trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Recklessness
by So8res — 2016-02-02T02:00:00.000Z
Link: https://mindingourway.com/recklessness/

The second dubious virtue is recklessness. As with desperation, there are many bad ways to be reckless. There is a nihilistic recklessness, in those with a muted ability to feel and care, that is self-destructive. There is a social recklessness, when peers push each other towards doing something dangerous that none of them would do alone, in a demonstration of commitment that can become needlessly dangerous. And there is a fiery, destructive recklessness in those too quick to anger, which can lead people to actions they will regret for a lifetime. I caution against all these types of recklessness.

Nevertheless, there is a type of recklessness that is a virtue. This is recklessness in the pursuit of an external goal, and I have found it to be rather rare.

I get a lot of questions from people about how cautious they should be as they make changes in their lives. If they remove their guilt motivation, will they be able to do anything at all? If they really try to understand how screwed up the world is, on a gut level, will they break? If they devote their efforts to the pursuit of something larger than them, will they lose touch with their humanity, and with their ability to connect to other human beings?

And I tend to answer: You are not made of glass.

Dive in. Change things. Fix problems. If more problems crop up, fix those too.

Imagine that you look upon yourself, detect harmful guilt-based motivation, tear it out, and then notice that this leaves you with a Zen-like lack of drive, such that most of yourself is now happy to let days slip by but some small part of you is crying out that something is wrong. Recklessness-the-virtue is about being in that state and deciding to push forward rather than retreating; deciding to make a desperate effort to acquire a new drive, rather than panicking and retreating back towards guilt.

Recklessness is about ripping off the blinders that prevent you from seeing the dark world on a gut level, and knowing that if this happens to be debilitating then you'll find some new way to handle it, rather than being forced to retreat.

Always forward, never back. Be unable to despair. Have confidence all the way up. Think of all the people you know who are too stagnant, too cautious about breaking something important, to ever change at all.

You can recover from breaking a few parts of yourself, so long as you're modular rather than fragile. Y...
February 2016 Media Thread
by ArisKatsaris — 2016-02-02T00:20:37.857Z

This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.

If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.

Please post only under one of the already created subthreads, and never directly under the parent media thread.

Use the "Other Media" thread if you believe the piece of media you want to discuss doesn't fit under any of the established categories.

Use the "Meta" thread if you want to discuss about the monthly media thread itself (e.g. to propose adding/removing/splitting/merging subthreads, or to discuss the type of content properly belonging to each subthread) or for any other question or issue you may have about the thread or the rules.
The Valentine’s Day Gift That Saves Lives
by Gleb_Tsipursky — 2016-02-01T17:00:50.753Z

This is mainly of interest to Effective Altruism-aligned Less Wrongers. Thanks to Agnes Vishnevkin, Jake Krycia, Will Kiely, Jo Duyvestyn, Alfredo Parra, Jay Quigley, Hunter Glenn, and Rhema Hokama for looking at draft versions of this post. At least one aspiring rationalist who read a draft version of this post, after talking to his girlfriend, decided to adopt this new Valentine's Day tradition, which is some proof of its impact. The more it's shared, the more this new tradition might get taken up, and if you want to share it, I suggest you share the version of this post published on The Life You Can Save blog. It's also cross-posted on the Intentional Insights blog and on the EA Forum.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Valentine’s Day Gift That Saves Lives

Last year, my wife gave me the most romantic Valentine’s Day gift ever.

We had previously been very traditional with our Valentine’s Day gifts, such as fancy candy for her or a bottle of nice liquor for me. Yet shortly before Valentine’s Day, she approached me about rethinking that tradition.

Did candy or liquor truly express our love for each other? Is it more important that a gift helps the other person be happy and healthy, or that it follows traditional patterns?

Instead of candy and liquor, my wife suggested giving each other gifts that actually help us improve our mental and physical well-being, and the world as a whole, by donating to charities in the name of the other person.

