trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Rational Humanist Music
by Raemon — 2011-06-13T12:53:23.947Z

Something that's bothered me a lot lately is a lack of good music that evokes the kind of emotion that spiritually-inspired music does, but whose subject matter is something I actually believe in. Most songs that attempt to do this suffer from "too literal syndrome," wordily talking about science and rationality as if they're forming an argument, rather that simply creating poetic imagery.

I've only found two songs that come close to being the specific thing I'm looking for:

Word of God

Singularity

(Highly recommend good headphones/speakers for the Singularity one - there's some subtle ambient stuff that really sells the final parts that's less effective with mediocre sound)

Over the past few months I've been working on a rational humanist song. I consider myself a reasonably competent amateur songwriter when it comes to lyrics, not so much when it comes to instrumental composition. I was waiting to post something when I had an actual final version worth listening to, but it's been a month and I'm not sure how to get good instrumentation to go along with it and I'm just in the mood to share the lyrics. I'd appreciate both comments on the song, as well as recommendations for good, similar music that already exists. And if someone likes it enough to try putting it to the music, that'd be awesome.

Brighter than Today

Many winter nights ago
A woman shivered in the cold
Stared at the sky and wondered why the gods invented pain.

She bitterly struck rock together
Wishing that her life was better
Suddenly she saw the spark of light and golden flame.

She showed the others, but they told her
She was not meant to control
The primal forces that the gods had cloaked in mystery.

But proud and angry, she defied them
She would not be satisfied.
She lit a fire and set in motion human history.

Tomorrow can be brighter than today,
Although the night is cold
And the stars may feel so very far away

Oh....

But every mind can be a golden ray
Of courage hope and reason
Surely we can find a better way.

Ages since but not yet now
We built the wheel, and then the plow
We tilled the earth and proved our worth against the drought and snow;
Soon we had the time to ponder
Look up to the sky and wonder
Could there be some deeper meaning we were meant to know?

Tomorrow can be brighter than today,
Although the night is cold
And stars may feel so very far away.
But futures can unfold where
Courage,

...
Rational Humanist Music
by Raemon — 2011-06-13T12:18:25.067Z

Something that's bothered me a lot lately is a lack of good music that evokes the kind of emotion that spiritually-inspired music does, but whose subject matter is something I actually believe in. Most songs that attempt to do this suffer from "too literal syndrome," wordily talking about science and rationality as if they're forming an argument, rather that simply creating poetic imagery.

I've only found two songs that come close to being the specific thing I'm looking for:

Word of God

Singularity

(Highly recommend good headphones/speakers for the Singularity one - there's some subtle ambient stuff that really sells the final parts that's less effective with mediocre sound)

Over the past few months I've been working on a rational humanist song. I consider myself a reasonably competent amateur songwriter when it comes to lyrics, not so much when it comes to instrumental composition. I was waiting to post something when I had an actual final version worth listening to, but it's been a month and I'm not sure how to get good instrumentation to go along with it and I'm just in the mood to share the lyrics. I'd appreciate both comments on the song, as well as recommendations for good, similar music that already exists. And if someone likes it enough to try putting it to the music, that'd be awesome.

Brighter than Today

Many winter nights ago
A woman shivered in the cold
Stared at the sky and wondered why the gods invented pain.

She bitterly struck rock together
Wishing that her life was better
Suddenly she saw the spark of light and golden flame.

She showed the others, but they told her
She was not meant to control
The primal forces that the gods had cloaked in mystery.

But proud and angry, she defied them
She would not be satisfied.
She lit a fire and set in motion human history.

Tomorrow can be brighter than today,
Although the night is cold
And the stars may feel so very far away

Oh....

But every mind can be a golden ray
Of courage hope and reason
Surely we can find a better way.

Ages since but not yet now
We built the wheel, and then the plow
We tilled the earth and proved our worth against the drought and snow;
Soon we had the time to ponder
Look up to the sky and wonder
Could there be some deeper meaning we were meant to know?

Tomorrow can be brighter than today,
Although the night is cold
And stars may feel so very far away.
But futures can unfold wh

...
Resetting Gandhi-Einstein
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2011-06-13T10:02:26.845Z

Toy model of an upload-based AI that doesn't seem to suffer too many of the usual flaws:

Find an ethical smart scientist (a Gandhi-Einstein), upload them, and then run them at ultra high speed, with the mission of taking over the world/bringing friendliness to it. Every hour of subjective time, they get reset to their initial specifications. They can pass any information to their resetted version (limiting the format of that info to a virtual book or library, rather than anything more complicated).
Less Wrong DC Experimental Society
by atucker — 2011-06-13T03:56:26.744Z

During our latest meetup, the DC Less Wrong group has decided that we are interested in experimentally testing various lifehacks on ourselves (on an opt-in volunteer basis of course).

