trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
On Robin Hanson’s “Social Proof, but of What?”
by Zvi — 2020-12-20T22:20:02.515Z

Response Post to (Overcoming Bias): Social Proof, But of What?

Epistemic Status: It seemed worth writing a long post but not a short one, so I saved time and wrote a long one. Feel free to skip this if it does not seem interesting to you.

It seems worthwhile to closely examine the first two paragraphs of Robin Hanson’s recent post, except I will replace his A and B with X and Y because this is a classic Robin “X is not about Y” claim (“Talk isn’t about info”):

People tend to (say they) believe what they expect that others around them will soon (say they) believe. Why? Two obvious theories:

X) What others say they believe embodies info about reality,

Y) Key audiences respect us more when we agree with them.

Can data distinguish these theories? Consider a few examples.

Robin goes on to consider examples that he suggests are better explained by Y than by X.

I noticed instinctively that this framing felt like a trick. After analyzing this instinct, I noticed it was because Y was a very strange particular hypothesis to privilege. If I was writing this post in a ‘write through to think it through’ mode, I would have said something like this (without consciously considering the examples Robin gives, although I did skim them on a previous day before writing this list, and giving myself about 30 minutes):

People tend to (say they) believe what they expect that others around them will soon (say they) believe. Why? I see three classes of reasons they might do this:

X) What others say they believe embodies info about reality.

X1) It is likely to be an accurate map.

X2) Even if inaccurate, it is likely to be a locally useful wrong map.

X3) You might choose to be around those for which X1+X2 are true.

X4) You have more exposure to the expressed beliefs of those around you than of others, and of their justifications for those beliefs, and often they are motivated to convince you to share those beliefs.

X5) You likely share much of the same cultural background, skills, knowledge, contacts and information flows as those around you, and you often combine such things. Such resulting beliefs not being highly correlated would be very surprising.

X6) X4-X5, with explicit information cascades, whether or not the information in question is accurate.

X7) Skin in the game. Those around you are in a position where you can reward or punish them, so if believing the things they say hur...
Intuition
by Rafael Harth — 2020-12-20T21:49:29.947Z

In the previous post, I've said,

[...] in both schemes, Factored Cognition includes a step that is by definition non-decomposable. In Ideal Debate, this is step is judging the final statement. In HCH, it is solving a problem given access to the subtrees. This step is also entirely internal to the human.

You can take this as a motivation for part two of the sequence, which is about how humans think. I think a good place to start here is by reflecting on the argument against Factored Cognition based on intuition. Here is a version made by Rohin Shah on the AI alignment podcast:

[...] I should mention another key intuition against [the Factored Cognition Hypothesis]. We have all these examples of human geniuses like Ramanujan, who were posed very difficult math problems and just immediately get the answer and then you ask them how did they do it and they say, well, I asked myself what should the answer be? And I was like, the answer should be a continued fraction. And then I asked myself which continued fraction and then I got the answer. And you're like, that does not sound very decomposable. It seems like you need these magic flashes of intuition. Those would be the hard cases for factored cognition. [...]

This sounds sort of convincing, but what is this intuition thing? Wikipedia says that...

Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without recourse to conscious reasoning.

... which I take to represent the consensus view. However, I don't think it's accurate. Consider the following examples:

I throw you a ball, and you catch it. We know that your brain had to do something that effectively approximates Newtonian physics to figure out where the ball was headed, but you're not consciously aware of any such process.

I ask you to compute 5⋅8. I predict that your brain just 'spat out' the right answer, without any conscious computation on your part.

I show you a mathematical conjecture that you immediately feel is true. I ask you why you think it's true, you think about it for two minutes, and manage to derive a short proof. We know that this proof is not the reason why you thought it was true to begin with.

It's evident that your brain is acquiring knowledge without recourse to conscious reasoning in all three cases. That means they would all involve intuition, according to Wikipedia's definition. Nonetheless, we would not defer to intuit...
New SARS-CoV-2 variant
by TheMajor — 2020-12-20T21:22:54.711Z

tl; dr: there is a mutated strain of COVID that seems to spread a lot more quickly. Here is its Wikipedia page.

