trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Burdens
by Scott Alexander — 2014-08-16T19:00:00.000Z

[Content note: Suicide. May be guilt-inducing for people who feel like burdens. All patient characteristics have been heavily obfuscated to protect confidentiality.]

The DSM lists nine criteria for major depressive disorder, of which the seventh is “feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt”.

There are a lot of dumb diagnostic debates over which criteria are “more important” or “more fundamental”, and for me there’s always been something special about criterion seven. People get depressed over all sorts of things. But when they’re actively suicidal, the people who aren’t just gesturing for help but totally set on it, they always say one thing:

“I feel like I’m a burden”.

Depression is in part a disease of distorted cognitions, a failure of rationality. I had one patient who worked for GM, very smart guy, invented a lot of safety features for cars. He was probably actively saving a bunch of people’s lives every time he checked in at the office, and he still felt like he was worthless, a burden, that he was just draining resources that could better be used for someone else.

In cases like these, you can do a little bit of good just by teaching people the fundamental lesson of rationality: that you can’t always trust your brain. If your System I is telling you that you’re a worthless burden, it could be because you’re a worthless burden, or it could be because System I is broken. If System I is broken, you need to call in System II to route around the distorted cognition so you can understand at least on an intellectual level that you’re wrong. Once you understand you’re wrong on an intellectual level, you can do what you need to do to make it sink in on a practical level as well – which starts with not killing yourself.

As sad as it was, Robin Williams’ suicide has actually been sort of helpful for me. For the past few days, I’ve tried telling these sorts of people that Robin Williams brightened the lives of millions of people, was a truly great man – and his brain still kept telling him he didn’t deserve to live. So maybe depressed brains are not the most trustworthy arbiters on these sorts of issues.

This sort of supportive psychotherapy (ie “psychotherapy you make up as you go along”) can sometimes...
Astray with the Truth: Logic and Math
by StephenR — 2014-08-16T15:40:31.757Z

LessWrong has one of the strongest and most compelling presentations of a correspondence theory of truth on the internet, but as I said in A Pragmatic Epistemology, it has some deficiencies. This post delves into one example: its treatment of math and logic. First, though, I'll summarise the epistemology of the sequences (especially as presented in High Advanced Epistemology 101 for Beginners).

Truth is the correspondence between beliefs and reality, between the map and the territory.[1] Reality is a causal fabric, a collection of variables ("stuff") that interact with each other.[2] True beliefs mirror reality in some way. If I believe that most maps skew the relative size of Ellesmere Island, it's true when I compare accurate measurements of Ellesmere Island to accurate measurements of other places, and find that the differences aren't preserved in the scaling of most maps. That is an example of a truth-condition, which is a reality that the belief can correspond to. My belief about world maps is true when that scaling doesn't match up in reality. All meaningful beliefs have truth-conditions; they trace out paths in a causal fabric.[3] Another way to define truth, then, is that a belief is true when it traces a path which is found in the causal fabric the believer inhabits.

Beliefs come in many forms. You can have beliefs about your experiences past, present and future; about what you ought to do; and, relevant to our purposes, about abstractions like mathematical objects. Mathematical statements are true when they are truth-preserving, or valid. They're also conditional: they're about all possible causal fabrics rather than any one in particular.[4] That is, when you take a true mathematical statement and plug in any acceptable inputs,[5] you will end up with a true conditional statement about the inputs. Let's illustrate this with the disjunctive syllogism:

((A∨B) ∧ ¬A) ⇒ B

Letting A be "All penguins ski in December" and B be "Martians have been decimated," this reads "If all penguins ski in December or Martians have been decimated, and some penguins don't ski in December, then Martians have been decimated." And if the hypothesis obtains (if it's true that (A∨B) ∧ ¬A), then the conclusion (B) is claimed to follow.[6]

That's it for review, now for the substance.