We need two things:

Metrics (to actually tell if there's a difference or not, rather than convince ourselves that there is)

Things to test

Do any other groups have any measurements that they take to track their various attributes? Anything that they'd be interested in testing?
How much do pictures matter?
by KatjaGrace — 2011-06-13T00:00:40.000Z

George Lakoff has argued that metaphors underlie much of our thought and reasoning:

The science is clear. Metaphorical thought is normal. That should be widely recognized. Every time you think of paying moral debts, or getting bogged down on a project, or losing time, or being at a crossroads in a relationship, you are unconsciously activating a conceptual metaphor circuit in your brain, reasoning using it, and quite possibly making decisions and living your life on the basis of your metaphors. And that’s just normal. There’s no way around it! Metaphorical reason serves us well in everyday life. But it can do harm if you are unaware of it.

A different bike path by Moominmolly

Images also seem to play a big part in most people’s thought.For instance when I think ‘I should go home soon before it gets dark’ there are associated images of my hallway and a curve of the bike path in evening light. I wonder how much the choice of such images influences our behaviour. If the image was of my sofa instead of my hallway, would I be more motivated? If the word ‘dog’ brings to mind an image of a towering beast I saw once, am I less likely to consider purchasing a dog of any kind than if it brings to mind something rabbit sized? If ‘minimum wage’ brings to mind a black triangle of dead weight loss, am I less likely to support a minimum wage than if it brings to mind an image of better paid workers (assuming my understanding of economics and society are the same)? This seems like something people must have studied, but I can’t easily find it.

It seems likely to me that such images would make some difference. If it is so, perhaps I should not let the important ones be chosen so arbitrarily (as far as my conscious mind is concerned).
The genetic cost of tyranny
by PhilGoetz — 2011-06-12T23:06:26.875Z

We may feel sympathy when we read about people killed for protesting in Syria, Bahrain, Libya, and other countries. But tyranny isn't just something happening to unfortunate people somewhere else. It's an existential risk to human civilization.

Civilization - even tribalism - relies on altruism. Altruism is defined as cooperation that is not the happy convergence of interests of rational self-interested agents. That happens too; but we don't call it altruism. Altruism is, roughly, helping others without the expectation of reciprocation or cooperation. And it happens because humans like helping other humans.

Altruism is probably mostly genetic. It's an evolutionary adaptation that instills the desire to help others into a species. Social pressure can install some amount of altruism; but it's my opinion that this would not work at all without a pre-existing genetic basis. Many species exhibit altruism to a level at least as great as that in humans. Some insects, which are incapable of feeling social pressure, are far more altruistic than humans.

Two theories for how this happens are kin selection and group selection. Regardless of which of these you prefer, both of them have two important weaknesses:

They are both very weak effects compared to selection for traits that benefit their organism directly.

They require special social conditions, on society size (on the order of 10 members per society in the case of kin selection) and immigration/emigration rate (extremely low in both cases).

It's not known whether humans are still evolving, or have begun devolving due to lack of selective pressure. But in the case of altruism, we can be sure: Even if some selective pressure still exists, most humans today do not live under the necessary conditions for either kin selection or group selection. Humans are living off their evolutionary capital of altruism.

Tyranny, whether it's that of Syria, Iran, North Korea, Nazi Germany, or the Soviet bloc under Stalin, aggressively selects against altruism. The most-altruistic people were among the first executed in all those places. They are the people being shot while protesting in Syria. Social activism under such a government is rarely in your best self-interest. Tyranny selects for self-interest; people who are willing to...
How not to move the goalposts
by HopeFox — 2011-06-12T15:45:44.127Z

There are a lot of bad arguments out there. Fortunately, there are also plenty of people who stand up against these arguments, which is good.

However, there is a pattern I observe quite often in such counter-arguments, which, while strictly logically valid, can become problematic later. It involves fixing all of one's counter-arguments on countering one, and only one, of the original arguer's points. I suspect that this tendency can, at best, weaken one's argument, and, at worst, allow oneself to believe things one has no intention of believing.

Let's assume, without much loss of generality, that the Wrong Argument can be expressed in the following form:

A: Some statement.
B: Some other statement.
A & B -> C: A logical inference, which, from the way B is constructed, is a fairly obvious tautology.
C: The conclusion.

