trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
The mystery of pain and pleasure
by johnsonmx — 2015-03-01T19:47:05.251Z

Some arrangements of particles feel better than others. Why?

We have no general theories, only descriptive observations within the context of the vertebrate brain, about what produces pain and pleasure. It seems like there's a mystery here, a general principle to uncover.

Let's try to chart the mystery. I think we should, in theory, be able to answer the following questions:

(1) What are the necessary and sufficient properties for a thought to be pleasurable?

(2) What are the characteristic mathematics of a painful thought?

(3) If we wanted to create an artificial neural network-based mind (i.e., using neurons, but not slavishly patterned after a mammalian brain) that could experience bliss, what would the important design parameters be?

(4) If we wanted to create an AGI whose nominal reward signal coincided with visceral happiness -- how would we do that?

(5) If we wanted to ensure an uploaded mind could feel visceral pleasure of the same kind a non-uploaded mind can, how could we check that?

(6) If we wanted to fill the universe with computronium and maximize hedons, what algorithm would we run on it?

(7) If we met an alien life-form, how could we tell if it was suffering?

It seems to me these are all empirical questions that should have empirical answers. But we don't seem to have much for hand-holds which can give us a starting point.

Where would *you* start on answering these questions? Which ones are good questions, and which ones are aren't? And if you think certain questions aren't good, could you offer some you think are?

As suggested by shminux, here's some research I believe is indicative of the state of the literature (though this falls quite short of a full literature review):

Tononi's IIT seems relevant, though it only addresses consciousness and explicitly avoids valence. Max Tegmark has a formal generalization of IIT which he claims should apply to non-neural substrates. And although Tegmark doesn't address valence either, he posted a recent paper on arxiv noting that there *is* a mystery here, and that it seems topical for FAI research.

Current models of emotion based on brain architecture and neurochemicals (e.g., EMOCON) are somewhat relevant, though ultimately correlative or merely descriptive, and seem to have little universalization potential.

There's also a great deal of quality literature about s...
Followup: Sequences book reading group
by iarwain1 — 2015-03-01T17:37:57.650Z

It's been about a week since I posted a request for a reading group once the Sequences book comes out. As of this post, 25 people have indicated that they would like someone to do this, but we still have no volunteers to actually do it. I would volunteer to do it myself, but it's hard for me to commit to it. (For productivity reasons I usually have LessWrong blocked on my computer except in the evenings, and there are many evenings when I don't have time to log on at all.)

I propose that we use essentially the same model used for the Open Threads. If it's time for a new Reading Group post and nobody's posted it yet, post it yourself. If you feel that you can probably commit to help with this on occasion, please mention this in the comments. (I understand that having a few people volunteer while everybody else stays quiet might increase the bystander effect, but I think it's useful to have at least a few people mention that they can help. Everybody else, even if you didn't volunteer in the comments here, please step up to the plate anyway if you see nobody else is posting.)

We had a number of discussions / polls in the previous thread about exactly how the reading group should be conducted: What should the pace be? Should we re-post the entire article or just post a link to the original? Should we post individual articles (at whatever pace we decide) or should we post all the articles of the sequence all together? (This last link is to a new poll I just put up.) Or maybe we should just have a link on the sidebar to where the reading group is currently holding?

I propose that we start off the reading group with whatever seems to be the most popular options, and that we re-assess towards the end of each sequence. So for example we might start off at a rate of one individual article every other day1, which would mean we'd probably finish the first sequence in a little less than a month. Towards the end of that time we'd do the polls again and perhaps switch to a different pace or to posting the whole sequence at once.

Actionable items:

If you haven't voted on the linked polls and want to, please do so.

If you know how to set up the LW sidebar so that it shows a link to the current reading group article, please volunteer to do so.

If you are privy to information about the upcoming book, please let us know about whether or not there will be copyr

...
Death, Existentialism, and AI 
by BereczFereng — 2015-03-01T17:13:27.770Z

A while back, I posited two questions, which are listed below, and tried to expand upon them. I am inserting this text as 'quote text' because I realize the writing and thinking are likely flawed in some places. (For example, the assertion of something like life-bias. I have no articles or research to cite here.)

I am posting them on LW because I have not really resolved any of the two questions or found reason to dismiss them. If they are worthy of pursuit, I am uncertain of how to go about it within the world. So, here I seek some constructive input.

