trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : Melbourne, practical rationality
by matt — 2012-03-23T00:45:31.889Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne, practical rationality

WHEN:
06 April 2012 08:00:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
55 Walsh St West Melbourne 3003

Practical rationality, as distinct from the social and rationality outreach meetups. Look for a social meetup on the 3rd Friday of each month.

Discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/melbourne-less-wrong

This meetup repeats on the 1st Friday of each month.

All welcome from 6:30pm. Call the phone number on the door and I'll let you in.

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne, practical rationality
[LINK] Freeman Dyson reviews "Physics on the Fringe: Smoke Rings, Circlons, and Alternative Theories of Everything"
by David_Gerard — 2012-03-23T00:03:09.969Z

Freeman Dyson writes in the New York Review of Books about people who took up the crackpot offer. Not just complete cranks, but eminent scientists such as Eddington who got into crankery in their later years.

New thing I learnt: Dyson was not only a good friend of Immanuel Velikovsky, but considers him a greatly underappreciated poet.
Meetup : Monthly Bay Area meetup
by Nisan — 2012-03-22T19:13:58.203Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Monthly Bay Area meetup

WHEN:
24 March 2012 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
2071 University Avenue, Berkeley, CA

Hey, it's time for another monthly meetup! There will be a Bay Area Less Wrong meetup in Berkeley this Saturday, at 7pm in Taiwan Restaurant. That's at 2071 University Avenue. (The Free Speech Cafe will be closed.) I hope to see you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : Monthly Bay Area meetup
Best shot at immortality?
by tomme — 2012-03-22T10:29:49.057Z

What looks, at the moment, as the most feasible technology that can grant us immortality (e.g., mind uploading, cryonics)?

I posed this question to a fellow transhumanist and he argued that cryonics is the answer, but I failed to grasp his explanation. Besides, I am still struggling to learn the basics of science and transhumanism, so it would be great if you could shed some light on my question.
Scenario analysis: semi-general AIs
by Will_Newsome — 2012-03-22T09:11:45.829Z

Are there any essays anywhere that go in depth about scenarios where AIs become somewhat recursive/general in that they can write functioning code to solve diverse problems, but the AI reflection problem remains unsolved and thus limits the depth of recursion attainable by the AIs? Let's provisionally call such general but reflection-limited AIs semi-general AIs, or SGAIs. SGAIs might be of roughly smart-animal-level intelligence, e.g. have rudimentary communication/negotiation abilities and some level of ability to formulate narrowish plans of the sort that don't leave them susceptible to Pascalian self-destruction or wireheading or the like.

At first blush, this scenario strikes me as Bad; AIs could take over all computers connected to the internet, totally messing stuff up as their goals/subgoals mutate and adapt to circumvent wireheading selection pressures, without being able to reach general intelligence. AIs might or might not cooperate with humans in such a scenario. I imagine any detailed existing literature on this subject would focus on computer security and intelligent computer "viruses"; does such literature exist, anywhere?

I have various questions about this scenario, including:

How quickly should one expect temetic selective sweeps to reach ~99% fixation?

To what extent should SGAIs be expected to cooperate with humans in such a scenario? Would SGAIs be able to make plans that involve exchange of currency, even if they don't understand what currency is or how exactly it works? What do humans have to offer SGAIs?

How confident can we be that SGAIs will or won't have enough oomph to FOOM once they saturate and optimize/corrupt all existing computing hardware?

Assuming such a scenario doesn't immediately lead to a FOOM scenario, how bad is it? To what extent is its badness contingent on the capability/willingness of SGAIs to play nice with humans?

Those are the questions that immediately spring to mind, but I'd like to see who else has thought about this and what they've already considered before I cover too much ground.

My intuition says that thinking about SGAIs in terms of population genetics and microeconomics will somewhat counteract automatic tendencies to imagine cool stories rather than engage in dispassionate analysis. I'd like other suggestions for how to achieve that goal.

I'm confused that I don't see people talking about t

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Meetup : Madison Monday Meetup
by fiddlemath — 2012-03-22T04:59:04.865Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Madison Monday Meetup

WHEN:
26 March 2012 06:30:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
1831 Monroe St, Madison, WI

Show and tell, of various minor hacks and life improvements. Bonus points if you can actually demonstrate them. :)

The idea: try to think of at least one clever trick that you've tried that has made your life better, and which you think would probably work for at least one or two other people in the meetup. This could be for pretty much any goal that several of us share: ways to improve diet, get better exercise, focus better, notice mistakes more readily, stay on task longer, become better motivated... whatever people might care about.

The format:

State the goal of the hack.

