trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Being a lab rat for phase I trials for extended-release versions of drugs that are already well-known - a potential windfall financial opportunity for rationalists?
by InquilineKea — 2011-06-23T00:12:15.952Z

This is one of the cases where better information (which we can easily get as rationalists) can really pay off. I got paid over $500 to test Concerta, which is basically the extended-release version of Ritalin (and it was one of the last stages too, even after it got FDA-approved). And Ritalin's effects are already very well-known.

Many people are systematically prone to overestimating the risks from drugs (due to an intrinsic resistance to anything "unnatural"), especially since they don't do any research into them. Now, certainly, there is *some* chance that Phase I drugs could end up as disasters - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGN1412 foremost among them. And there's also a chance that you could end up with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosiglitazone (but then, if you're only taking it for a few weeks, there probably won't be any permanent damage).

But these are still the exceptions rather than the norm, and you're still probably more likely to die from a car accident. Furthermore, these types of things aren't going to happen to extended release forms (and the FDA still somehow requires stringent testing for new extended release forms of drugs). Some of us rationalists excel at doing research, and can easily estimate the risks of most drugs (and go straight into the journal papers to see relative ratios and LD50s [and the dose required to cause severe side effects in any human, which is usually much higher than the normal dose]). Furthermore, in the new era of genomic sequencing, we may even be able to better predict how our body will respond to these drugs (for example, we can see which receptors we're over-sensitive too, and which ones we're not so oversensitive to, as well as our expression of Cytochrome p450 enzymes). So maybe this is a potential windfall for some of us?

Especially in the future, since we're in the age where we are rapidly learning about biological networks?

==

Even then, it doesn't have to be Phase I.

With that all being said, it's probably wise to avoid getting too many blood draws from the same vein
[Link] Does a Simulation Really Need to Be Run?
by VincentYu — 2011-06-22T23:28:18.081Z

http://blog.regehr.org/archives/546

John Regehr, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Utah, writes about two algorithmic optimizations for Conway's Game of Life, and speculates on the implications for self-aware entities in simulations.

Hashlife is a clever optimization that treats the Life grid as a hierarchy of quadtrees. By observing that the maximum speed of signal propagation in a Life configuration is one cell per step, it becomes possible to evolve squares of the Life grid multiple steps into the future using hash codes. Hashlife is amazing to watch: it starts out slow but as the hashtable fills up, it suddenly “explodes” into exponential progress. I recommend Golly. Hashlife is one of my ten all-time favorite algorithms.

Those who have read Greg Egan's Permutation City will find the concept of Hashlife familiar.

Another ingenious simulation speedup (developed, as it happens, around the same time as Hashlife) is Time Warp, which relaxes the synchronization requirements, permitting a processor to run well ahead of its neighbors. This opens up the possibility that a processor will at some point receive a message that violates causality: it needs to be executed in the past. Clearly this is a problem. The solution is to roll back the simulation state to the time of the message and resume execution from there. If rollbacks are infrequent, overall performance may increase due to improved asynchrony. This is a form of “optimistic concurrency” and it can be shown to preserve the meaning of a simulation in the sense that the Time Warp implementation must always return the same final answer as the non-optimistic implementation.
Mentoring as an alternative to having children?
by InquilineKea — 2011-06-22T23:04:53.861Z

So... Has anyone considered that mentoring could possibly be an alternative to having children? In terms of overall psychological well-being? The studies do show that having children is inversely related to happiness, but many people choose to have children anyways since they get a different sort of satisfaction from having children.

