trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Estimate Stability
by lukeprog — 2013-04-13T18:33:23.799Z

I've been trying to get clear on something you might call "estimate stability." Steven Kaas recently posted my question to StackExchange, but we might as well post it here as well:

I'm trying to reason about something I call "estimate stability," and I'm hoping you can tell me whether there’s some relevant technical language...

What do I mean by "estimate stability?" Consider these three different propositions:

We’re 50% sure that a coin (known to be fair) will land on heads.

We’re 50% sure that Matt will show up at the party.

We’re 50% sure that Strong AI will be invented by 2080.

These estimates feel different. One reason they feel different is that the estimates have different degrees of "stability." In case (1) we don't expect to gain information that will change our probability estimate. But for cases (2) and (3), we may well come upon some information that causes us to adjust the estimate either up or down.

So estimate (1) is more "stable," but I'm not sure how this should be quantified. Should I think of it in terms of running a Monte Carlo simulation of what future evidence might be, and looking at something like the variance of the distribution of the resulting estimates? What happens when it’s a whole probability distribution for e.g. the time Strong AI is invented? (Do you do calculate the stability of the probability density for every year, then average the result?)

Here are some other considerations that would be useful to relate more formally to considerations of estimate stability:

If we’re estimating some variable, having a narrow probability distribution (prior to future evidence with respect to which we’re trying to assess the stability) corresponds to having a lot of data. New data, in that case, would make less of a contribution in terms of changing the mean and reducing the variance.

There are differences in model uncertainty between the three cases. I know what model to use when predicting a coin flip. My method of predicting whether Matt will show up at a party is shakier, but I have some idea of what I’m doing. With the Strong AI case, I don’t really have any good idea of what I’m doing. Presumably model uncertainty is related to estimate stability, because the more model uncertainty we have, the more we can change our estimate by reducing our model uncertainty.

Another d

...
[SEQ RERUN] Extenuating Circumstances
by MinibearRex — 2013-04-13T04:27:04.146Z

Today's post, Extenuating Circumstances was originally published on 06 April 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

You can excuse other people's shortcomings on the basis of extenuating circumstances, but you shouldn't do that with yourself.

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 Real-Life Anthropic Weirdness, 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.
Meetup : Brussels meetup
by Axel — 2013-04-12T19:05:27.221Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Brussels meetup

WHEN:
20 April 2013 01:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Rue des Alexiens 55 1000 Bruxelles

We are once again meeting at 'la fleur en papier dorée' close to the Brussels Central station. If you feel like an intelligent discussion and are in the neighborhood, consider dropping by. As always, I'll have a sign. The meeting will be in English to facilitate both French and Dutch speaking members.

If you are coming for the first time, please consider filling out this one minute form, to share your contact information.

Discussion article for the meetup : Brussels meetup
Weekly LW Meetups: Austin, Brussels, Cambridge UK, Frankfurt, Moscow, Vancouver
by FrankAdamek — 2013-04-12T15:20:18.308Z

This summary was posted to LW main on March 15th. The following week's summary is here.

There are upcoming irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups in:

2. Frankfurt am Main meetup: 15 March 2013 06:30PM
Brussels meetup: 16 March 2013 01:00PM
Vancouver Extraordinary Evidence and Bayes: 16 March 2013 03:00PM
Moscow, Theory and Practice: 17 March 2013 04:00PM
London Meetup, 24th March: Steelmanning: 24 March 2013 02:00PM
Munich Meetup (updated): 01 April 2013 03:00PM
Vienna Meetup #2 - : 13 April 2013 07:06PM

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

Austin, TX: 16 March 2019 01:30PM
(Cambridge, UK) Meetup [Reading Group, HAEFB-06]: 17 March 2013 11:00AM

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

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

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

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

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

Whether or not there's currently a meetup in your area, you can sign up to be notified automatically of any future...
NES-game playing AI [video link and AI-boxing-related comment]
by Dr_Manhattan — 2013-04-12T13:11:36.365Z

"Pretty simple" algorithm playing games quite impressively.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOCurBYI_gY
First, this is awesome - enjoy!
Paper here http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom7/mario/mario.pdf
One interesting observation made by Tom Murphy is that the AI found and exploited playable bugs in the game not (commonly) known to human players. I think it's a good example to have available suggesting what a really smart AI might look for to win.
Noisy Poll Results And Reptilian Muslim Climatologists from Mars
by Scott Alexander — 2013-04-12T10:49:25.000Z

Beware of Phantom Lizardmen

I have only done a little bit of social science research, but it was enough to make me hate people. One study I helped with analyzed whether people from different countries had different answers on a certain psychological test. So we put up a website where people answered some questions about themselves (like “what country are you from?”) and then took the psychological test.