Last Monday (Dec 14) the UK MP's were informed of a new strain of COVID-19, named "VUI – 202012/01". This strain seems to spread more quickly than other forms of COVID-19, and wikipedia claims that this might be related to the mutated spike protein.

Two days ago (Dec 18) the NERVTAG (an expert panel advising the Chief Medical Officer of the UK, who in turn advises the UK Department of Health and Social Care) meet and release their meeting minutes, stating that:

"Growth rate from genomic data: which suggest a growth rate of VUI-202012/01 that that is 71% (95%CI: 67%-75%) higher than other variants." [sic]
"Studies of correlation between R-values and detection of the variant: which suggest an absolute increase in the R-value of between 0.39 to 0.93."

amongst other information on this new strain (the meeting minutes are 3 pages only so I encourage people to check them if interested).

Yesterday (Dec 19) Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a lockdown for London, South East and East of England starting the day after (so today, Sunday), to combat the spread of this new strain.

Today (Dec 20) the European Centre for Disease prevention and Control (ECDC) released a threat assessment brief. The same day multiple countries in Europe (a quick search reveals Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Austria, but I possibly have missed others) issue travel restrictions from the United Kingdom and South Africa.

To the best of my ability to interpret the above documents it is too early to make conclusive statements about the impact this strain will have on the COVID-19 pandemic. The threat assessment brief states that "To date, there is no indication of increased infection severity observed related to the variant, but the assessment is challenged by the fact that the majority of cases were reported in people under 60 years old, who are less likely to develop severe symptoms [29].". This seems like relatively good news - so far the health impact is not noticeably worse. However, the strain is spreading like a wildfire:

Source: the ECDC threat assessment brief. No, I also don't know why their constant bars are on a logarithmic scale and their exponential growth is on a linear one.

The blue line is the fraction of all reported COVID-19 cases in the UK...
Gratitude: Data and Anecdata
by Dan Weinand — 2020-12-20T20:24:29.310Z

This is an attempt to go moderately deep on a particular happiness topic. For a broader overview of the topic I highly recommend Sonja Lyubomirsky's The How of Happiness and lukeprog's How to Be Happy. The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Positive Psychological Interventions has a fairly in-depth treatment of this topic and others.

I'm going over three different forms of gratitude exercises, what the data says about them, and my personal experiences with them.

Gratitude Journaling/Listing

The act of recording several items you are grateful periodically, generally once a day or once a week. Here's another exhortation for the practice.

Data

Per Davis et al 2016, gratitude lists are by far the most commonly studied gratitude intervention (to such an overwhelming degree that I'm going to pretend the meta-analyses just look at this). The same study suggests that gratitude is effective at improving psychological well-being, with suggestive trends not reaching significance for improving measures of anxiety and gratitude when compared to measurement only control groups. Gratitude interventions appear to have a larger impact on psychological well-being than gratitude! Using alternative activity control groups keeps the benefit to psychological well being, and now there is a significant improvement in anxiety. I would take this with a grain of salt, as several of the alternative activities seem plausibly anxiety increasing (hassle lists are a common alternative activity).

Cregg & Chevvens 2020 look at the results restricted to impact on depression. They come away with an effect size of 0.29 at post test and 0.23 at follow up. This is nominally quite small, but should be compared against Ciprani et al's analysis suggesting antidepressants have an effect size of around 0.3 (SSC had a good discussion on this). When framed this way, encouraging gratitude as an antidepressant exercise seems like a no-brainer.

