trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : Atlanta - Filtering Ideas
by Adele_L — 2014-08-04T02:11:30.905Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Atlanta - Filtering Ideas

WHEN:
09 August 2014 07:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
2388 Lawrenceville Hwy. Unit L. Decatur, GA 30033

This meetup, we'll be talking about recognizing confusion, doublethink, and how to filter good and true ideas from false and bad ones.

Please read Doublethink (Choosing to be Biased):
http://lesswrong.com/lw/je/doublethink_choosing_to_be_biased/

as well as Absence of Evidence is Evidence of Absence:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/ih/absence_of_evidence_is_evidence_of_absence/

There will be snacks as usual and there are cats at the location. Hope to see you then!

Discussion article for the meetup : Atlanta - Filtering Ideas
Meetup : Frankfurt Open Mic (Thinking Fast and Slow, Happiness and Money,...)
by Kendra — 2014-08-03T19:22:25.348Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Frankfurt Open Mic (Thinking Fast and Slow, Happiness and Money,...)

WHEN:
10 August 2014 02:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Frankfurt

We'll have another meetup!
TOP:
1) 14:00, Arriving and Getting to know each other
2) 15:00 Structured Part, Open Mic, with max 30min each,
so far confirmed are a presentation about Thinking Fast and Slow,
one workshop/presentation about Money and Happiness (Budgeting) and at least one other
3) Goal Tracking
4) possibly games
We'll have a bit of food, but it would be nice if you could bring some too. It should be vegan.
If you have any special needs, please tell us in advance, so we can take them into account accordingly!
You can contact me under 0049 176 34 095 760 or subscribe to our mailing list: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/less-wrong-frankfurt
You can also find the meetup notes of previous meetups there.
See you then!

We'll meet at Ginnheimer Landstraße again. Contact me for further details.

Discussion article for the meetup : Frankfurt Open Mic (Thinking Fast and Slow, Happiness and Money,...)
MIRI 2014 Summer Matching Challenge and one-off opportunity to donate *for free*
by KnaveOfAllTrades — 2014-08-03T17:58:26.609Z

Edit: This post is obsoleted by this post; please see that one instead.

MIRI are currently holding a donation-matching challenge, until Friday 15th August. You can donate and track its progress by going to the Donations page.

Also, to quote the MIRI Facebook page:

Stellar, a long awaited new cryptocurrency and distributed payment network, made by the founder of Mt. Gox and Ripple, just launched.

You can support MIRI for free by signing up. Every new Stellar user gets 6000 STR, and can send an additional 1000 STR to another user for FREE!

Our Stellar username is “miri”.

This is an awesome opportunity to get in on the ground floor of an exciting and promising new digital currency project while also supporting MIRI.

Registering for Stellar requires just a username and password, no e-mail or verification required. To get the free Stellar, you have to have Facebook Platform turned on (see the first setting on this page) and allow the Stellar App to temporarily integrate with your account. Send 1000 STR to 'miri' or their address (gHhshpzDcfRsie2qxjjHqrsTRe3JSCaUeN), and you will get back the 1000 STR. Once you receive back the 1000 STR, you can then remove the Stellar app like any other in your Facebook settings.

Edit: The promotion seems to have been reduced. See these two comments.

Edit2: The promotion seems more-or-less gone now; consider the part of this post about Stellar irrelevant.

I did this and it took me maybe three minutes (including time to take notes). The Stellar website is self-explanatory. If you encounter difficulties at any point in the process, or if I've forgotten some part of the process, feel free to comment on this post to that effect.

To track follow-up on threads like this: If you donate because of this thread, please indicate that in this comment (you can do so anonymously there if you prefer), and feel free to state that you have donated as a reply to that comment.

(If you're thinking free cryptocurrency is too good to be true, and wondering what the founders get out of it: My understanding is the reason this works is that early investment in a cryptocurrency bolsters it, so that giving away some for free at the start is actually a smart thing to do at first for the founders. No gimmicks or tricks about it asking for card details or anything dodgy like that.)
Bragging Thread, August 2014
by CronoDAS — 2014-08-03T07:23:38.238Z

Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to comment on this thread explaining the most awesome thing you've done this since July 1st. You may be as blatantly proud of yourself as you feel. You may unabashedly consider yourself the coolest freaking person ever because of that awesome thing you're dying to tell everyone about. This is the place to do just that.

Remember, however, that this isn't any kind of progress thread. Nor is it any kind of proposal thread. This thread is solely for people to talk about the awesome things they have done. Not "will do". Not "are working on". Have already done. This is to cultivate an environment of object level productivity rather than meta-productivity methods.

