trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Deontological Decision Theory and The Solution to Morality
by Tesseract — 2011-01-10T16:15:22.184Z

Asking the Question

Until very recently, I was a hedonic utilitarian. That is, I held ‘happiness is good’ as an axiom – blurring the definition a little by pretending that good emotions other than strict happiness still counted because it made people “happy” to have them -- and built up my moral philosophy from there. There were a few problems I couldn’t quite figure out, but by and large, it worked: it produced answers that felt right, and it was the most logically consistent moral system I could find.

But then I read Three Worlds Collide.

The ending didn’t fit within my moral model: it was a scenario in which making people happy seemed wrong. Which raised the question: What’s so great about happiness? If people don’t want happiness, how can you call it good to force it on them? After all, happiness is just a pattern of neural excitation in the brain; it can’t possibly be an intrinsic good, any more than the pattern that produces the thought “2+2=4”.

Well, people like being happy. Happiness is something they want. But it’s by no means all they want: people also want mystery, wonder, excitement, and many other things – and so those things are also good, quite independent of their relation to the specific emotion ‘happiness’. If they also desire occasional sadness and pain, who am I to say they’re wrong? It’s not moral to make people happy against their desires – it’s moral to give people what they want. (Voila, preference utilitarianism.)

But – that’s not a real answer, is it?

If axiom ‘happiness is good’ didn’t match my idea of morality, that meant I wasn’t really constructing my morality around it. Replacing that axiom with ‘preference fulfillment is good’ would make my logic match my feelings better, but it wouldn’t give me a reason to have those feelings in the first place. So I had to ask the next question: Why is preference fulfillment good? What makes it “good” to give other people what they want?

Why should we care about other people at all?

In other words, why be moral?

~

Human feelings are a product of our evolutionary pressures. Emotions, the things that make us human, are there because they caused the genes that promoted them to become more prevalent in the ...
Open Thread, January 2011
by Paul Crowley — 2011-01-10T11:14:49.179Z

Better late than never, a new open thread. Even with the discussion section, there are ideas or questions too short or inchoate to be worth a post.

This thread is for the discussion of Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. If a discussion gets unwieldy, celebrate by turning it into a top-level post.
Bayesianism versus Critical Rationalism
by Jayson_Virissimo — 2011-01-10T04:54:45.706Z

I have just rediscovered an article by Max Albert on my hard drive which I never got around to reading that might interest others on Less Wrong. You can find the article here. It is an argument against Bayesianism and for Critical Rationalism (of Karl Popper fame).

Abstract:

Economists claim that principles of rationality are normative principles. Nevertheless,
they go on to explain why it is in a person’s own interest to be rational. If this were true,
being rational itself would be a means to an end, and rationality could be interpreted in
a non-normative or naturalistic way. The alternative is not attractive: if the only argument
in favor of principles of rationality were their intrinsic appeal, a commitment to
rationality would be irrational, making the notion of rationality self-defeating. A comprehensive
conception of rationality should recommend itself: it should be rational to be
rational. Moreover, since rational action requires rational beliefs concerning means-ends
relations, a naturalistic conception of rationality has to cover rational belief formation including
the belief that it is rational to be rational. The paper considers four conceptions
of rationality and asks whether they can deliver the goods: Bayesianism, perfect rationality
(just in case that it differs from Bayesianism), ecological rationality (as a version of
bounded rationality), and critical rationality, the conception of rationality characterizing
critical rationalism.

Any thoughts?
A cautionary note about "Bayesianism"
by PhilGoetz — 2011-01-10T01:40:29.905Z

(Is Bayesianism even a word? Should it be? The suffix "ism" sets off warning lights for me.)

Visitors to LessWrong may come away with the impression that they need to be Bayesians to be rational, or to fit in here. But most people are a long way from the point where learning Bayesian thought patterns is the most time-effective thing they can do to improve their rationality. Most of the insights available on LessWrong don't require people to understand Bayes' Theorem (or timeless decision theory).