Explain the overall hack.

Tell about its benefits and downsides.

Explain how, in some detail, someone else could try the same thing. (Break this, of course, if you have a really good reason to.)

Try to keep each thing somewhere between 2 and 20 minutes. If there's any specific item that you can demonstrate, bring it. (Does this make sense? Let me know if I can better explain something.)

See you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : Madison Monday Meetup
Meetup : Houston Meetup
by Cog — 2012-03-22T04:58:41.373Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Houston Meetup

WHEN:
25 March 2012 01:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
2010 Commerce St, Houston, Tx. 77002

The Houston LW meetup group will be gathering this Sunday at 1PM to discuss the 4th chapter of ET Jaynes "The Logic of Science". We will also have one of our members discussing "The 4 Hour Work Week", which has received some good press on this forum.

Anyone is welcome to join, and there will be breakfast foods available if you so desire. Bring some money for the tip jar if you want some food.

Discussion article for the meetup : Houston Meetup
[SEQ RERUN] Brain Breakthrough! It's Made of Neurons!
by MinibearRex — 2012-03-22T03:06:35.554Z

Today's post, Brain Breakthrough! It's Made of Neurons! was originally published on 01 April 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Eliezer's contribution to Amazing Breakthrough Day.

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 Heat vs. Motion, 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.
Modest Superintelligences
by Wei Dai — 2012-03-22T00:29:03.184Z

I'm skeptical about trying to build FAI, but not about trying to influence the Singularity in a positive direction. Some people may be skeptical even of the latter because they don't think the possibility of an intelligence explosion is a very likely one. I suggest that even if intelligence explosion turns out to be impossible, we can still reach a positive Singularity by building what I'll call "modest superintelligences", that is, superintelligent entities, capable of taking over the universe and preventing existential risks and Malthusian outcomes, whose construction does not require fast recursive self-improvement or other questionable assumptions about the nature of intelligence. This helps to establish a lower bound on the benefits of an organization that aims to strategically influence the outcome of the Singularity.

MSI-1: 105 biologically cloned humans of von Neumann-level intelligence, highly educated and indoctrinated from birth to work collaboratively towards some goal, such as building MSI-2 (or equivalent)

MSI-2: 1010 whole brain emulations of von Neumann, each running at ten times human speed, with WBE-enabled institutional controls that increase group coherence/rationality (or equivalent)

MSI-3: 1020 copies of von Neumann WBE, each running at a thousand times human speed, with more advanced (to be invented) institutional controls and collaboration tools (or equivalent)

(To recall what the actual von Neumann, who we might call MSI-0, accomplished, open his Wikipedia page and scroll through the "known for" sidebar.)

Building a MSI-1 seems to require a total cost on the order of $100 billion (assuming $10 million for each clone), which is comparable to the Apollo project, and about 0.25% of the annual Gross World Product. (For further comparison, note that Apple has a market capitalization of $561 billion, and annual profit of $25 billion.) In exchange for that cost, any nation that undertakes the project has a reasonable chance of obtaining an insurmountable lead in whatever technologies end up driving the Singularity, and with that a large measure of control over its outcome. If no better strategic options come along, lobbying a government to build MSI-1 and/or influencing its design and aims seems to be the least that a Singularitarian organization could do.
A Problem About Bargaining and Logical Uncertainty
by Wei Dai — 2012-03-21T21:03:17.051Z

Suppose you wake up as a paperclip maximizer. Omega says "I calculated the millionth digit of pi, and it's odd. If it had been even, I would have made the universe capable of producing either 1020 paperclips or 1010 staples, and given control of it to a staples maximizer. But since it was odd, I made the universe capable of producing 1010 paperclips or 1020 staples, and gave you control." You double check Omega's pi computation and your internal calculator gives the same answer.

Then a staples maximizer comes to you and says, "You should give me control of the universe, because before you knew the millionth digit of pi, you would have wanted to pre-commit to a deal where each of us would give the other control of the universe, since that gives you 1/2 probability of 1020 paperclips instead of 1/2 probability of 1010 paperclips."

Is the staples maximizer right? If so, the general principle seems to be that we should act as if we had precommited to a deal we would have made in ignorance of logical facts we actually possess. But how far are we supposed to push this? What deal would you have made if you didn't know that the first digit of pi was odd, or if you didn't know that 1+1=2?

On the other hand, suppose the staples maximizer is wrong. Does that mean you also shouldn't agree to exchange control of the universe before you knew the millionth digit of pi?

