trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : West LA Meetup - Likelihood Ratios
by  — 2012-06-05T03:15:57.201Z

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup - Likelihood Ratios

WHEN:
06 June 2012 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
10850 West Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90064

When: 7:00pm - 9:00pm Wednesday, June 6th.

Where: The Westside Tavern in the upstairs Wine Bar (all ages welcome), located inside the Westside Pavillion on the second floor, right by the movie theaters.

Parking is free for 3 hours.

Discussion Topic: This week will be all about gaining a useful intuition for Bayes' Theorem. We're going to focus on the formalization with odds and likelihood ratios. If you are already familiar with the concept of likelihood ratios, I recommend you read this article. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, read that Bayes' Theorem post I linked and, if you have time, check out one of the blog posts or external links from the article.

But don't worry if you don't have time to read any articles, or even if you've never read any Less Wrong! Bring a friend! The atmosphere is casual, and good, intelligent conversation with friendly people is guaranteed.

I will bring a whiteboard with Bayes' Theorem written on it.

P.S. One of our routines is to ask if anyone has any predictions they would like to commit. Feel free to organize your thoughts ahead of time!

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup - Likelihood Ratios
Where Fermi Fails: What is hard to estimate?
by tgb — 2012-06-05T03:15:32.232Z

I have a whimsical challenge for you: come up with problems with numerical solutions that are hard to estimate.

This, like surprisingly many things, originates from a Richard Feynman story:

One day I was feeling my oats. It was lunch time in the technical area, and I don't
know how I got the idea, but I announced, "I can work out in sixty seconds the answer to
any problem that anybody can state in ten seconds, to 10 percent!"
People started giving me problems they thought were difficult, such as integrating
a function like 1/(1 + x 4 ), which hardly changed over the range they gave me. The hardest
one somebody gave me was the binomial coefficient of x 10 in (1 + x) 20 ; I got that just in
time.
They were all giving me problems and I was feeling great, when Paul Olum
walked by in the hall. Paul had worked with me for a while at Princeton before coming
out to Los Alamos, and he was always cleverer than I was.

..

So Paul is walking past the lunch place and these guys are all excited. "Hey,
Paul!" they call out. "Feynman's terrific! We give him a problem that can be stated in ten
seconds, and in a minute he gets the answer to 10 percent. Why don't you give him one?"
Without hardly stopping, he says, "The tangent of 10 to the 100th."
I was sunk: you have to divide by pi to 100 decimal places! It was hopeless.

(From Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman section "Lucky Numbers")

So what would you ask Richard Feynman to solve? Think of this as the reverse of Fermi Problems.

Number theory may be a rich source of possibilities here; many functions there are wildly fluctuating, require prime factorization and depend upon the exact value of the number rather than it's order of magnitude. For example, I challenge you to compute the largest prime factor of 650238.

(My original example was: "For example, I challenge you to compute the greatest common denominator of 10643 and 15047 without a computer. This problem has the nice advantage of being trivial to make harder to compute - just throw in some extra primes." It has been pointed out that I forgot Euclid's algorithm and have managed to choose about the only number theoretic question that does have an efficient solution.)
Satire of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology's publication bias
by CarlShulman — 2012-06-05T00:08:27.479Z

Follow-up to: Follow-up on ESP study: "We don't publish replications", Using degrees of freedom to change the past for fun and profit

As I discussed in the above posts, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a leading psych journal, published a deeply flawed parapsychology study (see the second post for details) which had apparently been tortured to produce results. Then they rejected an attempt to replicate that found no effect, citing a sadly typical policy of not publishing replications. Some of you may enjoy reading one enterprising researcher's amusing satire article, purportedly (not actually) "tallying" past confirmations and disconfirmations in JPSP and drawing conclusions.

ETA: To clarify the last sentence, they didn't really find 4800+ confirmation and two disconfirmations. As they say in small print, the data were made up. It's right by the chart.
Meetup : Tucson, Arizona
by DeevGrape — 2012-06-04T21:49:41.397Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Tucson, Arizona

WHEN:
20 June 2012 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
2443 North Campbell Avenue

Hey Tucson, After the fun and inspiration of the Rationality Mini-Camp in Berkeley last month, I'm pretty jazzed about rationality, and I'd like to meet some more of my fellow LessWrongers :) So I'll be hanging out in Coffee X Change Wednesday the 20th from 7 to 10, and anyone who's free should come out. I'll be the one with a print-out of the HPMOR cover on my table (http://mike-obee-lay.deviantart.com/art/Harry-Potter-and-the-Methods-of-Rationality-Cover-280590525) We'll be talking about some of the information that was covered at the Mini-Camp, especially how to apply rationality to your own life and decisions; but I'm sure conversation will wander immensely. (Oh, and if you like in-group-out-group conflicts, then just look at Phoenix, with their LW meetup on the 15th... you don't want to let them win, do you? Tucson Uber Alles!)