I'm not calling for any specific change. Just to keep this in mind when writing things in the Wiki, or constructing a rationality workbook.
Spaced Repetition Database for A Human's Guide to Words
by divia — 2011-01-10T00:21:28.461Z

Followup to: Spaced Repetition Database for Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions

I've updated my Anki database for the Less Wrong Sequences to include cards from A Human's Guide to Words. I've been trying to put less information on each card, and I relied on cloze deletion more for the newer ones. Feedback is much appreciated. You can download them by opening up Anki, going to Download > Shared Deck and searching for Less Wrong Sequences.

I probably erred on the side of making way too many cards, but it seemed really important to me to internalize this stuff, since I think it has quite a lot of practical value. I can tell learning this deck has improved the quality of my thinking and my conversations with people because I'm better at noticing when I'm making one of the 37 mistakes and changing my course. I hope other people find it useful too!
A LessWrong "rationality workbook" idea
by jwhendy — 2011-01-09T17:52:51.814Z

Note: This was originally posted in the discussion area, but motions to move it to the top level were made.
-----

My own desire to improve my rationality coupled with some posts criticizing LessWrong not too long ago led to an idea. For reference, the posts I mean are these:

Goals for which LessWrong does (and doesn't) help

Self-Improvement of Shiny Distraction: Why LessWrong is anti-instrumental Rationality

A comment on Humans are not automatically strategic

The comment stream on that last link brought up whether or not LessWrong is fulfilling EY's vision of a "rationality dojo" of sorts (along with what I assume is the idea that LessWong is supposed to be fulfilling that vision).

Now, I'm not the one to evaluate whether LessWrong is or is not a true "rationality dojo" (not to mention reducing the problem as not to argue over semantics), but I do have an idea for how it could perhaps do so, and an idea I personally find quite exciting.

The idea is simple: that of a LessWrong workbook.

What does that mean? For one, it means an awful lot of effort, primarily at distillation. I quite enjoy reading posts and appreciate the overall prose style used here. A lot of posts are easy reading, contain nice anecdotes, hypothetical real-world scenarios, and the like. Distillation would entail extraction of the "nuggets" that an aspiring rationalist should know. Teach me rationality in bullet points, flash card modules, and other mini-homework-sized methods (which I'll get to).

I see the above as reducing to some form of "Rationality Overview." What is rationality? What's the point? What is the end result? What are the typical tools used to be rational? Finally, perhaps, what does the life of a rationalist look like? Perhaps pages containing some helpful "mantras" or questions to ask one's self periodically, such as during some period of daily meditation? Inspirational/helpful prose like the Twelve Virtues, The Simple Truth, and the Litanies of Gendlin and Tarski.

Secondly, I envision a literal "workbook" type of section. I was intrigued by a comment on my first post, in which JenniferRM wrote [in discussing my ongoing de-conversion]:

Unfortunately, I don't know of any resources to help people traverse the path you're facing in a series of small safe steps.

W

...
Sleeping Beauty should remain pure
by KatjaGrace — 2011-01-09T17:40:42.000Z

Image via Wikipedia

Consider the Sleeping Beauty Problem. Sleeping Beauty is put to sleep on Sunday night. A coin is tossed. If it lands heads, she is awoken once on Monday, then sleeps until the end of the experiment. If it lands tails, she is woken once on Monday, drugged to remove her memory of this event, then awoken once on Tuesday, before sleeping till the end of the experiment. The awakenings during the experiment are indistinguishable to Beauty, so when she awakens she doesn’t know what day it is or how the coin fell. The question is this: when Beauty wakes up on one of these occasions, how confident should she be that heads came up?

There are two popular answers, 1/2 and 1/3. However virtually everyone agrees that if Sleeping Beauty should learn that it is Monday, her credence in Tails should be reduced by half, from whatever it was initially. So ‘Halfers’ come to think heads has a 2/3 chance, and ‘Thirders’ come to think they heads is as likely as tails. This is the standard Bayesian way to update, and is pretty uncontroversial.

