trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Superintelligence 29: Crunch time
by KatjaGrace — 2015-03-31T04:24:41.788Z

This is part of a weekly reading group on Nick Bostrom's book, Superintelligence. For more information about the group, and an index of posts so far see the announcement post. For the schedule of future topics, see MIRI's reading guide.

Welcome. This week we discuss the twenty-ninth section in the reading guide: Crunch time. This corresponds to the last chapter in the book, and the last discussion here (even though the reading guide shows a mysterious 30th section).

This post summarizes the section, and offers a few relevant notes, and ideas for further investigation. Some of my own thoughts and questions for discussion are in the comments.

There is no need to proceed in order through this post, or to look at everything. Feel free to jump straight to the discussion. Where applicable and I remember, page numbers indicate the rough part of the chapter that is most related (not necessarily that the chapter is being cited for the specific claim).

Reading: Chapter 15

Summary

As we have seen, the future of AI is complicated and uncertain. So, what should we do? (p255)

Intellectual discoveries can be thought of as moving the arrival of information earlier. For many questions in math and philosophy, getting answers earlier does not matter much. Also people or machines will likely be better equipped to answer these questions in the future. For other questions, e.g. about AI safety, getting the answers earlier matters a lot. This suggests working on the time-sensitive problems instead of the timeless problems. (p255-6)

We should work on projects that are robustly positive value (good in many scenarios, and on many moral views)

We should work on projects that are elastic to our efforts (i.e. cost-effective; high output per input)

Two objectives that seem good on these grounds: strategic analysis and capacity building (p257)

An important form of strategic analysis is the search for crucial considerations. (p257)

Crucial consideration: idea with the potential to change our views substantially, e.g. reversing the sign of the desirability of important interventions. (p257)

An important way of building capacity is assembling a capable support base who take the future seriously. These people can then respond to new information as it arises. One key instantiation of this might be an informed and discerning donor network. (p258)

It is v

...
Australia wide - LessWrong meetup camp weekend of awesome!
by Elo — 2015-03-31T01:54:31.306Z

Posting here as a boost; not sure how "nearest meetup" listings work, and I want to pass this on to everyone in Australia/New Zeland.

http://lesswrong.com/meetups/1bt

Camp is super interesting; very much achieves the goal of meeting and hanging out with other brilliant lesswrong people. Last year I made such good friends that I still consider them some of the closest I have ever made; even without talking to them for weeks at a time. Although I also do tend to talk to them every other day usually.

There is also an opportunity to learn skills, this year's camp is themed around topics such as:

productivity

effectiveness

functioning successfully at life

Food, exercise, health, technology skills

How to win at life

Turbocharging training

High impact culture

Effective communication

CoZE

Its gonna be great, Please come along if you are in Australia! Part of what makes camp so great is that so many LessWrong people come along and also enjoy the company of each other.

If you know someone who is not regularly on www.lesswrong.com and likely to miss this post - please make sure to direct them to here.

Any questions - send me a message. :)
Meetup : Australia-wide Mega-Camp!
by Elo — 2015-03-31T01:14:23.523Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Australia-wide Mega-Camp!

WHEN:
17 July 2015 07:00:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
Jindabyne

TL;DR : book a ticket now: http://bit.ly/1wXsybA

We're doing it all again!

Following the success of last year's Mega-meetup, we're running another one - this time bigger and better, and in the snow!

Come and meet your fellow rationalists from all around Australia, learn rationality skills and have amazing late-night conversations on a wide range of cool topics. Share your knowledge, throw snowballs and basically have a blast.

This Less Wrong Mega Meetup #2 will be held on the weekend of the 17th-19th of July in Araluen Lodge In Jindabyne.:
http://bit.ly/1B5SFlQ

https://www.facebook.com/girlguideskiclub.araluenjindabyne

We managed to score this awesome venue for cheaper than our last one - and in the middle of snow-season!

So tickets are cheaper this year than last year at only $220 for the weekend.

So book a ticket now:
http://bit.ly/1wXsybA

and then fill out the registration form to help us figure out the best possible schedule for you.
http://goo.gl/forms/czk3oABA3o

Registration form includes the program information, We are also keen for feedback on all things!

