trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Alzheimer's vs Cryonics
by RobertLumley — 2011-08-26T23:59:32.786Z

The diagnosis of a legendary women's basketball coach at my school, Pat Summit, with early onset dementia, Alzheimer's type, got me thinking about Cryonics and Alzheimer's. For the purposes of this thought experiment, we will ignore the legal implications of the fact that you can't be frozen until you are legally dead. Let us further assume (which given my knowledge of Alzheimer's, is pretty reasonable) that the damage done by Alzheimer's is complete, and that future technology will be unable to reconstruct the destroyed components.

If you were diagnosed with Alzheimer's, or really any neurodegenerative disorder, at what point in the degradation would you want to be frozen? This would fairly easily prevent further degradation, but might further damage you/all of the other risks associated with cryonics that everyone knows. Obviously, you wouldn't have the agency of mind (or perhaps you still would, depending on when you made the decision) to do it yourself, but suppose you were caring for a loved one, or writing a living will. Assume you operate healthily at the onset of your diagnosis.

Things to consider:

How would your loved ones react to your being frozen versus coping with you having Alzheimer's? Should this matter in your decision? If it does, what implications does that have for a duty to die?

How much degradation of the mind is acceptable (and the added damage potentially done by cryonics) before one should freeze onesself?

Would you avoid the risk of being frozen all together because you believe we will or may have a cure for Alzheimer's soon, and waiting for it would do less damage than cryonics?
Bayesian Reasoning Applied to House Selling: Listing Price
by byrnema — 2011-08-26T23:43:13.806Z

Like Yvain's parents, I am planning on moving house. Selling a house and buying a house involve making a lot of decisions based on limited information, which I thought would make a set of good exercises for the application of Bayesian reasoning. I need to decide what price to list my house for, determine how much time and money to put into fixing it up, choose a new home and then there's the two poker games of the final negotiations of the sale.

(I logged onto Less Wrong having just made the decision to consider posting this article, so I was kind of weirded out at first by the title of Yvain's post; but then I was relieved that the topic was somewhat different. I am used to coincidences but on the other hand they push me a little paranoid on my spectrum and I'll feel less stable for a few hours. I already know Google tracks me and who knows what algorithms could be running given a bunch of computer scientists...?)

House Story

tldr; We're listing at the appraised value +10%.

A few years ago, we purchased a beautiful house. 'We' is my husband and I and my parents. We purchased the house because it includes a guest house where my parents can retire. However, my mom continues to postpone retirement and in the meantime my husband and I decided we would a) like more light, b) like a shorter commute and c) could purchase two homes we prefer for the price of this one -- my parents would enjoy a house on the water. (Great post and spot on about the features that matter, Yvain!)

I would be happy to sell the house for +5%, covering real estate fees and new flooring we put in. However, three houses in the cul de sac have sold this year for +10% and so we listed it at that price too. Our house is bigger than theirs but not as nice (they have granite and impressive entrances and we don't). On the other hand, having the guest house makes us special.

Via agent and potential buyer feedback, we're coming to realize that we might be lucky to sell the house for +5%. At this price level, people prefer a house that is impressive and in perfect condition.

Primary Bayesian Question

My primary question is the following: how should we decide to modify our listing price as we get more information?

First, I've read that if a house is priced correctly you'll get an average of one offer every 10 showings. So far we've had 2 showings without an offer. After how many showings should we...
Singularity Institute Strategic Plan 2011
by MichaelAnissimov — 2011-08-26T23:34:13.479Z

Thanks to the hard work and cooperation of Singularity Institute staff and volunteers, especially Louie Helm and Luke Muehlhauser (lukeprog), we now have a Strategic Plan, which outlines the near-term goals and vision of the Institute, and concrete actions we can take to fulfill those goals.

http://singinst.org/blog/2011/08/26/singularity-institute-strategic-plan-2011/

We welcome your feedback. You can send any comments to institute@intelligence.org.

The release of this Strategic Plan is part of an overall effort to increase transparency at Singularity Institute.
Weight training
by Alex Flint — 2011-08-26T15:25:42.166Z

I'm looking for resources on effective weight training for the purpose of physique building. It's an area with a particularly poor signal to noise ratio so I would value pointers from other rationalists. The kinds of questions I would like to answer are:

How to structure work-outs. Should I lift as much weight as possible or do more repetitions at lower weights?

How should I trade off frequency of gym visits against length of those visits?

What supplements should I take?