Now consider a variation on the Sleeping Beauty Problem where Sleeping Beauty will be woken up one million times on tails and only once on heads. Again, the probability you initially put on heads is determined by the reasoning principle you use, but the probability shift if you are to learn that you are in the first awakening will be the same either way. You will have to shift your odds by a million to one toward heads. Nick Bostrom points out that in this scenario, either before or after this shift you will have to be extremely certain either of heads or of tails, and that such extreme certainty seems intuitively unjustified, either before or after knowing you are experiencing the first wakening.

Extreme Sleeping Beauty wakes up a million times on tails or once on heads. There is no choice of 'a' which doesn't lead to extreme certainty either before or after knowing she is at her first waking.

However the only alternative to this certainty is for Sleeping Beauty to keep odds near 1:1 both before and after she learns she is at her first waking. This entails apparently giving up Bayesian conditionalization. Having excluded 99.9999% of the situations she may have been in where tails would have come up, Sleeping Beauty retains her previous credenc...
London meetup, Shakespeare's Head, Sunday 2011-03-06 14:00
by Paul Crowley — 2011-01-09T15:43:35.015Z

Our last London meetup was a fantastic success! We're doing it again, same time same place. The time: Sunday 6th March, at 2pm. The place: the Shakespeares Head (official page) on Kingsway near Holborn Tube station. As before, we'll have a big picture of a paperclip on the table so you can find us; also, I look like this. I'm hoping that we can graduate to meeting up every other month, on the first Sunday of the month. Hope to see lots of you there!
Branding Biodiversity
by Axel — 2011-01-09T15:20:42.796Z

http://www.futerra.co.uk/downloads/Branding_Biodiversity.pdf

I'm quite interested in seeing if this works. I have sent this to several wildlife-guides and conservationists and will monitor their reactions.

It talks about what emotions drive people to actually do something to protect biodiversity rather then just showing them figures. After looking at what makes a certain brand successful they apply it on biodiversity. Their end conclusion is to remove messages based on extinction as it just makes people apathetic rather then inspire change. Furthermore they propose different ways of conveying "biodiversity is important" for different audiences. Love, fuzzy feelings and "you-can-make-a-difference!" for public changes and financial advantages and concrete action for policy changes. Lastly, the advise to make the message more personal by talking about loving your pets, focusing on local species and anthropomorphise whatever you are talking about.

In short they want to protect biodiversity by making it a brand name and getting people to buy their product (i.e. donate money, etc.)
Second Life creators to attempt to create AI
by nick012000 — 2011-01-09T13:50:59.337Z

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2010/02/philip-rosedale-ai.html

http://www.lovemachineinc.com/

Should I feel bad for hoping they'll fail? I do not want to see the sort of unFriendly AI would be created after being raised on social interactions with pedophiles, Gorians, and furries. Seriously, those are some of the more prominent of the groups still on Second Life, and an AI that spends its formative period interacting with them (and the first two, especially) could develop a very twisted morality.
Meetup organizing query & a rally for Minnesotans
by jwhendy — 2011-01-09T04:51:43.141Z

General Comments about Organizing Meetups

I looked through the meetup thread prior to making this, but found it horrendously confusing. I don't think LessWrong is the best way to organize, especially via a string of 250 comments. I also checked out the Facebook group and found it equally unhelpful as far as meetups were concerned. Perhaps there is a way to find out who's from your area by searching the group members, but it didn't look like that was possible to me.

Is there a recommended way to find out who is in your area, or are these two the only options? I did find Meetup.com groups for NYC, Cambridge MA, and the CA bay area, but that was about it from my searching.

St. Paul/Minneapolis and a Potential Example

In anticipation that the question above should be answered in a disappointing manner (the thread and Facebook are the current primary options), I went ahead and took some initiative by creating a group at a free site similar to Meetup.com called Group-O-Matic. There's now a site for those in the Twin Cities area here. It's definitely not all fancy-dancy but looks like it has the ability to do what it needs to do: post new meetups, notify members, allow for RSVPs, and display a list of scheduled meetups.