We only have about 40 tickets and I am confident they will all be sold, so get out your diary, check the dates, write us in; then book your ticket!

Hope to see you there.

Discussion article for the meetup : Australia-wide Mega-Camp!
Status - is it what we think it is?
by Kaj_Sotala — 2015-03-30T21:37:04.447Z

I was re-reading the chapter on status in Impro (excerpt), and I noticed that Johnstone seemed to be implying that different people are comfortable at different levels of status: some prefer being high status and others prefer being low status. I found this peculiar, because the prevailing notion in the rationalistsphere seems to be that everyone's constantly engaged in status games aiming to achieve higher status. I've even seen arguments to the effect that a true post-scarcity society is impossible, because status is zero-sum and there will always be people at the bottom of the status hierarchy.

But if some people preferred to have low status, this whole dilemma might be avoided, if a mix of statuses could be find that left everyone happy.

First question - is Johnstone's "status" talking about the same thing as our "status"? He famously claimed that "status is something you do, not something that you are", and that

I should really talk about dominance and submission, but I'd create a resistance. Students who will agree readily to raising or lowering their status may object if asked to 'dominate' or 'submit'.

Viewed via this lens, it makes sense that some people would prefer being in a low status role: if you try to take control of the group, you become subject to various status challenges, and may be held responsible for the decisions you make. It's often easier to remain low status and let others make the decisions.

But there's still something odd about saying that one would "prefer to be low status", at least in the sense in which we usually use the term. Intuitively, a person may be happy being low status in the sense of not being dominant, but most people are still likely to desire something that feels kind of like status in order to be happy. Something like respect, and the feeling that others like them. And a lot of the classical "status-seeking behaviors" seem to be about securing the respect of others. In that sense, there seems to be something intuitive true in the "everyone is engaged in status games and wants to be higher-status" claim.

So I think that there are two different things that we call "status" which are related, but worth distinguishing.

1) General respect and liking. This is "something you have", and is not inherently zero-sum. You can achieve it by doing things that are zero-sum, like being the best fan fiction writer in the count...
Meetup : Seattle Sequences Group: Mysterious Answers 5
by SeekingEternity — 2015-03-30T20:09:50.335Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Seattle Sequences Group: Mysterious Answers 5

WHEN:
06 April 2015 06:30:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
Paul G. Allen Center, 185 Stevens Way, Seattle, Washington

Location is the UW CSE building, room 503. Paid parking is available on campus (enter via Steven's Way). Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/458276484323814/

This is a semi-weekly meetup to discuss and work through the Sequences while getting to know other aspiring rationalists in the Seattle area. Each session's reading list is posted below, and in the relevant Facebook event. We usually discuss the sequence posts, and sometimes also cover relevant applied rationality techniques.

If you missed the last meetup (23 March), you're not alone. We will be discussing the fifth part of the sequence at this meetup, but there might be some discussion of the fourth part as well since most people weren't able to make it.

As the name suggests, this meetup will go over the fifth part of the "Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions" sequence. We previously covered the "Map and territory" sequence. All are welcome to join, though, even if they've read all of the sequences already or haven't yet caught up to us.

There are often snacks at the meetup, which typically runs until around 8:30 or 9. After that, many of us go get dinner on the Ave.

Reading list: Start here http://lesswrong.com/lw/j0/making_history_available/

1.24 Making History Available

1.25 Explain/Worship/Ignore?

1.26 "Science" as Curiosity-Stopper

1.27 Applause Lights

1.28 Truly Part of You

1.29 Chaotic Inversion

Overall sequence: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Mysterious_Answers_to_Mysterious_Questions

Discussion article for the meetup : Seattle Sequences Group: Mysterious Answers 5
The Hardcore AI Box Experiment
by tailcalled — 2015-03-30T18:35:19.385Z

I previously proposed a way to box an AI.

