trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
[Link] Reddit, help me find some peace I'm dying young
by  — 2012-08-18T15:17:01.302Z

Saw this on reddit.

http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/ydsy5/reddit_help_me_find_some_peace_in_dying_young_im/

Hey Reddit,

I'm a 23 year old girl with recurrent Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), a highly aggressive type of brain cancer. I posted a couple of months ago asking for suggestions for things I should try before I die (life expectancy is 3-6 months) and got a lot of great ideas (many of which I've fulfilled).

At the time of my last post, my treatment was undecided. I ended up participating in a phase I trial at Dana-Farber, but I progressed after two months of treatment. There are not many great treatment options left for me, but my next move will be five radiosurgery treatments at Duke University next week. My prognosis looks pretty bleak at this point, and though I am hoping to exceed the 6-10 month median survival, I have to prepare to die. In a way, I am fortunate because the lesion is primarily in my brain stem (controls things like breathing), so I will likely die before the tumor spreads to the areas central to who I am.

I'm back on Reddit again, mostly to ask for help because I want to be cryogenically preserved upon my death. I've been interested in cryonics since long before I was even diagnosed, but I never thought that I would have to secure the finances so fast, and without a career or savings to stand on. As weird as it feels to ask for help here, I feel I should just give it a shot and sees what happens.

I caused a lot of family controversy last week by breaking the news to my parents. I can tell I've alienated them quite a bit as they are Christian and don't see why I'd want to be preserved; in their mind, I am going to heaven and my "soul" will forever leave my body when I die anyway. I clearly upset both of them with the implication that I was agnostic (I didn't say this outright, but it's true). My mom is fairly supportive of my plans to be preserved, but unfortunately, my dad isn't a fan of the idea, and he's really the only family I have that could offer financial help (my parents are divorced and not on good terms). The company I'm looking into, Cryonics Institute, costs $30,000-35,000 with transportation to the facility accounted for. My boyfriend is fully supportive, but like me, he's broke and barely out of college.

I know this is a big thing to ask for, and I'm sure many people are doubtful that preservation is plausible wi

...
An angle of attack on Open Problem #1
by Benya — 2012-08-18T12:08:32.126Z

There is a problem with the proof here and I have to think about whether I can fix it. Thanks to vi21maobk9vp for pointing me in the right direction! I have posted a new and hopefully correct proof attempt. Thanks again to vi21maobk9vp!

In his talk on open problems in Friendly AI, Eliezer's first question is how, given Löb's theorem, an AI can replace itself with a better expected utility maximizer that believes in as much mathematics as the original AI. I know exactly one trick for that sort of problem, so I decided to try that on a toy variant. To my surprise, it more or less just worked. Therefore:

Professor Quirrell proposes a game. You start with a score of one. Professor Quirrell moves first, by choosing a computer program and showing you its source code. You then have three options: Take your winnings; double down; or self-destruct.

If you take your winnings, the game ends, and your score is converted to Quirrell points.

If you self-destruct, the game ends, your score is lost, you'll be sent to bed without dinner, you'll lose 150 House points, Rita Skeeter will write a feature alleging that you're a Death Eater, and Professor Quirrell will publicly critique your performance. You are advised not to pick this option.

If you double down, your score doubles, and you advance to the next round. Professor Quirrell again moves first by choosing a computer program. Then, it's your turn—except that this time, you don't get to choose your move yourself: instead, it'll be chosen by Professor Quirrell's program from the previous round.

Professor Quirrell will endeavor to present an educational sequence of programs.

*

The idea is that Quirrell will make you self-destruct if he possibly can, so you must only accept programs that don't self-destruct, that accept only programs that don't self-destruct, that accept only programs that only accept—etc. That's supposed to capture one essential aspect of Eliezer's problem, namely how to make sure that a proposed rewrite doesn't destroy your values, while ignoring the complications due to a different aspect, namely comparing the expected values before and after the rewrite. In Quirrell's game, there are safe and unsafe rewrites, and you should always double down on a safe one and take your winnings when presented with an unsafe one. Let's look at some interesting programs that we could recognize as safe. [And to d...
[SEQ RERUN] Harder Choices Matter Less
by MinibearRex — 2012-08-18T06:11:42.676Z

Today's post, Harder Choices Matter Less was originally published on 29 August 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

If a choice is hard, that means the alternatives are around equally balanced, right?