So, what's the coolest thing you've done this month?
Meetup : Sydney Meetup - August
by taryneast — 2014-08-02T23:10:29.654Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Meetup - August

WHEN:
27 August 2014 06:30:00PM (+1000)

WHERE:
Sydney City RSL, 565 George St, Sydney, Australia 2000

6:30 PM for early discussion 7PM general dinner-discussion after dinner we'll have our rationality exercise and a more specific discussion-topic.

I'll book another table under the name "less wrong".We normally meet in the restaurant on level 2. So far they've always put it about 5m to the left of the lift, up against the kitchen area.

The theme for this month is "trying new things" - so get ready to test your comfort zone and expand your abilities :)

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Meetup - August
Me and M&Ms
by coyotespike — 2014-08-02T19:06:21.931Z

Ah, delicious dark chocolate M&Ms, colorfully filling a glass jar with your goodness. How do I love thee? About four of you an hour. Here's a brief rundown of my most recent motivation hacking experiment.

1. Gwern has an interesting article arguing that Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) may shift the learning advantage from intelligence toward conscientiousness (actually he's not sure about the intelligence part). This shift occurs because MOOCs select for higher-quality instruction and better feedback, broadly speaking and over time, but it's much harder to stay on task without a malevolent instructor and bad grades breathing down your neck. This thesis jives with my own experience; if I get stuck on a math problem, I just google "an intuitive approach to x," and I usually find a couple of people begging to teach me the concept. But it's harder to get started and to stay focused than in a classroom.

2. Given that knowledge compounds and grants increasing advantages, I'd really like to keep taking advantage of MOOCs. Some MOOCs are better than others, but many are better than your standard college course - and they're free. For a non-technical guy getting technical, like me, it's a golden age of education. So, it would be great if I were highly conscientious. Gwern points out that conscientiousness is a relatively stable Big Five personality trait.

3. The question then becomes, can conscientiousness be developed? Well, I'm not a Cartesian agent, so wouldn't it make sense to reward myself for conscientiousness? Enter the M&Ms. I set a daily target for pomodoros. When I finish a pomodoro, I get a big peanut M&M or two small ones. If I finish two in a row, I get two servings, and so on. In this way, I encourage myself to get started, and then to keep going to build Deep Focus. Each pomodoro becomes cause for celebration, and I find my rapid progress through pomodoros (and chocolate) energizing, where long periods of distraction were tiring.

This has worked fantastically well for the last two weeks. I hit my pomodoro target for paid work, then switch to educational work. I plan to keep it up, and maybe I'll use chocolate as motivation somewhere else as well. Now back to my M&Ms, green, yellow, blue, orange, brown, red . . .
Meetup : Bratislava
by Viliam_Bur — 2014-08-02T18:18:58.958Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Bratislava

WHEN:
18 August 2014 06:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Bistro The Peach, Mariánska 3, Bratislava

Pošlite do mailovej skupiny linku na zaujímavú tému, o ktorej sa chcete na meetupe porozprávať.

Discussion article for the meetup : Bratislava
Meetup : Helsinki Book Blanket Meetup
by Teo — 2014-08-02T17:31:08.478Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Helsinki Book Blanket Meetup

WHEN:
16 August 2014 03:00:00PM (+0300)

WHERE:
MANNERHEIMINTIE 13 A, Helsinki

Location changed to the large lobby-cafe of [http://www.musiikkitalo.fi/en] because of weather

Posted also as an event on Less Wrong Finland's Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/events/632882116808767/ – viewing might require joining the group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/lw.finland/

––––

[Less Wrong Finland meetup]

Having recently grown into a hundred-member group, we will hold our (first!) Book Blanket Meetup which should work regardless of how many people attend!

The idea is that you can add books through a simple Google form below, and that the added books will be made into cards like those in the event photo. The resulting deck of book-cards will be brought to the meetup and used for discovering new books, and whether people have read the same books and how others felt about them — and perhaps for trading them in an attempt to build a Hand of Sanity in case you end up deserted on some island. (Would you risk it and pick highly-praised books you haven’t read, or rather resort to old favorites you know to be full of deep meaning? Come find out!)

The form (which seemed to me anonymous even if signed in to Google): https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1OCPK0_GLHBFEnB_WQ6e8lfFIbPlP1y7PahuQK9abeZg/viewform?usp=send_form)

Also, you're just as welcome even if you haven't read or submitted anything! Deserted islands are serious considerations regardless of reading history, and in any case others can practice explaining why some books could be good to read. And of course you can just ask others about books they admit having read, though everyone's bound to forget old books. Time to resurface memories?

––––

Time?: 08-16-2014 15:00:00 (UTC+03)

Place?: CHANGED: To be weather-safe, we're going to meet at the large lobby-cafe of Musiikkitalo (Mannerheimintie 13 A). To find me, I'll have an orange hoodie.

