trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
How do you do fit-testing for KN95/N95/FFP2/FFP3 masks?
by ChristianKl — 2020-04-07T08:46:14.425Z

I have brought FFP3 masks half a year ago and at the time I brought them to get outside and protect myself in enviroments with allergy triggers. It didn't work. At the time I wasn't aware that fit testing is hard as writes:

Fit-testing is a laborious task, taking around 30 min to do properly, and comprises qualitative fit-testing (testing whether the respirator-wearing healthcare worker can taste an intensely bitter or sweet substance sprayed into the ambient air around the outside of the mask) or quantitative fit testing (measuring the ratio of particles in the air inside and outside the breathing zone when wearing the respirator). Attempts have been made to circumvent the requirement for fit testing, and it has been suggested that self-testing for a seal by the respirator wearer (see http://youtu.be/pGXiUyAoEd8a for a video demonstration) is a sufficient substitute for fit-testing. However, self-checking for a seal has been demonstrated to be a highly unreliable technique in two separate studies so that full fit-testing remains a necessary preliminary requirement before respirators can be used in the healthcare setting.

There are many people who seem to wear masks in this crisis in a way that's doesn't provide as much protection as the mask could theoretically give them.

Having protocol that individuals can use for self-checking that's reliable would be very valuable.

In particular it would be good to know what solutions to use for the smell test. Do you have to take take to use moleculs that have the right size?
Would 2009 H1N1 (Swine Flu) ring the alarm bell?
by DirectedEvolution — 2020-04-07T07:16:11.367Z

Introduction

In order to assist in anticipating and responding to the next pandemic, I created an "alarm bell" questionnaire to suggest whether or not one should behave as if the world is about to experience a stock market-crashing pandemic.

To evaluate whether it is correctly calibrated, my intention is to investigate whether the "alarm bell" would have rung during historical pandemics, and whether the stock market would have crashed before it rang, after it rang, or not at all. I have performed the first test, based on the 2009 H1N1/swine flu pandemic. The stock market did not crash, and in my analysis the alarm bell did not ring - but see the comments for caveats.

This is because 2009 H1N1 was much less deadly than COVID-19, and it also did not shut down the world economy. The "alarm bell" rings if 13 of the 16 below criteria are operative, but only 11 of the 16 criteria were ever met.

This is one point of evidence in favor of this alarm bell being correctly calibrated. I would also like to investigate this question for Ebola, MERS, SARS, HIV/AIDS, the 1968 Hong Kong flu, and (as far as it's relevant) the 1918 Spanish flu.

Stock Market Trends in 2009

The stock market was at a low point in 2009 around March 6th, but had begun a strong upward trend that would last the rest of the year by mid-March, when the first cases of swine flu were confirmed in Mexico. Although the New York Times reported stock market tremors related to swine flu on April 27th, 2009, looking at the data for the whole year, the daily fluctuations for the year look pretty much like a random walk (April 27th highlighted in red):

Factor 1: Transmissibility

Does the disease appear to spread from human to human?

Yes, as with all H1N1 flu.

Does the disease spread via indirect contact (coughing, sneezing)?

Yes, as with all H1N1 flu.

Is there any evidence that the disease is transmissible before or just after the start of symptoms?

Yes. According to a fact sheet released by the state of New Hampshire, "People with H1N1 flu virus infection should be considered potentially contagious one day before the onset of symptoms and as long as they are symptomatic, and possibly up to 7 days following the onset of illness."

Do any academic papers, especially in the Lancet or the New England Journal of Medicine, suggest the possibility of "risk of much wider spread,"

...
Kids Ear Protection
by jefftk — 2020-04-07T01:40:02.645Z

Last summer, with the Fourth of July coming up, I ordered ear
protection for the kids. I think I got

this blue
pair and

this red
pair. They were very effective! In 2018 both kids wanted to go
home as soon as the fireworks started, while in 2019 they could enjoy
watching them for a while:

What I wasn't anticipating, though, was how useful they would be in
general. They kids have worn them when helping me work on the house:

When hanging out at the HONK!
festival:

And have generally enjoyed having them as an option any time things
are louder than they would like.

I'm glad we got them!

Comment via: facebook
Being right isn't enough. Confidence is very important.
by mako yass — 2020-04-07T01:10:52.517Z

There are two machines that predict weather. One machine always reports the probability of a storm as 1%, because 1% is the local yearly rate of storms. This machine turns out to be perfectly well calibrated and totally unbiased.

Another machine pays attention to local data, and processes it in a clever way. It always gives numbers like either 98% or 0.05%, depending on the day. Impressively, it also turns out to be perfectly well calibrated and unbiased.

