trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
On making fictional miracles seem plausible
by Yair Halberstadt — 2021-05-31T11:32:59.114Z

Consider the following two plot overviews of a book.

a)

The dark lord attacks Goodia.

At first Goodia holds out, but eventually the dark forces break through and take over the land, torturing and enslaving it's inhabitants.

The Goodian forces retreat to their mountain fortress where they are able to survive for years by growing mountain crops.

Eventually a traitor burns the food supplies, and the defenders begin to starve.

The Goodian king, now old and ailing, challenges the dark lord to a duel, the winner who will take over both kingdoms. The dark lord agrees.

Just as he is about to kill the Goodian king, a meteorite flies out the blue and strikes the dark lord, killing him instantly. Everyone lives happily ever after.

b)

A comet is flying through space.

The dark lord attacks Goodia.

The comet nears the sun.

At first Goodia holds out, but eventually the dark forces break through and take over the land, torturing and enslaving it's inhabitants.

Bits of the commit begin to break off, and stream behind it in a tail.

The Goodian forces retreat to their mountain fortress where they are able to survive for years by growing mountain crops.

We focus on one of these meteors, zooming through space.

Eventually a traitor burns the food supplies, and the defenders begin to starve.

This particular meteorite is not flying off into the endless void of space, but by a million to one chance is heading for a planet.

The Goodian king, now old and ailing, challenges the dark lord to a duel, the winner who will take over both kingdoms. The dark lord agrees.

As we get closer we see the planet is blue and green, with streaks of white.

Just as he is about to kill the Goodian king, a meteorite flies out the blue and strikes the dark lord, killing him instantly. Everyone lives happily ever after.

Now these are clearly both awful stories, but the first seems significantly more awful. I think I could almost get away with writing the second, but I wouldn't stand a chance with the first. The climax is a miracle happens and the dark lord is killed? What a waste of a build up!

What is curious is that the second story adds exactly 0 information. We know how meteorites occur, and we could have extrapolated everything I wrote about the comet simply by knowing that the dark lord was struck by one. So why does the second seem so much better a story than the first?

It's plausible that this is literat...
For Better Commenting, Take an Oath of Reply.
by DirectedEvolution — 2021-05-31T06:01:13.722Z

Thus spoke Maedhros and Maglor and Celegorm, Curufin and Caranthir, Amrod and Amras, princes of the Noldor; and many quailed to hear the dread words. For so sworn, good or evil, an oath may not be broken, and it shall pursue oathkeeper and oathbreaker to the world's end. - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

If our blogging is to be more than shouting into the void, we have to write good comments. But that's hard to do. If commenters have a low prior that they'll receive a response, they might not bother to write a comment in the first place, producing a negative feedback loop.

One simple solution is an Oath of Reply.

At the end of your post or comment, make a realistic promise stating when and how much you will respond to those who reply to you. You can make one Oath of Reply to your general audience, and separate oaths to specific commenters. You can also update and increase the specificity of your oaths as you go along. Keeping them accurate is even more important than keeping them.

For example, you might make vows like these:

I’m interested in spending at least X hours, with an option for more, having a longer conversation with you on this. Let me know if you're interested.

You have good ideas, and I can promise to participate in at least a few more back-and-forths on this if you're still engaged.

I will probably respond once if you comment, but I'm unlikely to respond more than once unless it's exceptionally intriguing.

Oaths of Reply are entirely voluntary. You do not need to make one. You don't have to make a big one. If you don't make an Oath of Reply, nobody can pressure you to do so, or complain if you don't respond. This is opt-in, not opt-out.

Oaths of Reply also come with an assumption of good faith and self-care. Rudeness and the intervening of life circumstances are grounds to modify or break the oath. Furthermore, it's very hard to predict the future beyond a few months. So an Oath of Reply lasts for no more than three months unless it is explicitly refreshed. This should be a universal understanding if somebody makes an Oath of Reply.