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Against Modal Logics, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
Enjoy solving "impossible" problems? Group project!
by Epiphany — 2012-08-18T00:20:07.779Z

In the Muehlhauser-Hibbard Dialogue on AGI, Hibbard states it will be "impossible to decelerate AI capabilities" but Luke counters with "Persuade key AGI researchers of the importance of safety ... If we can change the minds of a few key AGI scientists, it may be that key insights into AGI are delayed by years or decades." and before I read that dialogue, I had come up with three additional ideas on Heading off a near-term AGI arms race. Bill Hibbard may be right that "any effort expended on that goal could be better applied to the political and technical problems of AI safety" but I doubt he's right that it's impossible.

How do you prove something is impossible? You might prove that a specific METHOD of getting to the goal does not work, but that doesn't mean there's not another method. You might prove that all the methods you know about do not work. That doesn't prove there's not some other option you don't see. "I don't see an option, therefore it's impossible." is only an appeal to ignorance. It's a common one but it's incorrect reasoning regardless. Think about it. Can you think of a way to prove that a method that does work isn't out there waiting to be discovered without saying the equivalent of "I don't see any evidence for this." We can say "I don't see it, I don't see it, I don't see it!" all day long.

I say: "Then Look!"

How often do we push past this feeling to keep thinking of ideas that might work? For many, the answer is "never" or "only if it's needed". The sense that something is impossible is subjective and fallible. If we don't have a way of proving something is impossible, but yet believe it to be impossible anyway, this is a belief. What distinguishes this from bias?

I think it's a common fear that you may waste your entire life on doing something that is, in fact, impossible. This is valid, but it's completely missing the obvious: As soon as you think of a plan to do the impossible, you'll be able to guess whether it will work. The hard part is THINKING of a plan to do the impossible. I'm suggesting that if we put our heads together, we can think of a plan to make an impossible thing into a possible one. Not only that, I think we're capable of doing this on a worthwhile topic. An idea that's not only going to benefit humanity, b...
Proposed rewrites of LW home page, about page, and FAQ
by John_Maxwell — 2012-08-17T22:41:57.843Z

Proposed rewrites can be found here. Please suggest specific improvements in the comments!

Although long-time Less Wrong users don't pay much attention to the home page, about page, and FAQ, I suspect new users pay lots of attention to them. A few times, elsewhere on the internet, I've seen people describe their impression of Less Wrong that seemed primarily gleaned from these pages--they made generalizations about Less Wrong that didn't seem true to me, but might appear to be true if all one did was read the about page and FAQ.

The about page, in particular, is called out to every new visitor. Try visiting Less Wrong in incognito mode or private browsing (i.e. without your current cookies) to see what I'm referring to.

But the current set of "newcomer pages" isn't very good, in my opinion:

Text is duplicated between the home page and the about page. There's plenty to say and link to without repeating ourselves.

The first paragraph of the home page text has four links to Wikipedia articles and none to Less Wrong posts. These may be very good Wikipedia articles, but I tend to think that linking to actual Less Wrong posts is generally a better way to communicate what kind of site Less Wrong is than linking to Wikipedia.

The home page text also makes references to the blog, discussion section, and meetups, which are already highlighted plenty in the brain image.

I think the primary purpose of the about page should be to describe and link to lots of interesting Less Wrong posts. I think reading posts is probably best way to figure out what Less Wrong is about. If the smorgasboard of posts linked to from the about page is sufficiently varied and high-quality, I think that most users will be able to find at least a couple posts they really like. Right now this purpose isn't given much real estate. There is a sentence starting with the words "If you want a sampling of the content on the main blog...", but this sentence does little to describe the posts it links to aside from providing a few related keywords.

There's also a lot of instruction on the about page regarding how to do basic stuff like create posts. Facebook and Youtube don't seem to think it's necessary to provide instructions on how to do basic stuff, so I don't think we need it either. (Just in case, though, it's mostly still all there

...
Any LessWrongers going to EMFCamp?
by philh — 2012-08-17T21:37:08.624Z

Electromagnetic Field is a three-day hacker camp near Milton Keynes (UK), running from Friday 31st August to Sunday 2nd September. It seems like something that would interest a healthy fraction of the LW crowd; among other things, there are talks on biohacking, gene therapy and "engineering tomorrow's healthcare, synthetic tissue generation". So I figured I'd see if anyone else here is planning to go; and if so, are you interested in meeting?
TLP: Insight without Change
by Vaniver — 2012-08-17T19:24:01.241Z

An interesting read by one of the blogs I read. It seems relevant to epiphany addiction.