Both are predicting the same category of event, both are perfectly calibrated- the event does happen or fail to happen at the rate they claim it will-, but the confident machine is much more useful than the simpler, low-confidence machine.

Being right and sane means being well calibrated. It imposes no further requirements. Being right and sane is not enough. Moving well in the world requires your predictions to also sometimes be confident.

Feel the pain of confidence's absence. Imagine that an enemy tank has entered your firing range. You can hear it rolling and occasionally clambering through the foliage, but you can't see it, your night cameras are damaged, however, your network holds a lot of good historical data. You figure out the most likely place for it to be given what you can hear and what you all remember, and you fire in that direction. You make the right choice given the data and the cognitive resources you had available to you. You are following a sound algorithm. Nobody can call you insane. Your record as a predictor will have a perfectly triangular histogram.

You miss. Your enemy's night vision is fine, and so they shoot back at you. Some of your parts can be salvaged but they probably wont be. It would have been really good if you'd had more eyes.
Self-priming
by Connor_Flexman — 2020-04-07T00:54:40.469Z

This is a self-help technique in the class of things like "low-grade meditation for 15 minutes", and as such YMMV and it's only sometimes even worth burning the time to do it. But, I like it, and I liked exploring it. Also, I derived it from cognitive science, which is a thing a lot of people seem to think is never practical, so there.

Anyways, here's

The pitch.

Everyone knows the power of priming. Even though all the stupid versions of the experiments failed to replicate, the basic ones did. And even if the basic ones didn't, you'd know they were designed wrong, because everyone's had the experience of e.g. talking about fetch while tossing a ball and then trying to yell "catch" to your friend and saying "fetch" instead.

But this is low-level priming. There's also high-level priming: if you take two gamers and have them talk about the stock market, but one of them hasn't played games in weeks and the other just finished a wild round of Dota, all else being equal the one who was just playing will be much more likely to introduce a gaming metaphor first.

For the more important application of it, the old version of Meditations on Moloch said it well:

Chronology is a harsh master. You read three totally unrelated things at the same time and they start seeming like obviously connected blind-man-and-elephant style groping at different aspects of the same fiendishly-hard-to-express point.

You can obviously prime yourself a ton by what you read. But this isn't super useful on its own. At least, I don't immediately know what I would prime myself for.

But another point. Creative people are always traveling and seeking out novelty, because travel just causes your brain to invariably begin erupting with ideas. On the opposite end, consider when you are (for an unlikely example) in lockdown in your house seeing the same 3 rooms over and over again for weeks. Your flow of ideas ceases, when you hear a new thing your brain reaches nowhere for a similarity, and you become catatonic.

(This quarantine isn't where the technique originated, but it sure is its wheelhouse.)

The technique

is to then prime yourself with the densest analogy-fodder available, so you can effortlessly have lots of thoughts later. Maybe you choose the following regimen for day 1:

3-minute video of a lightsaber duel
3 minutes writing do

...
Choosing the Zero Point
by orthonormal — 2020-04-06T23:44:02.083Z

Summary: You can decide what state of affairs counts as neutral, and what counts as positive or negative. Bad things happen if humans do that in our natural way. It's more motivating and less stressful if, when we learn something new, we update the neutral point to [what we think the world really is like now].

A few years back, I read an essay by Rob Bensinger about vegetarianism/veganism, and it convinced me to at least eat much less meat. This post is not about that topic. It's about the way that essay differed, psychologically, from many others I've seen on the same topic, and the general importance of that difference.

Rob's essay referred to the same arguments I'd previously seen, but while other essays concluded with the implication "you're doing great evil by eating meat, and you need to realize what a monster you've been and immediately stop", Rob emphasized the following:

Frame animal welfare activism as an astonishingly promising, efficient, and uncrowded opportunity to do good. Scale back moral condemnation and guilt. LessWrong types can be powerful allies, but the way to get them on board is to give them opportunities to feel like munchkins with rare secret insights, not like latecomers to a not-particularly-fun party who have to play catch-up to avoid getting yelled at. It’s fine to frame helping animals as challenging, but the challenge should be to excel and do something astonishing, not to meet a bare standard for decency.

That shouldn't have had different effects on me than other essays, but damned if it didn't.

Consider a utilitarian Ursula with a utility function U. U is defined over all possible ways the world could be, and for each of those ways it gives you a number. Ursula's goal is to maximize the expected value of U.

Now consider the utility function V, where V always equals U + 1. If a utilitarian Vader with utility function V is facing the same choice (in another universe) as Ursula, then because that +1 applies to every option equally, the right choice for Vader is the same as the right choice for Ursula. The constant difference between U and V doesn't matter for any decision whatsoever!