However, it is obligatory to state explicitly that you are modifying your oath. After all, the function of the Oath of Reply is to set accurate prior expectations about the likelihood of receiving a reply. If you honestly can't uphold it, then the best thing you can do to preserve the sanctity and power of the oath is...
Mega Links Post for Mar-Apr-May 2021
by ike — 2021-05-31T03:47:47.290Z
Link: https://misinfounderload.substack.com/p/mega-links-post-for-mar-apr-may-2021

It’s been a few months since my last links post, so here’s three months worth of catch-up. (formatting works better on substack)

Physics:

https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/physicist-creates-ai-algorithm-prove-reality-simulation “Physicist creates AI algorithm that may prove reality is a simulation” pretty sure this way oversells the paper (as with most of my physics links, see the Feb 2021 post) but still interesting.

https://www.guardianmag.press/2021/03/scientists-predict-possibility-of.html “Earth's Oxygen-rich Atmosphere will Last Only Another Billion years”

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/03/new-gambling-version-of-maxwells-demon-knows-when-to-fold-em/ “Meet Maxwell’s gambling demon—smart enough to quit while it’s ahead”

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210304145458.htm “Factoring in gravitomagnetism could do away with dark matter” - explosive paper claims that we don’t need dark matter to explain galactic rotation curves. https://www.overcomingbias.com/2021/03/what-holds-up-a-north-pole-of-dust.html claims to identify a mistaken assumption in the dark matter paper.

Sean Carroll @seanmcarroll

Dark matter exists -- an occasional reminder. The first evidence for dark matter came from the dynamics of galaxies and clusters of galaxies. But these days that is not our *best* evidence. 1/n

March 14th 2021

305 Retweets1,402 Likes

this tweet-thread goes over some of the evidence for dark matter.

https://phys.org/news/2021-03-physics-undergraduate-solution-quantum-field.amp “Physics undergraduate proposes solution to quantum field theory problem”

https://news.agu.org/press-release/interstellar-object-oumuamua-is-likely-a-piece-of-a-pluto-like-planet the Oumuamua mystery has allegedly been solved, and it’s not aliens (we think)

https://phys.org/news/2021-03-result-lhcb-theory-physics.html “The LHCb Collaboration at CERN has found particles not behaving in the way they should according to the guiding theory of particle physics—the Standard Model.”

https://www.inverse.com/science/redefining-a-second-atomic-clock Number go up: “Previous attempts to measure these minute differences between how atoms keep time — also referred to the ratio between them — had only ever delivered an accuracy of up to 17 digits.

But now using their new model, which includes the first-ever use of a ‘free-space link’ for this purpose (essentially, laser pulses of data go...
Introducing Rational Animations
by Writer — 2021-05-31T00:49:25.400Z

Crossposted to the EA Forum

Hello, everyone

In February, my girlfriend and I started Rational Animations, a YouTube channel with the long-term mission of producing high-quality animated videos about rationality and Effective Altruism. The aim is to spread these ideas to a broader audience, organize fundraisers, and animate rationality and EA ideas in general.

I've been reading and interacting with the EA and rationality community for a few years. I have other accounts on the EA Forum and LW focused on a niche topic. Still, I decided to start fresh with this account for talking about more diversified topics and crossposting relevant videos from the channel, either accompanied by the scripts of the videos or by an article more suitable for Less Wrong or the EA Forum. I will probably also post articles that won't make it to the YT channel and experiment with different topics to see what is more appreciated.

My name here is "Writer" because I write the scripts for the channel. The videos you see uploaded right now are all narrated by me, but this will change soon. I also take decisions on the channel's direction, advertise it, interact with subscribers, etc. In short, I do everything that isn't animation and graphics, and I'll outsource narration to someone else.

You can consider the first three videos as trials, in which I was testing the waters. Both the animator and I are still improving, but the following videos will be increasingly representative of our future uploads.