She described an article she read about a study that found that people who give to charity feel happier than those that don’t give. The experimenters gave people money and asked them to spend it either on themselves or on others. Those who spent it on others experienced greater happiness.

Not only that, such giving also made people healthier. Another study showed that participants who gave to others experienced a significant decrease in blood pressure, which did not happen to those who spent money on themselves

So my thoughtful wife suggested we try an experiment: for Valentine’s Day, we'd give to charity in the name of the other person. This way, we could make each other happier and healthier, while helping save lives at the same time. Moreover, we could even improve our relationship!

I accepted my w

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Open thread, Feb. 01 - Feb. 07, 2016
by MrMind — 2016-02-01T08:24:43.445Z

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.
AI safety in the age of neural networks and Stanislaw Lem 1959 prediction
by turchin — 2016-01-31T19:08:59.827Z

Tl;DR: Neural networks will result in slow takeoff and arm race between two AIs. It has some good and bad consequences to the problem of AI safety. Hard takeoff may happen after it anyway.

Summary: Neural networks based AI can be built; it will be relatively safe, not for a long time though.

The neuro AI era (since 2012) feature an exponential growth of the total AI expertise, with a doubling period of about 1 year, mainly due to data exchange among diverse agents and different processing methods. It will probably last for about 10 to 20 years, after that, hard takeoff of strong AI or creation of Singleton based on integration of different AI systems can take place.

Neural networks based AI implies slow takeoff, which can take years and eventually lead to AI’s evolutionary integration into the human society. A similar scenario was described by Stanisław Lem in 1959: the arms race between countries would cause power race between AIs. The race is only possible if the self-enhancement rate is rather slow and there is data interchange between the systems. The slow takeoff will result in a world system with two competitive AI-countries. Its major risk will be a war between AIs and corrosion of value system of competing AIs.

The hard takeoff implies revolutionary changes within days or weeks. The slow takeoff can transform into the hard takeoff at some stage. The hard takeoff is only possible if one AI considerably surpasses its peers (OpenAI project wants to prevent it).

Part 1. Limitations of explosive potential of neural nets

Everyday now we hear about success of neural networks, and we could conclude that human level AI is near the corner. But such type of AI is not fit for explosive self-improvement.

If AI is based on neural net, it is not easy for it to undergo quick self-improvement for several reasons:

1. A neuronet’s executable code is not fully transparent because of theoretical reasons, as knowledge is not explicitly present within it. So even if one can read neuron weight values, it’s not easy to understand how they can be changed to improve something.

2. Educating a new neural network is a resource-consuming task. If a neuro AI decides to go the way of self-enhancement, but is unable to understand its source code, a logical solution would be to ‘deliver a child’, i.e. to teach a new neural network. However, educati...
Meetup :  LW Melb Rationality Dojo. Including: "Critical Thoughts on Nutritional Recommendations"
by Chriswaterguy — 2016-01-31T11:42:30.642Z

Discussion article for the meetup : LW Melb Rationality Dojo. Including: "Critical Thoughts on Nutritional Recommendations"

WHEN:
06 February 2016 02:30:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
Janet Lady Clarke Memorial Rotunda, Queen Victoria Gardens (near NGV), Melbourne, Australia

This is an event for Less Wrong Melbourne, an active local group dedicated to the art of rationality and winning at life. It is cross-posted here for your information.

PLEASE NOTE, THE TIME AND VENUE ARE DIFFERENT FROM USUAL. (On Saturday, 2:30pm, and in the park near the NGV. See below.)

Less Wrong Melbourne's Rationality Dojos are self-improvement sessions for those committed to the art of rationality and personal growth.

For this month's scheduled activities, we have...

Adam Karlovsky speaking on "Critical thoughts on nutritional recommendations." Adam will cover government and non-government recommendations, a review of various theories of nutrition, and then a common behaviours roundup (e.g. taking multivitamins, cutting out or adding various foods/drinks).