Discussion article for the meetup : Tucson, Arizona
Meetup : Melbourne social/games meetup
by toner — 2012-06-04T18:04:52.435Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne social/games meetup

WHEN:
15 June 2012 07:00:00PM (+1000)

WHERE:
see mailing list, Carlton VIC 3053

Melbourne's next social meetup is on Friday 15th June, 6:30 for 7pm, at my house. If you have any trouble working out the location or getting in, you can call me on 0412 996 288 or Scott (shokwave) on 0432 862 932.

Some form of take-away will be organised for dinner and there will be snacks available. BYO drinks and games.

We had about 15 people last time. We always look forward to meeting new people!

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne social/games meetup
Meetup : Garden Grove CA: Less wrong and more tasty.
by cloudlicker — 2012-06-04T18:03:22.087Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Garden Grove CA: Less wrong and more tasty.

WHEN:
07 June 2012 06:01:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
10130 Garden Grove Blvd., Garden Grove, CA.

After our nice meet and greet last time it is decided to work on goals. To that end we will be once again returning to the ideally located Genki Living: Snackery and Bakery. So come on out and consume a large dose of logic and peanut butter bacon frosting with us. Plus they jenga

Discussion article for the meetup : Garden Grove CA: Less wrong and more tasty.
Meetup : First Cali, Colombia meetup
by jpulgarin — 2012-06-04T13:49:35.558Z

Discussion article for the meetup : First Cali, Colombia meetup

WHEN:
02 July 2012 07:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
Chipichape, Cali, Valle del Cauca, Colombia

Specific Location: Juan Valdez Cafe inside Chipichape Mall

http://lesswrong.com/lw/bc2/setting_up_lw_meetups_in_unlikely_places_positive/ motivated me to post this meetup on the off chance there are any LessWrongers in Cali, Colombia.

Discussion article for the meetup : First Cali, Colombia meetup
"Where Am I?", by Daniel Dennett 
by  — 2012-06-04T09:45:02.041Z

”Where Am I?” is a short story by Daniel Dennett from his book Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology. Some of you might already be familiar with it.

The story is a humorous semi-science fiction one, where Dennett gets a job offer form Pentagon that entails moving his brain into a vat, without actually moving his point of view. Later on it brings up questions about uploading and what it would mean in terms of diverging perspectives and so on. Aside from being a joy to read, it offers solutions to a few hurdles about the nature of consciousnesses and personal identity.

Suppose, I argued to myself, I were now to fly to California, rob a bank, and be apprehended. In which state would I be tried: in California, where the robbery took place, or in Texas, where the brains of the outfit were located? Would I be a California felon with an out-of-state brain, or a Texas felon remotely controlling an accomplice of sorts in California? It seemed possible that I might beat such a rap just on the undecidability of that jurisdictional question, though perhaps it would be deemed an interstate, and hence Federal, offense.
"Where Am I?" by Daniel Dennett
by  — 2012-06-04T09:33:57.353Z

[”Where Am I?”](http://www.newbanner.com/SecHumSCM/WhereAmI.html) short story by [Daniel Dennett’s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett) from his book Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology (1978). A few people might already be familiar with it.

The story is a humorous semi-science fiction one, where Dennett gets a job offer form Pentagon that entails moving his brain into a vat, without actually moving his point of view. Later on it brings up questions about uploading and what it would mean in terms of diverging perspectives and so on. Aside from being a joy to read, it offers solutions to a few hurdles about the nature of consciousnesses and personal identity.

>Suppose, I argued to myself, I were now to fly to California, rob a bank, and be apprehended. In which state would I be tried: in California, where the robbery took place, or in Texas, where the brains of the outfit were located? Would I be a California felon with an out-of-state brain, or a Texas felon remotely controlling an accomplice of sorts in California? It seemed possible that I might beat such a rap just on the undecidability of that jurisdictional question, though perhaps it would be deemed an interstate, and hence Federal, offense.
A plan for Pascal's mugging?
by yttrium — 2012-06-04T09:04:19.816Z

The idea is to compare not the results of actions, but the results of decision algorithms. The question that the agent should ask itself is thus:

"Suppose everyone1 who runs the same thinking procedure like me uses decision algorithm X. What utility would I get at the 50th percentile (not: what expected utility should I get), after my life is finished?"
Then, he should of course look for the X that maximizes this value.