Once you've read it (or tried and decided you didn't like it): the primary thing I got out of it is that insights can only be communicated inside social relationships (counting self-self relationships), which is difficult and rare to optimize around correctly. The father saying "your problem is that you seek validation from me" can only be done the in context of the father-son relationship, and saying it directly is often not the optimal way to actually change the behavior of the son. (Inception's climax comes to mind, which I don't recommend watching before seeing the rest of the film.)
Meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup Thursday 7pm
by EvelynM — 2012-08-17T16:33:16.847Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup Thursday 7pm

WHEN:
23 August 2012 07:00:00PM (-0600)

WHERE:
1129 W. Elizabeth St. Fort Collins 80521

Back to Fort Collins.

What are the experiments you are running now? How do you track them?

Discussion article for the meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup Thursday 7pm
Weekly LW Meetups: Austin, Brussels, Dublin, Redmond WA, Washington DC
by FrankAdamek — 2012-08-17T15:47:34.606Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on August 10th, and has now been moved to discussion.

There are upcoming irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups in:

Brussels meetup: 11 August 2012 12:00PM
(Redmond WA) Board Games: 11 August 2012 02:00PM
Dublin, Ireland Meetup: 12 August 2012 03:00PM
Washington DC Social Meetup: 12 August 2012 03:00PM
Bratislava, Slovakia - the first LW meetup: 18 August 2012 05:00PM
Less Wrong Sydney: 20th August : 20 August 2012 06:30PM

The following meetups take place in cities with regularly scheduled meetups, but involve a change in time or location, special meeting content, or simply a helpful reminder about the meetup:

Austin, TX: 11 August 2018 02:30PM
Cambridge (MA) Meetup: 19 August 2012 02:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Cambridge, MA, Cambridge UK, Chicago, Madison WI, Melbourne, Mountain View, New York, Ohio, Oxford, Portland, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Toronto, Waterloo, and West Los Angeles.

If you'd like to talk with other LW-ers face to face, and there is no meetup in your area, consider starting your own meetup; it's easy (more resources here). Check one out, stretch your rationality skills, build community, and have fun!

In addition to the handy sidebar of upcoming meetups, a meetup overview will continue to be posted on the front page every Friday. These will be an attempt to collect information on all the meetups happening in the next weeks. The best way to get your meetup featured is still to use the Add New Meetup feature, but you'll now also have the benefit of having your meetup mentioned in a weekly overview. These overview posts will be moved to the discussion section when the new post goes up.

Please note that for your meetup to appear in the weekly meetups feature, you need to post your meetup before the Friday before your meetup!

If you check Less Wrong irregularly, consider subscribing to one or more city-specific mailing list in order to be notified when an irregular meetup is happening: Atlanta, Berlin, Helsinki, London, Marin CA, Ottawa, Pittsburgh, Southern California (Los Angeles/Orange County area), St. Louis, Vancouver, Washington, DC.

If your meetup has a mailing list that you'd like mentioned here, or has become regular and isn't listed as such, let me know!

Want to help out the common good? If one of the meetups list...
[LINK] Cryonics - without even trying
by Kawoomba — 2012-08-17T08:41:27.895Z

(Title is tongue-in-cheek, "preservation" would've been more appropriate but less catchy)
With [news like that](http://news.discovery.com/history/preserved-brain-bog-england-110406.html), how hard can it be when you actually do want to preserve a brain:
> A human skull dated to about 2,684 years ago with an "exceptionally preserved" human brain still inside of it was recently discovered in a waterlogged U.K. pit, according to a new Journal of Archaeological Science study.
> The brain is the oldest known intact human brain from Europe and Asia, according to the authors, who also believe it's one of the best-preserved ancient brains in the world. (...) Scientists believe that submersion in liquid, anoxic environments helps to preserve human brain tissue.
Unfortunately for the poor guy / brain, we killed his survival prospects. He did go with the cheap option of just saving the head. Speculating, if he got found another few centuries from now, he might've been a patient, not "archeological remains".
On a more serious note, I'd like the perspective of someone signed up for cryonics on this:

With people signed up for cryonics nowadays - I hear it even comes with a necklace! - I wonder what role the signalling aspect (to others, more importantly to oneself, feeling safer from death) plays versus the actual permanent-death-evading.

