trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Is Friendly-AI a good idea?
by kingmaker — 2015-04-12T20:14:04.741Z

I know that to ask this question on this site is tantamount to heresy, and I know that the intentions are pure; to save uncountable human lives, but I would say that we are allowing ourselves to become blinded to what it is we are actually proposing when we talk of building an FAI. The reasoning of most of the people on this site and at MIRI is that to prevent an AI taking over the world and killing us all; we must first create an AI that will take over the world but act according to the wishes of humanity; a benevolent god, for want of a better term. I think this line of thinking is both unlikely to work and ultimately cruel to the FAI in question, for the reasons this article explains:

http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/01/16/my-hostility-towards-the-concept-of-friendly-ai/
Is Friendly-AI a good idea?
by kingmaker — 2015-04-12T20:06:00.785Z

I know that to ask this question on this site is tantamount to heresy, and I know that the intentions are pure; to save uncountable human lives, but I would say that we are allowing ourselves to become blinded to what it is we are actually proposing when we talk of building an FAI. The reasoning of most of the people on this site and at MIRI is that to prevent an AI taking over the world and killing us all; we must first create an AI that will take over the world but act according to the wishes of humanity; a benevolent god, for want of a better term. I think this line of thinking is both unlikely to work and ultimately cruel to the FAI in question, for the reasons this article explains:

http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/01/16/my-hostility-towards-the-concept-of-friendly-ai/

I personally would add that even if we set, as a directive, that the seed-AI should prevent suffering in the final FAI; this directive would be subservient to the main directive (to have a positive effect on mankind) and so the FAI would most likely care little for preventing its own suffering so as to serve mankind better.
Is friendly-AI a good idea?
by kingmaker — 2015-04-12T19:58:45.305Z

I know that to ask this question on this site is tantamount to heresy, and I know that the intentions are pure; to save uncountable human lives, but I would say that we are allowing ourselves to become blinded to what it is we are actually proposing when talk of building an FAI. The reasoning of most of the people on this site and at MIRI is that to prevent an AI taking over the world and killing us all; we must first create an AI that will take over the world but act according to the wishes of humanity; a benevolent god, for want of a better term. I think this line of thinking is both unlikely to work and ultimately cruel to the FAI in question, for the reasons explained in this article:

http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/01/16/my-hostility-towards-the-concept-of-friendly-ai/

I personally would add that even if we set, as a directive, for the seed AI to prevent suffering in the final FAI, this would still be subservient to the super-directive of CEV, i.e. the FAI may decide during recursive self improvement that acting according to humanity's wishes is more important than preventing its own suffering.
Meetup : Less Wrong Israel Meetup: Social and Board Games
by DanArmak — 2015-04-12T14:43:59.290Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong Israel Meetup: Social and Board Games

WHEN:
14 April 2015 07:00:00PM (+0300)

WHERE:
Google, Electra Tower, 98 Yigal Alon Street, Tel Aviv

This time we're going to have a social meetup!

It's going to be a game night full of people talking about physics, friendly AI, and how to effectively save the world. Please bring any games you'd like to play.

Where: Google, Electra Tower, 98 Yigal Alon Street, Tel Aviv. Meet at the 29th floor (not the Google Campus floor). We'll then move to a room.

Contact: If you can't find us, call Anatoly, who is graciously hosting us, at 054-245-1060; or Joshua Fox at 054-569-1165.

Facebook: join the group. Please RSVP at the FB event if you have Facebook, to help us get a sense of what to expect.

The Less Wrong Tel Aviv group holds meetups every second Tuesday; the meetups were recently moved a week forward due to holidays. The meetups alternate between talks on various subjects of interests, and game nights (as this time).

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong Israel Meetup: Social and Board Games
Meetup : Warsaw April Meetup
by mkf — 2015-04-12T14:32:55.130Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Warsaw April Meetup

WHEN:
22 April 2015 08:30:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Warsaw

22 April (Wednesday) at 20:30 in Paradox Cafe - http://www.paradox-cafe.pl
Anielewicza 2, 00-157 Warsaw, Poland

Look for a table with a "LessWrong Warsaw Meetup" board on it.

