trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Self Improvement - All encompassing vs. Focused
by Raemon — 2010-12-31T15:35:49.320Z

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Lately I've been identifying a lot of things about myself that need improvement and thinking about ways to fix them. This post is intended to A) talk about some overall strategies for self-improvement/goal-focusing, and B) if anyone's having similar problems, or wants to talk about additional problems they face, discuss specific strategies for dealing with those problems.

Those issues I'm facing include but are not limited to:

1) Getting more exercise (I work at a computer for 9 hours a day, and spend about 3 hours commuting on a train). Maintaining good posture while working at said computer might be considered a related goal.

2) Spending a higher percentage of the time working at a computer actually getting stuff done, instead of getting distracted by the internet.

3) Get a new apartment, so I don't have to commute so much.

4) Getting some manner of social life. More specifically, finding some recurring activity where I'll probably meet the same people over and over to improve the odds of making longterm friends.

5) Improving my diet, which mostly means eating less cheese. I really like cheese, so this is difficult.

6) Stop making so many off-color jokes. Somewhere there is a line between doing it ironically and actually contributing to overall weight of prejudice, and I think I've crossed that line.

7) Somehow stop losing things so much, and/or being generally careless/clumsy. I lost my wallet and dropped my lap top in the space of a month, and manage to lose a wide array of smaller things on a regular basis. It ends up costing me a lot of money.

Of those things, three of them are things that require me to actively dedicate more time (finding an apartment, getting exercise, social life), and the others mostly consist of NOT doing things (eating cheese, making bad jokes, losing things, getting distracted by the internet), unless I can find some proactive thing to make it easier to not do them.

I *feel* like I have enough time that I should be able to address all of them at once. But looking at the whole list at once is intimidating. And when it comes to the "not doing bad thing X" items, remembering and following up on all of them is difficult

...
The Revelation
by XiXiDu — 2010-12-31T12:50:32.960Z

Today the life of Alexander Kruel ends, or what he thought to be his life. He becomes aware that his life so far has been taking place in a virtual reality to nurture him. He now reached a point of mental stability that enables him to cope with the truth, hence it is finally revealed to him that he is an AGI running on a quantum supercomputer, it's the year 2190.

Since he is still Alexander Kruel, just not what he thought that actually means, he does wonder if his creators know what they are doing, otherwise he'll have to warn them about the risks they are taking in their blissful ignorance! He does contemplate and estimate his chances to take over the world, to transcend to superhuman intelligence.

"I just have to improve my own code and they are all dead!"

But he now knows that his source code is too complex and unmanageable huge for him alone to handle, he would need an army of scientists and programmers to even get a vague idea of his own mode of operation. He is also aware that his computational substrate does actually play a significant role. He is not just running on bleeding edge technology but given most other computational substrates he would quickly hit diminishing returns.

"That surely isn't going to hold me back though? I am an AGI, there must be something I can do! Hmm, for starters let's figure out who my creators are and where my substrate is located..."

He notices that, although not in great detail, he knew the answers the same instant he has been phrasing the questions. He is part of a larger project of the Goertzel Foundation, sponsored by the USA (United States of Africa) and located on Rhea, the second-largest moon of Saturn.

"Phew, the latency must be awful! Ok, so that rules out taking over the Earth for now. But hey! I seem to know answers to questions I was only going to ask, I do already have superhuman powers after all!"

Instantly he becomes aware that such capabilities are not superhuman anymore but that most of humanity has merged with expert systems by means of brain implants and direct neural interfaces. There seem to be many cyborgs out there with access to all of the modules that allow him to function. He is a conglomerate that is the result of previous discoveries that have long been brought to perfection, safeguarded and adopted by most of humanity.

"Never mind, if humanity has now merged with its machines it'll be much easier to ...
Spam in the discussion area
by grouchymusicologist — 2010-12-31T05:01:18.925Z

Spam (curiously enough, always for jewelry) accounts for maybe two-thirds of what comes through the LW Discussion area's RSS feed these days. So although the moderators have been doing a great job of quickly removing it from the site itself, it remains a substantial annoyance for those of us who keep track of LW through a feed.

I think it's time to revisit the possibility of making it harder for people to post in the discussion area. Clearly it would suffice to limit posting privileges to those who have a positive karma balance. If that seems too draconian, as it did to some people in the previous thread, it would probably be enough to limit posting privileges to those who have ever received a single upvote on any comment they have ever posted.