In April, we received a grant from the Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund. We are using it for the animator's equipment, salary for the next six months, paying our new narrator, and potentially pursue paid advertisement strategies. I already experimented with YT ads, but they were disappointing. I have more creative ideas that don't rely on ads or third-party advertisers. For the longer term, the animator and I would really like to make a career with this project.

Suggest stuff!

One thing I would be fond of doing is to bring articles from LW to the YouTube channel. So don't be afraid to message me if there is something that you consider particularly important or interesting that you would like to see animated. I will probably answer with a considerable delay because I'll have plenty of videos already scheduled. But I'll definitely consider your idea and get back to you if I...
Why don't long running conversations happen on LessWrong?
by Adam Zerner — 2021-05-30T22:36:03.951Z

Here is how things currently work:

Someone writes a post.

It lingers around the front page for a few days. During this time, conversations emerge in the comments section.

After a few days, the post no longer persists on the front page and conversations largely fizzle out.

For some types of posts, this works. For other types of posts, it doesn't.

For example, Two Definitions of Generalization seems like the type of post where the status quo wouldn't work (edit: What is the most effective way to donate to AGI XRisk Mitigation is another good example). Instead, to make meaningful progress on the question of what generalization really is, I think you'd want something closer to academia, where there are various scientists interested in the same research question, and they have a long running conversation about it. A few days of back and forth just doesn't cut it. You need a lot more back and forth.

In a recent interview I had with Professor Quirrell, I asked him for his take on this. Here is what he had to say:

Mister Zerner... a lesser version of myself would find your naivety amusing. Unfortunately, this current version merely finds it annoying.

The issue with your idea is the premise that John Does on the internet want to engage on the same level as academic researchers. They don't. They are just killing time, looking for instant gratification.

You are going to object that members of LessWrong are not average Joes. Again, I find your naivety annoying. While it is true that LessWrongers, as you fondly refer to them, are a step up from the rest, it is just that: a step. Getting people to engage seriously in long running conversations would require something more akin to a leap. Merely being "less wrong" is not sufficient.

I think that there is a lot of truth to what Professor Quirrell is saying. However, I am also not convinced that it has to be this way.

Here's a thought. Consider the Two Definitions of Generalization post. Imagine that I invested a bunch of time reading up on the topic, thinking about it, and commenting on the post. The likely outcome is that I get a reply or two, and maybe a discussion emerges for a few days. But after that it will fizzle out. And then the topic of the day will move to whatever new posts happen to have made the front page.

That is demotivating. It'd be nice if I knew that if I invest the time on a post, I can depend on there b...
Paper Review: Mathematical Truth
by Alex Hollow — 2021-05-30T20:25:09.525Z
Link: https://alexhollow.wordpress.com/2021/05/30/paper-review-mathematical-truth/

Mathematical Truth (Benacerraf 1973), introduces a problem for mathematical knowledge that I find incredibly compelling. Benacerraf thinks that there are two requirements of a theory of mathematical truth: semantic uniformity, such that what we mean when we talk about math is similar to what we mean when we talk about everything else; and epistemic uniformity, such that the epistemology of math is similar to the epistemology of everything else. Benacerraf thinks that a good theory of mathematical truth has to meet both goals, and that the two goals are incompatible, which leaves mathematical truth in a rough spot.

Semantic Uniformity

On the topic of semantic uniformity, Benacerraf says that "A theory of truth for the language we speak, argue in, theorize in, mathematize in, etc., should ... provide similar truth conditions for similar sentences. The truth conditions as- signed to two sentences containing quantifiers should reflect in relevantly similar ways the contribution made by the quantifiers". For examples, he looks at these two sentences:
(1) There are at least three large cities older than New York. and
(2) There are at least three perfect numbers greater than 17.
Then, he asks if these sentences have the same logical form:
(3) There are at least three F's that bear R to a.