Google returned results for a meetup that occurred on 9/26/2009 at the University of Minnesota. Has there been activity since then? I'd like to meet members in person.

I also write this in case others find this solution helpful. I would have used Meetup.com but it requires a fee to be the organizer. Perhaps Group-O-Matic is good enough and will inspire others to organize for their area. If I receive no interest from Minnesota locals, I'll take down the site in a month or so. I don't have anything in mind; I'd just like to meet with flesh and blood and perhaps discuss meetup ideas from there.

Lastly, if this is something that could/should be a top level post either for assisting me in finding Minnesotans, or giving others ideas for organizing since it will receive more publicity, let me know. I've only posted twice and don't have a good sense for what warrants posting at the top level.
Is there a way to quantify the relationship between Person1's Map and Person2's Map?
by InquilineKea — 2011-01-09T01:14:36.898Z

Okay, so maybe you could say this.

Suppose you have an index I. I could be a list of items in belief-space (or a person's map). So I could have these items (believes in evolution, believes in free will, believes that he will get energy from eating food, etc..) Of course, in order to make this argument more rigorous, we must make the beliefs finer.

For now, we can assume the non-existence of a priori knowledge. In other words, facts they may not explicitly know, but would explicitly deduce simply by using the knowledge they already have.

Now, maybe Person1 has a map in j-space with values of (0,0,0.2,0.5,0,1,...), corresponding to the degree of his belief in items in index I. So the first value of 0 corresponds to his total disbelief in evolution, the second corresponds to total disbelief in free will, and so on.

Person2 has a map in k-space with values of (0,0,0.2,0.5,0,0.8, NaN, 0, 1, ...), corresponding to the degree of his belief in everything in the world. Now, I include a value of NaN in his map, because the NaN could correspond to an item in index I that he has never encountered. Maybe there's a way to quantify NaN, which might make it possible for Person1 and Person2 to both have maps in the same n-space (which might make it more possible to compare their mutual information using traditional math methods).

Furthermore, Person1's map is a function of time, as is Person2's map. Their maps evolve over time since they learn new information, change their beliefs, and forget information. Person1's map can expand from j-space to (j+n)th space, as he forms new beliefs on new items. Once you apply a distance metric to their beliefs, you might be able to map them on a grid, to compare their beliefs with each other. A distance metric with a scalar value, for example, would map their beliefs to a 1D axis (this is what political tests often do). A distance metric can also output a vector value (much like what a MBTI personality test could do) to a value in j-space. If you simply took the difference between the two maps, you cold also output a vector value that could be mapped to a space whose dimension is equal to the dimension of the original map (assuming that the two maps have the same dimension, of course).

Anyways, here is my question: Is there a better way to quantify this? Has anyone else thought of this? Of course, we could use a distance metric to c...
Femininity can’t be that bad
by KatjaGrace — 2011-01-08T23:18:34.000Z

Lisa at Sociological Images:

Most of us are clear on the idea that patriarchies are defined by sexism… In our American patriarchy, however, this is …perhaps even superseded by something called androcentrism: the valuing of all-things-masculine over all-things-feminine. We know we live in an androcentric society because masculinized things (playing sports, being a doctor, being self-sufficient) are imagined to be good for everyone (we encourage both our sons and daughters to do these things), but feminized things (playing with dolls, being a nurse, and staying at home to raise children) are considered to be good only for women.

I’ll admit I hadn’t really noticed the extent of this until she pointed it out. It’s not immediately clear though why this would be unfair toward women, rather than men. She explains elsewhere:

Comparably, women have got it good. We’re allowed to knit and play soccer, be a mom and be a lawyer, take dance and karate, wear skirts and pants!…How do we make sense of this? Crash course: Femininity is just for chicks. When men do feminine things, they are debasing themselves. Masculinity is awesome and for everyone. When women do masculine things, they’re awesome. This is sexism: Masculinity rules, femininity drools. Men are encouraged to stay away from femininity, so their individual choices are constrained, but they also are staying away from something debasing. In contrast, women are required to do a least some femininity, so women are required to debase themselves, at least a little bit, even as they are given more options.