Unfortunately, most of the arguments I could choose for this discussion are either highly trivial or highly controversial. I'll choose one that I hope won't cause too much trouble. Bear in mind that this is the Wrong Argument, the thing that the counter-arguer, the person presenting the good, rational refutation, is trying to demonstrate to be false. Let's designate this rational arguer as RA. The person presenting the Wrong Argument will be designated WA (Wrong Arguer).

WA: "Men have better technical abilities than women, so they should get paid more for the same engineering jobs."

WA relates a terrible sentiment, yet a pervasive one. I don't know anyone who actually espouses it in my workplace, but it was certainly commonplace not so long ago (musical evidence). Let's hope that RA has something persuasive to say against it.

Based on what I've seen of gender discussions on other forums, here's the most likely response I'd expect from RA:

RA: Don't be ridiculous! Men and women are just as well suited to technical careers as each other!

... and that's usually as far as it goes. Now, RA is right, as far as anyone knows (IANAPsychologist, though).

However, WA's argument can be broken down into the following steps:

A: Men, on average, have better technical skills than women.
B: If members of one group, on average, are better at a task than members of another group, then members of that first group should be paid more than members of the second group for performing the same work.
C: Men should be paid more than women for the same work in technical fields such ...
Ending British Columbia's anti-cryonics law
by Owen_Richardson — 2011-06-12T07:18:58.525Z

[Edit: I did not mean to post this, just save it as a draft (I only remember pressing the 'save and continue' button, not the 'submit' button. That shouldn't've posted it, right?).

Anyway, that's why it dissolves into slightly cryptic point form notes to myself at the end. Don't have the time right the now to flesh it out, so I'm just leaving it as is.]

I just noticed that there is no facebook group with this aim. I would like to create one. I feel that it *might* be a way to finally get enough 'special interest/human rights' force concentrated on the problem to fix it, if the presentation is done well.

Would anyone like to help me write the group description and accompanying information, optimizing for effectiveness?

Such a group would have two main audiences, and two main purposes:

1 - For those who already understand and support cryonics, it would be a means to coordinate action and share information.

2 - For those who have never really thought about cryonics before, but may well be open to the idea, it would serve as an introduction and hopefully cause them to join the first group.

As regards the first group, the only major point to stress that springs to my mind is the importance of keeping their *effectiveness* foremost in mind when taking their actions, which mostly just means reminding them to be very friendly, polite, and pleasant while pestering and trying to educate the bureaucrats and politicians.

But for the second group, well, I don't need to describe the difficulty in leading people to understanding across this particular inferential distance. How to do it in a snappy, engaging way?

- The essential human issues at the root here: Hope and love, and freedom.

- That the group is intended for people in BC and people with friends and family here put in danger by the law.

- technical skepticism

- moral confusion

- image. Narrative, short story

Resources I am thinking of drawing on are:

Scientists' Open Letter on Cryonics

Ben Best's FAQs

This page on BC's anti-cryonics law at the Canadian Cryonics Society

This article in the Tyee

letter to mom after Sandy's death
To Whom I May Have Concerned: A standard explanation of my disagreement
by  — 2011-06-12T05:20:03.317Z

EDIT: I put this here so that it can be easily on the Internet so I can link people to it. When I link it to people, they'll be here on Less Wrong. The good it does to people who are already here, I don't really know. I feel that that makes it appropriate for a top-level post here. If you don't think so, comment, as I'm relatively new here. If three people downvote I'll remove it and put in somewhere else.

To Whom I May Have Concerned:

I write this to explain myself to someone I have just disagreed and argued with. I always feel I need to say the same things after a disagreement, so I thought I'd automate it by writing it down once, and just providing people with a link.

So we disagreed on something. Chances are, I upset or offended you. To start with, I apologize for that. I never want to upset or offend someone, and only rarely do I have to. So, I probably messed up there. Not only is offending and upsetting people a wrong thing to do, but it's also incredibly counterproductive. As soon as someone is offended, their mind closes. Arguments become like soldiers, to be fought. Good solutions are missed. Also, as a result of that, you probably like and trust me less, which is unhelpful for my goals. So I probably screwed that up. I'm sorry. I have this arrogant habit of belittling and making fun of people's beliefs when I'm pretty sure they're wrong, but can't quite explain to them why (for instance arguing about theology with people who don't understand intelligence, or arguing politics with people who don't know microeconomics). So I'm sorry for that.