Then three lightning talks:

Patrick Robotham: Group decision making.

Eike Germann: Gamifying your to do list.

Chris Waterguy: Practical insights from the book "Getting Things Done".

We welcome new members who are interested in exploring rationality. We're all "aspiring rationalists" – none of us have attained perfection ;-).

We have copies of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (aka HPMOR) to give away to anyone who'd like one. (First 17 chapters in hard copy, the rest free online.)

WHEN: Saturday 6 Feb, 2:30pm arrival, 3:00pm start.(We're experimenting with the first Saturday of the month, at this earlier time, for the next couple of dojos.)

WHERE: The Janet Lady Clarke Rotunda. Linlithgow Ave, Melbourne. Map: https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Janet+Lady+Clarke+Rotunda/@-37.822314,144.972208,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x6315345fa59c9740?sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiMrcfHlNHKAhWHUqYKHQKdAU8Q_BIIZTAK

Directions: It's in the park lands directly opposite the NGV in St Kilda Road, about 300m from the NGV tram stop. Walking distance from Flinders Street Station.

Contingency: If the rotunda is preoccupied by another group, we will be on the grass nearby. If the whole area has been taken over by a wedding party, deadly snakes, children or orcs, we may move over the roa

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Identifying bias. A Bayesian analysis of suspicious agreement between beliefs and values.
by Stefan_Schubert — 2016-01-31T11:29:05.276Z

Here is a new paper of mine (12 pages) on suspicious agreement between belief and values. The idea is that if your empirical beliefs systematically support your values, then that is evidence that you arrived at those beliefs through a biased belief-forming process. This is especially so if those beliefs concern propositions which aren’t probabilistically correlated with each other, I argue.

I have previously written several LW posts on these kinds of arguments (here and here; see also mine and ClearerThinking’s political bias test) but here the analysis is more thorough. See also Thrasymachus' recent post on the same theme.
[LINK] How A Lamp Took Away My Reading And A Box Brought It Back
by CronoDAS — 2016-01-30T16:55:11.200Z

By Ferrett Steinmetz

Ferrett isn't officially a Rationality Blogger, but he posts things that seem relevant fairly often. This one is in the spirit of "Beware Trivial Inconveniences". It's the story of how he realized that a small change in his environment led to a big change in his behavior...
[moderator action] The_Lion and The_Lion2 are banned
by Viliam_Bur — 2016-01-30T02:09:28.603Z

Accounts "The_Lion" and "The_Lion2" are banned now. Here is some background, mostly for the users who weren't here two years ago:

User "Eugine_Nier" was banned for retributive downvoting in July 2014. He keeps returning to the website using new accounts, such as "Azathoth123", "Voiceofra", "The_Lion", and he keeps repeating the behavior that got him banned originally.

The original ban was permanent. It will be enforced on all future known accounts of Eugine. (At random moments, because moderators sometimes feel too tired to play whack-a-mole.) This decision is not open to discussion.

Please note that the moderators of LW are the opposite of trigger-happy. Not counting spam, there is on average less than one account per year banned. I am writing this explicitly, to avoid possible misunderstanding among the new users. Just because you have read about someone being banned, it doesn't mean that you are now at risk.

Most of the time, LW discourse is regulated by the community voting on articles and comments. Stupid or offensive comments get downvoted; you lose some karma, then everyone moves on. In rare cases, moderators may remove specific content that goes against the rules. The account ban is only used in the extreme cases (plus for obvious spam accounts). Specifically, on LW people don't get banned for merely not understanding something or disagreeing with someone.

What does "retributive downvoting" mean? Imagine that in a discussion you write a comment that someone disagrees with. Then in a few hours you will find that your karma has dropped by hundreds of points, because someone went through your entire comment history and downvoted all comments you ever wrote on LW; most of them completely unrelated to the debate that "triggered" the downvoter.

