trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : Seattle, Diseased Thinking and evidence on parenting
by jsalvatier — 2012-01-11T16:33:05.210Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Seattle, Diseased Thinking and evidence on parenting

WHEN:
15 January 2012 04:00:00PM (-0800)

WHERE:
950 N 72nd St, Seattle 98103

We haven't had a serious-ish meetup in a while, so I'd like to do that this Sunday. Walid has graciously volunteered to host the meetup (call me to be let in 360-602-1069). There are two cats in the apartment that can be quarantined if necessary. The plan is read Diseased Thinking about applying reductionism to notions about diseases. I'd also like to discuss the role of parenting on life outcomes of children. Bryan Caplan's book "Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids" presents strong evidence that parenting style has surprisingly little impact on long term life outcomes of children. I'll begin by summarizing the evidence in the book and some of the things Caplan uses that evidence to argue and then we'll discuss for a while. I'm a bit of a Bryan Caplan fanboy, so come with your skeptic hat on. After that we'll have dinner and hang out. I'll try to bring a case of beer.

Discussion article for the meetup : Seattle, Diseased Thinking and evidence on parenting
Utopian hope versus reality
by Mitchell_Porter — 2012-01-11T12:55:45.959Z

I've seen an interesting variety of utopian hopes expressed recently. Raemon's "Ritual" sequence of posts is working to affirm the viability of LW's rationalist-immortalist utopianism, not just in the midst of an indifferent universe, but in the midst of an indifferent society. Leverage Research turn out to be social-psychology utopians, who plan to achieve their world of optimality by unleashing the best in human nature. And Russian life-extension activist Maria Konovalenko just blogged about the difficulty of getting people to adopt anti-aging research as the top priority in life, even though it's so obvious to her that it should be.

This phenomenon of utopian hope - its nature, its causes, its consequences, whether it's ever realistic, whether it ever does any good - certainly deserves attention and analysis, because it affects, and even afflicts, a lot of people, on this site and far beyond. It's a vast topic, with many dimensions. All my examples above have a futurist tinge to them - an AI singularity, and a biotech society where rejuvenation is possible, are clearly futurist concepts; and even the idea of human culture being transformed for the better by new ideas about the mind, belongs within the same broad scientific-technological current of Utopia Achieved Through Progress. But if we look at all the manifestations of utopian hope in history, and not just at those which resemble our favorites, other major categories of utopia can be observed - utopia achieved by reaching back to the conditions of a Golden Age; utopia achieved in some other reality, like an afterlife.

The most familiar form of utopia these days is the ideological social utopia, to be achieved once the world is run properly, according to the principles of some political "-ism". This type of utopia can cut across the categories I have mentioned so far; utopian communism, for example, has both futurist and golden-age elements to its thinking. The new society is to be created via new political forms and new philosophies, but the result is a restoration of human solidarity and community that existed before hierarchy and property... The student of utopian thought must also take note of religion, which until technology has been the main avenue through which humans have pursued their most transcendental hopes, like not having to die.

But I'm not setting out to study utopian thought and utopian ...
Meetup : Houston Meetup - 1/15
by Cog — 2012-01-11T05:56:28.513Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Houston Meetup - 1/15

WHEN:
15 January 2012 02:00:00PM (-0600)

WHERE:
2010 Commerce Street, Houston TX 77002

There will be a meetup this Sunday at 2PM at the local hackerspace. We'll be discussing the Maps and Territories sequence, as well as plannig a reading schedule for ET Jayne's "The Logic of Science". All are welcome, and we can order pizza if people are interested. PM me for my cell number if you are a new member, and need help finding the place the day of.

Discussion article for the meetup : Houston Meetup - 1/15
[SEQ RERUN] Typicality and Asymmetrical Similarity
by MinibearRex — 2012-01-11T04:40:34.216Z

Today's post, Typicality and Asymmetrical Similarity was originally published on 06 February 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

You try to treat category membership as all-or-nothing, ignoring the existence of more and less typical subclusters.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Similarity Clusters, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
Long-Term Technological Forecasting
by lukeprog — 2012-01-11T04:13:57.274Z

When will AGI be created? When will WBE be possible? It would be nice to have somewhat reliable methods of long-term technological forecasting. Do we? Here's my own brief overview of the subject...

