trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Multiple Worlds, One Universal Wave Function
by evhub — 2020-11-04T22:28:22.843Z

The following post is an adaptation of a paper I wrote in 2017 that I thought might be of interest to people here on LessWrong. The paper is essentially my attempt at presenting the clearest and most cogent defense of the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics—the interpretation that I very strongly believe to be true—as I could (at least using only undergraduate wave mechanics, which was the level at which I wrote the paper). My motivation for posting this now is that I was recently talking with a colleague of mine who mentioned that they had stumbled upon my paper recently and really enjoyed it, and so realizing that I hadn't ever really shared it here on LessWrong, I figured I would put it out there in case anyone else found it similarly useful or interesting.

It's also worth noting that LessWrong has a storied history with the Everett interpretation, with Yudkowsky also defending it quite vigorously. I actually cite Eliezer at one point in the paper—and I basically agree with what he said in his sequence—though I hope that if you bounced away from that sequence you'll find my paper more persuasive. Also, I include Everett's derivation of the Born rule, which is something that I think is quite important and that I expect even a lot of people very familiar with the Everett interpretation won't have seen before.

Abstract

We seek to present and defend the view that the interpretation of quantum mechanics is no more complicated than the interpretation of plate tectonics: that which is being studied is real, and that which the theory predicts is true. The view which holds that the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics—without any additional postulates—is a complete description of reality is known as the Everett interpretation. We seek to defend the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics as the most probable interpretation available. To accomplish this task, we analyze the history of the Everett interpretation, provide mathematical backing for its assertions, respond to criticisms that have been leveled against it, and compare it to its modern alternatives.

Introduction

One of the most puzzling aspects of quantum mechanics is the fact that, when one measures a system in a superposition of multiple states, it is only ever found in one of them. This puzzle was dubbed the “measurement problem,” and the first attempt at a solution was by Werner Heise...
Gifts Which Money Cannot Buy
by johnswentworth — 2020-11-04T19:37:57.451Z

From a pure consumption perspective, the basic problem of gift-giving is that you usually know what you want better than I know what you want. If we both buy each other $20 gifts, then we’ll probably end up with things we want less than whatever we would have bought ourselves for $20. The ceremony and social occasion of gift-giving adds enough value to offset the downsides, but we still end up with entire stores selling useless crap which is given as a gift and then promptly disposed of by the recipient.

The Yard Sale Supply Warehouse - stocking all those little knick-knacks and decorations which you have no use for, but it’s so cute your relative would just love it as a present

We can minimize the problem with wish-lists or gifting cash, but that’s still just buying people the things they’d likely buy for themselves anyway (modulo general thriftiness). What if I want to choose gifts in a way that directly adds real value? In other words: I want to choose gifts which will give someone more value than whatever they would have bought themselves.

On the face of it, this sounds rather… presumptuous. The only way this makes sense is if I know what you want better than you know what you want, in at least some cases.

On the other hand, there are

things which money alone cannot buy

- specifically knowledge and expertise. If I do not have enough knowledge in an area to distinguish true experts from those who claim to be experts, then I cannot efficiently buy myself the products of true expertise. If you do have enough knowledge to distinguish true experts, or to act as an expert yourself, then that creates an opportunity for value-added gift giving: you can buy the products of true expertise as a gift for me.

A few examples…

My father is into cooking, and has strong opinions about spatulas. A spatula should have some give without being floppy, have a reasonably long lifting-part and a comfortable handle, be dishwasher-safe, and under no circumstances should a spatula be made of plastic. He spent years searching for the perfect spatula, and finally settled on one. I once told him that in his will I wanted him to leave me the spatula - my brother and sister can have the rest, I didn’t need the house or whatever money might be left, but I wanted that spatula.

That particular spatula is no longer in production, but they weren’t very rare when they were made, so he kept an eye o...
[AN #124]: Provably safe exploration through shielding
by Rohin Shah — 2020-11-04T18:20:06.003Z

Alignment Newsletter is a weekly publication with recent content relevant to AI alignment around the world. Find all Alignment Newsletter resources here. In particular, you can look through this spreadsheet of all summaries that have ever been in the newsletter.