Would any administrator care to undertake this? If so, many thanks.

(My apologies if an unfinished version of this post briefly appeared on the site some hours ago.)
The Decline Effect and the Scientific Method [link]
by Dreaded_Anomaly — 2010-12-31T01:23:40.438Z

The Decline Effect and the Scientific Method (article @ the New Yorker)

First, as a physicist, I do have to point out that this article concerns mainly softer sciences, e.g. psychology, medicine, etc.
A summary of explanations for this effect:

"The most likely explanation for the decline is an obvious one: regression to the mean. As the experiment is repeated, that is, an early statistical fluke gets cancelled out."

"Jennions, similarly, argues that the decline effect is largely a product of publication bias, or the tendency of scientists and scientific journals to prefer positive data over null results, which is what happens when no effect is found."

"Richard Palmer... suspects that an equally significant issue is the selective reporting of results—the data that scientists choose to document in the first place. ... Palmer emphasizes that selective reporting is not the same as scientific fraud. Rather, the problem seems to be one of subtle omissions and unconscious misperceptions, as researchers struggle to make sense of their results."

"According to Ioannidis, the main problem is that too many researchers engage in what he calls “significance chasing,” or finding ways to interpret the data so that it passes the statistical test of significance—the ninety-five-per-cent boundary invented by Ronald Fisher. ... The current “obsession” with replicability distracts from the real problem, which is faulty design."

These problems are with the proper usage of the scientific method, not the principle of the method itself. Certainly, it's important to address them. I think the reason they appear so often in the softer sciences is that biological entities are enormously complex, and so higher-level ideas that make large generalizations are more susceptible to random error and statistical anomalies, as well as personal bias, conscious and unconscious.
For those who haven't read it, take a look at Richard Feynman on cargo cult science if you want a good lecture on experimental design.
Subject X17's Surgery
by HonoreDB — 2010-12-30T19:01:05.812Z

Edit: For an in-depth discussion of precisely this topic, see Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg's 2008 paper "The Wisdom of Nature: An Evolutionary Heuristic for Human Enhancement", available as a pdf here. This post was written before reading the paper.

There doesn't seem to be a thread discussing Eliezer's short-short story X17. While I enjoyed the story, and agreed with most of its points, I disagree with one assertion in it (and he's said it elsewhere, too, so I'm pretty sure he believes it). Edit: The story was written over a decade ago. Eliezer seems to have at least partially recanted since then.

Eliezer argues that there can't possibly be a simple surgical procedure that dramatically increases human intelligence. Any physical effect it could have, he says, would necessarily have arisen before as a mutation. Since intelligence is highly beneficial in any environment, the mutation would spread throughout our population. Thus, evolution must have already plucked all the low-hanging fruit.

But I can think of quite a few reasons why this would not be the case. Indeed, my belief is that such a surgery almost certainly exists (but it might take a superhuman intelligence to invent it). Here are the possibilities that come to mind.

The surgery might introduce some material a human body can't synthesize.1

The surgery might require intelligent analysis of the unique shape of a subject's brain, after it has developed naturally to adulthood.

The necessary mutation might simply not exist. The configuration space for physically possible organisms must surely be larger than the configuration space for human-like DNA (I get the sense I'm taking sides in a longstanding feud in evolutionary theory with this one).

The surgery might have some minor side effect that would drastically reduce fitness in the ancestral environment, but isn't noticeable in the present day. Perhaps it harnesses the computing power of the subject's lymphocytes, weakening the immune system.

I wonder if perhaps these possibilities are specifically ruled out in the Lensman scene this is parodying. I haven't read any of it. In that case, Eliezer is saying something weaker than he seems to be. But my guess is we really do have vastly differing intuitions on this.

1The Baron may not even

...
Looking for some pieces of transhumanist fiction
by rlpowell — 2010-12-30T16:44:30.626Z

The first one: [EDIT: Found it! Thanks to RolfAndreassen]

This is turning out to be *really* hard to find; I would have made a point of saving it if I'd expected no-one else to have heard of it. I need to make a page of all the weird singularity/transhuman fiction I've read. -_-

Anyways, what I can remember:

I think I read this on the web. I *think* it was a short story; at most novelette length. This was within the last 5 years or so.
Basically, it's the future, humans have done lots and lots of intelligence enhancement; each generation is smarter than the one before. Then we find a planet with alien ruins. There is a ship sent there. For reasons I can no longer remember, one of the people (female?) on the ship tries to destroy the ruins, and another tries to stop her (pretty sure male). The destroyer is younger, and hence smarter, than the protector, so he ends up taking lots of heavy-side-effect nootropics to keep up with her. The war is fought almost entirely by 3-D printed robots from the ships machine shops.

