trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Random fic idea
by nick012000 — 2010-10-02T08:02:04.945Z

Got this snippet of an idea while reading a Terminator/Buffy the Vampire Slayer crossover. Not going to do anything with it (for hopefully obvious reasons), but I figured I'd share because I found it amusing.

The artificial intelligence researcher looked up, startled, as the door slammed open, revealing a heavily-muscled man in the doorway.

"Eleizer Yudkowsky, come with me if you want to live."
The Singularity in the Zeitgeist
by dclayh — 2010-10-02T06:51:30.430Z

As a part of public relations, I think it's important to keep tabs on how the Singularity and related topics (GAI, FAI, life-extension, etc.) are presented in the culture at large. I've posted links to such things in the past, but I think there should be a central clearinghouse, and a discussion-level post seems like the right place.

So: in the comments, post examples of references to Singularity-related topics that you've found, ideally with a link and a few sentences' description of what the connection is and how it's presented (whether seriously or as an object of ridicule, for instance).

There should probably be a similar post for rationality references, but let's see how this one goes first.
Where did my comments go?
by PhilGoetz — 2010-10-01T23:21:25.924Z

I was googling to see if I'd already posted some stuff on LessWrong, and I found it in a web cache, but not on the site. Compare Google's Sept. 8 2010 cache of a LessWrong post to the version now on LessWrong. Everything between the comment made by MBlume on 20 April 2009 02:58:50AM, and the comment made by Alicorn on 19 April 2009 10:11:55PM, is now missing, including all 5 of my top-level comments, and some top-level comments by JulianMorrison.

I didn't delete them. Does anyone know what happened to them?

Is this happening to other comments?
credibility.com
by snarles — 2010-10-01T22:31:13.999Z

In the ideal world, all of human knowledge could be accessed and evaluated by every individual for personal decisions; we are more towards having more information be accessible, but it is increasingly infeasible for individuals to process all the information relevant to all their questions. The solution is to split some common important questions into sub-questions and to rely on the reports of individuals who investigate specific questions, often themselves relying on the reports of others in addition to primary data (observations). But one cannot trust these reports completely; thus there is a need for a system which can evaluate the reviews and reviewers themselves. Reputation and later, peer review, has historically played this role; but now the technology exists to implement something like a "credibility.com" in which every information source can be reviewed. Could such a site, properly implemented, grow to supersede the role now played by peer review?
6 Minute Intro to Evolutionary Psychology
by Edwin Evans — 2010-10-01T21:07:28.527Z

In the spirit of You Are A Brain, this is a 6 minute presentation I gave at Toastmasters on Evolutionary Psychology and may repeat. Be sure to click on show speaker notes (in Actions) to see the full text.

6 Minute Intro to Evolutionary Psychology

Any suggestions for improvements? Some people didn’t get it. Also, is it accurate enough? Also, I think the Wason Selection argument isn’t all that compelling and takes up about half of the time. Is there a better example I could use? (The speech was supposed to be for either informing or persuading and persuading required informing so I tried to focus just on informing.)
Automated theorem proving
by snarles — 2010-10-01T20:13:33.802Z

Automated theorem proving *sounds like* a natural extension of many useful trends and a solution to many current problems. To me, it seems obvious that there will be a need for the formalization of the mathematics (up to and beyond the boundary of mathematics with real-world applications) as well as the routine checking of software for 100% intended performance. Secure networks and software in particular could be an important safeguard against AI.

Yet I haven't heard much of it; the implementation difficulties must be considerable given that there are substantial and predictable benefits to the widespread use of automated theorem proving. Anyone with experience in the field?
The meta-evaluation question
by snarles — 2010-10-01T19:50:12.201Z

Evaluation refers to an agent's evaluation of the expected benefit of a particular action; meta-evaluation is the agent's evaluation of the computational cost-effectiveness of evaluation in general.

There are two difficulties with meta-evaluation. One is the nature of the data, which by nature will consist of unique events*. The second is the obvious self-referential nature of the problem.

Meta-evaluation is a central issue for any theory of rational decision-making, yet I have not yet seen it directly addressed here.