Sentence (1) has the same logical form as sentence (3). This means that sentence (1) is true if there are at least three elements in the set of things that exist which satisfy the predicates “large city” and “older than New York”. For sentence (2), can we do the same thing? Benacerraf replies “That sounds like a silly question to which the obvious answer is “Of course.””. However, he continues, that requires numbers to be in the set of things that exist! A Platonic realist has no problem with this, because they posit the real existence of numbers. Benacerraf calls this the “standard view” – sentence (2) has the logical form of sentence (3), and numbers really exist so this is fine.

However, in intuitionist mathematics, sentence (2) would have a very different logical form than sentence (3). Benacerraf then turns to views where mathematical truth comes from being derivable from a set of axioms. Those theories give a truth-predicate for sentences that is strictly syntactic, allowing us to determine the truth or falsity of a sent...
How counting neutrons explains nuclear waste
by jasoncrawford — 2021-05-30T18:10:01.468Z
Link: https://rootsofprogress.org/nuclear-physics

You probably recall from high school chemistry that atoms are made up of a nucleus containing protons and neutrons, surrounded by electrons. But how many of each?

If you remember a little bit more from high school chemistry, you’ll recall that the number of protons determines which element it is: an atom with six protons is an atom of carbon; seven makes it nitrogen; eight, oxygen. The number of electrons generally matches the number of protons, to make the atom electrically neutral. But how many neutrons are in the nucleus? Does it even matter?

It turns out that it matters a lot.

Atoms of the same element with different numbers of neutrons are called isotopes. They are distinguished by their “mass number”, which is the total number of protons and neutrons (together known as nucleons). A typical carbon atom has six protons and six neutrons, for a mass number of twelve; it is referred to as carbon-12 or C-12 (or sometimes 12C).

It would be oh, so simple if every element had an equal number of protons and neutrons. But reality is far more complicated than that.

As you walk the periodic table, you will find that heavier elements have a higher ratio of neutrons to protons. The lightest element, hydrogen, usually has zero neutrons—its nucleus is just a lone proton. The next element, helium, comes in balance: typically it has two protons and two neutrons. The other light elements usually have the same balance, such as carbon-12, or perhaps one more neutron than protons, such as sodium-23, with 11 protons and 12 neutrons. This lasts up to calcium (nicely balanced, with its most abundant isotope, calcium-40, having 20 of each).

But there it ends. After calcium you will find that every element has more neutrons than protons. Iron, element 26, usually has 30 neutrons. Iodine, element 53, has 74. Gold, element 79, has 118. By the time we get to uranium-238, we’re looking at 92 protons and 146 neutrons, for a neutron:proton ratio of over 3:2. What’s going on?

Here’s another piece of the puzzle: not all isotopes are stable.

I’ve been saying things like “carbon typically has six neutrons” or “iodine has 74”. What that really means is that carbon only has a few stable isotopes, and the most common one has six neutrons (carbon-12). Iodine only has one stable isotope, and it’s the one with 74 neutrons (iodine-127).

What does it mean for an isotope to be unstable? It means that atoms ...
Electric heat pumps (Mini-Splits) vs Natural gas boilers
by Steven Byrnes — 2021-05-30T15:51:53.580Z

I’m kinda out of the loop on this stuff, but it seems like suddenly out of nowhere everyone around me is converting natural gas heat into electric heat pumps—specifically a thing called a “mini-split” which can be both a heat pump in the winter and an air conditioner in the summer. It consists of one or more indoor units connected to one or more outdoor units by a small-ish (well, small compared to an air duct) tube of flowing liquid refrigerant (which transfers heat between the indoor and outdoor unit).

An electric heater converts 1W of electricity into 1W of heat. A heat pump converts 1W of electricity into >1W of heat, because it pulls heat from the outside air—it’s basically an air conditioner pointed backwards. The ratio of heat to electricity is called Coefficient of Performance (COP).

The COP for heat pumps gets worse (albeit still >1) as the outdoor temperature goes down, basically because the outdoor air is colder so it’s harder to extract heat from it.