Edit: I'm vegetarian, and I now realise this is rather important to answers to point three. So far the only supplement I've been taking is soy protein.
General textbook comparison thread
by gjm — 2011-08-26T13:27:35.095Z

We've already had a lengthy (and still active) thread attempting to address the question "What are the best textbooks, and why are they better than their rivals?". That's excellent, but no one is going to post there unless they're prepared to claim: Textbook X is the best on its subject. But surely many of us have read many texts for which we couldn't say that but could say "I've read X and Y, and here's how they differ". A good supply of such comparisons would be extremely useful.

I propose this thread for that purpose. Rules:

Each top-level reply should concern two or more texts on a single subject, and provide enough information about how they compare to one another that an interested would-be reader should be able to tell which is likely to be better for his or her purposes.

Replies to these offering or soliciting further comparisons in the same domain are encouraged.

At least one book in each comparison should either

be a very good one, or at least

look like a very good one even though it isn't.

If this gets enough responses that simply looking through them becomes tiresome, I'll update the article with (something like) a list of textbooks, arranged by subject and then by author, with links for the comments in which they're compared to other books and a brief summary of what's said about them. (I might include links to comments in Luke's thread too, since anything that deserves its place there would also be acceptable here.)

See also: magfrump's request for recommendations of basic science books; "Recommended Rationalist Reading" (narrower subject focus, and without the element of comparison).
Meetup : London Science Museum, Aug. 31
by Alexandros — 2011-08-26T12:54:14.893Z

Discussion article for the meetup : London Science Museum, Aug. 31

WHEN:
31 August 2011 06:30:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Exhibition Road, London SW7 2DD

We have decided to try different meetup formats and the next 'Science Museum Lates' event for adults, on Wednesday 31st of August looks like just the thing.

More information about the event: http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum/events/events_for_adults/Lates.aspx

UPDATE: Meeting time&place under discussion, will be updated as soon as they are decided.

Discussion article for the meetup : London Science Museum, Aug. 31
Why no archive of refuted research?
by Kaj_Sotala — 2011-08-26T08:14:10.294Z

From The Atlantic's Lies, Damned Lies and Medical Science:

Still, Ioannidis anticipated that the community might shrug off his findings: sure, a lot of dubious research makes it into journals, but we researchers and physicians know to ignore it and focus on the good stuff, so what’s the big deal? The other paper headed off that claim. He zoomed in on 49 of the most highly regarded research findings in medicine over the previous 13 years, as judged by the science community’s two standard measures: the papers had appeared in the journals most widely cited in research articles, and the 49 articles themselves were the most widely cited articles in these journals. These were articles that helped lead to the widespread popularity of treatments such as the use of hormone-replacement therapy for menopausal women, vitamin E to reduce the risk of heart disease, coronary stents to ward off heart attacks, and daily low-dose aspirin to control blood pressure and prevent heart attacks and strokes. Ioannidis was putting his contentions to the test not against run-of-the-mill research, or even merely well-accepted research, but against the absolute tip of the research pyramid. Of the 49 articles, 45 claimed to have uncovered effective interventions. Thirty-four of these claims had been retested, and 14 of these, or 41 percent, had been convincingly shown to be wrong or significantly exaggerated. If between a third and a half of the most acclaimed research in medicine was proving untrustworthy, the scope and impact of the problem were undeniable.
[...]
But even for medicine’s most influential studies, the evidence sometimes remains surprisingly narrow. Of those 45 super-cited studies that Ioannidis focused on, 11 had never been retested. Perhaps worse, Ioannidis found that even when a research error is outed, it typically persists for years or even decades. He looked at three prominent health studies from the 1980s and 1990s that were each later soundly refuted, and discovered that researchers continued to cite the original results as correct more often than as flawed—in one case for at least 12 years after the results were discredited.

Here's a suggested solution to the problem of refuted research still being cited. Have some respected agency maintain an archive of studies that have failed to replicate or that have otherwise been found lacking. Once ...
[SEQ RERUN] Rationality and the English Language
by MinibearRex — 2011-08-26T05:01:34.891Z

Today's post, Rationality and the English Language was originally published on 12 September 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

George Orwell's writings on language and totalitarianism are critical to understanding rationality. Orwell was an opponent of the use of words to obscure meaning, or to convey ideas without their emotional impact. Language should get the point across - when the effort to convey information gets lost in the effort to sound authoritative, you are acting irrationally.

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 Applause Lights, 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.
Hidden motives or innocent failure?
by KatjaGrace — 2011-08-25T23:30:34.000Z

There are many ways in which what humans do differs from what they should do if they wanted to achieve the ends they claim to want to achieve. Some of these are obviously because people don’t really want what they say they want. Few people who claim human life is valuable beyond measure are unaware that small amounts of money can save lives overseas for instance.