Summary. ...
Three methods of attaining change
by Stefan_Schubert — 2014-08-16T15:38:45.743Z

Say that you want to change some social or political institution: the educational system, the monetary system, research on AGI safety, or what not. When trying to reach this goal, you may use one of the following broad strategies (or some combination of them):

1) You may directly try to lobby (i.e. influence) politicians to implement this change, or try to influence voters to vote for parties that promise to implement these changes.

2) You may try to build an alternative system and hope that it eventually becomes so popular so that it replaces the existing system.

3) You may try to develop tools that a) appeal to users of existing systems and b) whose widespread use is bound to change those existing systems.

Let me give some examples of what I mean. Trying to persuade politicians that we should replace conventional currencies by a private currency or, for that matter, starting a pro-Bitcoin party, fall under 1), whereas starting a private currency and hope that it spreads falls under 2). (This post was inspired by a great comment by Gunnar Zarncke on precisely this topic. I take it that he was there talking of strategy 2.) Similarly, trying to lobby politicians to reform the academia falls under 1) whereas starting new research institutions which use new and hopefully more effective methods falls under 2). I take it that this is what, e.g. Leverage Research is trying to do, in part. Similarly, libertarians who vote for Ron Paul are taking the first course, while at least one possible motivation for the Seasteading Institute is to construct an alternative system that proves to be more efficient than existing governments.

Efficient Voting Advice Applications (VAA's), which advice you to vote on the basis of your views on different policy matters, can be an example of 3) (they are discussed here). Suppose that voters started to use them on a grand scale. This could potentially force politicians to adhere very closely to the views of the voters on each particular issue, since if you failed to do this you would stand little chance of winning. This may or may not be a good thing, but the point is that it would be a change that would not be caused by lobbying of politicians or by building an alternative system, but simply by constructing a tool whose widespread use could change the existing system.

Another similar tool is reputation or user...
Meetup : Utrecht: Debiasing techniques
by immasix — 2014-08-16T10:05:30.187Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Utrecht: Debiasing techniques

WHEN:
21 September 2014 02:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Utrecht, Netherlands

We have biweekly meetups in a pub in Utrecht, near Central Station. This time we will discuss debiasing techniques. For details, please look at meetup.com, which is supposed to be up-to-date. http://www.meetup.com/LWEANL/
Address: Film Café Oskar, Slachtstraat 5
Filmcafé OSKAR
Slachtstraat 5 (bij De Neude)
3512 BC UTRECHT

Discussion article for the meetup : Utrecht: Debiasing techniques
Meetup : Utrecht: Improve your productivity
by immasix — 2014-08-16T10:03:09.233Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Utrecht: Improve your productivity

WHEN:
06 September 2014 02:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Utrecht, Netherlands

We have biweekly meetups in a pub in Utrecht, near Central Station. For this meetup we don't know the topic yet. For details, please look at meetup.com, which is supposed to be up-to-date. http://www.meetup.com/LWEANL/events/200065492/ Address:
Filmcafé OSKAR
Slachtstraat 5 (bij De Neude)
3512 BC UTRECHT

Discussion article for the meetup : Utrecht: Improve your productivity
Doing good in a very noisy world
by KatjaGrace — 2014-08-16T05:22:47.000Z

Suppose you live in a world where every time you try to do something good, it gives rise to such a giant waterfall of side effects that half the time the net effect of your actions is bad, and half the time it is good but largely from sources you didn’t anticipate. Also suppose that the analogous thing would happen if you tried, hypothetically, to do bad things.

It sometimes seems plausible that we do live in such a world, and this sometimes makes it seem that doing good is a hopeless affair.

However I propose that in the most plausible worlds like this, when you try to do good things, in expectation you do a bit of good, and the good is merely overwhelmed by a vast random term, with expected value zero. In which case, even though your actions cause net bad half the time, they have positive expected value, and are about as good in expectation as you thought before considering the side effects. Is that so hopelessness inducing?