I live in a pretty cold climate; I figure the weighted-average outdoor temperature (weighted by how much heating I'm using) is 30°F (~0°C). A quick search suggests maybe I can expect COP of 3-3.5. The highest figure I found anywhere for that outdoor temperature was 5. I could be wrong here. (Update: in this comment I used a different method based on the "HSPF" spec and concluded that I should definitely expect weighted-average-COP below 3.5 where I live, unless I messed up the calculation, which is entirely possible.)

Meanwhile I also need to account for my gas boiler not successfully transferring all the heat from "burning gas" to "warm interior" (as opposed to losing heat out the chimney or whatever). I think 80% is a reasonable guess for our not-particularly-well-tuned boiler. It should go up a bit, maybe towards 90%, when I get it tuned up or replaced at some point in the future, which I need to do anyway, it's super old and the plumber says it could catastrophically break any day.

I looked up my marginal electricity price and marginal gas price from my most recent utility bills, and did the unit conversions to a common unit of gigajoules (GJ). (I'm using marginal price because it's not feasible for me to rid of gas altogether, for other reasons.) It turns out that 1 GJ of electricity costs me almost 10× as much as 1 GJ of natural gas! (I fully expected the electricity to be more expensive...
What is the most effective way to donate to AGI XRisk mitigation?
by JoshuaFox — 2021-05-30T11:08:10.446Z

There are now many organizations in field of Existential Risk from Artificial General Intelligence. I wonder which can make the most effective use of small donations.

My priority is on mathematical or engineering research aimed at XRisk from superhuman AGI.

My donations go to MIRI, and for now it looks best to me, but I will appreciate thoughtful assessment.

Machine Intelligence Research Institute pioneered AGI XRisk mitigation (alongside FHI, below) and does foundational research. Their approach aims to avoid a rush to implementation of an AGI which includes unknown failure modes.
Alignment Research Center: Paul Christiano's new organization. He has done impressive research and has worked with both academia and MIRI.
Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence at Berkeley: If you're looking to sponsor academia rather than an independent organization, this one does research that combines mainstream AI methods with serious consideration of XRisk.
Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford is a powerhouse in multiple relevant areas, including AGI XRisk Research.
The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge. Looks promising. I haven't seen much on AGI XRisk from them.
Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence, also at Cambridge and linked to CSER
Smaller organizations with scope that goes beyond AGI XRisk. I don't know much about them otherwise.

Global Catastrophic Risk Institute
Center on Long-Term Risk

Donating money to a grant-disbursing organization makes sense if you believe that they have better ability to determine effectiveness than you. Alternatively, you might be guided by their decisions as you make your own donations.

Open Philanthropy Project
Long-Term Future Fund
Survival and Flourishing Fund/Survival and Flourishing. org
Solenum Foundation (see here). Recently, Jaan Tallinn discussed a new initiative for an assessment pipeline that will aggregate expert opinion on the most effective organizations.
Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative

Future of Life Institute: It's not clear if they still actively contribute to AI XRisk research, but did disburse grants a few years ago.

Are there others?
Use of GPT-3 for identifying Phishing and other email based attacks?
by jmh — 2021-05-29T17:11:39.766Z

Yet a new report about malicious email attacks using the USAID systems.

I would think that language processing AI/ML tools like I understand GPT-3 is (which could be a complete mischaracterization) seem like a good area of application. But I've never heard of any mention of such an application.

However, I know so little of this area it might be both the wrong level of analysis to mitigate threats and so costly that the marginal gain over what is in place (assuming no current role) just doesn't make good sense.

Still, given how long these types of attacks have been used -- and by implication continue to work it seems -- I wonder if perhaps such an approach might catch more before a careless or unwitting user reads the email or worse, follows the links. In other words, could such an approach perhaps alert the user to more subtle language based clues than they have the attention, capacity or knowledge to pick-up on in their day to day routines.