But with mentors, they can get many of the benefits and few of the costs (plus, they'll know unambiguously that they've helped someone - with parenting, it's different). And the people they mentor are most likely more compatible with them than the children that they'll most likely have (it's selection bias for compatibility, basically)

That being said, maybe there is something psychological missing out from all this. I was never brought up in a loving or close family (asian parents), so I don't really see any benefits to having a family (incidentally, this might be one huge reason why the fertility rate in places like Taiwan/Japan/South Korea are now among the lowest rates in the world - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_fertility_rate#The_CIA_TFR_Ranking ).
Meetup : Paris Meetup
by Emile — 2011-06-22T20:47:46.627Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Paris Meetup

WHEN:
25 June 2011 02:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Cafe des Techniques, next to Musee des Arts et Metiers, France

Third Paris meetup

Discussion article for the meetup : Paris Meetup
new Bright Eyes (Conor Oberst) single 'Singularity'
by lukeprog — 2011-06-22T20:04:53.340Z

Bright Eyes' new (2011) single, 'Singularity', is maybe the best song ever about the Singularity. It's a catchy electro-pop refrain.

Lyrics:

Learning on the fly
How to gather and analyze
Nothing is living if nothing dies
What an exception to make
Roundly rejecting our faith

When singularity comes
We will be fully revealed
Wandering limitless fields

When singularity comes
We will be abstraction then
We will buried within
All will be balanced
We will be one

Now we're on our way
All of our instincts accelerate
Nothing you imagine could keep this pace
We will know freedom at last
Finally make up for the past

When singularity comes
We will be faster than light
Whistling, skipping through time

When singularity comes
We will be children again
We will be cradled within
We will be perfect
We will be one

When singularity comes

Living in one mind
Every pin drop is amplified
Every outcome before its tried
Will make a rag doll of God
Wind up our new music box

When singularity comes
We will be fully revealed
Wandering limitless fields

When singularity comes
We'll be completely awake
Neophyte make no mistake
We're in this together
We will be one

When singularity comes
When singularity comes

Oberst's comments on the song:

I don't know if you're familiar with the theory of singularity. This guy, Ray Kurzweil, who was the inventor of early synthesizers, he has this theory -- a few other people write about it too -- but essentially there's a point where artificial intelligence reaches beyond human intelligence and we fuse in with the internet and become what he calls "spiritual machines." Essentially, you stop having to die and stop having to eat. Our physical form is no longer important because you're able to maintain your consciousness by uploading it to the next frame, which sounds spooky and weird but I think it's 100% achievable, especially when you think about how fast new machines invent newer machines, which invent the newer machines. It's exponential growth. A person doesn't have to sit down and invent every one of these steps. His vision is really utopian, like this is the way forward. Humans, we're obviously going to destroy our planet and destroy our physical form, but we'll continue in this way.

Hat tip to Kevin.
Meetup : Cambridge Massachusetts meetup
by jimrandomh — 2011-06-22T15:26:03.828Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge Massachusetts meetup

WHEN:
26 June 2011 02:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
Stata Center, Cambridge, MA, USA, room 261

The entrance is shown in Google Maps at http://goo.gl/maps/l0Cq. Note that the doors may be locked; we will post a pair of people to let people in for the first 30 minutes, but if you're later than that, you're at a different entrance, you're lost, or there's no one there, then call my cell phone at 607-339-5552.

I will be giving a short presentation on value of information - that is, order-of-magnitude calculations of how much research and thinking is worth, and spotting cases where it's unexpectedly high or low. This will not take up the entire time; the remainder will be spent on general-purpose socializing, calibration exercises using Wits & Wagers trivia questions, dinner (details to be decided on Saturday), and whatever good ideas you suggest.

Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge Massachusetts meetup
Meetup : Regular Seattle Meetup
by jsalvatier — 2011-06-22T13:33:44.523Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Regular Seattle Meetup

WHEN:
10 July 2011 09:07:21AM (-0700)

WHERE:
414 50th St NE, Seattle, WA

Agenda 1. presentation on procrastination psychology 2. do some exercises 3. dinner and open discussion See the Seattle mailing list.

Discussion article for the meetup : Regular Seattle Meetup
Community roles: teachers and auxiliaries
by calcsam — 2011-06-22T10:52:57.206Z

Related to: Building rationalist communities, Lessons from Latter-day Saints, Holy Books (Or Rationalist Sequences) Don't Implement Themselves, Designing rationalist projects.