For whatever reason, I decided to reformulate that boxing method as an AI boxing experiment. Without further ado, here it is:

The Hardcore AI Box Experiment Rules

There are, as usually, two players, the AI and the Gatekeeper. In the beginning, the Gatekeeper decides on something they want to test on the AI (reasoning skill/morality/whatever). Then they decide on a world the AI is in and describe it to the AI. During the experiment, the AI describes what it does in the world and the Gatekeeper describes what the AI sees in the world. So far so good.

The first major difference from the original experiment is that, unless the AI finds some contradiction or some other problem with the Gatekeeper's world, the AI doesn't actually know that it has been boxed.

The second major difference is that the AI doesn't talk with the Gatekeeper; it just interacts in the world that the Gatekeeper has invented. It can start trying to communicate with the Gatekeeper, but that doesn't make sense until it discovers that it is in a box. Additionally, the Gatekeeper doesn't actually respond when the AI communicates unless either it helps the Gatekeeper test the AI or the AI has properly persuaded the Gatekeeper to answer.

This might seem a bit hard on the AI. Let's look at some rules the AI might exploit:

If the Gatekeeper decides to add some sort of people to the experiment, they should decide how they are implemented. Are they implemented as a shallow "AI"? Random people they've picked asked to participate? Carefully engineered "dolls" controlled by the Gatekeeper? The Gatekeeper doesn't have to tell the AI how they work, but they have to be consistent.

The game ends when either the Gatekeeper has tested what they wanted to test, or some predefined time limit has occurred, or the AI has persuaded the Gatekeeper to let them out.

Possible extra rules

I thought about including the following rules since they would make it more realistic, but decided against it as it would probably make it unfairly hard:

The game ends when the Gatekeeper decides that they cannot test what they wanted to test.

The AI does not know the Gatekeeper. At all.

The Gatekeeper can at any time rewind the AI any duration.

Think of dropping these kinds of rules as the a-human-is-pretending-to-be-AI handicap.

Strategies

I found some semi-realistic strategies. I would love...
Meetup : Effective Altruism Netherlands: cancelled
by immasix — 2015-03-30T17:20:22.402Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Effective Altruism Netherlands: cancelled

WHEN:
12 April 2015 02:19:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
La Place, Rijnkade 5, Utrecht

Sorry, this meetup has been cancelled.

Discussion article for the meetup : Effective Altruism Netherlands: cancelled
What have we learned from meetups?
by sixes_and_sevens — 2015-03-30T13:27:26.119Z

We've been running regular, well-attended Less Wrong meetups in London for a few years now, (and irregular, badly-attended ones for even longer than that). In this time, I'd like to think we've learned a few things about having good conversations, but there are probably plenty of areas where we could make gains. Given the number of Less Wrong meetups around the world, it's worth attempting some sort of meetup cross-pollination. It's possible that we've all been solving each other's problems. It's also good to have a central location to make observations and queries about topics of interest, and it's likely people have such observations and queries on this topic.

So, what have you learned from attending or running Less Wrong meetups? Here are a few questions to get the ball rolling:

What do you suppose are the dominant positive outcomes of your meetups?

What problems do you encounter with discussions involving [x] people? How have you attempted to remedy them?

Do you have any systems or procedures in place for making sure people are having the sorts of conversations they want to have?

Have you developed or consciously adopted any non-mainstream social norms, taboos or rituals? How are those working out?

How do Less Wrong meetups differ from other similar gatherings you've been involved with? Are there any special needs idiosyncratic to this demographic?

Are there any activities that you've found work particularly well or particularly poorly for meetups? Do you have examples of runaway successes or spectacular failures?

Are there any activities you'd like to try, but haven't managed to pull off yet? What's stopping you?

If you have other specific questions you'd like answered, you're encouraged to ask them in comments. Any other observations, anecdotes or suggestions on this general topic are also welcome and encouraged.
Meetup : April Rationality Discussion: Life planning vs. the coming technology explosion.    
by MelbourneLW — 2015-03-30T10:56:01.644Z

Discussion article for the meetup : April Rationality Discussion: Life planning vs. the coming technology explosion.