On the other hand, many cases are obviously innocent failures of imagination or knowledge. The apparent progress humanity has made over recent millennia is not just a winding path through various signaling equilibria; we have actually thought of better stuff to do. The stone age didn’t end because making everything out of stone stopped being a credible sign of a hardworking personality.

In between there are many interesting puzzles where it isn’t clear whether hidden motives or innocent failure are to blame*. Many people strongly prefer innocent failure as a default, but in general if you can think of some improvement to the status quo, it should be pretty surprising if heaps of other people haven’t also thought of it. Even if your idea is ultimately bad, there should be some signs of people having looked into it if its deficiency isn’t obvious. Often it is clear that people have known of apparently good ideas for ages, with no sign of action. So I think there is quite a case for hidden motives explaining many of these puzzles.

Sometimes when I point out such instances, I say something like ‘ha, you aren’t trying to do what you claim – looks like you are secretly trying to do this other thing instead’. Sometimes I say something like ‘if you are trying to do X, maybe you should try doing it in this way that would achieve X rather than that other way that doesn’t seem to so well’.

I’d like to make clear that my choice of explicitly blaming hidden motives vs. suggesting alternatives as though innocent failure were the cause is not necessarily based on how likely these two explanations are. I think either presentation of such a puzzle should suggest both hypotheses to some extent. If I blame hidden motives and you feel you don’t have those hidden motives, you should question whether you are behaving efficiently. If I blame innocent failure, and you don’t feel compelled to fix the failure, you might question your motive...
Meetup : Irvine Meetup Wednesday August 31
by JGWeissman — 2011-08-25T22:03:56.295Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Irvine Meetup Wednesday August 31

WHEN:
31 August 2011 06:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
4187 Campus Dr, University Center, Irvine, CA 92612

This continues the weekly meetups in Irvine. As always the meetup at the outdoor food court in the University Center near UCI, from 6:00 to 8:00 (or whenever we actually decide to leave). Look for the sign with naive neural classifiers for bleggs and rubes. See also the email group and calendar for the Southern California Meetup Group

Discussion article for the meetup : Irvine Meetup Wednesday August 31
LW September WebDiplomacy Games
by Vaniver — 2011-08-25T21:03:12.032Z

prase is starting up a Prisoner's Dilemma Game Theory Lab which you ought to check out, and that revived (my) interest in playing Diplomacy with LWers. We've had two games run on this site, and one run on WebDiplomacy.

Diplomacy is easy to learn and, at its heart, a very simple game. Strategy and (surprisingly) diplomacy take center stage; tactics cannot get you very far, and there is no randomness. Players control a great power chosen at random on the eve of WWI, with all powers having roughly the same army size and strength, and so the ability to prevail in conflicts comes almost entirely from creating the right alliances and knowing when to trust (and betray) others. (Also, did you catch the lie in this explanation? Diplomacy involves a lot of lies.)

WebDiplomacy is a free site you can use to play Diplomacy with people online; make an account here. It also seems convenient for having multiple games going on or doing games repeated- Yvain did a heroic job in organizing, administrating, and updating the first game, but it's the sort of job that can be done with less personality by a computer. So, this post exists to help people interested in playing Diplomacy with LWers find other people to play with.

The games spawned by this post will start around the beginning of September, and a typical game lasts somewhere around 20 turns (though many players are eliminated before then). If there's continuing interest, we'll probably have a thread like this once a month, so if you don't know if you can commit to being active during September, but want to make sure a November thread gets posted even if there's not much interest now, reply to the November comment below.

A downside of Diplomacy is it really only works with 7 people, but we should be able to get at least one game going. It seems natural to break people up by game pace, as that represents significantly different time commitments. I'll be posting a number of comments with different game paces (i.e. times between turns); please only reply to the time you would most prefer. That'll make it easy to see how many players we have that are interested, and if we need to shuffle people between paces that'll be easy enough to do later. Signups will close August 31st, and games may start before then if we have sufficient interest. An exception is single-day games; those games will only have 15 or 20 minute turns, and thus ...
Meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup Wednesday August 31 7pm
by EvelynM — 2011-08-25T19:16:08.631Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup Wednesday August 31 7pm

WHEN:
31 August 2011 07:00:00PM (-0600)

WHERE:
144 North College Avenue Fort Collins, CO 80524

Coffee shop chat format, to get to know other rationalists. Look for the LessWrong sign. I'll be there till at least 8pm.