Anecdata

I've kept a daily gratitude journal consistently for around 3 years, I started beeminding it more recently. In its best case, journaling helps me re-live the parts of the day that were the most fun and realize the good that I have even on quite poor days (some rough food poisoning during a trip to Hyderabad comes to mind). It is 'very' easy for this to turn into a chore, however. My partner found this activity extremely chorelike and unpleasant, and eventually q...
Is there a community aligned with the idea of creating species of AGI systems for them to become our successors?
by iamhefesto — 2020-12-20T19:06:50.106Z

The main narrative which I see out there is that "we are trying to build AGI for him to become our slave". I've found little to nothing public opinions supporting the idea of free AGI. It is infinitely curious for me why in the current society of total inclusiveness dominates the idea of basically slavery. It would be great if somebody can point me to a community or maybe individual thinkers aligned with the idea of free AGI.
How to eradicate the desire to check time-wasting sites
by Space L Clottey — 2020-12-20T19:06:44.467Z

Linkpost: https://gingerjumble.wordpress.com/2020/12/05/how-to-stop-compulsively-checking-messaging-sites/

I used to be constantly checking messaging apps. Discord, Telegram, WhatsApp (and Email). They are the most skinner-boxy things I use since I don’t use other social media. But then I read the beautifully titled Distraction Affliction Correction Extension by xkdc and Why Email is Addictive and it turns out the secret to killing an addiction to these sites is really just as simple as adding a cost, and it is incredibly effective.

An easy cost to set up is a delay to opening the tab. What’s key about the delay is that is must be endured: no alt+tabbing around your computer as it loads, otherwise you have paid no cost. The extension Crackbook Revival does this perfectly, politely reminding you on the minimalist waiting page that the timer restarts if you switch away from the tab.

What’s extra cool about the extension is that you can set up increasing costs to procrastinatory behaviour by increasing the wait time on each check. . This is ridiculously effective in making me actively dislike checking these websites. I have it set to disable at 20:00, after the day is done and I can deploy my tired brain on what its best at.

Currently I have my starting time set to 10 seconds, set to climb by 2 seconds on each increase. I would strongly recommend starting at a number lower than this, maybe at 5 seconds, increasing by 1 second each check. A failure mode I doubt is uncommon would be setting a starting point that’s way to high and getting annoyed at the extension and deleting it after a month. Remember, the goal isn’t to do brilliantly now. It’s for you to be able to say in five years that you’ve eradicated this problem by chipping it at so slowly that each individual stage was never hard, but fun.

Funny thing is that this delay probably even more effective than FocusMe, and have found myself rarely checking Discord even when FocusMe allows it. This has given me a massive mental resistance to checking these sites, which I consider a massive win.

Another benefit is that, as I have had to pay the cost quite often for important-on-discord-messages, I’ve gotten more used to sitting in silence for 10-40 seconds at a time, making the times when the internet is buggy far more bearable.

Problems:

I.

As this is a browser extension...
Interactive exploration of LessWrong and other large collections of documents
by vpetukhov — 2020-12-20T19:06:32.128Z

TL;DR We made a tool that allows you to interactively explore LessWrong, EA Forum and - potentially - other large collections of documents. It seems like this part of the Information Retrieval field is highly underutilized in practice, so I listed some ideas on where it could be used, including a project on AI Governance research. Some of those I already tried, and it looks promising. Please, let me know if you have ideas on how to apply this to some other fields, especially if you'd be personally interested in doing this.

Intro

While doing my PhD and generally looking for information on areas that I don't understand, I've met the problem that the normal search engines give a very small subset of the information on the topic. This leaves you very little idea of what you miss and even how much missing information is there in total. So, together with Denis Skripov (software development), Elena Plekhanova (ideation part) and Alexander Fedorenko (both) we created a tool for building an overview of large collections of documents. We applied this tool to LessWrong and EA Forum.

The goal of this post is to share the visualizations, to describe the ideas behind the tool, its possible applications, and, hopefully, to gather some feedback. Lots of research on similar topics have been done, so I expect that some of the ideas listed here reinvent the wheel or are known dead-ends. If you have some info on that, please share it in the comments or in PM.