And so of course people screwed it up in every conceivable way. There were the merely dumb, like the guy who put “male” as his nationality and “American” as his gender. But there were also the actively malicious or at least annoying, like the people (yes, more than one) who wrote in “Martian”.

I think we all probably know someone like this, maybe a couple people like this.

I also think most of us don’t know someone who believes reptilian aliens in human form control all the major nations of Earth.

Public Policy Polling’s recent poll on conspiracy theories mostly showed up on my Facebook feed as “Four percent of Americans believe lizardmen are running the Earth”.

(of note, an additional 7% of Americans are “not sure” whether lizardmen are running the Earth or not.)

Imagine the situation. You’re at home, eating dinner. You get a call from someone who says “Hello, this is Public Policy Polling. Would you mind answering some questions for us?” You say “Sure”. An extremely dignified sounding voice says – and this is the exact wording of the question – “Do you believe that shape-shifting reptilian people control our world by taking on human form and gaining political power to manipulate our society, or not?” Then it urges you to press 1 if yes, press 2 if no, press 3 if not sure.

So first we get the people who think “Wait, was 1 the one for if I did believe in lizardmen, or if I didn’t? I’ll just press 1 and move on to the next question.”

Then we get the people who are like “I never heard it before, but if this nice pollster thinks it’s true, I might as well go along with them.”

Then we get the people who are all “F#&k you, polling company, I don’t want people calling me when I’m at dinner. You screw with me, I tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to tell you I...
[SEQ RERUN] Real-Life Anthropic Weirdness
by MinibearRex — 2013-04-12T05:33:14.994Z

Today's post, Real-Life Anthropic Weirdness was originally published on 05 April 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Extremely rare events can create bizarre circumstances in which people may not be able to effectively communicate about improbability.

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 Incremental Progress and the Valley, 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.
Meetup : Cincinnati near-Schelling day
by RolfAndreassen — 2013-04-12T03:04:13.611Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Cincinnati near-Schelling day

WHEN:
21 April 2013 04:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
3060 Marshall Avenue, apartment 414, Cincinnati

It turns out that Schelling Day is not, in fact, a Schelling point locally; but we will run the ritual anyway, with better snacks.

Discussion article for the meetup : Cincinnati near-Schelling day
Pay other people to go vegetarian for you?
by jefftk — 2013-04-12T01:56:59.745Z

I notice that a large fraction of Effective Altruism people are vegetarian. This makes sense: in general Effective Altruists take moral issues seriously, even when that means changing your lifestyle. I'm not sure it's a good balance, though.

One way to think about this is to convert it into money. How much would I need to be paid to give up eating meat? All animal products? How much money would I need to spend on myself to be about as happy as I would be with less money but continuing to eat animals? I'd probably be willing to go vegetarian for about $500/year, vegan for maybe $2000/year.

It turns out you can probably pay to convince other people to be vegetarian much more cheaply than that. I estimate the cost of a vegetarian-year at $4.29 to $536 while Brian Tomasik estimates $11 with better methodology (which I looked at). This is by placing ads on facebook for a site where people can watch an animial cruelty video and ideally become vegetarian or vegan.

If you would get more than $11/year worth of enjoyment out of continuing to eat meat, why not give $11/year to convince someone else to not eat meat for you? Or give $50/year and be on the safe side?

(While you're giving money, you should probably give it to the organization that you think will do the most good with it, which I think is probably one of GiveWell's top charities. The nice thing about money as opposed to actions is that it's easy to redirect.)

I also posted this on my blog.
Fermi Estimates
by lukeprog — 2013-04-11T17:52:28.708Z

Just before the Trinity test, Enrico Fermi decided he wanted a rough estimate of the blast's power before the diagnostic data came in. So he dropped some pieces of paper from his hand as the blast wave passed him, and used this to estimate that the blast was equivalent to 10 kilotons of TNT. His guess was remarkably accurate for having so little data: the true answer turned out to be 20 kilotons of TNT.

Fermi had a knack for making roughly-accurate estimates with very little data, and therefore such an estimate is known today as a Fermi estimate.