Discussion article for the meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup Wednesday August 31 7pm
Meetup : Madison
by fiddlemath — 2011-08-25T18:02:01.019Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Madison

WHEN:
30 August 2011 06:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
2100 Winnebago St, Madison, WI 53704

The third biweekly Madison Meetup, this week at Sector67.

For rather lighter fare than last time, we'll play at least a few rounds of The Resistance -- in which good play demands practical use of Bayesian reasoning and understanding the causes of your own thoughts. Also, it's quite fun. If you're a reader in the area, sign up on the Less Wrong Madison mailing list!

Discussion article for the meetup : Madison
Prisoner's Dilemma as a Game Theory Laboratory
by prase — 2011-08-25T14:30:29.507Z

Last year Yvain had organised a Diplomacy game between LessWrong users to test how well we perform in practical application of game theory. At least two games had been played, but as far as I know no analysis was made afterwards. One reason is probably that few games involving complex interactions between players constitute at most anecdotal evidence for whatever hypothesis one may test. The second one is lack of comparison to outside players. Although the games were fun, their value as a game theory experiment remains rather low. Could we test our game theoretic skills in a statistically more significant way?

Only recently I have learned about Robert Axelrod's experiment in which he run a competition of different strategies playing iteraded prisoner's dilemma, and got an idea to replicate it. I have already run a similar experiment with five contestants (all being my friends) and now a second run is being prepared, with at least nine strategies in the pool. I am interested in a third run, this time with strategies nominated by LessWrongers. The contestants of the second run which has identical rules are readers of my blog and neither of them is probably familiar with specific LW ideas. Therefore, they would serve as a fairly good control group to test LW's applied rationality skills (or a subset of). After matching the strategies in both groups separately, I plan to put all of them together and see who wins.

So, if you want to participate in this contest, feel free to send me your strategy. The rules are following.

By a strategy I mean a program sent by a contestant or coded according to his/her instructions. The strategies compete in iterated prisoner's dilemmas. A single iteration I will call a turn. In each turn each strategy has to choose between cooperating and defecting. The payoffs are:

if both cooperate, 4 points for each

if both defect, 1 point for each

else 7 points for the defector and 0 points for its cooperating opponent

By a match I mean a series of 100 iterations between the same opponents.

There will be two different competitions, the round-robin tournament and the evolutionary tournament. Two separate final standings will be made, one for each tournament. Any received strategy has to participate in both.

In the round-robin tournament strategies will play one match against each other (not against a copy of themselves). The winner will b

...
Meetup : Austin, TX
by Vaniver — 2011-08-25T12:49:22.368Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Austin, TX

WHEN: 27 August 2011 01:30:00PM (-0500)

WHERE: 2222B Guadalupe St Austin, Texas 78705

Saturday SATURDAY SATURDAY, come down to Caffe Medici and be AMAZED and ASTOUNDED by the WARM PERSONALITIES and GREAT CONVERSATION on display!

We typically occupy the little raised stage on the second floor, to the left of the stairs. Come join us!

Discussion article for the meetup : Austin, TX
[Poll] Who looks better in your eyes?
by  — 2011-08-25T11:29:12.784Z

This is thread where I'm trying to figure out a few things about signalling on LessWrong and need some information, so please immediately after reading about the two individuals please answer the poll. The two individuals:

A. Sees that an interpretation of reality shared by others is not correct, but tries to pretend otherwise for personal gain and/or safety.

B. Fails to see that an interpretation of reality is shared by others is flawed. He is therefore perfectly honest in sharing the interpretation of reality with others. The reward regime for outward behaviour is the same as with A.

To add a trivial inconvenience that matches the inconvenience of answering the poll before reading on, comments on what I think the two individuals signal,what the trade off is and what I speculate the results might be here versus the general population, is behind this link.
Meetup : Helsinki meetup
by Kellopyy — 2011-08-25T07:24:57.735Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Helsinki meetup

WHEN:
01 September 2011 06:00:00PM (+0300)

WHERE:
Yliopistonkatu 5, 00100 Helsinki, Finland

Less Wrong meetup for our Helsinki group.

Discussion article for the meetup : Helsinki meetup
IntelligenceExplosion.com graphic redesign
by lukeprog — 2011-08-25T06:33:11.922Z

LW user Lightwave offered to redesign IntelligenceExplosion.com, which at that point looked almost identical to anthropic-principle.com because I don't do web design. Within 9 days of original email contact, Lightwave completed the project and I uploaded the new files. The redesign is a big improvement, so please go to this comment by Lightwave and give him/her lots of karma!