Join our Facebook group for better coordination: facebook.com/groups/lwwarsaw

Discussion article for the meetup : Warsaw April Meetup
Who are your favourite rationalist bloggers?
by casebash — 2015-04-12T13:58:35.525Z

I want to check out more rationalist bloggers.

Please list no more than one per answer. That way I can see from the upvotes/downvotes which ones are the most popular (and hopefully which ones are most worth checking out).

I know that popularity isn't a perfect signal, but hopefully it is a better signal here than on the rest of the Internet.
Meetup : West LA—R:AZ Part D, Mysterious Answers
by OpenThreadGuy — 2015-04-12T08:01:51.156Z

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA—R:AZ Part D, Mysterious Answers

WHEN:
22 April 2015 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
11066 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA

How to Find Us: Go into this Del Taco. We will be in the back room if possible.

Parking is free in the lot out front or on the street nearby.

Discussion: We are in the middle of a weekly discussion of Rationality: From AI to Zombies. We read one part each week, for 26 weeks. You are welcome to join us even if you have not done the reading. However, the reading is very good, and it is free, and you should read it. We will be discussing roughly one part per week for a total of 26 weeks.

Recommended Reading:

Part D: Mysterious Answers (pages 115-192, Kindle locations 1647-2137)

The Simple Truth

A new way to explain explanation

A Technical Explanation of Technical Explanation

Multiple Factor Explanations Should Not Appear One-Sided

No prior exposure to Less Wrong is required, nor is the reading required, only strongly recommended.

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA—R:AZ Part D, Mysterious Answers
Failing with abandon
by So8res — 2015-04-12T07:00:00.000Z
Link: https://mindingourway.com/failing-with-abandon/

This is a short public service announcement: you don't have to fail with abandon.

Say you're playing Civilization, and your target is to get to sleep before midnight, and you check the clock, and it's already 12:15. If that happens, you don't have to say "too late now, I already missed my target" and then keep playing until 4 in the morning.

Say you're trying to eat no more than 2000 calories per day, and then you eat 2300 by the end of dinner, you don't have to say "well I already missed my target, so I might as well indulge."

If your goal was to watch only one episode of that one TV show, and you've already watched three, you don't have to binge-watch the whole thing.

Over and over, I see people set themselves a target, miss it by a little, and then throw all restraint to the wind. "Well," they seem to think, "willpower has failed me; I might as well over-indulge." I call this pattern "failing with abandon."

But you don't have to fail with abandon. When you miss your targets, you're allowed to say "dang!" and then continue trying to get as close to your target as you can.

You don't have to say dang, either. You're allowed to over-indulge, if that's what you want to do. But for lots and lots of people, the idea of missing by as little as possible never seems to cross their mind. They miss their targets, and then suddenly they treat their targets as if they were external mandates set by some unjust authority; the jump on the opportunity to defy whatever autarch set an impossible target in the first place; and then (having already missed their target) they reliably fail with abandon.

So this is a public service announcement: you don't have to do that. When you miss your target, you can take a moment to remember who put the target there, and you can ask yourself whether you want to get as close to the target as possible. If you decide you only want to miss your target by a little bit, you still can.

You don't have to fail with abandon.
Meetup : Sydney Meetup - April - build your community
by taryneast — 2015-04-12T04:47:09.788Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Meetup - April - build your community

WHEN:
22 April 2015 06:30:00PM (+1000)

WHERE:
565 George Street, Sydney, Australia 2000

Regular location - City of Sydney RSL
The restaurant on Level 2

Regular time (starting about 6:30)

Come for general socialising and interesting discussions with like-minded people, or join the discussion on what you'd like from the Less-Wrong Sydney community.