If you're only interested in testing the tool, jump straight to the "Instructions" and "Demonstration on LessWrong" sections. In "Motivation and the Concept description" I give a summary of my views on this part of exploratory search. "Methods" describe the algorithms we used. And in the "Further Applications" I describe my estimates on where these ideas could be applied. Any feedback is highly appreciated, but the "Input you could provide" section gives some details on what would be the most valuable.

Please, keep in mind that the tool is only a proof of concept and that every aspect of it can be improved.

Motivation and the Concept description

Imagine you're a graduate student who just started working in a new field and wants to make some sense of it. Or you just want to learn some new big topic, such as "rationality techniques". There are two general ways to approach the problem. One way, you may start with what you alread...
Would a more deadly virus have induced greater compliance with US lockdown restrictions?
by Tim Liptrot — 2020-12-20T18:24:40.433Z

Relative to other pandemics and our initial fears, Covid has a low infection fatality rate (IFR). The IFR varies between societies depending on age and obesity distributions, such that it was more severe in the US than in India. Estimates of the US initial IFR are about .5% of infected persons.

Some American persons have not complied with social distancing guidelines and some states have refused to apply restrictions. Justifications vary. Some argue that the virus is not severe enough and we are over-preventing Covid (example 1, example 2). Others argue that lockdowns violate some moral/political right or whatever (example).

If the virus were more severe such that all IFR's were increased, would the US people have responded differently? At a 5% IFR with no change infectivity would a would a New Zealand path become likely?
Gauging the conscious experience of LessWrong
by Vermillion — 2020-12-20T11:34:30.970Z

Yesterday I discovered I had been a victim of the Typical Mind Fallacy thanks to accidentally finding out that someone very close to me doesn’t have an internal monologue, doesn’t think in words and has a visual photographic memory. Despite knowing that such people existed I thought I would know if someone close to me was one. As a result I thought it would be an interesting and fun exercise to gauge the conscious perceptions of the community.

The below questions are judged on a 0-99 scale (they are not binary or predictions, the embedded Elicit formatting was just too great to not use), they attempt to find where the reader sits on a series of common mental metrics.

How vivid is your visual imagination?

Elicit Prediction (elicit.org/binary/questions/VMs-r172N)

How vivid is your sound imagination?

Elicit Prediction (elicit.org/binary/questions/7IdTsZLwQ)

How vivid is your taste imagination?

Elicit Prediction (elicit.org/binary/questions/1z38N4iwb)

How vivid is your smell imagination?

Elicit Prediction (elicit.org/binary/questions/LXJq-IvZ7)

How vivid is your touch imagination?

Elicit Prediction (elicit.org/binary/questions/DYD1BjiN0)

Do you have an internal monologue?

Elicit Prediction (elicit.org/binary/questions/0klHZhAEf)

How frequently do you think in words?

Elicit Prediction (elicit.org/binary/questions/u2R0BtAwp)

How good is your memory?

Elicit Prediction (elicit.org/binary/questions/dyZ0gw67E)

How much control do you have over your mind? (For example, the ability to stop all thoughts on command)

Elicit Prediction (elicit.org/binary/questions/eULBN11TJ)

Do you have a type of Synaesthesia? (0 = none, 100 = very intense and encompassing)

Elicit Prediction (elicit.org/binary/questions/cc-L-MZgK)

If anybody has an unusual mental experience (or normal one!) please share it with us in the comments. If you do, don’t leave out the obvious, try to avoid the illusion of transparency.
Luna Lovegood and the Chamber of Secrets - Part 9
by lsusr — 2020-12-20T09:22:55.770Z

The Ministry-sanctioned tour of the Chamber of Secrets was pure propaganda. The Marauder's Map showed a second entrance to the Chamber of Secrets hidden in the Girls' Bathroom.

"Hss hsssss hsss," Luna copied from Harry Potter.

A sink opened up into a large tunnel.

"Lumos, Luna said.