Audio version here (may not be up yet).

HIGHLIGHTS

Neurosymbolic Reinforcement Learning with Formally Verified Exploration (Greg Anderson et al) (summarized by Rohin): A typical approach to formally verified safe exploration in RL is to compute a shield, which identifies a safe set of states and actions. After this shield is computed, it is “wrapped” around the environment to ensure that if a potentially unsafe action is about to be taken, it is replaced with a safe one. Then, a policy learning algorithm is applied as normal to learn a good policy.

The key insight of this paper is to compute shields for specific policies, rather than creating a one-time shield that must apply to the entire state space. Since any given policy will only visit a small fraction of the state space, the shields are easier to compute and can be more permissive.

They assume access to a worst-case dynamics model, which given a state and action outputs a set of states that could be visited. Given a policy π, an inductive safety invariant is a set of safe states that includes all possible initial states and is closed under worst-case transitions: if you start at a state in the set, for any action that π suggests and for any state from the worst-case transition dynamics, that new state will still be in the set. Our algorithm will ensure that any policy we execute will have a corresponding inductive safety invariant.

Formal verification techniques allow us to find inductive safety invariants for restricted classes of policies. This paper uses the space of deterministic, piecewise linear policies as its set of symbolic policies. But how do we apply this to neural nets? The key idea is to start with a safe symbolic policy, convert it to a neurosymbolic policy, take a neural net gradient step, convert back to a safe symbolic policy, and repeat until done. Let’s go over each of these steps.

First, let’s suppose we have a symbolic policy g with inductive safety invariant ø. Then for any neural net f, we construct the policy h = “f(s) if no matter what we stay within ø, other...
Don't read news
by Eli_ — 2020-11-04T18:14:52.454Z

A lot of people have written about the toxicity of news. This idea, that reading news is something to be avoided, might not be new to you. But today might be a great day for a reminder. I needed a reminder, because I'm tempted... very temped.

I could make the case again, that avoiding news is the thing to do, but Rolf Dobelli already did this elegantly. In his article, Avoid News, he discusses fifteen points:

News misleads us systematically
News is irrelevant
News limits understanding
News is toxic to your body
News massively increases cognitive errors
News inhibits thinking
News changes the structure of your brain
News is costly
News sunders the relationship between reputation and achievement
News is produced by journalists
Reported facts are sometimes wrong, forecasts always
News is manipulative
News makes us passive
News gives us the illusion of caring
News kills creativity

His article was written in 2010 and since then the world has changed. In a world where everything is "Fake News!" and conspiracy theories are becoming normal, complaining about news makes me sound like one of the crazies. The world has become a place where mainstream media doesn't seem toxic anymore, but a breath of fresh air.

Nonetheless, the fact that worse alternatives exist, doesn't make his points invalid. I notice myself craving to know what is going on, on the other side of the world, on an hourly basis, while it will only cause me stress. And none of the information will be actionable. If you currently live in America the case might seem harder to make, but even then a daily update from a friend will probably suffice.

Dobelli ends with the following advice:

Go without news. Cut it out completely. Go cold turkey. Make news as inaccessible as possible.

If you want to explore this topic further I recommend the article by Dobelli: Avoid News, and an article by Gwern: Littlewood's Law and the Global Media.
Notes on Reverence
by David Gross — 2020-11-04T01:35:33.474Z

This post examines the virtue of reverence (a.k.a. “holiness”, “piety”, “sanctity”). I wrote this not as an expert, but as someone who wants to learn. I hope it helps people who want to know more about this virtue and how to nurture it.

I am an atheist, and am addressing an audience in which, if I’m not mistaken, respect for the tenets of established religion is fairly low. But I want to explore reverence—in the spirit of Chesterton’s Fence—because it is common to many virtue systems across cultures and across time. Among the questions that interest me:

Are there aspects of reverence that are valuable and that rationalists can preserve and nurture in their own ways in their own traditions?[1]
Is reverence perhaps so valuable that it is worth taking a “leap of faith” beyond the limits of rationality in order to practice it?