Nagy et al. (2010) is, I think, the best paper in the field. At first you might think it's basically supporting Kurzweillian conclusions about exponential curves for all technologies, but there are serious qualifications to make. The first is that the prediction laws they tested are linear regression models, which fit the data well but are not theoretically appropriate for modeling the data because the assumptions of independence and so on are not satisfied. A second and bigger qualification is that Nagy & company only used data from small time slices for most technologies examined in the paper. This latter problem becomes a larger source of worry when you note that we have reason to expect many technologies to follow a logistic rather than exponential growth pattern, and exponential and logistic growth patterns look the same for the first part of their curves — see Modis (2006). A third qualification is that Nagy's performance curves database is not representative of "technology in general" or anything like that. Fourth, Nagy's study is the first of its kind, not a summary of 20 years of careful work all leading to a shared set of conclusions we can be fairly confident about. The hedonic hotspots that fire in my brain when I engage in hyperbole want me to say that serious long-term technological forecasting is not summarized by Nagy but begins with Nagy. (But that, of course, compresses history too much.)

Williams (2011) demonstrates that prediction markets just aren't yet tested in the domain of long-term forecasting, and have several incentive-structure problems yet to be worked out. I bought the book, but it's probably not worth $125. If you go to the library and want to copy just one chapter, make it Croxson's.

I see basically no evidence that any expert elicitation method is reliable for long-term technological forecasting (e.g. see Rowe & Wright 2001). The first study to show positive results from expert elicitation (in this case, a particular version of the Delphi method) for long-term forecasting is a single paper from last year: this one.

So if you want to predict the future of technology, it's best not to tell deta...
The Gift I Give Tomorrow
by Raemon — 2012-01-11T04:02:58.006Z

This is the final post in my Ritual Mini-Sequence. Previous posts include the Introduction, a discussion on the Value (and Danger) of Ritual, and How to Design Ritual Ceremonies that reflect your values.

I wrote this as a concluding essay in the Solstice ritual book. It was intended to be at least comprehensible to people who weren’t already familiar with our memes, and to communicate why I thought this was important. It builds upon themes from the ritual book, and in particular, the readings of Beyond the Reach of God and The Gift We Give to Tomorrow. Working on this essay was transformative to me - it allowed me to finally bypass my scope insensitivity and other biases, so that I could evaluate organizations like the Singularity Institute with fairness. I haven’t yet decided what to do with my charitable dollars - it’s a complex problem. But I’ve overcome my emotional restistance to the idea of fighting X-Risk.

I don’t know if that was due to the words themselves, or to the process I had to go through to write them, but I hope others may benefit from this.

I thought ‘The Gift We Give to Tomorrow’ was incredibly beautiful when I first read it. I actually cried. I wanted to share it with friends and family, except that work ONLY has meaning in the context of the Sequences. Practically every line is a hyperlink to an important, earlier point, and without many hours of previous reading, it just won’t have the impact. But to me, it felt like the perfect endcap to everything the Sequences covered, taking all of the facts and ideas and weaving them into a coherent, poetic narrative that left me feeling satisfied with my place in the world.

Except that... I wasn’t sure that it actually said anything.

And when I showed it to a few other people, they reacted similarly: “This is pretty, but what does it mean?” I knew I wanted to include it in our Solstice celebration, if for no other reason than “it was pretty.” Particularly pretty in a particular way that seemed right for the occassion. But I’m wary about things that seem beautiful and moving without really understanding why, especially when those things become part of your worldview, perhaps subtly impacting your decisions.

In order to use The G...
Rationality meditation theory.
by  — 2012-01-11T03:50:03.359Z

First allow me to show you my preliminary data.: http://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/obtqe/its_they_live_these_are_reddit_robots_programmed/

Introduction

I think I may have found a novel use for an old technique, which may or may not have implications for rational decision making. I am open to constructive criticism or even deconstructive criticism if you make a sound argument. Ultimately, I would like the experiment to be put to the test. If you have the supplies and know-how to carry it out, then feel free to try it and report your findings.
The Goal:

Catalyze the brainstorming process in a way that increases both the number and quality of ideas made.