(1) Do physical and metaphysical conditions ensure certainty of death? If so, what type(s) of death?

(2) Will Friendly AI renovations of existential epistemology behave in ways that deflect nihilism?

I assume that (1) is clear enough. I am asking if death is a definite, and if it is a thing to have to accept. It requires work in physics, biology, metaphysics, and the like. It also requires that we consider entropy and possible cosmological theories, like The Heat Death. I believe some use Many Worlds as a response by claiming that other selves live on in other universes and by choosing to identify with those other selves. There must be many more responses to this question. I just have not spent enough time considering them all to align myself to a position.

Question (2) is vague. It is unclear what is meant by existential epistemology. I believe that humans suffer from something called life-bias: the tendency to maximize life-span or otherwise minimize existential psychological tension (by believing in unscientific higher purposes, like God, or something). When this bias is exposed, and death is accepted as an inevitable outcome, nihilistic attitudes only seem natural.

I am wondering if modifications to these basic conditions (of life and death), especially in the possession of super-intelligence, will affect the existential cognition that has lead to certain values. For example, notions like ‘objectivity’ and ‘truth’ may not appear as valuable to such a super-intelligence because there would be no life-death problem for these notions to assist in. The question for objectivity and truth has enabled human scientific progress, as well as the corresponding technological and medical advancements.

It is obvious that intelligence augments cognitive sensitivity, and this includes exis

...
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 113
by Gondolinian — 2015-02-28T20:23:08.416Z

This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 113.

There is a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)

Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

IMPORTANT -- From the end of chapter 113:

This is your final exam.

You have 60 hours.

Your solution must at least allow Harry to evade immediate death,
despite being naked, holding only his wand, facing 36 Death Eaters
plus the fully resurrected Lord Voldemort.

If a viable solution is posted before
*12:01AM Pacific Time* (8:01AM UTC) on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2015,
the story will continue to Ch. 121.

Otherwise you will get a shorter and sadder ending.

Keep in mind the following:

1. Harry must succeed via his own efforts. The cavalry is not coming.
Everyone who might want to help Harry thinks he is at a Quidditch game.

2. Harry may only use capabilities the story has already shown him to have;
he cannot develop wordless wandless Legilimency in the next 60 seconds.

3. Voldemort is evil and cannot be persuaded to be good;
the Dark Lord's utility function cannot be changed by talking to him.

4. If Harry raises his wand or speaks in anything except Parseltongue,
the Death Eaters will fire on him immediately.

5. If the simplest timeline is otherwise one where Harry dies -
if Harry cannot reach his Time-Turner without Time-Turned help -
then the Time-Turne

...
Meetup : LessWrong Scotland
by cjb230 — 2015-02-28T19:05:27.408Z

Discussion article for the meetup : LessWrong Scotland

WHEN:
15 March 2015 03:00:00PM (+0000)

WHERE:
Curler's Rest, 256-260 Byres Rd, Glasgow G12 8SH

After a successful trial meetup (five people!) in November, this will be the first meetup of 2015.

We don't have a definite plan yet, but we had some suggested activities last time - rationality games or show-and-tell style talks on what techniques we like. I think bentarm may volunteer!

Discussion article for the meetup : LessWrong Scotland
Probability of coming into existence again ?
by pzwczzx — 2015-02-28T12:02:58.959Z

This question has been bothering me for a while now, but I have the nagging feeling that I'm missing something big and that the reasoning is flawed in a very significant way. I'm not well read in philosophy at all, and I'd be really surprised if this particular problem hasn't been addressed many times by more enlightened minds. Please don't hesitate to give reading suggestions if you know more. I don't even know where to start learning about such questions. I have tried the search bar but have failed to find a discussion around this specific topic.

I'll try and explain my train of thought as best as I can but I am not familiar with formal reasoning, so bear with me! (English is not my first language, either)

Based on the information and sensations currently available, I am stuck in a specific point of view and experience specific qualia. So far, it's the only thing that has been available to me; it is the entirety of my reality. I don't know if the cogito ergo sum is well received on Less Wrong, but it seems on the face of it to be a compelling argument for my own existence at least.

Let's assume that there are other conscious beings who "exist" in a similar way, and thus other possible qualia. If we don't assume this, doesn't it mean that we are in a dead end and no further argument is possible? Similar to what happens if there is no free will and thus nothing matters since no change is possible? Again, I am not certain about this reasoning but I can't see the flaw so far.