To make this more relevant to real life, consider two humans negotiating over the goal system of an AI they're jointly building. They have a lot of ignorance about the relevant logical facts, like how smart/powerful the AI will turn out to be and how efficient it will be in implementing each of their goals. They could negotiate a solution now in the form of a weighted average of their utility functions, but the weights they choose now will likely turn out to be "wrong" in full view of the relevant logical facts (e.g., the actual shape of the utility-possibility frontier). Or they could program their utility functions into the AI separately, and let the AI determine the weights later using some formal bargaining solution when it has more knowledge about the relevant logical facts. Which is the right thing to do? Or should they follow the staples maximizer's reasoning and bargain under the pretense that they know even less than they actually do?

Other Related Posts: Counterfactual Mugging and Logical Unce...
Is community-collaborative article production possible?
by lukeprog — 2012-03-21T20:10:15.732Z

When I showed up at the Singularity Institute, I was surprised to find that 30-60 papers' worth of material was lying around in blog posts, mailing list discussions, and people's heads — but it had never been written up in clear, well-referenced academic articles.

Why is this so? Writing such articles has many clear benefits:

Clearly stated and well-defended arguments can persuade smart people to take AI risk seriously, creating additional supporters and collaborators for the Singularity Institute.

Such articles can also improve the credibility of the organization as a whole, which is especially important for attracting funds from top-level social entrepreneurs and institutions like the Gates Foundation and Givewell.

Laying out the arguments clearly and analyzing each premise can lead to new strategic insights that will help us understand how to purchase x-risk reduction most efficiently.

Clear explanations can provide a platform on which researchers can build to produce new strategic and technical research results.

Communicating clearly is what lets other people find errors in your reasoning.

Communities can use articles to cut down on communication costs. When something is written up clearly, 1000 people can read a single article instead of needing to transmit the information by having several hundred personal conversations between 2-5 people.

Of course, there are costs to writing articles, too. The single biggest cost is staff time / opportunity cost. An article like "Intelligence Explosion: Evidence and Import" can require anywhere from 150-800 person-hours. That is 150-800 paid hours during which our staff is not doing other critically important things that collectively have a bigger positive impact than a single academic article is likely to have.

So Louie Helm and Nick Beckstead and I sat down and asked, "Is there a way we can buy these articles without such an egregious cost?"

We think there might be. Basically, we suspect that most of the work involved in writing these articles can be outsourced. Here's the process we have in mind:

An SI staff member chooses a paper idea we need written up, then writes an abstract and some notes on the desired final content.

SI pays Gwern or another remote researcher to do a literature search-and-summary of relevant material, with pointers to other resources.

SI posts a contest to LessWrong, inviting subm

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What epistemic hygiene norms should there be?
by Kaj_Sotala — 2012-03-21T19:26:45.006Z

The wiki entry for Epistemic Hygiene defines the term as:

Epistemic hygiene consists of practices meant to allow accurate beliefs to spread within a community and keep less accurate or biased beliefs contained. The practices are meant to serve an analogous purpose to normal hygiene and sanitation in containing disease.

The term was coined in Steve Rayhawk's and Anna Salamon's post "The ethic of hand-washing and community epistemic practice", and there have been several mentions of it around the site. But what, exactly, might good epistemic hygiene norms be?

I'm especially interested in this question in the context of meetup groups. In Less Wrong NYC: Case Study of a Successful Rationalist Chapter, Cosmos writes:

Epistemic privilege and meme-sharing: The most powerful aspect of a group of rationalists is that you have an entire class of people whose reasoning you trust. Division of labor arises naturally as each member has different interests, they all pursue a variety of skills and areas of expertise, which they can then bring back to the group. Even the lowest-level rationalists in the group can rapidly upgrade themselves by adopting winning heuristics from other group members. I cannot overstate the power of epistemic privilege. We have rapidly spread knowledge about metabolism, exercise, neuroscience, meditation, hypnosis, several systems of therapy... and don't forget the Dark Arts.

This would imply that one way that a meetup group (or for that matter, any social group) could get really successful would be by adopting great epistemic hygiene norms. But unless everyone present has read most of the Sequences - which gets increasingly unlikely the more the group grows - even most LW meetups probably won't just spontaneously enforce such norms. Wouldn't it be great if there were an existing list of such norms, that each group could look through and then decide which ones they'd like to adopt?

Here are some possible epistemic hygiene norms that I could find / come up with:

Be honest about your evidence and about the actual causes of your beliefs. Valuable for distinguishing accurate from mistaken beliefs. (The ethic of hand-washing)

Focus attention on the evidence and on the actual causes of both your beliefs, and beliefs of the people you're talking with. (The ethic of hand-washing)

Only pass on ideas that you've verified yourself. (Problematic, since any given

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Meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup Wedneday 7pm
by EvelynM — 2012-03-21T17:49:59.496Z

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

WHEN:
21 March 2012 07:00:00PM (-0600)

WHERE:
144 North College Avenue, Fort Collins, CO 80524

Another Wednesday, another opportunity for hanging out with the cool kids.