Having been present for (mouse) brain slice experiments done immediately after extraction, being confronted with the rapidly progressing tissue decay, the most important aspect that could easily be optimised - apart from research into other methods of preservation - was the time from the extraction to the experiments. Each minute made a tremendous difference. Not a surprise: as the aphorism in neurology (stroke therapy) goes, "time is brain".
What leads me to somewhat doubt the seriousness of the actual belief in brain preservation, versus the belief in belief that's based on minimising existential angst, is that the obvious idea of "when death is approaching with an ETA of less than X, commit suicide with cryonics on immediate standby" is not an integral part of the discussion. X may be weeks, or even years, based on how serious you take cryonics.

The above incidentally contains a way of betting to indicate the strength you assign to the actual prospects of cryonics, versus the role it plays for you psychologically. Isn't betting on your ...
AI timeline predictions: are we getting better?
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2012-08-17T07:07:11.196Z

EDIT: Thanks to Kaj's work, we now have more rigorous evidence on the "Maes-Garreau law" (the idea that people will predict AI coming before they die). This post has been updated with extra information. The original data used for this analysis can now be found through here.

Thanks to some sterling work by Kaj Sotala and others (such as Jonathan Wang and Brian Potter - all paid for by the gracious Singularity Institute, a fine organisation that I recommend everyone look into), we've managed to put together a databases listing all AI predictions that we could find. The list is necessarily incomplete, but we found as much as we could, and collated the data so that we could have an overview of what people have been predicting in the field since Turing.

We retained 257 predictions total, of various quality (in our expanded definition, philosophical arguments such as "computers can't think because they don't have bodies" count as predictions). Of these, 95 could be construed as giving timelines for the creation of human-level AIs. And "construed" is the operative word - very few were in a convenient "By golly, I give a 50% chance that we will have human-level AIs by XXXX" format. Some gave ranges; some were surveys of various experts; some predicted other things (such as child-like AIs, or superintelligent AIs).

Where possible, I collapsed these down to single median estimate, making some somewhat arbitrary choices and judgement calls. When a range was given, I took the mid-point of that range. If a year was given with a 50% likelihood estimate, I took that year. If it was the collection of a variety of expert opinions, I took the prediction of the median expert. If the author predicted some sort of AI by a given date (partial AI or superintelligent AI), I took that date as their estimate rather than trying to correct it in one direction or the other (there were roughly the same number of subhuman AIs as suphuman AIs in the list, and not that many of either). I read extracts of the papers to make judgement calls when interpreting problematic statements like "within thirty years" or "during this century" (is that a range or an end-date?).

So some biases will certainly have crept in during the process. That said, it's still probably the best data we have. So keeping all that in mind, let's have a look at what these guys said (and it was mainly guys).

There are ...
Number of Members on LessWrong
by Epiphany — 2012-08-17T05:47:55.115Z

I was excited to find this site, so I wanted to know how many people had joined LessWrong. Was it what it seemed - that a lot of people had actually gathered around the theme of rational thought - or was that just wishful thinking about a site that a guy with a neat idea and his buddies put together? I couldn't find anything stating the number of members on LessWrong anywhere on the site or the internet, so I decided it would be a fun test of my search engine knowledge to nail jello to a tree and make my own.

Some argue that Google totals are completely meaningless, however, the real problem is that it's very complicated and if you don't know how search engines work, your likelihood of getting a usable number is low. I took into account the potential pitfalls when MacGyvering this figure out of Google. So far, no one has posted a significant flaw with my specific method. (I will change that statement if they do, once I've read their comment.) Also, I was right (Find in page: total).

Here is the query I constructed:

site:lesswrong.com/user -"submitted by" -"comments by"

(Translation provided at the end.)
This gets a similar result in Bing and Yahoo:

"lesswrong.com/user"

If this is correct, LessWrong has over 9,000 members. That's my claim: "LessWrong probably has over 9,000 members" not "LessWrong has exactly 9,000 members". My LessWrong population figure is likely to be low. (I explain this below.)

Why did I do this? I was really overjoyed to find this site and wanted to see whether it was somebody's personal site with just a few buddies, or if they actually managed to draw a significant gathering of people who are interested in rational thought. I was very happy to see that it looks much bigger than a personal site. Since it was so hard to find out how many users LessWrong has, I decided to share.

I think a lot of people assume the hasty generalization that "all search engine totals are meaningless". If you're an average user just plugging in search terms with little understanding of how search engines work: yes, you should regard them as meaningless. However, if you know the limitations of a technique, what parts of the system your working within are consistent and what parts of it are not, I say it is possible to get some meaning within those limitations. Do I know all th...