Methods:

Find a problem that needs solving. Unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics is a good, but ambitious, example. Some more likely problems that could be solved are: "How might I solve my relationship problems," or "how can I advertise my company's product to its target demographic", or "what are some ideas to make quick money."

Find 2-3 rationalists who understand the problem well. They don't need to be expert rationalists; the most important part is that they know the difference between rationalization and rationality. In the QM example above, and in most scientific applications of the method, all players should have access to the experimental data.

Assign two of the three rationalists to the "brainstormers" group (name subject to change), whose primary concern is to make logical connections between the data to form hypotheses.

Assign the odd-rationalist-out as the Confessor, whose primary concern, like in TWC, is to preserve sanity. It is the Confessor's job to catch the brainstormers when they make a logical leap or use biased reasoning. Some tactics the Confessor might use are the rationalist taboo, the reversal test, and argument from the least convenient world.

This is a scaled up version of what the brain seems to do. We need the brainstormers and the Confessor to act the part of the Apologist and the Revolutionary, respectively.

The Confessor - brainstormer dynamic is interesting in its own right, but I believe it can be improv

...
Designing Ritual
by Raemon — 2012-01-11T01:52:24.831Z

This is the third post in my ritual mini-sequence. My first article was an

emotional rallying cry around of the idea of a rational-(trans)humanist culture

. My second article

examined the value and potential dangers of ritual

.

So far, I remain convinced that ritual is a valuable experience for most people. I don’t know if there can or should be a unified “Less Wrong” culture, but I do think individual communities should consider creating their own (“rational-humanist” or otherwise). Ritual can be a useful source of fun, comfort and inspiration for positive change. A decent heuristic for "Should my meetup try this?" is "Do the people at my meetup think this sounds cool?"

This article is both an explanation of certain design principles, and a case study of my attempt at one particular kind of community event.

Designing Timelessness

So, say your community decides to incorporate some ritual. How do you do that?

Ritual-space is large, and includes things as simple as "Pass around dark chocolate at the beginning of meetups." You probably already have some kind of ritual going on. Over time, these small traditions can accumulate into something interesting and comforting. But if you’re like me, you want something more powerful - you want the gravitas of an ancient cultural cornerstone, and you want it now.

This is... a challenge.

“Creating tradition” almost feels like an oxymoron. To be effective, it has to have a timeless quality about it. It doesn't have to actually be ancient, but it needs to feel resonant, familiar and personal. Most ritual is created through a combination of artistic skill and memetic evolution. A few central traditions begin the process (say, a particular feast, prayer and/or anthem), and then the ritual begins to spread from family to family, adapting in response to memetic selection pressure, filling specific niches, often resulting in bizarre injokes and absurdities. The absurdities can actually help bind a community together, as a badge of pride.

Powerful governments and religions can attempt to steer this. The Catholic church votes on deliberate changes to their ceremonies. But the church could not have intentionally created Modern Western Christmas - a

bizarre gestalt of pagan and christian mythology

,

random stories

, eventually infused with modern capitalis...
[Template] Questions regarding possible risks from artificial intelligence
by XiXiDu — 2012-01-10T11:59:07.288Z

I am emailing experts in order to raise and estimate the academic awareness and perception of risks from AI. Below are some questions I am going to ask. Please help to refine the questions or suggest new and better questions.

(Thanks goes to paulfchristiano, Steve Rayhawk and Mafred.)

Q1: Assuming beneficially political and economic development and that no global catastrophe halts progress, by what year would you assign a 10%/50%/90% chance of the development of artificial intelligence that is roughly as good as humans at science, mathematics, engineering and programming?
Q2: Once we build AI that is roughly as good as humans at science, mathematics, engineering and programming, how much more difficult will it be for humans and/or AIs to build an AI which is substantially better at those activities than humans?

Q3: Do you ever expect artificial intelligence to overwhelmingly outperform humans at typical academic research, in the way that they may soon overwhelmingly outperform humans at trivia contests, or do you expect that humans will always play an important role in scientific progress?

Q4: What probability do you assign to the possibility of an AI with initially (professional) human-level competence at general reasoning (including science, mathematics, engineering and programming) to self-modify its way up to vastly superhuman capabilities within a matter of hours/days/< 5 years?