Now, if you formulate a turing-complete "decision algorithm", this heads into an infinite loop. But suppose that "decision algorithm" is defined as a huge table for lots of different possible situations, and the appropriate outputs.

Let's see what results such a thing should give:

If the agent has the possibility to play a gamble, and the probabilities involved are not small, and he expects to be allowed to play many gambles like this in the future, he should decide exactly as if he was maximizing expected utility: If he has made many decisions like this, he will get a positive utility difference in the 50th percentile if and only if his expected utility from playing the gamble is positive.

However, if Pascal's mugger comes along, he will decline: The complete probability of living in a universe where people like this mugger ought to be taken seriously is small. In the probability distribution over expected utility at the end of the agent's lifetime, the possibility of getting tortured will manifest itself only very slightly at the 50th percentile - much less than the possibility of losing 5 Dollars.

The reason why humans will intuitively decline to give money to the mugger might be similar: They imagine not the expected utility with both decisions, but the typical outcome of giving the mugger some money, versus declining to.

1I say this to make agents of the same type cooperate in prisoner-like dilemmas.
[SEQ RERUN] Passing the Recursive Buck
by MinibearRex — 2012-06-04T05:10:00.611Z

Today's post, Passing the Recursive Buck was originally published on 16 June 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

When confronted with a difficult question, don't try to point backwards to a misunderstood black box. Ask yourself, what's inside the black box? If the answer is another black box, you likely have a problem.

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 The Ultimate Source, 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.
Boltzmann Brains and Anthropic Reference Classes (Updated)
by pragmatist — 2012-06-04T04:04:17.048Z

Summary: There are claims that Boltzmann brains pose a significant problem for contemporary cosmology. But this problem relies on assuming that Boltzmann brains would be part of the appropriate reference class for anthropic reasoning. Is there a good reason to accept this assumption?

Nick Bostrom's Self Sampling Assumption (SSA) says that when accounting for indexical information, one should reason as if one were a random sample from the set of all observer's in one's reference class. As an example of the scientific usefulness of anthropic reasoning, Bostrom shows how the SSA rules out a particular cosmological model suggested by Boltzmann. Boltzmann was trying to construct a model that is symmetric under time reversal, but still accounts for the pervasive temporal asymmetry we observe. The idea is that the universe is eternal and, at most times and places, at thermodynamic equilibrium. Occasionally, there will be chance fluctuations away from equilibrium, creating pockets of low entropy. Life can only develop in these low entropy pockets, so it is no surprise that we find ourselves in such a region, even though it is atypical.

The objection to this model is that smaller fluctuations from equilibrium will be more common. In particular, fluctuations that produce disembodied brains floating in a high entropy soup with the exact brain state I am in right now (called Boltzmann brains) would be vastly more common than fluctuations that actually produce me and the world around me. If we reason according to SSA, the Boltzmann model predicts I am one of those brains and all my experiences are spurious. Conditionalizing on the model, the probability that my experiences are not spurious is minute. But my experiences are in fact not spurious (or at least, I must operate under the assumption that they are not if I am to meaningfully engage in scientific inquiry). So the Boltzmann model is heavily disconfirmed. [EDIT: As AlexSchell points out, this is not actually Bostrom's argument. The argument has been made by others. Here, for example.]

Now, no one (not even Boltzmann) actually believed the Boltzmann model, so this might seem like an unproblematic result. Unfortunately, it turns out that our current best cosmological models also predict a preponderance of Boltzmann brains. They predict that the universe is evolving towards an eternally expanding cold de Sitter phase. On...
"Progress"
by PhilGoetz — 2012-06-04T03:51:58.920Z

I often hear people speak of democracy as the next, or the final, inevitable stage of human social development. Its inevitability is usually justified not by describing power relations that result in democracy being a stable attractor, but in terms of morality - democracy is more "enlightened". I don't see any inevitability to it - China and the Soviet Union manage(d) to maintain large, technologically-advanced nations for a long time without it - but suppose, for the sake of argument, that democracy is the inevitable next stage of human progress.

The May 18 2012 issue of Science has an article on p. 844, "Ancestral hierarchy and conflict", by Christopher Boehm, which, among other things, describes the changes over time of equality among male hominids. If we add its timeline to recent human history, then here is the history of democracy over time in the evolutionary line leading to humans:

Pre-human male hominids, we infer from observing bonobos and chimpanzees, were dominated by one alpha male per group, who got the best food and most of the females.