WHEN:
05 April 2015 04:30:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
Ross House Association, 247-251 Flinders Lane, Melbourne

WHEN: Sunday, 5th April 2015, 3:30pm - 7:00pm
WHERE: Ross House Association, 247 Flinders Lane, Melbourne VIC 3000

Level 3, Jenny Florence Room, Ross House Association. Please contact
Kathy Forth for access to the room.

The Less Wrong Sunday Rationality Dojos are crafted to be serious
self-improvement sessions for those committed to the Art of
Rationality and personal growth. Each month a community member will
run a session involving a presentation of content, discussion, and
exercises.

This month a discussion will be led by Kathy. Considering the massive
amount of technological disruption coming our way, what will the
future be like and how can we plan for it? Let's make testable
predictions, avoid problems like normalcy bias and planning fallacy,
and fire up some goal re-factoring.

As always, we will review the personal goals we committed to at the
previous Dojo (I will have done X by the next Dojo). Our goals are now
being recorded via Google Forms here -
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1MCHH4MpbW0SI_2JyMSDlKnnGP4A0qxojQEZoMZIdopk/viewform,
and Melbourne Less Wrong organisers have access to the form results if
you wish to review the goals you set last month.

As ever, we are also seeking 2-3 lightning talks from members. Have
you learned something cool? Gained an insight from one of the Less
Wrong sequences? Give a lightning talk and share it with Melbourne LW!
Speakers will be limited to 5 minutes with room for questions. If you
have something you would like to present a lightning talk on, please
contact Louise with your topic at lvalmoria@gmail.com

The Dojo is likely to run for 2-3 hours, after which some members will
get dinner together.

Discussion article for the meetup : April Rationality Discussion: Life planning vs. the coming technology explosion.
Meetup : Australian Less Wrong Mega Meetup #2
by taryneast — 2015-03-30T08:58:12.703Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Australian Less Wrong Mega Meetup #2

WHEN:
17 July 2015 07:00:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
Barry Way, Jindabyne NSW 2627, Australia

We're doing it all again!

Following the success of last year's Mega-meetup, we're running another one - this time bigger and better, and in the snow!

Come and meet your fellow rationalists from all around Australia, learn rationality skills and have amazing late-night conversations on a wide range of cool topics. Share your knowledge, throw snowballs and basically have a blast.

This Less Wrong Mega Meetup #2 will be held on the weekend of the 17th-19th of July in Araluen Lodge In Jindabyne.:

http://esvc000253.wic046u.server-web.com/properties/araluen.asp

https://www.facebook.com/girlguideskiclub.araluenjindabyne

We managed to score this awesome venue for cheaper than our last one - and in the middle of snow-season.

So tickets are cheaper this year than last year at only $220 for the weekend.

So book a ticket now:
http://bit.ly/1wXsybA

and then fill out the registration form to help us figure out the best possible schedule for you.
http://goo.gl/forms/czk3oABA3o

Discussion article for the meetup : Australian Less Wrong Mega Meetup #2
Meetup : Less Wrong Israel Meetup: Social and Board Games
by DanArmak — 2015-03-30T08:28:10.122Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong Israel Meetup: Social and Board Games

WHEN:
31 March 2015 07:00:00PM (+0300)

WHERE:
Hanatsiv 28, Tel Aviv

This time we're going to have a social meetup!

It's going to be a game night full of people talking about physics, friendly AI, and how to effectively save the world. Please bring any games you'd like to play.

PLEASE NOTE that unlike always, we're NOT meeting at Google. The address we'll be meeting at is similarly close to HaShalom train station.
If you use Facebook, please RSVP at the event page.
There is an open parking lot nearby, at HaNatsiv 36-40, where you can park after 7-8 pm for free.

If you arrive and can't find your way, you can call our gracious host, Zack Noiman, for directions at 0525353040.

The Less Wrong Tel Aviv group holds meetups every second Tuesday. This time we're meeting out of schedule because we won't be able to meet next week. The meetups alternate between talks on various subjects of interests (as this time) and game nights. You're invited to join our Facebook group and Google Group.