Q5: How important is it to figure out how to make superhuman AI provably friendly to us and our values (non-dangerous), before attempting to build AI that is good enough at general reasoning (including science, mathematics, engineering and programming) to undergo radical self-modification?
Q6: What probability do you assign to the possibility of human extinction as a result of AI capable of self-modification (that is not provably non-dangerous, if that is even possible)?
On Leverage Research's plan for an optimal world
by Mitchell_Porter — 2012-01-10T09:49:40.086Z

The plan currently revolves around using Connection Theory, a new psychological theory, to design "beneficial contagious ideologies", the spread of which will lead to the existence of "an enormous number of actively and stably benevolent people", who will then "coordinate their activities", seek power, and then use their power to eliminate scarcity, disease, harmful governments, global catastrophic threats, etc.

That is not how the world works. Most positions of power are already occupied by people who have common sense, good will, and a sense of responsibility - or they have those traits, to the extent that human frailty manages to preserve them, amidst the unpredictability of life. The idea that a magic new theory of psychology will unlock human potential and create a new political majority of model citizens is a secular messianism with nothing to back it up.

I suggest that the people behind Leverage Research need to decide whether they are in the business of solving problems, or in the business of solving meta-problems. The real problems of the world are hard problems, they overwhelm even highly capable people who devote their lives to making a difference. Handwaving about meta topics like psychology and methodology can't be expected to offer more than marginal assistance in any specific concrete domain.
[SEQ RERUN] Similarity Clusters
by MinibearRex — 2012-01-10T04:51:17.414Z

Today's post, Similarity Clusters was originally published on 06 February 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Your verbal definition doesn't capture more than a tiny fraction of the category's shared characteristics, but you try to reason as if it does.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Buy Now or Forever Hold Your Peace, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
Meetup : West LA Meetup 01-11-2012
by  — 2012-01-09T22:22:00.836Z

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup 01-11-2012

WHEN:
11 January 2012 07:00:00PM (-0800)

WHERE:
10850 West Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90064

When: 7:00pm - 9:00pm Wednesday, January 11th.

Where: The Westside Tavern in the upstairs Wine Bar (all ages welcome), located inside the Westside Pavillion on the second floor, right by the movie theaters.

Parking is free for 3 hours.

Recommended Reading:

Any article you like.

Whether you're a regular reader or totally new, here for the theoretical musings or the practical things, come by and say hello! The conversation is largely unstructured and casual, and the people are awesome. If we have a large group, we may also play a game!

I will bring a whiteboard with Bayes' Theorem written on it.

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup 01-11-2012
Rational Justice
by geebee2 — 2012-01-09T22:05:28.287Z

I'm interested in how courts and juries might use rational techniques to arrive at correct decisions on guilt.

In a complex case, it would seem to sensible to assess each component of the prosecution and defence case, and estimate the relative likelihood. If the prosecution case is (say) 100 times more likely than the defence case, then you can say the defendant is guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

I never heard of this being done though. I recently made an analysis of the Massei report into the Amanda Knox case. It looked like this ( see http://massei-report-analysis.wikispaces.com/ for the entire analysis and some insight into the numbers below ).

Event

Prosecution Probability

Defence Probability

Phone at cottage at 22:13

1%

99%

DNA evidence correct

50%

50%

Break in staged to look like Rudy did it vs unstaged break-in

10%

90%

Conspiracy among 3 near strangers with no apparent motive vs burglary gone wrong

5%

95%

Murder weapon was two knives rather than one

10%

90%

Time of death 23:30 vs 21:10 according to empty duodenum

10%

90%

This is perhaps a bit vague. It's not a great example, because in the end I didn't find any credible prosecution evidence. It's not entirely clear what the "probability" numbers here actually are, and whether two columns are needed. But hopefully it shows that the Massei's account of the murder is quite improbable, and there is considerable doubt.

I'm interested in possibly devising a more complete framework for how such an assessment should be done, the pitfalls that need to be guarded against (how uncertain are the probability estimates?), and even views as to how "reasonable doubt" should be quantified.

Perhaps readers would like to make an assessment of other interesting cases, to explore the issues.

Or how would you approach this problem?