Why bother with Fermi estimates, if your estimates are likely to be off by a factor of 2 or even 10? Often, getting an estimate within a factor of 10 or 20 is enough to make a decision. So Fermi estimates can save you a lot of time, especially as you gain more practice at making them.

Estimation tips

These first two sections are adapted from Guestimation 2.0.

Dare to be imprecise. Round things off enough to do the calculations in your head. I call this the spherical cow principle, after a joke about how physicists oversimplify things to make calculations feasible:

Milk production at a dairy farm was low, so the farmer asked a local university for help. A multidisciplinary team of professors was assembled, headed by a theoretical physicist. After two weeks of observation and analysis, the physicist told the farmer, "I have the solution, but it only works in the case of spherical cows in a vacuum."

By the spherical cow principle, there are 300 days in a year, people are six feet (or 2 meters) tall, the circumference of the Earth is 20,000 mi (or 40,000 km), and cows are spheres of meat and bone 4 feet (or 1 meter) in diameter.

Decompose the problem. Sometimes you can give an estimate in one step, within a factor of 10. (How much does a new compact car cost? $20,000.) But in most cases, you'll need to break the problem into several pieces, estimate each of them, and then recombine them. I'll give several examples below.

Estimate by bounding. Sometimes it is easier to give lower and upper bounds than to give a point estimate. How much time per day does the average 15-year-old watch TV? I don't spend any time with 15-year-olds, so I haven't a clue. It could be 30 minutes, or 3 hours, or 5 hours, but I'm pretty confident it's more than 2 minutes and less than 7 hours (400 minutes, by the spherical cow principle).

Can we...
Columbus Mega-meetup Planning- RSVPs wanted
by daenerys — 2013-04-11T14:53:32.039Z

This October 11-13, Columbus, Ohio will be holding our first mega-meetup. The theme will be:

"Leveling Up"

The site will be the HCCO conference room, and attendance will be limited to 60. Tickets will be sold in advance and will cover lunch (Tickets will be extremely cheap to buy in advance, and will pretty much just be the cost of lunch, rounded up. Their sole purpose is to reserve seats for attendees in a reasonable manner.)

If you think you might be coming, please leave a comment, along with a confidence estimation. Yes, I know the event is pretty far in the future, but an early RSVP will be extremely helpful to me! For example if you would be bringing two guests, and are 75% certain you will come:

J. Doe +2, 75%

Talks:

Note- October is far enough out in advance that all the details are tentative at this point.

Down the Rabbit Hole: Magic as Psychic Entertainment -Jack Strauss

Magician/Mentalist Jack Strauss will present a stage act as a psychic entertainer. Afterwards, there will be a sit-down talkback with the audience. Topics will be determined by audience questions and may include: ethics of performing on stage with a psychic persona, psychology of deception, techniques of cold reading, etc. The only topic off the table will be the specifics of how the act you just saw is performed.

Jesse Galef- Defense Against the Dark Arts

Elissa Caffery Fleming- Effective Altruism (tentative)

Amanda Metskas- The Next Generation (tentative)

Eric Huff- Applications of Models

Demitri Muna- Instrumental Improv workshop

Erica Edelman- Intro to Rationality

Other Events:

Friday we may do a swing dance class. Sunday we may go shopping.

Approximate Drive Times:

Dayton, OH- 1:00
Cincinnati, OH- 1:30
Cleveland, OH- 2:10
Toledo, OH- 2:20
Indianapolis, IN- 2:40
Fort Wayne, IN- 2:45
Pittsburgh, PA- 2:50
Lexington, KY- 3:00
Louisville, KY- 3:10
Detroit, MI- 3:15

Grand Rapids, MI- 4:50
Buffalo, MI- 5:00
Knoxville, TN- 5:15
Chicago, IL- 5:20
Nashville, TN- 5:30
Springfield, IL- 5:50
Rochester, NY- 6:00
Washington DC- 6:15
St Louis, MO- 6:20
Toronto, Canada- 6:30
Charlotte, NC- 6:40
Milwuakee, WI- 6:50
Philadelphia, PA- 7:15

NYC- 8:00
Meetup : April Atlanta Meetup! Friday, April 19th
by Nova_Division — 2013-04-11T14:13:08.712Z

Discussion article for the meetup : April Atlanta Meetup! Friday, April 19th

WHEN: 19 April 2013 07:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE: 1314 Hosea L Williams Drive NE, Atlanta, GA 30317

Note: The date for this meetup was previously incorrect. The correct date is Friday, April 19th.