There doesn't seem to be any reason why I should be experiencing these specific qualia instead of others, that I "popped into existence" as this specific consciousness instead of another, or that I perceive time subjectively. According to what I know, the qualia will probably stop completely at some subjective point in time and I will cease to exist. The qualia are likely to be tied to a physical state of matter (for example colorblindness due to different cells in the eyes) and once the matter does not "function" or is altered, the qualia are gone. It would seem that there could be a link between the subjective and some sort of objective reality, if there is indeed such a thing.

On a side note, I think it's safe to ignore theism and all mentions of a pleasurable afterlife of some sort. I suppose most people on this site have debated this to death elsewhere and there's no real point in bringin...
Best of Rationality Quotes, 2014 Edition
by DanielVarga — 2015-02-27T22:43:09.988Z

Here is the way-too-late 2014 edition of the Best of Rationality Quotes collection. (Here is last year's.) Thanks Huluk for nudging me to do it.

Best of Rationality Quotes 2014 (300kB page, 235 quotes)
and Best of Rationality Quotes 2009-2014 (1900kB page, 1770 quotes)

The page was built by a short script (source code here) from all the LW Rationality Quotes threads so far. (We had such a thread each month since April 2009.) The script collects all comments with karma score 10 or more, and sorts them by score. Replies are not collected, only top-level comments.

As is now usual, I provide various statistics and top-lists based on the data. (Source code for these is also at the above link, see the README.) I added these as comments to the post:

Top quote contributors by total karma score collected

Top quote contributors by karma score collected in 2014

Top quote contributors of 2014 by statistical significance level (See this comment for a description of this metric.)

Top original authors by number of quotes

Top original authors by total karma score collected

Best short quotes 2009-2014
Meetup : Frankfurt Pub Social
by Kendra — 2015-02-27T20:48:25.218Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Frankfurt Pub Social

WHEN:
18 March 2015 07:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Frankfurt, Adalbertstrasse 36a

To make it easier for newcomers, this will be our first pub meetup in a long time. Bring all the topics you want to talk about. :)

Discussion article for the meetup : Frankfurt Pub Social
[Link] Algorithm aversion
by Stefan_Schubert — 2015-02-27T19:26:43.647Z

It has long been known that algorithms out-perform human experts on a range of topics (here's a LW post on this by lukeprog). Why, then, is it that people continue to mistrust algorithms, in spite of their superiority, and instead cling to human advice? A recent paper by Dietvorst, Simmons and Massey suggests it is due to a cognitive bias which they call algorithm aversion. We judge less-than-perfect algorithms more harshly than less-than-perfect humans. They argue that since this aversion leads to poorer decisions, it is very costly, and that we therefore must find ways of combating it.

Abstract:

Research shows that evidence-based algorithms more accurately predict the future than do human forecasters. Yet when forecasters are deciding whether to use a human forecaster or a statistical algorithm, they often choose the human forecaster. This phenomenon, which we call algorithm aversion, is costly, and it is important to understand its causes. We show that people are especially averse to algorithmic forecasters after seeing them perform, even when they see them outperform a human forecaster. This is because people more quickly lose confidence in algorithmic than human forecasters after seeing them make the same mistake. In 5 studies, participants either saw an algorithm make forecasts, a human make forecasts, both, or neither. They then decided whether to tie their incentives to the future predictions of the algorithm or the human. Participants who saw the algorithm perform were less confident in it, and less likely to choose it over an inferior human forecaster. This was true even among those who saw the algorithm outperform the human.

General discussion:

The results of five studies show that seeing algorithms err makes people less confident in them and less likely to choose them over an inferior human forecaster. This effect was evident in two distinct domains of judgment, including one in which the human forecasters produced nearly twice as much error as the algorithm. It arose regardless of whether the participant was choosing between the algorithm and her own forecasts or between the algorithm and the forecasts of a different participant. And it even arose among the (vast majority of) participants who saw the algorithm outperform the human forecaster.

The aversion to algorithms is costly, not only for the participants in our stud

...
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2015-02-27T16:26:49.740Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on February 20th. The following week's summary is here.