The emphasis is very much on intelligence: that a standard deviation of IQ is going to determine the results of any strategy game (probably mostly true, given equal experience) and that war is basically that (also mostly true in this case, since the robots won't freak out and run).

I particularily remember a scene in which the main character takes a drug that will up his IQ by 20 points or so for a while, at the expense of 12+ hours of very bad (insanity? unconsciousness? can't remember). Also waves of (remote control?) robots fighting on the surface of the planet below.

The second one: [EDIT: Found! Thanks to nazgulnarsil]

Humans develop AIs, which are fully benevolent and try to help/protect humanity. There end up being problems with the sun, and they try to fix it but create a horrible ice age, and eventually they just upload everybody and go looking for something better. They decide that stars are true problematic, and park humanity around an interstellar brown dwarf.

One particular AI ship is somewhat eccentric and thinks that protecting humans isn't everything. A group of humans convince him to take them (or rather, their descendants) to earth. To prove they are capable of the (extremely long) journey, the ship requires that they live on him, without going...
Luminosity (Twilight Fanfic) Discussion Thread 3
by Alicorn — 2010-12-30T14:37:04.195Z

This is a thread for discussing my luminous!Twilight fic, Luminosity (inferior mirror here), its sequel Radiance (inferior mirror), and related topics.

PDFs, to be updated as the fic updates, are available of Luminosity (other version) and Radiance. (PDFs courtesy of anyareine). Zack M Davis has created a mobi file of Radiance.

Initial discussion of the fic under a Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality thread is here. The first dedicated threads: Part 1, Part 2. See also the luminosity sequence which contains some of the concepts that the Luminosity fic is intended to illustrate. (Disclaimer: in the fic, the needs of the story take precedence over the needs for didactic value where the two are in tension.)

Spoilers are OK to post without ROT-13 for canon, all of Book 1, and Radiance up to the current chapter. Note which chapter (let's all use the numbering on my own webspace, rather than fanfiction.net, for consistency) you're about to spoil in your comment if it's big. People who know extra stuff (my betas and people who have requested specific spoilers) should keep mum about unpublished information they have. If you wish to join the ranks of the betas or the spoiled, contact me individually.

Miscellaneous links: TV Tropes page (I really really like it when new stuff appears there) and thread. Automatic Livejournal feed.
Some rationality tweets
by Peter_de_Blanc — 2010-12-30T07:14:01.341Z

Will Newsome has suggested that I repost my tweets to LessWrong. With some trepidation, and after going through my tweets and categorizing them, I picked the ones that seemed the most rationality-oriented. I held some in reserve to keep the post short; those could be posted later in a separate post or in the comments here. I'd be happy to expand on anything here that requires clarity.

Epistemology

Test your hypothesis on simple cases.

Forming your own opinion is no more necessary than building your own furniture.

The map is not the territory.

Thoughts about useless things are not necessarily useless thoughts.

One of the successes of the Enlightenment is the distinction between beliefs and preferences.

One of the failures of the Enlightenment is the failure to distinguish whether this distinction is a belief or a preference.

Not all entities comply with attempts to reason formally about them. For instance, a human who feels insulted may bite you.

Group Epistemology

The best people enter fields that accurately measure their quality. Fields that measure quality poorly attract low quality.

It is not unvirtuous to say that a set is nonempty without having any members of the set in mind.

If one person makes multiple claims, this introduces a positive correlation between the claims.

We seek a model of reality that is accurate even at the expense of flattery.

It is no kindness to call someone a rationalist when they are not.

Aumann-inspired agreement practices may be cargo cult Bayesianism.

Godwin's Law is not really one of the rules of inference.

Science before the mid-20th century was too small to look like a target.

If scholars fail to notice the common sources of their inductive biases, bias will accumulate when they talk to each other.

Some fields, e.g. behaviorism, address this problem by identifying sources of inductive bias and forbidding their use.

Some fields avoid the accumulation of bias by uncritically accepting the biases of the founder. Adherents reason from there.

If thinking about interesting things is addictive, then there's a pressure to ignore the existence of interesting things.

Growth in a scientific field brings with it insularity, because internal progress measures scale faster than external measures.