Broodwar proleague, Creatine + dual-n-back, volatility, markets and feedback loops.

Discussion article for the meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup Wedneday 7pm
[Meetup] Reminder: Reason Rally Meetup in DC, this Saturday
by Raemon — 2012-03-21T13:38:58.280Z

This Saturday is the Reason Rally in Washington DC, a gathering of people promoting secularism, skepticism, rationality, atheism and other related topics. It's a good opportunity to meet people who are close to but not familiar with the Less Wrong memeplex. There will be a Less Wrong meetup later in the evening.

http://reasonrally.org

The Rally itself starts at 10:00 AM, running till 4 PM. Shortly thereafter (i.e 4:15) Less Wrong folks will meet up by a (currently unchosen) distinctive landmark, and plan the evening. (Any plan we make in advance will likely change, since we don't know how many people are coming, don't know who else we might have met who was interested in hanging out with us, and there will probably be various other things going on we can't anticipate).

If you're coming, you may want to send me a PM with your phone number so we can find each other during the Rally. (I'll be posting the chosen landmark here when we figure it out, but it may be easier to communicate by phone or text)

Maia and PhilSchwartz had some crash space available. Send them a PM to inquire if they still have space

The original meetup post is here.
Daily Low-Dose Aspirin, Round 2
by  — 2012-03-21T07:09:44.387Z

(For Round 1, see this comment from last year.)

NYT: Studies Link Daily Doses of Aspirin to Reduced Risk of Cancer

One of the new studies examined patient data from dozens of large, long-term randomized controlled trials involving tens of thousands of men and women. Researchers at the University of Oxford found that after three years of daily aspirin use, the risk of developing cancer was reduced by almost 25 percent when compared with a control group not taking aspirin. After five years, the risk of dying of cancer was reduced by 37 percent among those taking aspirin.

A second paper that analyzed five large randomized controlled studies in Britain found that over six and a half years on average, daily aspirin use reduced the risk of metastatic cancer by 36 percent and the risk of adenocarcinomas — common solid cancers including colon, lung and prostate cancer — by 46 percent.

The article is worth reading in its entirety, but here's an especially interesting paragraph:

The new studies, however, also found that the risk of bleeding in aspirin users diminished over time, and that the risk of death from brain bleeds was actually lower in the aspirin users than in the comparison group.

The evidence still isn't perfect, but the purpose of rationality is making good decisions with limited information. I am a healthy 28-year-old and these studies make me even more confident that taking daily low-dose aspirin is the right thing for me to do.

On a related note, if society were more rational, I wouldn't have to be sad reading paragraphs like this one:

Some cancer doctors commended the new research, saying said that despite the limitations of the analyses, no other long-term clinical trials of aspirin and cancer are likely to be done because of the enormous expense involved and the fact that aspirin is a cheap generic drug.

Or these ones from A Cheap Drug Is Found to Save Bleeding Victims, published on the same day:

For months, a simple generic drug has been saving lives on America’s battlefields by slowing the bleeding of even gravely wounded soldiers.

Even better, it is cheap. But its very inexpensiveness has slowed its entry into American emergency rooms, where it might save the lives of bleeding victims of car crashes, shootings and stabbings — up to 4,000 Americans a year, according to a recent study.

Because there is so little

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Simple but important ideas
by John_Maxwell — 2012-03-21T06:59:22.043Z

Important ideas don't always require long explanations. Here's a famous example:

Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an “intelligence explosion,” and the intelligence of man would be left far behind… Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.

This is a single paragraph on the third page of a 50 page report. Maybe someone who's good at parsing 60s era academic English can tell us if the rest is any good.

It seems like anyone who has an idea they want people to take seriously has to write a bunch about it. This is most apparent in popular nonfiction books, which are often bloated far beyond what it takes to communicate the core ideas.

To correct this "presentation length bias", we can fight it from both ends:

Remember that important ideas don't have to be in an important place, be said by an important person, or be an important length.

Alert readers to important ideas that don't look important (e.g. "This is a simple idea, but it seems important:"). Do this especially if it's someone else's idea, since people are going to be reluctant to label their own ideas as important.

If we get rid of this bias, the biggest win may be that people work harder to present important ideas concisely, since it won't cost them prestige anymore.

See also: Why do we write too much?