This meetup will focus on instrumental rationality and life-hacking skills.

If you are a quiet, introverted person who hasn't yet made the leap from online-Lesswrong to Lesswrong-in-the-flesh, and you feel intimidated or worried that you'll feel out of place at our meetup, worry no more! Give it a shot this month and see what you think. :)

If you're an energetic, outgoing person and you're worried that rationalist fraternizing might prove pedantic or tedious, I have some truly lovely people I'd like to introduce you to!

We have rapid-fire, large group discussions--and intimate, small group discussions.

We have time to reflect quietly on what we are learning--and time to physically express our excitement by bouncing around like bubble balls in a hopper.

We have large group, bawdy games (Operant conditioning or Cards Against Humanity, anyone?)-- and quiet, relaxing, noncompetitive games (cooperative Set is my favorite! And have you tried Aquarius?).

Whatever your taste for socializing, there's a niche in ATLesswrong for you. =D

Agenda

Mini-presentations. Anyone is invited to give a mini-presentation on a topic of their choice! A whiteboard is available if needed.

What went down at Teens & Twenties 4. We will give a short summary of the recent Teens and Twenties 4 cryonics conference for those interested in hearing more.

Soylent samples! For those interested in life-hacking via DIY meal-replacement drinks.

Biased board gaming. There was a lot of interest last time in this idea, so we're making it happen.

Post-meetup social time! Games, cuddling, kittens! No, seriously, there will be KITTENS.

Post-post-meetup out on the town time! If you're up for a late night, lets do random acts of kindness and mayhem in Atlanta.

Please bring a laptop or other device that can view Google Docs. That way we can share notes and avoid the need for printouts.

Snacks and drinks will be provided! As always, snacks will be vegan with gluten-free and soy-free options.

Discussion article for the meetup : April Atlanta Meetup! Friday, April 19th
[SEQ RERUN] Incremental Progress and the Valley
by MinibearRex — 2013-04-11T05:58:55.393Z

Today's post, was originally published on 04 April 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

The optimality theorems for probability theory and decision theory, are for perfect probability theory and decision theory. There is no theorem that incremental changes toward the ideal, starting from a flawed initial form, must yield incremental progress at each step along the way. Since perfection is unattainable, why dare to try for improvement? But my limited experience with specialized applications suggests that given enough progress, one can achieve huge improvements over baseline - it just takes a lot of progress to get there.

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 Rationality is Systematized Winning, 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.
Post Request Thread
by Qiaochu_Yuan — 2013-04-11T01:28:46.351Z

This thread is another experiment roughly in the vein of the Boring Advice Repository and the Solved Problems Repository.

There are some topics I'd like to see more LW posts on, but I feel underqualified to post about them relative to my estimate of the most qualified LWer on the topic. I would guess that I am not the only one. I would further guess that there are some LWers who are really knowledgeable about various topics and might like to write about one of them but are unsure which one to choose.

If my guesses are right, these people should be made aware of each other. In this thread, please comment with a request for a LW post (Discussion or Main) on a particular topic. Please upvote such a comment if you would also like to see such a post, and comment on such a comment if you plan on writing such a post. If you leave a writing-plan comment, please edit it once you actually write the post and link to the post so as to avoid duplication of effort in the future.

Let's see what happens!

Edit: it just occurred to me that it might also be reasonable to comment indicating what topics you'd be interested in writing about and then asking people to tell you which ones they'd like you to write about the most. So try that too!
Open Request for Writing Assistance
by apophenia — 2013-04-11T00:53:04.207Z

I have several rough drafts of things I'd like to post to Less Wrong. The one I'm currently working on is about Solomonoff Induction. I seem to be best-motivated by active feedback while writing; this thread is mainly to request feedback while writing in the future. If you'd be interesting in reading what I'm writing every few paragraphs (either because you'd find it interesting or in order to cause it to be written), I would very much appreciate that.

As long as I'm making that request, I might as well make two more: I would also like to hire someone who can edit writing for flow, and someone who can copy-edit. These could be two people or maybe you're amazing and can be both people. I will be willing to pay around $10/hr to anyone interested. If you're editing for flow I'd like to see a sample of your writing.

Thanks in advance to any volunteer readers!