*This quality of nonredundancy occurs in its purest form in "mathematical data," ie the distribution of primes.
Coding Rationally - Test Driven Development
by DSimon — 2010-10-01T15:20:47.873Z

Computer programming can be a lot of fun, or it can be brain-rendingly frustrating. The transition between these two states often goes something like this:

Paula the Programmer: Computer, using the "Paula's_Neat_Geometry" library, draw a triangle near the top of the screen once per frame.
Cronus the Computer: Sure, no problem.
P: After drawing that triangle, draw a rectangle 50 units below it.
C: Will do, boss.
P: Sweet. Alright, after the rectangle, draw a circle 20 units to the right, then another 20 units to the left.
C: GLARBL GLARBL GLARBL I hear it's amazing when the famous purple stuff wormed in flap-jaw space with the tuning fork does a raw blink on Hari Kiri Rock! I need scissors! 61!1 System error.
P: Crap! Crap crap crap. Um, okay, let's see...

And then Paula must spend the next 45 minutes turning the circle drawing code on and off and figuring out where the wackiness originates from. When the circle code is off, she sees everything work fine. When she turns it back on, she sees everything that she thought she understood so well, that she was previously able to manipulate with the calm joyful deftness of a virtuoso playing a violin, turn into a world of mystery and ice-slick confusion. Something about that request to draw that circle at that particular time and place is exposing a difference between Paula's model of the computer and the computer's reality.

When this happens to a programmer often enough, they begin to realize that even when things seem to be working fine, these differences still probably lurk unseen beneath the surface, waiting invisibly to strike. This is an unsettling feeling. As a technique of rationality, or just because being uncomfortable is unpleasant, they seek diligently to avoid creating these cross-model inconsistencies (known colloquially as "bugs") in their own code, so as to avoid subjecting themselves to GLARBL GLARBL GLARBL moments.

Having a sincere desire to be less wrong in one's thinking is fine, but not enough. One also needs an effective process to follow, a system for making it harder to fool oneself, or at least for noticing when it's happened. Test Driven Development is one such system; not the only one, and not without its practical problems (which will be at most briefly glossed over in this introductory article), but one of my personal favorites, primarily because of the way it makes me feel confident about the qu...
Can you enter the Matrix? The deliberate simulation of sensory input.
by XiXiDu — 2010-10-01T14:58:24.217Z

Related to: Generalizing From One Example

I am able to simulate sensory input, i.e. dream deliberately, enter my personal Matrix (Holodeck). I can see, hear, feel and smell without the presence of light, sound, tactile or olfactory sensory input. That is, I do not need to undergo certain conditions to consciously experience them. They do not have to happen live, I can imagine them, simulate them. I can replay previous and create new sensory experiences in my mind, i.e. perceive them with my minds eye. I can live, pursue and experience activities inside my head without any environmental circumstances, i.e. all I need is my body. I can walk through a park, see and hear children playing, feel and smell the air, while being weightlessness in a totally dark and quiet zero gravity environment.

After reading the article by Yvain some time ago the idea(?) that some people are unable to deliberately experience the world with their mind's eye hasn't ceased to fascinate me. So yesterday I came back to search the comments on that article if there are people who actually confirm this claim. The comments by Garth and Blueberry seem to suggest this. After that I started to ask other people and was amazed that after some misunderstanding the first two people I asked were both either completely or almost unable to experience anything if it wasn't happening live. This is shocking. The second person was actually my dad. I asked, "if you were to close your eyes and I told you that I changed the lighting in the kitchen from normal to red, could you imagine how it would look like"? "Well, yes" he said. Only after about 10 minutes I figured what he meant is that he would be able to describe it, paint it or pinpoint other characteristics of his kitchen equipped with all red lighting, but he couldn't actually dream it! He couldn't see it if he closed his eyes! He always thought that when people say they imagine a beautiful sunset they actually mean that they could describe it or picture it literally, not experience it! I was struck. This insight only came after we started talking about dreaming. He seems to be able to dream, but once I compared dreaming with imagination he said that's really completely different. Dreaming is closer to the real thing he said, you actually experience it. But if he's awake and closes his eyes there seems to be nothing but darkness and some unconscious pr...
Expectation-Based Akrasia Management
by AdeleneDawner — 2010-10-01T04:34:32.782Z