Then, in the human lineage, hunter-gatherers developed larger social groups, and the ability to form stronger coalitions against the alpha; and they became more egalitarian.

Then, human social groups even became larger, and it became possible for a central alpha-male chieftain to control a large area; and the groups became less egalitarian.

Then, they became even larger, so that they were too large for a central authority to administer efficiently; and decentralized market-based methods of production led to democracy. (Or so goes one story.)

There are two points to observe in this data:

There is no linear relationship between social complexity, and equality. Steadily-increasing social complexity lead to more equality, then less, then more.

Enlightenment has nothing to do with it - if any theory makes sense, it is that social equality tunes itself to the level that provides maximal social competitive fitness. Even if we agree that democracy is the most-enlightened political system, this realization says nothing about what the future holds.

I do believe "progress" is a meaningful term. But there isn't some cosmic niceness built into the universe that makes everything improve monotonically along every dimension at once.
Meetup : Summer Festival Megameetup at NYC
by Raemon — 2012-06-04T01:37:52.788Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Summer Festival Megameetup at NYC

WHEN: 23 June 2012 02:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE: North Meadow New York, 10029

The weekend of June 23rd, the New York Less Wrong community will be hosting a summer festival. Less Wrongers from around the world are invited to intend.

Features include:
• A Saturday of sun and fun in Central Park. (Unless rain is forecast, in which case this will be on Sunday).
• Picnic Lunch. Share food and swap stories with Less Wrong folks. Engage in intellectual discussion while stimulating your monkey brain's desire for tribal bonding.
• Compete in feats of strength and sport.
• Singing and dancing.

There will be other get-togethers on the surrounding days, most notably a dinner party on Friday the 22nd.

If you are coming, please RSVP so we can plan appropriately (replying to this thread is fine)

Discussion article for the meetup : Summer Festival Megameetup at NYC
What are you working on? June 2012
by David_Gerard — 2012-06-03T11:02:24.212Z

This is the bimonthly 'What are you working On?' thread. Previous threads are here. So here's the question:

What are you working on?

Here are some guidelines:

Focus on projects that you have recently made progress on, not projects that you're thinking about doing but haven't started.

Why this project and not others? Mention reasons why you're doing the project and/or why others should contribute to your project (if applicable).

Talk about your goals for the project.

Any kind of project is fair game: personal improvement, research project, art project, whatever.

Link to your work if it's linkable.
Seeking ethical rules-of-thumb for comparison
by DataPacRat — 2012-06-03T04:36:25.012Z

Rules-of-thumb are handy, in that they let you use a solution you've figured out beforehand without having to take the time and effort to re-derive it in the heat of the moment. They may not apply in all situations, they may not provide the absolutely maximally best answer, but in situations where you have limited time to come up with an answer, they can certainly provide the best answer that it's possible for you to come up with in the time you have to think about it.

I'm currently seeking fairly fundamental rules-of-thumb, which can serve as overall ethical guidelines, or even as the axioms for a full ethical system; and preferably ones that can pass at least the basic sniff-test of actually being usable in everyday life; so that I can compare them with each other, and try to figure out ahead of time whether any of them would work better than the others, either in specific sorts of situations or in general.

Here are a few examples of what I'm thinking of:

* Pacifism. Violence is bad, so never use violence. In game theory, this would be the 'always cooperate' strategy of the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, and is the simplest strategy that satisfies the criteria of being 'nice'.

* Zero-Aggression Principle. Do not /initiate/ violence, but if violence is used against you, act violently in self-defense. The foundation of many variations of libertarianism. In the IPD, this satisfies both the criteria of being 'nice' and being 'retaliating'.

* Proportional Force. Aim for the least amount of violence to be done: "Avoid rather than check, check rather than harm...". This meets being 'nice', 'retaliating', and in a certain sense, 'forgiving', for the IPD.

I'm hoping to learn of rules-of-thumb which are at least as useful as the ZAP; I know and respect certain people who base their own ethics on the ZAP, but reject the idea of proportional force, and am hoping to learn of additional alternatives so I can have a better idea of the range of available options.

Any suggestions?
[SEQ RERUN] The Ultimate Source
by MinibearRex — 2012-06-03T02:50:07.532Z

Today's post, The Ultimate Source was originally published on 15 June 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

There is a school of thought in philosophy that says that even if you make a decision, that still isn't enough to conclude that you have free will. You have to have been the ultimate source of your decision. Nothing else can have influenced it previously. This doesn't work. There is no such thing as "the ultimate source" of your decisions.

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 Possibility and Could-ness, 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.