If so, consider a related scenario. Every time you do anything, it has exactly the desired consequences, and no others of importance. Except that it also causes a random number generator to run, and add or subtract a random amount of utility from the world, with expected value zero. Does this seem hopeless, or do you just ignore the random number generator, and do good things?

If our world is very noisy like this, is the aforementioned model a good description?

Inspired by a conversation with Paul Christiano, in which he said something like this.
Meetup : LessWrong Hamburg - Diet
by Gunnar_Zarncke — 2014-08-15T22:53:30.717Z

Discussion article for the meetup : LessWrong Hamburg - Diet

WHEN:
29 August 2014 07:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
hamburg, germany, fehnweg 4

After some extended summer break we continue our LessWrong meetup
on Friday, August 29th at Fehnweg 4, 22415 Hamburg
The meetup will start around 7 PM MET.

The topics of the meetup will be:
- comparison of our meetup to the meetup in Berlin which I attended
- reasons for vegetarian diet
- possibly a round of Pandemic (the game)

As always guests and newbies are welcome.

Note: Further meetups will follow on different weekdays.

Discussion article for the meetup : LessWrong Hamburg - Diet
FAI PR tracking well [link]
by Dr_Manhattan — 2014-08-15T21:23:48.622Z

This time, it's by "The Editors" of Bloomberg view (which is very significant in News world). Content is very reasonable explanation of AI concerns, though not novel to this audience.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-08-10/intelligent-machines-scare-smart-people

Directionally this is definitely positive, though I'm not sure quite how. Does anyone have have ideas? Perhaps one of the orgs (MIRI, FHI, CSER, FLI) reach out and say hello to the editors?
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2014-08-15T20:21:31.452Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on August 8th. The following week's summary is here.

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

Atlanta - Filtering Ideas: 09 August 2014 07:00PM
Bratislava: 18 August 2014 06:00PM
Buenos Aires LessWrong meetup: 09 August 2014 04:00PM
Frankfurt Open Mic (Thinking Fast and Slow, Happiness and Money,...): 10 August 2014 02:00PM
Helsinki Book Blanket Meetup: 16 August 2014 03:00PM
Houston, TX: 09 August 2014 12:00PM
Perth, Australia: Sunday lunch: 17 August 2014 12:00PM

The remaining meetups take place in cities with regular scheduling, but involve a change in time or location, special meeting content, or simply a helpful reminder about the meetup:

Brussels - August (topic TBD): 09 August 2014 01:00PM
Canberra: Effective Altruism: 09 August 2014 06:00PM
London - Index Funds and Other Fun Stuff: 10 August 2014 02:00PM
Salt Lake, UT: Lightning Talks: 09 August 2014 04:45PM
Sydney Meetup - August: 27 August 2014 06:30PM
Washington, D.C.: Intro to Confirmation Bias or "Encore" Singing Game Meetup: 10 August 2014 03:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buffalo, Cambridge UK, Canberra, Columbus, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Mountain View, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Sydney, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, Waterloo, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers.

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, build community, and have fun!

In addition to the handy sidebar of upcoming meetups, a meetup overview is posted on the front page every Friday. These are an attempt to collect information on all the meetups happening in upcoming weeks. The best way to get your meetup featured is still to use the Add New Meetup feature, but you'll also have the benefit of having your meetup mentioned in a weekly overview. These overview posts are moved to the discussion section when the new post goes up.

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

If you check Less Wrong irregularly, consider s...
Credence Calibration Icebreaker Game
by Ruby — 2014-08-14T21:01:00.000Z

The Aussie mega-meetup took place this past weekend. For it, a new kind of icebreaker was needed: one which is was not merely fun and sociable, but also instilled with the Way. Thus was the Credence Calibration Icebreaker forged.

A marriage of the credence game and the classic icebreaker, ‘Say three things about yourself, one of them a lie’, the game allows players to learn about each other, test their ability to deceive and detect deception, and discover just how calibrated they are.

