internet as a PDF

A static HTML page on the Singularity Institute's website

A page on a Singularity Institute or Less Wrong wiki

A speech, downloadable as an audio file

A PowerPoint or other presentation format

EDIT: To state the obvious, this poll will be biased in favor of blog postings, since it's on a blog. However, I still think it'll provide data that's much better than anecdotal guessing. I've emailed a few rationalist mailing lists to try and counteract this effect.
Help me make SI's arguments clear
by crazy88 — 2012-06-20T22:54:42.424Z

One of the biggest problems with evaluating the plausibility of SI's arguments is that the arguments involve a large number of premises (as any complex argument will) and often these arguments are either not written down or are written down in disparate locations, making it very hard to piece together these claims. SI is aware of this and one of their major aims is to state their argument very clearly. I'm hoping to help with this aim.

My specific plan is as follows: I want to map out the broad structure of SI's arguments in "standard form" - that is, as a list of premises that support a conclusion. I then want to write this up into a more readable summary and discussion of SI's views.

The first step to achieving this is making sure that I understand what SI is arguing. Obviously, SI is arguing for a number of different things but I take their principle argument to be the following:

P1. Superintelligent AI (SAI) is highly likely to be developed in the near future (say, next 100 years and probably sooner)
P2. Without explicit FAI research, superintelligent AI is likely to pose a global catastrophic risk for humanity.
P3. FAI research has a reasonable chance of making it so that superintelligent AI will not pose a global catastrophic risk for humanity.
Therefore
C1. FAI research has a high expected value for humanity.
P4. We currently fund FAI research at a level below that supported by its expected value.
Therefore
C2. Humanity should expend more effort on FAI research.

Note that P1 in this argument can be weakened to simply say that SAI is a non-trivial possibility but, in response, a stronger version of P2 and P3 are required if the conclusion is still to be viable (that is, if SAI is less likely, it needs to be more dangerous or FAI research needs to be more effective in order for FAI research to have the same expected value). However, if P2 and P3 already seem strong to you, then the argument can be made more forceful by weakening P1. One further note, however, doing so might also make the move from C1 and P4 to C2 more open to criticism - that is, some people think that we shouldn't make decisions based on expected value calculations when we are talking about low probability/high value events.

So I'm asking for a few things from anyone willing to comment:

1.) A sense of whether this is a useful project (I'm very busy and would like to know whether this is a suit...
Plastination is maturing and needs funding, says Hanson
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2012-06-20T20:00:25.676Z
Link: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/06/plastination-is-near.html

Though cryonics has been practiced for forty years, its techniques have improved only slowly; its few customers can only induce a tiny research effort. The much larger brain research community, in contrast, has been rapidly improving their ways to do fast cheap detailed 3D brain scans, and to prepare samples for such scans. You see, brain researchers need ways to stop brain samples from changing, and to be strong against scanning disruptions, just so they can study brain samples at their leisure.

These brain research techniques have now reached two key milestones:

They’ve found new ways to “fix” brain samples by filling them with plastic, ways that seem impressively reliable, resilient, and long lasting, and which work on large brain volumes (e.g., here). Such plastination techniques seem close to being able to save enough info in entire brains for centuries, without needing continual care. Just dumping a plastic brain in a box in a closet might work fine.
Today, for a few tens of thousands of dollars, less than the price charged for one cryonics customer, it is feasible to have independent lab(s) take random samples from whole mouse or human brains preserved via either cryonics or plastination, and do high (5nm) resolution 3D scans to map out thousands of neighboring cells, their connections, and connection strengths, to test if either of these approaches clearly preserve such key brain info.

An anonymous donor has actually funded a $100K Brain Preservation Prize, paid to the first team(s) to pass this test on a human brain, with a quarter of the prize going to those that first pass the test on a mouse brain. Cryonics and plastination teams have already submitted whole mouse brains to be tested. The only hitch is that the prize organization needs money (~25-50K$) to actually do the tests!

Comments? If superior brain preservation can be demonstrated under a 5nm-resolution 3D scan, plastination wins over vitrification hands-down. Is Robin missing anything here, or is this indeed as important as he says?