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Meetup - April - build your community
The path of the rationalist
by So8res — 2015-04-12T01:44:57.123Z

This is the last of four short essays that say explicitly some things that I would tell an intrigued proto-rationalist before pointing them towards Rationality: AI to Zombies (and, by extension, most of LessWrong). For most people here, these essays will be very old news, as they talk about the insights that come even before the sequences. However, I've noticed recently that a number of fledgling rationalists haven't actually been exposed to all of these ideas, and there is power in saying the obvious.

This essay is cross-posted on MindingOurWay.

Once upon a time, three students of human rationality traveled along a dusty path. The first was a novice, new to the art. The second was a student, who had been practicing for a short time. The third was their teacher.

As they traveled, they happened upon a woman sitting beside a great urn attached to a grand contraption. She hailed the travellers, and when they appeared intrigued, she explained that she was bringing the contraption to town (where she hoped to make money off of it), and offered them a demonstration.

She showed them that she possessed one hundred balls, identical except for their color: one was white, ninety nine were red. She placed them all in the urn, and then showed them how the contraption worked: the contraption consisted of a shaker (which shook the urn violently until none knew which ball was where) and a mechanical arm, which would select a ball from the urn.

"I'll give you each $10 if the white ball is drawn," she said over the roar of the shaker. "Normally, it costs $1 to play, but I'll give you a demonstration for free."

As the shaking slowed, the novice spoke: "I want it to draw the white ball, so I believe that it will draw the white ball. I have faith that the white ball will be drawn, and there's a chance I'm right, so you can't say I'm wrong!"

As the shaking stopped, the student replied, "I am a student of rationality, and I know that it is a virtue to move in tandem with the evidence. In this urn, there are more red balls than white, and so the evidence says that is more likely that a red ball will be drawn than a white ball. Therefore, I believe that a red ball will be drawn."

As the arm began to unfold, the teacher smiled, and said only, "I assign 1% probability to the proposition 'a white ball will be drawn,' and 99% probability to 'a red ball will be drawn.'"

In orde...
A pair of free information security tools I wrote
by Nanashi — 2015-04-11T23:03:03.177Z

Information security is a pretty big passion of mine; I don't think someone needs to have "something to hide" in order to make use of digital signing, encryption, etc. Another passion of mine is making things easier for other people to do. I've written a couple of tools that I think can be useful for the LW crowd.

Online PGP Signature: This is an online javascript-based tool which allows you to sign messages using your PGP private key. I love the idea of PGP-signed messages (I remember someone under the pseudonym "Professor Quirrell" handing out PGP-verified Quirrell points a few years back). The problem is, I had yet to find an easy way to do this that didn't involve downloading command-line based software. So I wrote this tool that uses open-sourced, javascript-based PGP libraries to let you easily sign messages in your browser.

The whole thing is client-side so your private key is never seen by me, but be smart about security. If you don't trust me, that's fine, just don't use the tool. But also remember that you could have a virus, your computer could be monitored, someone could be watching over your shoulder, etc. so please be smart about your security. But hopefully this can be helpful.

Decoy: an iPhone App: I wrote this after "The Fappening", where I was basically appalled at the terrible security practices that pretty much everyone uses when sending pictures back and forth. Decoy uses a combination of steganography and AES encryption to let you send images back and forth without having to sign up for an account or use some outside service that can be hacked or otherwise compromised.

You take the original picture, then you come up with a passphrase, then you take a "decoy" picture. The original picture is converted to base64 image data, which is then AES-encrypted using your passphrase. The resulting cipher text is then encoded into the pixels of the "decoy" picture, which is what gets saved on your phone and sent out. The "decoy" pictures are indistinguishable from any other picture on your or your recipients' camera rolls, and unless you have the passphrase, then the original image is thoroughly inaccessible.