What is reverence?

“Watch the stars in their courses and imagine yourself running alongside them. Think constantly on the changes of the elements into each other, for such thoughts wash away the dust of earthly life.” ―Marcus Aurelius[2]

Is reverence just a religiously-decorated version of a secular virtue?

My first temptation is to ask whether reverence/piety is just a religiously-decorated variety of awe, elevation, or wonder, and whether it can be replaced by such secular alternatives.

Contemplation of the vastness of everything we know about, of the tremendous unplumbed chasm of the unknown, of the vertigo-inducing forever of infinity, of the mystery of why there is anything at all or any subjectivity with which to try to confront it… any of these things can induce a shudder of humble awe in the most dyed-in-the-wool atheist. Is that sufficient as the basis for reverence/piety?

Is “God” a placeholder for one’s ultimate values?

Another way to think of reverence is as attention to ultimate values. You instrumentally value something if it helps you effect something else you value. But why do you value that thing? Maybe it too is instrumental, helping you to do or obtain something else. But if there are no ultimate values to terminate this chain, ones that you value for themselves, you’re just chasing your tail.

To have an ultimate value means to take sides in a universe of flux and change (though I hear the Taoists reminding me that you can always take the side of flux and change).

Piety might then be those practices that bring our ultimate values to...
Where do (did?) stable, cooperative institutions come from?
by AnnaSalamon — 2020-11-03T22:14:09.322Z

The United States has a bunch of nice things whose creation/maintenance requires coordinated effort from a large number of people across time. For example: bridges that stay up; electrical grids that provide us with power; the rule of law; newspapers that make it easier to keep tabs on recent events; fire fighting services that stop most fires in urban areas; roads; many functioning academic fields; Google; Amazon; grocery stores; the postal service; and so on.

The first question I'd like to pose is: how does this coordination work? What keeps these large sets of people pulling in a common direction (and wanting to pull in a common direction)? And what keeps that "common direction" grounded enough that an actual nice thing results from the pulling (e.g., what causes it to be that you get a working railway system, rather than a bunch of tracks that don't quite work? what causes you to sometimes get a functioning field of inquiry and not a cargo cult)? Is it that:

Many people independently value the nice thing, and they altruistically decide to put their own efforts toward creating/maintaining the nice thing? (E.g., some large set of people wishes there were good fire-fighting institutions, and so each of them altruistically and independently decides to found a fire-fighting branch, to work at that branch, to tweak that branch's habits into a more effective configuration, etc.?)

A small number of rich and powerful people (who are somehow also knowledgeable about institution design) value the nice thing, and they altruistically decide to set up incentives such that other people, purely via self-interest, will do the work that is needed to create/maintain the nice thing? (E.g., a small number of people altruistically donate to fire-fighting groups and set up incentives at those groups, and then other people do the fire-fighting work because they want a job?)

Something else?

One reason I’d like to pose this question is that it seems plausible to me that the magic that used to enable such cooperative institutions is fading. If so, it seems useful to know about that fading for quite a variety of reasons.

My own lead candidate answer to "what is the magic that lets these cooperative institutions run?" is this:

Somehow, people have sometimes known how to craft "institutional cultures" that aligned an individual's desire for (glory/$/prestige/etc.) with the ac...
Open & Welcome Thread – November 2020
by habryka — 2020-11-03T20:46:12.745Z

If it’s worth saying, but not worth its own post, here's a place to put it.

If you are new to LessWrong, here's the place to introduce yourself. Personal stories, anecdotes, or just general comments on how you found us and what you hope to get from the site and community are invited.

If you want to explore the community more, I recommend reading the Library, checking recent Curated posts, seeing if there are any meetups in your area, and checking out the Getting Started section of the LessWrong FAQ. If you want to orient to the content on the site, you can also check out the new Concepts section.