I'd been staying out of anti-akrasia discussion mostly because my strategy for getting things done is so different from the common one that it barely seems related, much less relevant. I've been asked, though, so here's what I have to say about it.
One of the main premises in how I go about getting things done is that the process of choosing what to do is a major factor in how easy it is to get yourself to do that thing. Being confident that the goal is one that you want to achieve and that the next step really is the best thing to do to achieve it is important. Without that, you're likely going to have to run on willpower rather than coast on your own drive to reach that goal. (Fear is another common drive, and sometimes an unavoidable one, but I really don't recommend it. On top of the stress of working that way, running on fear means that you risk having a sudden impetus failure if you misjudge what your brain will consider a safe solution to the problem in the immediate sense. Example: My fear of doctors would be better handled by taking active steps to keep my health, not by avoiding dealing with medical issues altogether as I've been doing for the last few years. I'm working on turning that around, and am actually planning to post about it as an open question of instrumental rationality sometime in the next few days.)
I have a few techniques that I use to determine that a particular goal or next step is a good one. These may seem rather basic - it's noteworthy that I didn't really comprehend the concept of 'pursuing goals' when I was younger, and that I've only been building these skills for a few years - but they do seem to be quite effective, if somewhat slower than the normal methods.
My main technique for determining whether a goal is a good one is to think about the goal in many different contexts - not by sitting down and trying to come up with relevant contexts all at once (which seems likely to induce bias, along with being more difficult than my technique), but by thinking about the goal from time to time as I go about my life. When I'm doing this, I'll spend anywhere from a week or two to a few years occasionally asking myself 'how would the situation I'm in be different if I'd already achieved my goal?'. This seems to give a pretty accurate idea of whether the goal is a good one, helps make any flaws obvious, and perhaps most importantly ...
Reflections on a Personal Public Relations Failure: A Lesson in Communication
by multifoliaterose — 2010-10-01T00:29:26.468Z

Related To: Are Your Enemies Innately Evil?, Talking Snakes: A Cautionary Tale, How to Not Lose an Argument

Eliezer's excellent article Are Your Enemies Innately Evil? points to the fact that when two people have a strong disagreement it's often the case that each person sincerely believes that he or she is on the right side. Yvain's excellent article Talking Snakes: A Cautionary Tale highlights that the fact that to each such person, without knowledge of the larger context that the other person's beliefs fit into, the other person's beliefs can appear to be absurd. The frequency with which this phenomenon occurs is sufficiently high so that it's important for each participant in an argument to make a strong effort to understand where the other person is coming from and to frame one's own ideas with the other person's perspective in mind.

Last month I made a sequence of posts [1], [2], [3], [4] raising concerns about the fruitfulness of SIAI's approach to reducing existential risk. My concerns were sincere and I made my sequence of postings in good faith. All the same, there's a sense in which my sequence of postings was a failure. In the first of these I argued that the SIAI staff should place greater emphasis on public relations. Ironically, in my subsequent postings I myself should have placed greater emphasis on public relations. I made mistakes which damaged my credibility and barred me from serious consideration by some of those who I hoped to influence.

In the present posting I catalog these mistakes and describe the related lessons that I've learned about communication.

Mistake #1: Starting during the Singularity Summit

I started my string of posts during the Singularity Summit. This was interpreted by some to be underhanded and overly aggressive. In fact, the coincidence of my string of posts with the Singularity Summit was influenced more by the appearance of XiXiDu's Should I Believe What the SIAI claims? than anything else, but it's understandable that some SIAI supporters would construe the timing of my posts as premeditated and hostile in nature. Moreover, the timing of my posts did not give the SIAI staff a fair chance to respond real time. I should have avoided posting during a period of time when I knew that the SIAI staff would be occupied, waiting until a week after the Singularity Summit to begin my sequence of posts.

Mistake #2: Failing to bal...
Proposal for a structured agreement tool
by DilGreen — 2010-09-30T23:31:24.793Z

I hope this is a good place for this - comments/suggestions welcome - offers of collaboration more than welcome!

I envisage a kind of structured wiki, centred around the creation of propositions, which can be linked to allow communities of interest to rapidly come to fairly sophisticated levels of mutual understanding; the aim being to foster the development of strong groups with confidence in shared, conscious positions. This should allow significant confidence in collaboration.