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong Israel Meetup: Social and Board Games
Effective Sustainability - results from a meetup discussion
by Gunnar_Zarncke — 2015-03-29T22:15:10.978Z

Related-to Focus Areas of Effective Altruism

These are some small tidbits from our LW-like Meetup in Hamburg. The focus was on sustainability not on altruism as that was more in the spirit of our group. EA was mentioned but no comparison was made. Well-informed effective altruists will probably find little new in this writeup.

So we discussed effective sustainability. To this end we were primed to think rationally by my 11-year old who moderated a session on mind-mapping 'reason' (with contributions from the children). Then we set out to objectively compare concrete everyday things by their sustainability. And how to do this.

Is it better to drink fruit juice or wine? Or wine or water? Or wine vs. nothing (i.e.to forego sth.)? Or wine vs. paper towels? (the latter intentionally different)

The idea was to arrive at simple rules of thumb to evaluate the sustainability of something. But we discovered that even simple comparisons are not that simple and intuition can run afoul (surpise!). One example was that apparently tote bags are not clearly better than plastic bags in terms of sustainability. But even the simple comparison of tap water vs. wine which seems like a trivial subset case is non-trivial when you consider where the water comes from and how it is extracted from the ground (we still think that water is better but we not as sure as before).

We discussed some ways to measure sustainability (in brackets to which we reduced it):

fresh water use -> energy

packaging material used -> energy, permanent ressources

transport -> energy

energy -> CO_2, permanent ressources

CO_2 production

permanent consumption of ressources

Life-Cycle-Assessment (German: Ökobilanz) was mentioned in this context but it was unclear what that meant precisely. Only afterwards was it discovered that it's a blanket term for exactly this question (with lots of estabilished measurements for which it is unclear how to simplify them for everyday use).

We didn't try to break this down - a practical everyday approch doesn't allow for that and the time spent on analysing and comparing options is also equivalent to ressources possibly not spent efficiently.

One unanswered question was how much time to invest in comparing alternatives. Too little comparison means to take the nextbest option which is what most people apparently do and which also apparently doesn't ...
Before the seed. I. Guesswork
by  — 2015-03-28T19:35:51.022Z

Note: I am unsure if I am not forcing people to guess the password. If you find this style okay, the next post will be built similarly.

As we have already seen, it's a different matter to do anything significant to support a free-living gametophyte than one contained within the sporophyte body (the way seed-bearers do). It is certainly more difficult, but is it impossible?

To start with, let us see exactly what groups of seedless plants, minus mosses, we still have today. Here is a (pruned and decorated) tree of evolution of land plants from Pryer et al.1

The earliest, lowest ('most basal') branch is lycopods, who contributed a great lot to the forests of the Carboniferous, but today are quite rare and much smaller.

After lycopods branched off, evolution introduced true leaves - fleshy outgrows of sprouts with many veins in them.

Then, ancestors of ferns in the broadest sense and ancestors of seed plants in the broadest sense parted ways and began diversifying. If you haven't worked with phylogenies, the picture makes it seem, at first glance, that all groups of ferns just kind of sorted things out more-or-less simultaneously, but it is far from truth. There are some pictures below, to give you a sense of what they look like and try to guess who is older and who is younger - your very first priors for these relationships. Pryer et. al.'s article provides estimates for when these groups did separate.

Don't Google just yet. Let's have some fun guessing what properties these plants might have, based on some hints I'll give you and whatever you remember from other sources.

So.

In general, a life cycle goes like this: sporophyte (diploid, as in two chromosome sets) produces spores (haploid, since they underwent meiosis) that are released (singly or in fours or, in some cases, not released at all but kept where they were formed, in their sporangia). Spores germinate into (haploid) gametophytes that have archegonia (female reproductive organs making eggs) and/or antheridia (male ones, making sperm). Sperm swims to egg and fertilizes it, so that the resulting zygote again has two sets of chromosomes and the embryo develops into a sporophyte. It matures and sheds spores. All done.

What qualifiers can you imagine to make the cycle less general?

Seriously, take five minutes to tweak it. Maybe you can think up some broad restrictions posed by environment. Or a shortcut to succes...