Discussion article for the meetup : Helsinki Book Blanket Meetup
Meetup : Perth, Australia: Sunday lunch
by  — 2014-08-02T16:10:02.859Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Perth, Australia: Sunday lunch

WHEN:
17 August 2014 12:00:00PM (+0800)

WHERE:
Annalakshmi, Barrack Square, Perth, Australia

Come have lunch with other Less Wrongians! Hossein will start the conversation with a quick introduction to one of the cognitive biases. (Human irrationality: a delicious entree.)

We'll be at Annalakshmi (http://www.annalakshmi.com.au/), a vegetarian pay-what-you-want restaurant.

How to find me: I'll be by the entrance, carrying a silver water bottle labeled "CFAR" in orange.

You can RSVP here: http://www.meetup.com/Perth-Less-Wrong/events/198567632/

Discussion article for the meetup : Perth, Australia: Sunday lunch
Maybe we're not doomed
by Manfred — 2014-08-02T15:22:14.965Z

This is prompted by Scott's excellent article, Meditations on Moloch.

I might caricature (grossly unfairly) his post like this:

Map some central problems for humanity onto the tragedy of the commons.

Game theory says we're doomed.

Of course my life is pretty nice right now. But, goes the story, this is just a non-equilibrium starting period. We're inexorably progressing towards a miserable Nash equilibrium, and once we get there we'll be doomed forever. (This forever loses a bit of foreverness if one expects everything to get interrupted by self-improving AI, but let's elide that.)

There are a few ways we might not be doomed. The first and less likely is that people will just decide not to go to their doom, even though it's the Nash equilibrium. To give a totally crazy example, suppose there were two countries playing a game where the first one to launch missiles had a huge advantage. And neither country trusts the other, and there are multiple false alarms - thus pushing the situation to the stable Nash equilibrium of both countries trying to launch first. Except imagine that somehow, through some heroic spasm of insanity, these two countries just decided not to nuke each other. That's the sort of thing it would take.

Of course, people are rarely able to be that insane, so success that way should not be counted on. But on the other hand, if we're doomed forever such events will eventually occur - like a bubble of spontaneous low entropy spawning intelligent life in a steady-state universe.

The second and most already-implemented way is to jump outside the system and change the game to a non-doomed one. If people can't share the commons without defecting, why not portion it up into private property? Or institute government regulations? Or iterate the game to favor tit-for-tat strategies? Each of these changes has costs, but if the wage of the current game is 'doom,' each player has an incentive to change the game.

Scott devotes a sub-argument to why we're still doomed to things be miserable if we solve coordination problems with government:

Incentives for government employees sometimes don't match the needs of the people.

This has costs, and those costs help explain why some things that suck, suck.

I agree with this, but not all governments are equally costly as coordination technologies. Heck, not all governments even are a technology for improvi

...
Meetup : Moscow meet up
by marchdown — 2014-08-02T14:12:18.488Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow meet up

WHEN:
03 August 2014 02:00:49PM (+0400)

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

Pretty much the usual: Discussion of cognitive biases, rhetorical fallacies, a couple of presentations on rationality and strategic failures, games and exercises.

Announcement in Russian: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rationality-in-moscow/AmBM-gRpWv8

Everyone welcome!

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow meet up
Model of unlosing agents
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2014-08-02T07:59:19.545Z

Some have expressed skepticism that "unlosing agents" can actually exist. So to provide an existence proof, here is a model of an unlosing agent. It's not a model you'd want to use constructively to build one, but it's sufficient for the existence result.

Let D be the set of all decisions the agent has made in the past, let U be the set of all utility functions that are compatible with those decisions, and let P be a "better than" relationship on the set of outcomes (possibly intransitive, dependent, incomplete, etc...).

By "utility functions that are compatible those decisions" I mean that an expected utility maximising agent with any u in U would reach the same decisions D as the agent actually did. Notice that U starts off infinitely large when D is empty; when the agent faces a new decision d, here is a decision criteria that leaves U non-empty:

Restrict to the set of possible decision choices that would leave U non-empty. This is always possible, as any u in U would advocate for a particular decision choices du at d, and therefore choosing du would leave u in the updated U. Call this set compatible.

Among those compatible choices, choose one that is the least incompatible with P, using some criteria (such as needing to do the least work to remove intransitivenesses and dependences and so on).

Make that choice, and update P as in step 3, and update D and U (leaving U non-empty, as seen in step 1).

Proceed.