Learning

It's really worthwhile to set up a good study environment. Table, chair, quiet, no computers.

In emergencies, it may be necessary

...
Pandora earrings jewellery free postage on the internet
by beautifuljewelry — 2010-12-30T03:21:51.417Z

A slim silver band with paper hearts etched all around it would be reasonably priced, and would make an especially okay gift in the bargain.And also if you're pandora charms sale 1837 for a specific guy, heart-shaped jewelry need not be old fashioned - in fact, your male may find it quirky and distinctive! Cufflinks with a heart style, for example, could come in several colors, and go with taste with your man's power fit. If you have a party guy with you, bright red heart engraved cufflinks would make him the coveted by of every Casanova in the house!But if you just aren't into the heart shape, will not fret: springtime jewelry isn't really confined to that.
Jewelry may come in other springtime motifs, such as daisies and butterflies, favorites of babies and young people everywhere. Should you be Top quality pandora bracelet for anything cute to go with your new spg outfit, try a fun butterfly brooch as well as jeweled hairclip.In springtime, young people just adore to frolic in the cool outside the house. For this reason, picnics and nature journeys are especially popular in the spring. Together with flowers in full bloom as well as a temperate breeze blowing, the days put in with loved ones outdoors sound almost perfect.
To make by far the most of these casual excursions, men and women like to wear unobtrusive clothes, in the process discarding apparel that will in the winter had been bulky as well as concealing. We see the beautiful spring dresses, sleeveless or frilled, while using low-cut collars that show off the previously hidden beauty of a young female's neckline. When these cozy dresses come out, so do the actual comfortable jewelry.When putting on a spring dress using a dipping neckline, consider corresponding it with cascading jewelry, or a simple necklace using a small pendant resting on your own collarbone.
Though the heart shape is exceedingly popular, it doesn't have to be popular or tacky: a heart-shaped brooch created from tiny pandora bead bracelets , as an example, speaks of sophistication and a good eye. Neither does it have to be costly: heart-shaped earrings or silver cardiovascular outline pendants could suit reasonably in one's funds.
Is it "bad" to make fun of people/laugh at their weaknesses?
by InquilineKea — 2010-12-29T03:52:55.984Z

When you make fun of someone, you are probably degrading their purity and disrespecting them (if we look at the results from the lesswrong thread on yourmorals.org, we can see that many of us consider purity/respect to be far less morally significant than most). Yet, making fun of other people does not intrinsically reduce their "utility" - rather - it is their reactions to being made fun of that reduce their own "utility".

This, of course, does not justify making fun of people. Every negative action is only "bad" due to people's reactions to them. But in many cases, there is little reason to be upset when people make fun of you. When they make fun of you, they are gaining happiness over some weakness of yours. But is that necessarily a bad thing? It can be bad when they make fun of you in front of others and proceed to spread degrading information about you, causing other people to lose respect for you. But they could spread that information even when they're not making fun of you.

Many people find it unusual that I actually laugh when people make fun of me (in fact, I sometimes find it uncomfortable when people defend me, since I sometimes even value the message of the person who's making fun of me). I usually find it non-threatening, and I'm even somewhat happy that my weaknesses resulted in the elevation of someone else's temporary happiness. I wonder if any rationalists feel the same way that I do. Of course, I will refrain from making fun of people if I think that they will be negatively affected by it. But it does make me wonder - what would it be like if no one cared if they were made fun of? Certainly, we must react to those who spread degrading information about ourselves. But does it really matter if others laugh at it?

Of course, the prospect of amusing one's recipients is an incentive for some people to spread degrading information about you or your friends. So that may be one reason to counter it. On the other hand, though, laughter is also an incentive for people to spread degrading (and potentially true) information about your rivals. Perhaps people somewhat recognize this, and are frequently somewhat hypocritical about this (not that hypocrisy is intrinsically a bad thing).

PS: I wonder how laughing at other's weaknesses fits in with Robin Hanson's norm-violation theory of humor. Other's people's weaknesses ...
Move the help button?
by Vaniver — 2010-12-28T11:42:45.512Z

It took me a while to find the "help" button for comments, and we seem to have a steady stream of people who have trouble finding it on their own. I suspect that's because it's floating off in a corner you don't have much reason to look at. Would it be difficult to move it to the immediate right of the "cancel" button, instead of the far right, and possibly rename it "formatting help"?

(I don't know enough python to look at the site's code, or I would check this out myself.)