I'm beginning a new subseries of posts, trying to answer the following question: what should be the roles in a rationalist community?

In this post and the next one, I will outline the roles in Latter-day Saint communities. In the following posts, I will draw more conclusions as to which roles would be ideal for rationalist communities.

I should note that these sets of responsibilities are designed to function in congregations where 100 to 150 people come to church every week. They are slimmed down when the congregations are smaller. I’m going to outline all the roles, and as I go, I’ll note which ones are the most important.

The Main Roles

There are four main groups of “callings,” responsibilities in the church. I will discuss the first two groups in this post.

First, there are the teachers, who speak, teach and lead discussions in Sunday church meetings.

Second, there are auxiliaries, responsible for ensuring the well-being of the various segments of the congregation. In each congregation, there is a women’s organization, a men’s organization, as well as young women’s, young men’s, and children’s organizations.

In smaller groups, the leaders and more-committed members often wear multiple hats.

Teachers.

"Teachers [are] foot soldiers in the ongoing war against ignorance and complacency. Sunday worship is only as good and effective as the teaching." - Orson Scott Card. (Link, read the whole piece if you like this one.)

Some members of the congregation are selected as regular teachers, who teach “Sunday school” classes to everyone, for two hours of class every Sunday.

In addition, every week, three speakers from the congregation are assigned to give talks in the one-hour everyone-together “sacrament meeting”. These rotate every week; people rarely give talks more than once every six months.

Teacher selection

Qualifications? Interestingness and the ability to promote personal applications.

The main enemy in church is simply boring-ness. Making a learning experience interesting is a nontrivial problem: visit your local school for evidence of...
Do-it-yourself-science Wiki
by Drahflow — 2011-06-22T10:25:24.395Z

While I was busy procrastinating, I produced http://38020.vs.webtropia.com/sciencewiki/index.php/Helium_balloon (the Wiki-Extension for the plot, not the data, that was lying around anyway). This could (if enough people are using it) become quite a useful collection of evidence of various simple sciency questions, and also ultimately motivate some more people to actually do experiments themselves.

Before going further with this (in particular wrt. telling people about it) however, I have a few questions:

Is anybody aware of a similar effort to collect data from hobby scientists in formalized, yet wiki enabled form? I googled, but found nothing, in that case I'd rather not start a new project.

I would like to calculate a metric evaluating which models are "better", i.e. explain the data best, yet are not overfitted. Can anybody recommend a paper or book about this problem? In particular, I need a metric which can handle errors in all variables (not just the dependent ones), and would rather not like to assume a normal distribution globally.

General feedback is obviously also welcome. If anybody has data which needs something different from a scatterplot, just throw it in, I'll see that a decent plot gets implemented.
Charles Stross: Three arguments against the singularity
by Paul Crowley — 2011-06-22T09:52:08.250Z

I periodically get email from folks who, having read "Accelerando", assume I am some kind of fire-breathing extropian zealot who believes in the imminence of the singularity, the uploading of the libertarians, and the rapture of the nerds. I find this mildly distressing, and so I think it's time to set the record straight and say what I really think.

Short version: Santa Claus doesn't exist.

- Charles Stross, Three arguments against the singularity, 2011-06-22

EDITED TO ADD: don't get your hopes up, this is pretty weak stuff.
Introducing others to LessWrong-ism... through comics!
by DataPacRat — 2011-06-22T06:48:20.771Z

Having read through the Sequences, Methods of Rationality, related blogs and books and so on, and having changed my mind a few times on at least a few ideas that I'd been fairly sure about... I feel that I finally have enough of a grasp of the basics of LessWrong-style rationality to start trying to introduce it to other people. And while the Sequences form a good set of basics, getting someone interested enough in rationality to start reading them is a step of its own... and, as best as I can tell, one that needs to be custom-tailored to a particular audience.