That's the theory. In practice, we would want to restrict the utilities initially allowed into U to avoid really stupid utilities ("I like losing money to people called Rob at 15:46.34 every alternate Wednesday if the stock market is up; otherwise I don't.") When constructing the initial P and U, it could be a good start to be just looking at categories that humans natuarally express preferences between. But those are implementation details. And again, using this kind of explicit design violates the spirit of unlosing agents (unless the set U is defined in ways that are different from simply listing all u in U).

The proof that this agent is unlosing is that a) U will never be empty, and b) for any u in U, the agent will have behaved indistinguishably from a u-maximiser.
Intuitions and utilitarianism
by KatjaGrace — 2014-08-02T01:21:35.000Z

Bryan Caplan:

When backed into a corner, most hard-line utilitarians concede that the standard counter-examples seem extremely persuasive. They know they’re supposed to think that pushing one fat man in front of a trolley to save five skinny kids ismorally obligatory. But the opposite moral intuition in their heads refuses to shut up.

Why can’t even utilitarians fully embrace their own theory?

He raises this question to argue that ‘there was evolutionary pressure to avoid activities such as pushing people in front of trolleys’ is not an adequate debunking explanation of the moral intuition, since there was also plenty of evolutionary pressure to like not dying, and other things that we generally think of as legitimately good.

I agree that one can’t easily explain away the intuition that it is bad to push fat men in front of trolleys with evolution, since evolution is presumably largely responsible for all intuitions, and I endorse intuitions that exist solely because of evolutionary pressures.

Bryan’s original question doesn’t seem so hard to answer though. I don’t know about other utilitarian-leaning people, but while my intuitions do say something like:

‘It is very bad to push the fat man in front of the train, and I don’t want to do it’

They also say something like:

‘It is extremely important to save those five skinny kids! We must find a way!’

So while ‘the opposite intuition refuses to shut up’, if the so-called counterexample is persuasive, it is not in the sense that my intuitions agree that one should not push the fat man, and my moral stance insists on the opposite. My moral intuitions are on both sides.

Given that I have conflicting intuitions, it seems that any account would conflict with some intuitions. So seeing that utilitarianism conflicts with some intuitions here does not seem like much of a mark against utilitarianism.

The closest an account might get to not conflicting with any intuitions would be if it said ‘pushing the fat man is terrible, and not saving the kids is terrible too. I will weigh up how terrible each is and choose the least bad option’. Which is what utilitarianism does. An account could probably concord more with these intuitions than utilitarianism does, if it weighed up the strength of the two intuitions instead o...
Why the tails come apart
by Thrasymachus — 2014-08-01T22:41:00.044Z

[I'm unsure how much this rehashes things 'everyone knows already' - if old hat, feel free to downvote into oblivion. My other motivation for the cross-post is the hope it might catch the interest of someone with a stronger mathematical background who could make this line of argument more robust]

[Edit 2014/11/14: mainly adjustments and rewording in light of the many helpful comments below (thanks!). I've also added a geometric explanation.]

Many outcomes of interest have pretty good predictors. It seems that height correlates to performance in basketball (the average height in the NBA is around 6'7"). Faster serves in tennis improve one's likelihood of winning. IQ scores are known to predict a slew of factors, from income, to chance of being imprisoned, to lifespan.

What's interesting is what happens to these relationships 'out on the tail': extreme outliers of a given predictor are seldom similarly extreme outliers on the outcome it predicts, and vice versa. Although 6'7" is very tall, it lies within a couple of standard deviations of the median US adult male height - there are many thousands of US men taller than the average NBA player, yet are not in the NBA. Although elite tennis players have very fast serves, if you look at the players serving the fastest serves ever recorded, they aren't the very best players of their time. It is harder to look at the IQ case due to test ceilings, but again there seems to be some divergence near the top: the very highest earners tend to be very smart, but their intelligence is not in step with their income (their cognitive ability is around +3 to +4 SD above the mean, yet their wealth is much higher than this) (1).

The trend seems to be that even when two factors are correlated, their tails diverge: the fastest servers are good tennis players, but not the very best (and the very best players serve fast, but not the very fastest); the very richest tend to be smart, but not the very smartest (and vice versa). Why?

Too much of a good thing?

One candidate explanation would be that more isn't always better, and the correlations one gets looking at the whole population doesn't capture a reversal at the right tail. Maybe being taller at basketball is good up to a point, but being really tall leads to greater costs in terms of things like agility. Maybe although having a faster serv...
Group Rationality Diary, August 1-15
by therufs — 2014-08-01T20:44:01.871Z

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for August 1-15.

It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:

Established a useful new habit

Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief

Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations

Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior

Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something

Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life

Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you

Tried doing any of the above and failed

Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.

Thanks to cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating.

Previous diary: July 16-31

Next diary: August 16-31

Rationality diaries archive