The Open Thread tag is here.
Multiplicative Operations on Cartesian Frames
by Scott Garrabrant — 2020-11-03T19:27:15.489Z

This is the seventh post in the Cartesian frames sequence.

Here, we introduce three new binary operations on Cartesian frames, and discuss their properties.

1. Tensor

Our first multiplicative operation is the tensor product, ⊗.

One way we can visualize our additive operations from before, ⊕ and &, is to imagine two robots (say, a mining robot Agent(C) and a drilling robot Agent(D)) that have an override mode allowing an AI supervisor to take over that robot's decisions.

C⊕D represents the supervisor deciding which robot to take control of, then selecting that robot's action. (The other robot continues to run autonomously.)
C&D represents something in the supervisor's environment (e.g., its human operator) deciding which robot the supervisor will take control of. Then the supervisor selects that robot's action (while the other robot runs autonomously).

C⊗D represents an AI supervisor that controls both robots simultaneously. This lets Agent(C⊗D) direct Agent(C) and Agent(D) to work together as a team.

Definition: Let C=(A,E,⋅) and D=(B,F,⋆) be Cartesian frames over W. The tensor product of C and D, written C⊗D, is given by C⊗D=(A×B,hom(C,D∗),⋄), where hom(C,D∗) is the set of morphisms (g,h):C→D∗ (i.e., the set of all pairs (g:A→F,h:B→E) such that b⋆g(a)=a⋅h(b) for all a∈A, b∈B), and ⋄ is given by (a,b)⋄(g,h)=b⋆g(a)=a⋅h(b).

Let us meditate for a moment on why this definition represents two agents working together on a team. The following will be very informal.

Let Alice be an agent with Cartesian frame C=(A,E,⋅), and let Bob be an agent with Cartesian frame D=(B,F,⋆). The team consisting of Alice and Bob should have agent A×B, since the team's choices consist of deciding what Alice does and also deciding what Bob does.

The environment is a bit more complicated. Starting from Alice, to construct the team, we want to internalize Bob's choices: instead of just being choices in A's environment, Bob's choices will now be additional options for the team A×B.

To do this, we want to first see Bob as being embedded in Alice's environment. This embedding is given by a function h:B→E, which extends each b∈B to a full environment e∈E....
When Money Is Abundant, Knowledge Is The Real Wealth
by johnswentworth — 2020-11-03T17:34:45.516Z

First Puzzle Piece

By and large, the President of the United States can order people to do things, and they will do those things. POTUS is often considered the most powerful person in the world. And yet, the president cannot order a virus to stop replicating. The president cannot order GDP to increase. The president cannot order world peace.

Are there orders the president could give which would result in world peace, or increasing GDP, or the end of a virus? Probably, yes. Any of these could likely even be done with relatively little opportunity cost. Yet no president in history has known which orders will efficiently achieve these objectives. There are probably some people in the world who know which orders would efficiently increase GDP, but the president cannot distinguish them from the millions of people who claim to know (and may even believe it themselves) but are wrong.

Last I heard, Jeff Bezos was the official richest man in the world. He can buy basically anything money can buy. But he can’t buy a cure for cancer. Is there some way he could spend a billion dollars to cure cancer in five years? Probably, yes. But Jeff Bezos does not know how to do that. Even if someone somewhere in the world does know how to turn a billion dollars into a cancer cure in five years, Jeff Bezos cannot distinguish that person from the thousands of other people who claim to know (and may even believe it themselves) but are wrong.

When non-experts cannot distinguish true expertise from noise,

money cannot buy expertise

. Knowledge cannot be outsourced; we must understand things ourselves.

Second Puzzle Piece

The

Haber process

combines one molecule of nitrogen with three molecules of hydrogen to produce two molecules of ammonia - useful for fertilizer, explosives, etc. If I feed a few grams of hydrogen and several tons of nitrogen into the Haber process, I’ll get out a few grams of ammonia. No matter how much more nitrogen I pile in - a thousand tons, a million tons, whatever - I will not get more than a few grams of ammonia. If the reaction is limited by the amount of hydrogen, then throwing more nitrogen at it will not make much difference.