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

Dallas, TX: 22 February 2015 01:00PM
European Community Weekend 2015: 12 June 2015 12:00PM
[Frankfurt] Another Frankfurt meetup: 22 February 2015 02:00PM
[Netherlands] Effective Altruism Netherlands: Present the charity you'd like to give to: 01 March 2015 02:00PM
[Netherlands] Effective Altruism Netherlands: Effective Altruism for the masses: 15 March 2015 02:00PM
[Netherlands] Effective Altruism Netherlands: Small concrete actions you could take: 29 March 2015 01:00PM
Sandy, UT—Altruism Discussion: 21 February 2015 03:00PM
Warsaw February Meetup: 21 February 2015 06:00PM

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

Canberra: Technology to help achieve goals: 27 February 2015 06:00PM
Seattle Sequences group: Mysterious Answers 2: 23 February 2015 06:30PM
Sydney Meetup - February: 25 February 2015 06:30PM
Sydney Rationality Dojo - Optimising Skill Training: 01 March 2015 04:00PM
[Sydney] HPMOR Wrap Party! - Sydney Edition: 15 March 2015 06:00PM
Tel Aviv: Rationality in the Immune System: 24 February 2015 07:00PM
Vienna: 21 February 2015 03:00PM
Washington, D.C.: Book Swap (Postponed Due to Weather): 22 February 2015 03:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buffalo, Cambridge UK, Canberra, Columbus, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Moscow, Mountain View, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, Seattle, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers.

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 is posted on the front page every Friday. These are an attempt to collect information on all the meetups happening in upcoming weeks. The best way to get your meetup featured is still to use the Add New Meetup feature...
What subjects are important to rationality, but not covered in Less Wrong?
by casebash — 2015-02-27T11:57:42.747Z

As many people have noted, Less Wrong currently isn't receiving as much content as we would like. One way to think about expanding the content is to think about which areas of study deserve more articles written on them.

For example, I expect that sociology has a lot to say about many of our cultural assumptions. It is quite possible that 95% of it is either obvious or junk, but almost all fields have that 5% within them that could be valuable. Another area of study that might be interesting to consider is anthropology. Again this is a field that allows us to step outside of our cultural assumptions.

I don't know anything about media studies, but I imagine that they have some worthwhile things to say about how we the information that we hear is distorted.

What other fields would you like to see some discussion of on Less Wrong?
Meetup : West LA: The Substitution Principle
by abramdemski — 2015-02-27T08:43:41.449Z

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA: The Substitution Principle

WHEN:
04 March 2015 07:00:00PM (-0800)

WHERE:
11066 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90025

How to Find Us: Go into this Del Taco. We will be in the back room if possible.

Parking is free in the lot out front or on the street nearby.

Discussion: When the brain is faced with a hard question, it automatically replaces it with an easier one to estimate the answer. This is good so far as it goes, but it can do this without being aware of the substitution, causing overconfidence or other problems. This can even combine with consistency effects to alter your opinions long-term. Noticing this can help us revise quickly-formed impressions. But wait -- is that really true? Did I only believe it just now because I substituted some easier question, like whether it sounded cool or whether the person talking about it is high-status? Probably. We'd better try to sort it out more carefully at the meetup.

Recommended Reading:

The Substitution Principle

No prior exposure to Less Wrong is required; this will be generally accessible.

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA: The Substitution Principle
Meetup : Seattle Sequences group: Mysterious Answers 3
by SeekingEternity — 2015-02-27T07:54:52.095Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Seattle Sequences group: Mysterious Answers 3

WHEN:
02 March 2015 06:30:00PM (-0800)

WHERE:
Paul G. Allen Center, 185 Stevens Way, Seattle, Washington 98195

Location is the UW CSE building, room 503. Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/347049138832243

This is a weekly meetup to discuss and work through the Sequences while getting to know other aspiring rationalists in the Seattle area. Each week's reading list is posted in the relevant Facebook event. We usually discuss the relevant sequence posts and sometimes learn applied rationality techniques.

As the name suggests, this meetup will go over the third part of the "Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions" sequence. We previously covered the "Map and territory" sequence. All are welcome to join, though, even if they've read all of the sequences already or haven't yet caught up to us.

There are often snacks at the meetup, which typically runs until around 9. After that, we go get dinner on the Ave.

Reading list:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/im/hindsight_devalues_science/

1.12 Hindsight Devalues Science

1.13 Fake Explanations

1.14 Guessing the Teacher's Password

1.15 Science as Attire

1.16 Fake Causality

1.17 Semantic Stopsigns

Discussion article for the meetup : Seattle Sequences group: Mysterious Answers 3