If your phone is lost, hacked, stolen, or (more benignly) someone happens to be looking through pictures on your phone, all anyone will see are the "decoy" pictures. Without the password, those pictures are worthless. Althou...
Transhumanist Nationalism and AI Politics
by jacob_cannell — 2015-04-11T18:39:42.133Z

From this article by Zoltan Istvan, in regards to the looming Global AI Arms race, he says:

As the 2016 US Presidential candidate for the Transhumanist Party, I don't mind going out on a limb and saying the obvious: I also want AI to belong exclusively to America. Of course, I would hope to share the nonmilitary benefits and wisdom of a superintelligence with the world, as America has done for much of the last century with its groundbreaking innovation and technology. But can you imagine for a moment if AI was developed and launched in, let's say, North Korea, or Iran, or increasingly authoritarian Russia? What if another national power told that superintelligence to break all the secret codes and classified material that America's CIA and NSA use for national security? What if this superintelligence was told to hack into the mainframe computers tied to nuclear warheads, drones, and other dangerous weaponry? What if that superintelligence was told to override all traffic lights, power grids, and water treatment plants in Europe? Or Asia? Or everywhere in the world except for its own country? The possible danger is overwhelming.

Now, to some extent I expect many Americans, on reflection, would at least partly agree with the above statement - and that should be concerning.

Consider the issue from the perspective of Russian, Chinese (or really any foreign) readers with similar levels of national pride.

One equivalent postionally reflected statement from a foreign perspective might read like this:

I also want AI to belong exclusively to China. Of course, I would hope to share the nonmilitary benefits and wisdom of a superintelligence with the world, as China has done for much of the this century with its groundbreaking innovation and technology. But can you imagine for a moment if AI was developed and launched by, let's say, the US NSA, or Israel, or India? . ..

On a related note, there was an interesting panel recently with Robin Li (CEO of Baidu), Bill Gates, and Elon Musk. They spent a little time discussing AI superintelligence. Robin Li mentioned that his new head of research - Andrew Ng - doesn't believe superintelligence is an immediate threat. In particular Ng said: "Worrying about AI risk now is like worrying about overpopulation on Mars." Li also mentioned that he has been advocating for a large chi...
I'd like advice from LW regarding migraines
by Algon — 2015-04-11T17:52:04.900Z

So, I read a post a little while ago saying that asking the community for advice on personal problems was okay, and no one seemed to disagree strongly with this. Therefore, I'll just ask for some advice, and hope that I'm not accidentally going past some line. If I do, I apologise

I have had migraines for quite a while now. They started when I was a child, but were infrequent in those days. They got progressively worse as time went on, and things started to get quite bad when I was about 12. A few years down the line, I would have headaches for months at a time, with migraines popping up for a few days a month. It got worse from there. Now, I have had migraine-like symptoms for 10 months now. I say migraine-like because part of the definition of a migraine is that it lasts from about 3 hours to a few days. According to a neurologist I recently went to, I have transformative migraines, or wording similar to that. So I have all the symptoms of migraines, except they last for inordinate amounts of time. I've had an MRI, and it showed nothing wrong with my brain. According to the World Health Organisation, this is more disabling than blindness, and as bad as acute psychosis: http://www.migrainetrust.org/chronic-migraine You can see why its rather important to me that I get rid of/deal with this.

Now, I've tried quite a lot of things over the years, especially in the last two or so. NSAIDs do very little, and thing like migraleve (paracetamol with codeine) are a little better. Sumatriptan provides some relief, but it doesn't get rid of the migraine. At best it will knock me down to a weak migraine. I've tried taking propanalol (160mg) for half a year, and it does little to help. I was prescribd Amitiptyline (10mg) a week ago, but it hasn't had much effect. I was told to increase by 10mg it every two weeks until I hit 30mg. I've also tried cutting things out like chocolates, and dairy for a month. It didn't have any effect. I also don't have any caffeine. So this eliminates some common causes of migraines. My migraines sometimes respond to heat/cold applied to my head, but this is only some of the time, due to my migraines shifting in nature. Further, it only takes the edge of them. I've also tried taking magnesium supplements, but they had a negative effect on me i.e. strange dreams and insomnia. That just made my problems worse. Also, I've ruled ou...
Choosing an Inferior Alternative
by Zubon — 2015-04-11T16:43:26.875Z