For my first attempt, I've focused on two online subcultures which I'm at least somewhat familiar with: furries and a certain subset of libertarians. For example, a large number of furry fans are fairly easy to please - give them a short comic to read involving a cute anthropomorphic animal, throw in a bit of sex appeal and maybe a message that's compatible with tolerance of all people, and that comic will be happily read by a lot of them. Trying to avoid "politics is the mind-killer" derailment, the community of libertarians I'm aiming for tend to have their own quirks about what attracts their attention.

The result I came up with was the creation of Rationality Matters, a couple of comics pages that introduce some LW-type thoughts in an audience-compatible fashion without beating the readers' heads with them. I've already received some positive feedback from members of both target groups, indicating that I've accomplished my goal with at least a few individuals... so now I'm posting the link here, for whatever feedback I can get that could improve the existing pages (mainly for the text, since re-doing the art at this stage is impractical), and to make any future pages (should I decide to create them) better than I would have made them without such help.

(And yes, I try to follow Crocker's Rules.)
Mostly silly alternatives to the word 'rationalist'
by jsalvatier — 2011-06-22T04:53:00.539Z

Like many others I don't care much for the word 'rationalist', since it comes with lots of preexisting negative connotations. I think we're most likely stuck with the term, but to amuse myself, I came up a list of alternative terms. The Seattle LW group enjoyed the word 'cognomancy'.

I don't claim any of these are original to me; I know I've lifted a couple of them.

cognomancer

optimancer

orthomancer

ratiomancer

logimancer

utilimancer

mentamancer

metamancer

economancer

psychomancer

bayesian empiramancer (really you could add 'bayesian to most of these')

mathamancer

cognitive engineer

optimization engineer

neuromancer

cognologist

cognician

optimician

utilitician

ratician

orthocognician

economician

mentician

empirician

I really like the suffix -mancy; it's really fun to think of yourself as doing any kind of -mancy.

I'd love to hear other funny alternatives to 'rationalist' and other related terms.
So, I guess the site redesign is live?
by CronoDAS — 2011-06-22T04:51:20.289Z

I saw some discussion posts earlier talking about a LessWrong redesign, and now that things look different, I guess that it's been implemented. I'm always slightly annoyed for a while when a site I use gets redesigned because I have to relearn where everything is, but it eventually wears off once I'm used to the changes.

My initial impressions:

"Hmmm... it seems like the category menus have been replaced by dropdown menus. It's not like I used many of them anyway."

"Okay, I've clicked my name to see my recently posted comments. Now, where's the link to see it in context? Oh, I guess I have to click that icon in the lower right corner. For some reason I was looking for something at the upper right of the comment box."

"Well, that worked. Now how do I click to the parent comment? Oh, wait, it's probably one of those new icons in the lower right corner. I'll just mouseover them to see what they do..."

::realization sets in::

"AAUGH! LESSWRONG IS USING MYSTERY MEAT NAVIGATION!!!"

So, what does everyone else think of the new redesign?
Meetup : Melbourne, Friday 1st July 7pm
by wmoore — 2011-06-22T04:14:15.398Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne, Friday 1st July 7pm

WHEN:
01 July 2011 07:00:00PM (+1000)

WHERE:
55 Walsh St, West Melbourne 3003

Directions: Enter the somewhat unfriendly building, climb the stairs to the top (2 floors), and turn left. If the front door is locked look for a sign that includes my phone number ask me to let you in.

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

We meet on the first Friday of each month. We formally start at 7pm, but I'll be here from 6pm and you're all welcome. You're all welcome to BYO liquid refreshments.