Such behavior is damaging to the debate and the community. Unlike downvoting a specific comment, this kind of mass downvoting isn't used to correct a faux pas, but to drive a person away from the website. It has especially strong impact on new users, who don't know what is going on, so they may mistake it for a reaction of the whole community. But even in experienced users it creates an "ugh field" around certain topics known to invoke the reaction. Thus a single user has achieved disproportional control over the content and the user base of the website. This is not desired, and will be punished by the s...
Yoshua Bengio on AI progress, hype and risks
by V_V — 2016-01-30T01:45:53.290Z

LINK

Yoshua Bengio, one the world's leading expert on machine learning, and neural networks in particular, explains his view on these issues in an interview. Relevant quotes:

There are people who are grossly overestimating the progress that has been made. There are many, many years of small progress behind a lot of these things, including mundane things like more data and computer power. The hype isn’t about whether the stuff we’re doing is useful or not—it is. But people underestimate how much more science needs to be done. And it’s difficult to separate the hype from the reality because we are seeing these great things and also, to the naked eye, they look magical

[ Recursive self-improvement ] It’s not how AI is built these days. Machine learning means you have a painstaking, slow process of acquiring information through millions of examples. A machine improves itself, yes, but very, very slowly, and in very specialized ways. And the kind of algorithms we play with are not at all like little virus things that are self-programming. That’s not what we’re doing.

Right now, the way we’re teaching machines to be intelligent is that we have to tell the computer what is an image, even at the pixel level. For autonomous driving, humans label huge numbers of images of cars to show which parts are pedestrians or roads. It’s not at all how humans learn, and it’s not how animals learn. We’re missing something big. This is one of the main things we’re doing in my lab, but there are no short-term applications—it’s probably not going to be useful to build a product tomorrow.

We ought to be talking about these things [ AI risks ]. The thing I’m more worried about, in a foreseeable future, is not computers taking over the world. I’m more worried about misuse of AI. Things like bad military uses, manipulating people through really smart advertising; also, the social impact, like many people losing their jobs. Society needs to get together and come up with a collective response, and not leave it to the law of the jungle to sort things out.

I think it's fair to say that Bengio has joined the ranks of AI researchers like his colleagues Andrew Ng and Yann LeCun who publicly express skepticism towards imminent human-extinction-level AI.
Positive utility in an infinite universe
by casebash — 2016-01-29T23:40:45.491Z

Content Note: Highly abstract situation with existing infinities

This post will attempt to resolve the problem of infinities in utilitarianism. The arguments are very similar to an argument for total utilitarianism over other forms which I'll most likely write up at some point (my previous post was better as an argument against average utilitarianism, rather than an argument in favour of total utilitarianism).

In the Less Wrong Facebook group, Gabe Bf posted a challenge to save utilitarianism from the problem of infinities. The original problem is from by a paper by Nick Bostrom.

I believe that I have quite a good solution to this problem that allows us to systemise comparing infinite sets of utility, but this post focuses on justifying why we should take it to be axiomic that adding another person with positive utility is good and on why the results that seem to contradict this lack credibility. Let's call this the Addition Axiom or A. We can also consider the Finite Addition Axiom (only applies when we add utility into a universe with a finite number of people), call this A0.

Let's consider what other alternative axioms that we might want to take instead. One is the Infinite Indifference Axiom or I, that is that we should be indifferent if both options provide infinite total utility (of the same order of infinity). Another option would be the Remapping Axiom (or R), which would assert that if we can surjectively map a group of people G onto another group H so that each g from G is mapped onto a person h from H where u(g) >= u(h), then v(H) <= v(G) where v represents the value of a particular universe (it doesn't necessarily map onto the real numbers or represent a complete ordering). Using the Remapping Axiom twice implies that we should be indifferent between an infinite series of ones and the same series with a 0 at one spot. This means that the Remapping Axiom is incompatible with the Addition Axiom. We can also consider the Finite Remapping Axiom (R0) which is where we limit the Remapping Axiom to remapping a finite number of elements.