How to play

Playing instructions here: docx pdf. Scoring spreadsheet.

Each turn a player makes three statements about themselves. One and only one the statement must be intentionally untrue. All others players assign probabilities of being false to each statement. These probability sum to 1: P(A’) + P(B’) + P(C’ ) = 1. The game is scored in the same manner as the credence game, but with reference to 33% rather than 50%.

The way we played it, a player would reveal which was the lie immediately after everyone else had assigned probabilities. The immediate feedback is more fun and allows players to recalibrate as they learn about their performance. Revealing which statements were lies at the end would require reminding everyone what the other statements were.

Many meetup groups have played the Aumann agree game where groups collectively assign credences to a collection of statements, however that game requires a collection of statements to be collected in advance. Once played, new statements must be collected for a new game. The credence calibration icebreaker has the advantage that players generate the statements allowing for easy replay.

Improvements

Restrictions should be placed on the nature of the lies in order to control which skills are tested. We played without restrictions and most players generated a lie by altering a minor detail of a true statement which didn’t affect its plausibility, e.g. ‘My father’s brain is frozen’1 vs. ‘My uncle’s brain is frozen’. This resulted in the game being less about appraising the plausibility of statements and more about detecting deception by tells and other clues.

Following the original icebreaker game, three statements were used. Reducing the number of statements to two would have the following benefits:

The game is currently data entry intensive, requiring two numbers per question per player to be entered. Two state

...
[LINK] Speed superintelligence?
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2014-08-14T15:57:36.830Z

From Toby Ord:

Tool assisted speedruns (TAS) are when people take a game and play it frame by frame, effectively providing super reflexes and forethought, where they can spend a day deciding what to do in the next 1/60th of a second if they wish. There are some very extreme examples of this, showing what can be done if you really play a game perfectly. For example, this video shows how to winSuper Mario Bros 3 in 11 minutes. It shows how different optimal play can be from normal play. In particular, on level 8-1, it gains 90 extra lives by a sequence of amazing jumps.

Other TAS runs get more involved and start exploiting subtle glitches in the game. For example, this page talks about speed running NetHack, using a lot of normal tricks, as well as luck manipulation (exploiting the RNG) and exploiting a dangling pointer bug to rewrite parts of memory.

Though there are limits to what AIs could do with sheer speed, it's interesting that great performance can be achieved with speed alone, that this allows different strategies from usual ones, and that it allows the exploitation of otherwise unexploitable glitches and bugs in the setup.
Public thread for researchers seeking existential risk consultation
by snarles — 2014-08-14T13:01:10.619Z

LW is one of the few informal places which take existential risk seriously. Researchers can post here to describe proposed or ongoing research projects, seeking consultation on possible X-risk consequences of their work. Commenters should write their posts with the understanding that many researchers prioritize interest first and existential risk/social benefit of their work second, but that discussions of X-risk may steer researchers to projects with less X-risk/more social benefit.
[LINK] AI risk summary published in "The Conversation"
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2014-08-14T11:12:22.632Z

A slightly edited version of "AI risk - executive summary" has been published in "The Conversation", titled "Your essential guide to the rise of the intelligent machines":

The risks posed to human beings by artificial intelligence in no way resemble the popular image of the Terminator. That fictional mechanical monster is distinguished by many features – strength, armour, implacability, indestructability – but Arnie’s character lacks the one characteristic that we in the real world actually need to worry about – extreme intelligence.

Thanks again for those who helped forge the original article. You can use this link, or the Less Wrong one, depending on the audience.
Meetup : [CANCELLED] Perth, Australia: Games night
by  — 2014-08-14T04:28:46.836Z

Discussion article for the meetup : [CANCELLED] Perth, Australia: Games night

WHEN:
02 September 2014 06:00:00PM (+0800)

WHERE:
6/663 Newcastle Street, Leederville, WA 6007

This event has been cancelled. We will attempt to reschedule it. Sorry about the confusion!