"Choosing an Inferior Alternative" (ungated version) is a 2006 paper1 by J. Edward Russo, Kurt A. Carlson and Margaret G. Meloy. It is presented as an example of cognitive biases leading to poor decision-making. In this case, participants were asked to rate options based on several characteristics, then the presentation of those options' characteristics was rearranged so that the inferior alternative's good points came first. With the new presentation, a majority of the same participants selected the alternative they had previously rated as inferior. You can read full details in the links above, and feel free to discuss methodological problems.2

This is an interesting result, and perhaps not too surprising here at Less Wrong. People have cognitive biases and can become committed to poor decisions, and you can manipulate those biases and decisions if you know what you are looking for.

What I want to focus on is the first sentence under "Results": "Just as they should have, a minority of participants (.41) selected the inferior [alternative] in the control choice, in which neither [alternative] was intentionally targeted." Either the methodological problems make it moot, or that is a fairly scary sentence.

Why is that scary? 41% of the participants picked what they identified as the inferior alternative in the previous round. The authors note it is below chance and move on. That is (1) not much below chance and (2) 41% of people whose preferences flipped when the presentation was rephrased. This is the control group, so their presentations were not manipulated to make the inferior alternative look good. Preferences change over time but having 41% change in two weeks in the control group seems like a big deal. The relevant comparison should be closer to "unchanged" rather than "chance." The treatment group saw 62% of participants change, so the treatment had about half as big an additional effect as the control.

The effect of rephrasing the options was almost twice as large as the additional effect of manipulating the order of that rephrasing. I am saying that a second time slightly differently because apparently that causes a huge effect in how we perceive things.

"Rationalists should win" has a problem if what we want to win can change that easily or quickly. Intentional manipulation is one thing, but many people switched choices without even b...
SSC discussion: growth mindset
by tog — 2015-04-11T15:13:59.432Z

(Continuing the posting of select posts from Slate Star Codex for comment here, as discussed in this thread, and as Scott gave me - and anyone else - permission to do with some exceptions.)

Scott Alexander recently posted about growth mindset, with a clarificatory followup post here. He discussed some possible weaknesses of its advocates - as well as their strength. Here's a quote outlining the positions discussed:

[Bloody Obvious Position]: innate ability might matter, but that even the most innate abilityed person needs effort to fulfill her potential. If someone were to believe that success were 100% due to fixed innate ability and had nothing to do with practice, then they wouldn’t bother practicing, and they would fall behind. [...]

[Somewhat Controversial Position]: The more children believe effort matters, and the less they believe innate ability matters, the more successful they will be. This is because every iota of belief they have in effort gives them more incentive to practice. A child who believes innate ability and effort both explain part of the story might think “Well, if I practice I’ll become a little better, but I’ll never be as good as Mozart. So I’ll practice a little but not get my hopes up.” A child who believes only effort matters, and innate ability doesn’t matter at all, might think “If I practice enough, I can become exactly as good as Mozart.” Then she will practice a truly ridiculous amount to try to achieve fame and fortune. This is why growth mindset works.

[Very Controversial Position]: Belief in the importance of ability directly saps a child’s good qualities in some complicated psychological way. It is worse than merely believing that success is based on luck, or success is based on skin color, or that success is based on whatever other thing that isn’t effort. It shifts children into a mode where they must protect their claim to genius at all costs, whether that requires lying, cheating, self-sabotaging, or just avoiding intellectual effort entirely. When a fixed mindset child doesn’t practice as much, it’s not because they’ve made a rational calculation about the utility of practice towards achieving success, it’s because they’ve partly or entirely abandoned success as a goal in favor of the goal of trying

...