First, we need to determine what are good properties of a statement we wish to take as an axiom. This is my first time trying to establish an axiom so formally, so I will admit that this list is not going to be perfect.

Uses well-understood and regular objects, properties or processes. If the components are not underst

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Meetup : San Antonio Meetup Discussion (Topic: Pre-Hindsight)
by Bryan-san — 2016-01-29T22:30:07.376Z

Discussion article for the meetup : San Antonio Meetup Discussion (Topic: Pre-Hindsight)

WHEN:
07 February 2016 02:00:00PM (-0600)

WHERE:
12651 Vance Jackson Rd #118, San Antonio, TX 78230

Bubble tea, frozen yogurt, and discussion at Yumi Berry. All are welcome to attend.

Come meet the local community, discuss rationality, and talk about all things LessWrong. Look for the sign that says "Less Wrong".

Topic of the week: Pre-hindsight

Discussion article for the meetup : San Antonio Meetup Discussion (Topic: Pre-Hindsight)
Clearing An Overgrown Garden
by Anders_H — 2016-01-29T22:16:56.620Z

(tl;dr: In this post, I make some concrete suggestions for LessWrong 2.0.)

Less Wrong 2.0

A few months ago, Vaniver posted some ideas about how to reinvigorate Less Wrong. Based on comments in that thread and based on personal discussions I have had with other members of the community, I believe there are several different views on why Less Wrong is dying. The following are among the most popular hypotheses:

(1) Pacifism has caused our previously well-kept garden to become overgrown

(2) The aversion to politics has caused a lot of interesting political discussions to move away from the website

(3) People prefer posting to their personal blogs.

With this background, I suggest the following policies for Less Wrong 2.0. This should be seen only as a starting point for discussion about the ideal way to implement a rationality forum. Most likely, some of my ideas are counterproductive. If anyone has better suggestions, please post them to the comments.

Moderation Policy:

There are four levels of users:

Users

Trusted Users

Moderators

Administrator

Users may post comments and top level posts, but their contributions must be approved by a moderator.

Trusted users may post comments and top level posts which appear immediately. Trusted user status is awarded by 2/3 vote among the moderators

Moderators may approve comments made by non-trusted users. There should be at least 10 moderators to ensure that comments are approved within an hour of being posted, preferably quicker. If there is disagreement between moderators, the matter can be discussed on a private forum. Decisions may be altered by a simple majority vote.

The administrator (preferably Eliezer or Nate) chooses the moderators.

Personal Blogs:

All users are assigned a personal subdomain, such as Anders_H.lesswrong.com. When publishing a top-level post, users may click a checkbox to indicate whether the post should appear only on their personal subdomain, or also in the Less Wrong discussion feed. The commenting system is shared between the two access pathways. Users may choose a design template for their subdomain. However, when the post is accessed from the discussion feed, the default template overrides the user-specific template. The personal subdomain may include a blogroll, an about page, and other information. Users may purchase a top-level domain as an alias for their subdomain

Stan

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Meetup : Role playing game based on HPMOR in Moscow
by Alexander230 — 2016-01-29T17:45:09.623Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Role playing game based on HPMOR in Moscow

WHEN:
13 February 2016 02:00:00PM (+0300)

WHERE:
Большая Дорогомиловская, 5к2

Welcome to our custom made role playing game "Hogwarts and methods of rationality", inspired by HPMOR story! It will be intellectual role playing game with rationality-based minigames. You can read more detailed description here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W1VtMcyi0g8Fufs59Rkf7NOEsbReDUblCmmhSRpYGz4/edit#heading=h.tb763m3ouko8

If you intend to come, please register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/13sjU9mbHJQCOQf0h3iCymp8W14NRPuzIUMKpkVvh2Mk/viewform?c=0&w=1

It will help us to estimate the quantity of players.

Discussion article for the meetup : Role playing game based on HPMOR in Moscow