We represent this by saying that a utility function is only defined up to positive affine transformations. (That means you can also multiply U by any positive number and it stil...
The Origin of Consciousness Reading Companion, Part 1
by Jacob Falkovich — 2020-04-06T22:07:35.190Z

Cross-posted, as always, from Putanumonit.

As I threatened two weeks ago, the Bicameral Book Club met for its first session to discuss the first few chapters of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes. The book club will meet weekly, and every week I’ll write up a summary of the conversation and my follow up thoughts. I have a lot of thoughts about consciousness — this post has over 10% of the word count of the book chapters it covers.

This is not intended to be a review of the book but more of a reading companion — if you can’t join our book club live you can follow along or read this whenever you read the book.

I’m not going to track who came up with each thought below on the book club calls. Everything below is the result of a collective effort, and I’m grateful to all the participants.

Introduction: The Problem of Consciousness

Jaynes goes over the history of failed scientific conceptions of consciousness in a series of somewhat vignettes on views from Associationism to Skinnerian Behaviorism. There’s a strong whiff of straw about this section, but it’s an important reminder that for most of its modern history academic psychology refused to take the study of consciousness seriously. Christof Koch writes in his own book on the topic that “in the late 1980s, writing about consciousness was taken as a sign of cognitive decline.” I think that one of Jaynes’ historic contributions is mainstreaming consciousness as a topic of interest for both science and pop-science. The Origin, published in 1976, may have paved the way for the work of Koch, Dennett, Sachs, et al.

In a premonition for the rest of the book, the historic review notes how every age used metaphors from whichever science was prominent at the time to refer to consciousness. To the ancient Greeks, it was an open space like the sea. When geology was popular consciousness was a structure of hidden layers, and in the steam age it was “a boiler of straining energy”.

A survey of the book club revealed the without exception, the prevailing metaphor today is the brain as a computer. While this metaphor surely introduces its own biases, at least the world of computing is rich enough to provide variety: algorithms, global workspace theory, CPU allocation, input/output...
LW Coronavirus Agenda Update 4/6
by Elizabeth — 2020-04-06T17:53:11.106Z

Three weeks ago I announced the LessWrong Coronavirus Agenda, an attempt to increase knowledge by coordinating research between LW participants. This post is an update on that. If you want to skip to action items, check out the last section.

Last Week’s Spotlight Questions

What are the costs, benefits, and logistics of opening up new vaccine facilities?

I learned several things about vaccine facilities thanks to answers from micpie and ChristianKI. We also achieved the hidden goal of Bill Gates doing exactly what David Manheim suggested and building facilities for the 7 top vaccine candidates, which is the best result for any of these questions so far if you don’t look too closely at causality.

Economics Questions

What happens in a recession anyway?
How will this recession differ from the last two?
What will happen to supply chains in the era of COVID-19?

We made incremental progress on these but there’s a lot of ground to cover. Top comments:

Examination of mechanization of the produce supply chain
Discussion on the feasibility of moving away from JIT supply chains.
Alex Schnell on the right metrics to use for this recession.
Effect of recessions on fertility
Effect of recessions on suicide rate

Changes To The Agenda

“What are the costs, benefits, and logistics of opening up new vaccine facilities?” is being retired from the spotlight on account of “picked up by billionaire.”

Added question “What is the impact of varying initial viral load of COVID-19?”

This Week’s Spotlight Questions

Economics Questions

Having failed to solve all of economics, we’ll continue those questions into next week.

What happens in a recession anyway?
How will this recession differ from the last two?
What will happen to supply chains in the era of COVID-19?

What is the impact of varying initial viral load of COVID-19?

The hypothesis that lower initial viral load leads to better outcomes, and might be worth pursuing deliberately, is a central assumption is Zvi’s post Taking Initial Viral Load Seriously. Is it true?
Looking for AGI philosopher co-author on Draft Article: 'Optimising Peace to Constrain Risk of War from an Artificial Superintelligence'
by JohnCDraper — 2020-04-06T16:50:54.639Z