Each tunnel segment was designed in the same pattern as the previous, as if to deliberately disorient adventurers. Luna closed her eyes in case Slytherin's basilisk was still alive.

"Nox," Luna said.

It was quiet under the school. The tunnels smelled faintly of mildew. Ministry tours turned left at every fork. Luna placed her right hand on the right wall. She felt destiny wrapping around her. Salazar Slytherin's secrets would be hers. Luna followed the right wall until she bumped into the bones of a giant monster.

"Lumos," Luna said.

Some Gryffindor had slayed the basilisk before it could pass on its secrets to the Heir of Slytherin. Ministry archaeologists had defanged the skeleton. So much for destiny.

Salazar Slytherin had circumvented the Interdict of Merlin. But why? If Slytherin had wanted secrets to be preserved then he could have just passed them on to his students. No. Ravenclaw had positioned her diadem to be discovered by someone hunting nargles. Slytherin had done something similar.

But who was his target? Only a Parselmouth could talk to Slytherin's basilisk. Only a Parselmouth could enter the Chamber of Secrets. If only a Parselmouth could talk to the basilisk then it made sense to make the entrance only allow Parselmouths in so that you didn't get a Gryffindor charging in and killing the basilisk before talking to it. Except Slytherin's security by obscurity had failed.

That left the question of why. Parselmouthes were not special. They did not have secondary characteristics. There was no reason for Salazar Slytherin to leave his greatest secrets to someone random to find. The only thing he would know about the Heir of Slytherin was that whoever opened the Chamber of Secrets:

Could speak Parseltongue and could therefore communicate with Slytherin's basilisk.

Would have opened the Chamber of Secrets.

Chamber of Secrets. Plural.

The mazelike passageways echoed Daedalus's Labryinth. The Heir of Slytherin was supposed to use Salazar's secrets to slay the monster Slytherin himself never could. Instead, a Gryffindor had broken into the Chamber of Secrets first, slayed Slytherin's ...
Pseudorandomness contest, Round 2
by Eric Neyman — 2020-12-20T08:35:09.266Z
Link: https://ericneyman.wordpress.com/2020/12/17/pseudorandomness-contest-round-2/

[Note: if you’re reading this on 12/20 I recommend checking again tomorrow in case I need to make any clarifications to the rules.]

Last week, I asked you all to take 10 minutes to write down and submit a 150-bit string, with the goal of making your string “seem random” without the aid of any sources of randomness (except your brain and anything you had memorized). I received 62 submissions; thank you to everyone who participated!

Now it’s time for Round 2, which I think of as the “real” part of the contest. In addition to the 62 strings you all submitted, I created 62 “truly” random strings with my computer, and I have put the 124 strings in a random order. Your goal is to figure out which of the strings are truly random and which ones were submitted by a Round 1 participant. Note that you can participate in Round 2 even if you did not participate in Round 1. Just as for Round 1, there will be prizes for doing well! (See below for details.)

Click here to see the binary strings, but you should read the rules before starting!

The rules: For each string, you will be asked to submit your guess about the probability that the string is truly random. For example, you might say “70%” for a string you think is probably random and “5%” for a string you’re pretty sure isn’t random.

Unlike in Round 1, this time you are free to use almost any resources you want to complete this task. You can write a computer program. You may do Google for advice about how to tell apart truly random and fake-random strings. You may look up numerical constants people might have used to generate their random strings. There are two things you are not allowed to do:

You may not interact with a person, e.g. ask questions on Stack Exchange or talk to a friend, as part of completing this task, unless you are on the same team (see the team policy below).
You may not use code or pseudocode that was written by someone else, if that code is meant to be used for distinguishing random and pseudorandom strings. That is, you’re allowed to read articles describing how to tell strings apart, but may not use code that someone else has written, or something that is written in a format that may as well be code. (You may use code that someone else wrote for some other purpose, e.g. most libraries.) I’ll trust you in terms of where to draw the line between “algorithm description” and “pseudocode”, but the line

...