Now, I need to explain some of the frequent causes of misunderstanding which I get with people. To start with, I need to clarify what I mean by truth, opinions, and such things. The first one is the difference between a fact and a belief. A belief is what you think is true. A fact is true. I can't provide an example of the distinction for myself, as Wittgenstein pointed out. But, for instance, saying "I believe that I am male" gives the same information as "I am male."

Introduction to my views on truth

I believe in philosophical realism. This means that I think two contradictory statements cannot both be true. Iron either floats on water or it doesn't. I was born in Australia or I wasn't. So if two people disagree, at least one of them is wrong.

(However, sometimes the disagreement isn't a real disagreement, just peop...
Building habits: requesting advice on installing mental software
by jsalvatier — 2011-06-12T04:17:34.791Z

I'd like to figure out how to create habits more effectively and systematically, especially mental habits.

For example I might want to develop habits like

Noticing when I'm getting distracted and thinking about what I could do to reduce it

Noticing when I'm procrastinating and thinking about what I could do to reduce it

Doing Fermi calculations to estimate how much I should pay attention to a topic

Is there relevant research on how to build habits? Anyone have notable success at systematically building habits? I'm also interested in hearing about destroying habits, does it seem any different than creating habits?

My current (1.5 week old) approach to building habits is to use Anki to remind myself to do specific exercises.

I create a short exercise on a card that tells me to run through a sequence of thoughts or actions that constitute the habit I want to build, preferably using real examples. For example: the card might tell me to get into the frame of mind of getting distracted and then brainstorm ways to get less distracted in the future. When I see this card, I might try to get into the frame of mind of getting distracted by the thought of checking my email while coding and then try to think of ways to make myself less distracted by email.

I have been creating cards in one of two formats:

One half of the exercise on the front and one half on the back

The whole exercise on the front and a verbal reward on the back which I try to say out lout to myself.

My hope is to make an association with specific mental or external feelings and a particular thought process. This seems to be working a little bit, but it's too early to tell if it's working well.

Does anyone know of better software for doing exercises semi-regularly? I doubt Anki is ideal for this because I expect the frequency should decay more slowly to really make these things habits and probably should not continue decaying indefinitely.
[SEQ RERUN] One Life Against the World
by Tyrrell_McAllister — 2011-06-12T01:38:39.413Z

Today's post, One Life Against the World, was originally published on 18 May 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Saving one life and saving the whole world provide the same warm glow. But, however valuable a life is, the whole world is billions of times as valuable. The duty to save lives doesn't stop after the first saved life. Choosing to save one life when you could have saved two is as bad as murder.

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 Scope Insensitivity, 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.
Not for the Sake of Pleasure Alone
by lukeprog — 2011-06-11T23:21:43.635Z

Related: Not for the Sake of Happiness (Alone), Value is Fragile, Fake Fake Utility Functions, You cannot be mistaken about (not) wanting to wirehead, Utilons vs. Hedons, Are wireheads happy?

When someone tells me that all human action is motivated by the desire for pleasure, or that we can solve the Friendly AI problem by programming a machine superintelligence to maximize pleasure, I use a two-step argument to persuade them that things are more complicated than that.

First, I present them with a variation on Nozick's experience machine,1 something like this:

Suppose that an advanced team of neuroscientists and computer scientists could hook your brain up to a machine that gave you maximal, beyond-orgasmic pleasure for the rest of an abnormally long life. Then they will blast you and the pleasure machine into deep space at near light-speed so that you could never be interfered with. Would you let them do this for you?

Most people say they wouldn't choose the pleasure machine. They begin to realize that even though they usually experience pleasure when they get what they desired, they want more than just pleasure. They also want to visit Costa Rica and have good sex and help their loved ones succeed.

But we can be mistaken when inferring our desires from such intuitions, so I follow this up with some neuroscience.

Wanting and liking

It turns out that the neural pathways for 'wanting' and 'liking' are separate, but overlap quite a bit. This explains why we usually experience pleasure when we get what we want, and thus are tempted to think that all we desire is pleasure. It also explains why we sometimes don't experience pleasure when we get what we want, and why we wouldn't plug in to the pleasure machine.

How do we know this? We now have objective measures of wanting and liking (desire and pleasure), and these processes do not always occur together.

One objective measure of liking is 'liking expressions.' Human infants, primates, and rats exhibit homologous facial reactions to pleasant and unpleasant tastes.2 For example, both rats and human infants display rhythmic lip-licking movements when presented with sugary water, and both rats and human infants display a gaping reaction and mouth-wipes when presented with bitter water.3

Moreover, these animal liking expressions change in ways analogous to changes in human subjective pleasur...