Abstract

An artificial superintelligence (ASI) emerging in a world in which war is still normalised may constitute a catastrophic existential risk, either because the ASI goes to war on behalf of itself to establish global supremacy (internal risk), or because an ASI might be employed by a single nation-state to wage war for global supremacy (external risk). We now live in a world where few states actually declare war; the last major declaration of the existence of a state of war was in 2008, for the Russo-Georgian War. This is because the 1945 United Nations’ Charter's Article 2 states that UN member states should “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”, while allowing for “military measures by UN Security Council resolutions” and “exercise of self-defense”. In this theoretical ideal, wars are not declared; instead, 'international armed conflicts' occur. However, interstate wars, both ‘hot’ and ‘cold’, still exist, for instance the Syrian Civil War, where an interstate proxy war is being waged, and the Korean War. Furthermore, a ‘New Cold War’ between AI superpowers (the United States and China) looms. An ASI-directed/enabled future interstate war could trigger ‘total war’, including nuclear war, and may therefore be considered ‘high risk’. One risk reduction strategy would be optimising peace through a Universal Global Peace Treaty (UGPT), which could contribute towards the ending of existing wars and towards the prevention of future wars, through conforming instrumentalism. While this strategy cannot cope with non-state actors, it could influence state actors, including those developing ASIs, or the ASI itself, should it assume agency. An opportunity to optimise peace as a risk reduction strategy is emerging, by leveraging the UGPT off the announcement of a ‘burning plasma’ fusion reaction, expected from circa 2025 to 2035, as was attempted in 1946 with fission, for atomic war, in the Baruch Plan.
How can we quantify the good done of donating PPEs vs ventilators? 
by BrianTan — 2020-04-06T14:41:11.312Z

I know a group of friends that plan on raising ~$20,000 to donate to COVID-19 efforts in the Philippines. They are considering between donating PPEs or ventilators to local hospitals, and I want to help them quantify the expected impact of the two general options, to see which one is better.

Can anyone here provide evidence, such as through Fermi estimates or citing other sources, on which of the two ideas would do more good? My gut tells me that donating PPEs is a better use of the money, since ventilators are costly. They are also considering donating to a place that will make alternative ventilators, which might be another option. Would love other people to chime in their thoughts!
What is going on in Singapore and the Philippines?
by jmh — 2020-04-06T11:27:25.268Z

Both saw early cases and then seemed to see things level off. Some suggested it was the sensitivity to heat and humidity plus, for Singapore, quick and decisive actions to limit the spread.

Both are now looking almost like they are at the start of their outbreak.

Any clues as to why or if this largely refutes the seasonal claims (not sure about Singapore but Philippines is officially in Summer season).
Confessions of a Transhumanist: On Life in Known Space
by Slimepriestess — 2020-04-06T09:59:44.114Z
Link: https://hivewired.wordpress.com/2020/04/06/confessions-of-a-transhumanist-on-life-in-known-space/

This is a post about my personal history with transhumanism and world saving.
Transportation as a Constraint
by johnswentworth — 2020-04-06T04:58:28.862Z

Imagine it’s late autumn of 332 BC. You’re Alexander the Great, and your armies are marching toward Egypt from Gaza. There’s just one little problem: you need to cross the Sinai peninsula - 150 miles of hot, barren desert. How will you carry food and water for the troops?

Green triangle on the left is the Nile river delta in Egypt; green chunk in the upper right is Israel. The big desert peninsula between them is the Sinai.

Option 1: carry it

A physically-active human needs about 3 lbs of food per day. (Modern hikers can probably find lighter calorie-dense foodstuffs, but we’re talking ancient history here.) Water requirements vary; 5 lbs is a minimum, but the US Army Quartermaster Corps recommends 20 lbs/day when marching through a hot desert. Alexander’s army crossed the desert in 7 days. Food might be reasonable, but to carry the water would mean 7*20 = 140 lbs per person, plus 50+ lbs of armor, weapons, etc.

When I go hiking, I aim for a 20-30 lb pack. US marines are apparently expected to be able to carry 150 lbs for 9 miles - quite a bit less than the 20+ miles/day Alexander’s army managed, and with no comment on how long the marine in question might need to rest afterwards. (Also, I’m not sure I trust that source - 150 lbs for 9 miles sounds unrealistic to me, and if it’s true then I’m very impressed by marines.)

Suffice to say that carrying that much water across that much desert is not a realistic option, even if we drink it along the way.

Option 2: horses

A horse consumes 20 lbs of food (half of which may be forage) and 80 lbs of water per day. In exchange, it can carry about 200 lbs (surprisingly, my source claims that horses can carry more than they can pull). Of course, that 200 lbs has to include the horse’s own food and water, plus whatever useful load it’s carrying. So, marching through a desert, a horse can only transport (200 lbs)/(80+20 lbs/day) = 2 days of supplies for itself, and that’s before whatever useful things actually need to be transported.

In other words, there’s a hard upper limit on how far goods can be transported by horse without refilling supplies along the way. That limit is around 2 days travel time without any refill, 10 days if there’s plenty of fresh water along the route, or 20 days if there’s both water and forage. At 20 miles/day, that’s 40, 200, or 400 miles. Realistically, if we want the number of horses to be reasonable,...