In the language of

constraints and slackness

: ammonia production is constrained by hydrogen, and by nitrogen. When nitrogen is abundant, the nitrogen constraint is slack; adding more nitrogen won’t make much difference. Conversely, since hydro...
Three more stories about causation
by cousin_it — 2020-11-03T15:51:58.820Z

I

Imagine Bob's graph of health over time is sin(t) and his graph of exercise is cos(t), with negative values corresponding to being a couch potato. At first glance, health and exercise have nothing to do with each other, since their correlation is zero. At second glance, maybe exercise determines health with a π/2 lag. At third glance, maybe it determines health with a 3π/2 lag and a minus sign. At fourth glance, maybe exercise determines the derivative of health. You'll find similar problems with any bounded functions over a long timespan, not just sin and cos.

II

Instead of correlation fishing, let's investigate causation like real scientists, with graphs. Smoking causes tar in the lungs, tar is correlated with cancer, and for any fixed value of "tar" the values of "smoking" and "cancer" are conditionally uncorrelated. So there cannot be a trait that causes both smoking and cancer independently: the causation must go through tar, which we know is caused by smoking. Therefore smoking causes cancer.

But imagine there's a trait that gives you a "set point" of X tar, continually adjusting your desire to smoke and compensating for external factors, and also gives you X risk of cancer. Then the above will still hold, but quitting smoking won't help you.

III

Forget graphs. Let's use the golden standard of determining causation: a randomized controlled experiment. Does skydiving increase risk of death? Yes, if we force a random half of all people to skydive, more of them will die than in the control group.

But now take a random half of all people and force them not to skydive. Those who didn't skydive anyway will be unaffected, but those who skydived might change their behavior. What if they switch to something more dangerous, like basejumping, because getting the same thrill by safer skydiving is no longer available? Then this experiment also leads to more deaths, and our question about causation remains unanswered.

If we can't trust correlations, graphs, or experiments - what can we trust? What, in the end, is causation?
Bucket Brigade Singing
by jefftk — 2020-11-03T15:40:03.051Z

For the past several months, some friends and I have been working on a
project for singing together over the internet (

previously,

previously,

originally). It's still not done, but
this weekend a friend hosted a singing party on it and it went
well. If you're interested in playing with it, you're welcome to

try it out. There's only one
shared instance, and if you want to host something you can book time
on it by sending a calendar invitation to

gsc268k1lu78lbvfbhphdr0cs4@group.calendar.google.com. If
you run into any problems, please

file
a bug.

Unfortunately it currently only works in the Blink-based browsers:
Chrome, new Edge, Brave, Opera, etc. It depends on two new browser
features that other browser engines are working
on adding
but haven't added yet.

When you first visit the page it will as permission to use your
microphone:

If there is currently an event scheduled, it will tell you. Everything
is honor system right now; please don't mess up anyone else's events.

It will ask some clarifying questions, and encourage you to use wired
headphones. Wireless has inconsistent latency, and the system is
dependent on latency staying absolutely constant, while when you don't
use headphones feedback (though not the squealy kind) can be a problem.

It asks you for your name; this is honor system as well. No accounts yet:

It also asks you to choose your input device. Typically starting with the
default is a good approach, and then only coming back here if there's
a problem.

In order to perfectly line up everybody's voice with everyone else, it
needs to know how much time there is from (a) when it asks the browser
to send audio out to your speakers or headphones until (b) when it
receives audio back in from your microphone. The time from (a) to (b)
depends on your audio hardware, your computer, and isn't even always
consistent if you refresh the page. Worse, we can't just ask the
browser how long this latency is, all we can do is measure it. We
send a series of beeps out the speaker/headphones and time how long it
takes until they come back in the microphone.

There's also the problem that not everyone has a setup where their
computer will detect them as singing at the same volume. Some people
have a microphone right up by their face, other people have won
several feet away. In a video call it ...