Another possibility is that femininity is debasing for men, and awesome for women. Otherwise, how can one account for women doing so much femininity? So eagerly, so expensively? According to the above, they are required to do at least some, but shouldn’t women be consistently pushing this supposed boundary to do as little as possible? I don’t see this at all.

Consistent with this, and not with Lisa’s view, this vast majority of women who are actively unnecessarily feminine do not appear to be at any popularity disadvantage relative to their more tomboy counterparts. In fact they appear roughly to be more well liked as they display more feminine characteristics. Can Lisa’s view account for these observations? If not, it seems that men are the ones who lose out...
Is there anything after death?
by afterdeath — 2011-01-08T22:56:07.025Z

I was on Reddit today, and I came across (this link)[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/eyiat/for_those_of_you_who_have_died_and_been/]. One of the things I've seen on this site that's bothered me is the exclusion of personal experiences in deciding what a person should or should not believe. I know that less wrong is mostly atheist, and I wanted to hear less wrong's reaction to descriptions of experiences like these.

For example, my dad was in the hospital 5 or 6 years ago when a truck came across an icy road and hit him head-on. His most vivid memory from this is a dream he had when he was in the hospital. He was in a pool of water with my mom, and they were both naked (they were underwater, but didn't need to breathe). He remembers that at the end of this pool, there was a bright light that he wanted to head towards. He began to swim that way...and here, I don't remember what happened, but he was unable to reach the light for some reason.

Such stories seem to be common for people who come close to death, and for a community based around rationality which seems to consider the likelihood of life after death as slim, I just wondered what your reactions are. My reaction is that such experiences are explainable in terms of neural activity, but that doesn't necessarily exclude the possibility that these are descriptions of experiences of an afterlife. I'm not convinced by them, but I do consider it to be possible.
Could markets be called optimization proccesses? 
by  — 2011-01-08T21:42:31.588Z

Edit: This is old material. It may be out of date.

Most posters here seem to agree1 that:

Intelligence at least human intelligence is an optimization process.

Evolution is an optimization process.

Other optimization processes may exist.

Taking these as a given in this thread, let me ask are markets a optimization process that should be thought of as distinct from evolution and intelligence? My intuitive responses was no. But thinking about it I made me notice I was confused. This lead me to believe that there is probably something interesting for me to learn by thinking a bit more about this.

A argument against this is that companies basically engage in a survival of the fittest contest or that markets are just a organization of the optimizing power of human intelligence. But (please assume the smart version of the previous arguments since I wanted to save space and time by relying on your inference and your zombie argument creation skills) isn't it so that one optimization process might use another optimization process somewhere on the grit level while still not being disputed as a genuinely different optimization process?

Perhaps the condition is that the process must be able to work without the "use" of another process. A human may be predisposed to use his intelligence to help improve his own reproductive fitness but there is nothing preventing evolution in the absence of intelligence.

A idealized free market is that of selfish rational agents competing (with a few extra condition I'm skipping). I'm moderately confident this could work pretty ok in the absence of "general" (if such a thing exists) or perhaps human "intelligence", but I'm not familiar enough with simulations of markets to be certain.

Evolution never worked with agents as exist in the theoretic approximation of real world markets. It seems to me some of the strategies the agents would take up would start to break down the rules that make the market possible.

Do the results markets produce warrant them being included in a new family2 of optimization processes besides evolution and intelligence?

Notes:

1. I lean towards but don't feel comfortable adding a fourth point of "consensus":

the space of all optimization processes is probably quite a bit larger than just the two.

2. I think differences in the various kinds of Evolution (Darwinian, Lamarckian, ect.) and Intelligence that seem possibl...