Some aspects, in no particular order;

Propositions are made by users, and are editable by users - as in a wiki

Each proposition could be templated - the inspiration for the template being the form adopted by Chris. Alexander et al in 'A Pattern Language', namely;

TITLE (referenced)(confidence level)

picture

context - including links to other propositions within whose sphere this one might operate

STATEMENT OF PROBLEM/PURPOSE OF PROPOSITION

Discussion

CONCLUSION - couched in parametric/generic/process based terms

links to other propositions for which this proposition is the context

Some mechanism for users to make public their degree of acceptance of each proposition

Some mechanism for construction by individuals/groups of networks of propositions specific to particular users/groups (in other words, the links referred to in 3. and 7. above might be different for different users/groups) These networks can work like Pattern Languages that address particular fields / ethical approaches / political or philosophical positions / projects

Some mechanism for assignment by users/groups of tiered structure to proposition networks (to allow for distinctions to be made between fundamental, large scale propositions and more detailed, peripheral ones)

Some mechanism for individual users to form associations with other users/established groups who are subscribing to the same propositions

Some mechanism for community voting/karma to promote individuals to assume stewardship of groups

Enough of these for now. Some imagined interactions might be more helpful;

I stumble across the site (as I stumbled across LessWrong), and browse proposition titles. I come across one called 'Other people are real, just like me'. It contains some version of the argument for accepting that other humans are to be assumed to have roughly the same motivations, needs et al, as me, and the suggestion that this i

...
Are you doing what you should be doing?
by Will_Newsome — 2010-09-30T23:23:13.579Z

"What am I doing? And why am I doing it?"
One method for increasing high utility productivity I thought up was choosing a specific well-defined answer for the second half ("Why am I doing it?") and consistently checking to see if the answer to the first half satisfyingly aligns with the second half. For example, if I'd checked myself an hour ago, it'd be "I'm learning to program because I want to maximize the probability of FAI development." Ideally the second half would be related to a 'something to protect' or 'definite major purpose' that stays constant over time and that you want to be consistently moving towards. If you're already good at noticing rationalization this technique might work to induce cognitive dissonance when engaging in suboptimal courses of action. (Whether or not inducing cognitive dissonance in order to make yourself more productive is likely to work is open to debate. I suspect P.J. Eby would thoroughly disagree.) I'm going to try this over the next few days and see if the results are any better than how I've been doing recently. I am at a relative productivity high point right now though, so the data might not be too meaningful. I encourage others to see if this method works.

If you are equally good at explaining any plan, you have zero productivity.

An example that's sorta inspired by my own thinking, though not exactly:

"I'm learning to program because I want to maximize the probability of FAI development." ...That doesn't sound right. Maybe learning to program will help me think more rationally? But the connection is pretty loose, both from 'learning to program' to 'improving the relevant thinking skills' and from 'me thinking better' to 'a greater probability of FAI development'. Maybe learning to program will help me get a job to donate to FAI development? Money is the unit of caring, after all. (Note: cached thought, re-examine carefully.) But to be honest, my comparative advantage doesn't seem to be in making money. I should think about this more. Even so, I doubt programming is the best way for me to make money, since talking with Louie about it. Thus learning to program is probably a suboptimal action, though better than e.g. playing video games, if for whatever reason those were my only two options.

What to do, then? I should probably go ask 'wedrifid' from LW for a recommended book on neurochemistry

...
How do you organize your research?
by nhamann — 2010-09-30T19:37:33.147Z

This recent discussion post by SarahC got me thinking about how one can rationally manage research. It seems like software might be useful here, but I don't know how exactly the software should work. I'm intrigued by mind mapping software, but it's possible that all that structure is unnecessary and you could do quite well with less. For instance, I'm considering trying a system of timestamped notes which are managed by a tagging system. If the tagging was done thoroughly enough, you could filter through all the posts sharing a cluster of tags and fairly easily get access to every idea you've recorded on a certain topic.

The only problem is, I think I'd want even more specialized software than that. I'd want to integrate my notes with some form of bibliography management, and at least a to-do list. And I can imagine more, for example perhaps there could be a "sticky note" capability where I could pin up and move around things that I either want to remember or that will help me with my research, like an inspirational quote if I'm not feeling motivated to do research, or the Litany of Tarski or some other rationality technique if I really need to remember to use it.

I'm not sure if these ideas are all sound, but a basic requirement for the software would be to document the structure of your research so that it can be analyzed for effectiveness.

I know there are some people on Less Wrong who do research, so I suppose I should defer to the experts here: how do you organize your research? What methodologies and tools do you use? Why?
Tell me what I don't know about life insurance.
by CannibalSmith — 2010-09-30T12:21:23.655Z

I was offered life insurance and thought I need input from LessWrong people before I accept or decline the offer.

Please share your personal experience, if any, with me.

Thoughts that have occurred to me:

What are the odds that that company will be around in 38 years? I mean, both World Wars fit in that time span.

What is the probability distribution over how much the Euro will have inflated by then? Does that even matter?