Discussion article for the meetup : [CANCELLED] Perth, Australia: Games night
Ethical frameworks are isomorphic
by lavalamp — 2014-08-13T22:39:50.343Z

I have previously been saying things like "consequentialism is obviously correct". But it occurred to me that this was gibberish this morning.

I maintain that, for any consequentialist goal, you can construct a set of deontological rules which will achieve approximately the same outcome. The more fidelity you require, the more rules you'll have to make (so of course it's only isomorphic in the limit).

Similarly, for any given deontological system, one can construct a set of virtues which will cause the same behavior (e.g., "don't murder" becomes "it is virtuous to be the sort of person who doesn't murder")

The opposite is also true. Given a virtue ethics system, one can construct deontological rules which will cause the same things to happen. And given deontological rules, it's easy to get a consequentialist system by predicting what the rules will cause to happen and then calling that your desired outcome.

Given that you can phrase your desired (outcome, virtues, rules) in any system, it's really silly to argue about which system is the "correct" one.

Instead, recognize that some ethical systems are better for some tasks. Want to compute actions given limited computation? Better use deontological rules or maybe virtue ethics. Want to plan a society that makes everyone "happy" for some value of "happy"? Better use consequentialist reasoning.

Last thought: none of the three frameworks actually gives any insight into morality. Deontology leaves the question of "what rules?", virtue ethics leaves the question of "what virtues?", and consequentialism leaves the question of "what outcome?". The hard part of ethics is answering those questions.

(ducks before accusations of misusing "isomorphic")
Meetup : Regular Moscow Meetup
by Slava Matyukhin — 2014-08-13T18:59:40.889Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Regular Moscow Meetup

WHEN:
17 August 2014 02:00:00PM (+0400)

WHERE:
Russia, Moscow, ulitsa L'va Tolstogo 16

Here's our plan for the next time:

exercise on searching cognitive biases in texts

a talk on cognitive errors for the practical case of building computer clusters

calibration session

talk and exercises on analyzing and changing your identity

training game

afterparty: board games

Yudcoins, positive reinforcement and pizza will all be present.
If you've been to our meetups, you know what I'm talking about, and if you didn't, the best way to find out is to come and see for yourself.

Detailed schedule is in hackpad.

Info for newcomers:

We gather in the Yandex office, you need the first revolving door under the archway. Here is a guide how to get there: link. If this is your first meetup, can fill this one minute form to share your contact information.
Call me at +7(926)313-96-42 if you're late.

We start at 14:00 and stay until at least 19-20. Please pay attention that we only gather near the entrance and then come inside.

Discussion article for the meetup : Regular Moscow Meetup
Meetup : Canberra: Cooking for LessWrongers
by DanielFilan — 2014-08-13T14:12:54.548Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Canberra: Cooking for LessWrongers

WHEN:
22 August 2014 06:00:00PM (+1000)

WHERE:
Bruce Hall, 40 Daley Road, Acton, ACT, 0200

Note the change in location

We will introduce the idea of cooking as a set of easy templates or methods, which different ingredients can be applied to, rather than as a massively large set of recipes to be memorised and followed. We’ll cover the reasons for the presence and order of common steps in these formulas (which means you know which ones can be left out in other recipes). Ways to make meals more efficient (effort or time wise) will also be discussed.

Dahl (lentil stew) will be cooked and available for eating.

I will be meeting people in the foyer of Bruce Hall, and we will leave for South Kitchen at 6:15. If you do not know where South Kitchen is, please arrive before 6:15.

General meetup info:

If you use Facebook, please join our group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/lwcanberra/

Structured meetups are held on the second Saturday and fourth Friday of each month from 6 pm until late in the CSIT building, room N101 (except for this meetup, which will be held in Bruce Hall).

Discussion article for the meetup : Canberra: Cooking for LessWrongers