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne, Friday 1st July 7pm
Upcoming meet-ups
by AnnaSalamon — 2011-06-21T22:28:40.610Z

There are upcoming irregularly scheduled meet-ups in:

Bangalore: Sunday June 19th at 4pm

Cambridge, MA: Tuesday June 14th at 7pm

DC: Sunday June 12th at 1pm

Edinburgh: Saturday June 11 (I think, the announcement doesn't specify) at 2pm

Fort Collins: Wednesday June 15th at 7pm

Houston: Sunday June 12th at 4pm

Logan: Saturday June 18th at 4pm

Ottawa: Thurs June 16th at 7pm (+ a Bayes study group)

Paris: Sunday June 25th around 2pm

Cities with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Cambridge, MA, Irvine, Mountain View, New York, San Francisco,Seattle, Toronto.

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

If you missed the deadline and wish to have your meetup featured, add a comment and send me a PM.

Meet-ups should be posted in the discussion session; I will then make a promoted post "upcoming meetups" post every Friday that links to every meet-up that has been planned for the next two weeks. Please let me know if your meetup is omitted.

Please note that for your meetup to appear in the weekly meetups feature, you need to post about your meetup before the Friday before your meetup!

If you check Less Wrong irregularly, consider subscribing to one or more city-specific mailing list in order to be notified when an irregular meetup is happening: London, Chicago, Southern California (Los Angeles/Orange County area), St. Louis, Ottawa, Helsinki, Melbourne.
West LA Biweekly Meetups
by  — 2011-06-21T21:53:20.175Z

Next Meetup: Wednesday, February 29th.

When: 7pm - 9pm every other Wednesday.

Where: The Westside Tavern in the upstairs Wine Bar, located inside the Westside Pavillion on the second floor, right by the movie theaters.

Parking is free for 3 hours.

Whether you're a regular reader or totally new, here for the theoretical musings or the practical things, come by and say hello! If enough people want to change the time or place for future meetups, we will - send me a message.

See also: Irvine weekly meetups, SoCal google group.
Last day to register for Foresight@Google - Mountain View, California
by Louie — 2011-06-21T20:33:55.159Z

For those in the California bay area, I thought I'd post some details about the upcoming Foresight conference.

FORESIGHT@GOOGLE

25th Anniversary Conference Celebration and Reunion Weekend

Google HQ in Mountain View, CA

June 25-26 2011

Speakers and panelists include:

• WILLIAM ANDREGG - Founder/CEO of Halcyon Molecular

• MIKE GARNER, PhD - Chair of ITRS Emerging Research Materials

• MIKE NELSON - CTO of NanoInk

• LUKE NOSEK - CoFounder of Paypal, Founders Fund

Partner

• Keynote: BARNEY PELL, PhD -

Cofounder/CTO of Moon Express

• PAUL SAFFO, PhD - Wired, NYT-published strategist & forecaster

• SIR FRASER STODDART, PhD - Knighted for creation of molecular "switches" and a new field of nanochemistry

• THOMAS THEIS, PhD - IBM's Director of Physical Sciences

• Keynote: JIM VON EHR - Founder/President of Zyvex, the world's first successful molecular nanotech company

For the full speaker roster, as well as information on the 25th Anniversary Banquet, see the conference website:

http://www.foresight.org/reunion

Space is limited!

For $50 off, our supporters can register with the discount code: SIAI
[SEQ RERUN] Belief in Belief
by MinibearRex — 2011-06-21T20:27:04.222Z

Title: [SEQ RERUN] Belief in Belief Tags: sequence_reruns Today's post, Belief in Belief was originally published on July 29, 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Suppose someone claims to have a dragon in their garage, but as soon as you go to look, they say, "It's an invisible dragon!" The remarkable thing is that they know in advance exactly which experimental results they shall have to excuse, indicating that some part of their mind knows what's really going on. And yet they may honestly believe they believe there's a dragon in the garage. They may perhaps believe it is virtuous to believe there is a dragon in the garage, and believe themselves virtuous. Even though they anticipate as if there is no dragon.

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 Making Beliefs Pay Rent (in Anticipated Experiences), 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.