trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
The social value of high school extracurricular time
by JonahS — 2014-04-06T06:29:34.966Z

Ambitious high school students are typically heavily constrained in the sense that maximizing their college admissions prospects comes at the cost of spending a lot of time on coursework. See for example our page on College statements on the importance of grades and coursework. Outside of improving college admissions prospects, this is often a waste of time. In What You'll Wish You Had Known, Y Combinator founder Paul Graham wrote:

Right now most of you feel your job in life is to be a promising college applicant. But that means you're designing your life to satisfy a process so mindless that there's a whole industry devoted to subverting it. [...] So what do you do? What you should not do is rebel. [...] By putting you in this situation, society has fouled you. Yes, as you suspect, a lot of the stuff you learn in your classes is crap. And yes, as you suspect, the college admissions process is largely a charade. But like many fouls, this one was unintentional. So just keep playing.

However, colleges grant students considerable latitude with respect to how they spend their time on extracurricular activities. In What colleges look for in extracurricular activities I reported on conversations with admissions officers in which they said that it doesn't matter what extracurricular activities a student is involved in as long as he/she demonstrates characteristics such as passion and commitment. My post got a lot of pushback (in part because I framed the finding suboptimally), but based on these conversations and on reading writings by college admissions consultants, even if college admissions officers have some preferences, it's unlikely that they're sufficiently strong and narrow so that there's not considerable variability in the value of the activities that students can engage in and still look good to colleges. This raises the possibility that there's considerable potential for high school students to benefit more from their extracurricular activities and to contribute more social value through them (whether directly or indirectly).

This post focuses on social value, with the background context that social value contributed is often aligned with a person's interests, whether they be altruistic or financial. In some places below, I use income as a proxy to social value, though it's an imperfect one. The arguments below don't depend on ...
Meetup : Next Meetup: Fermi Estimates and Singing
by rocurley — 2014-04-06T03:29:00.455Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Next Meetup: Fermi Estimates and Singing

WHEN:
06 April 2014 03:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

We'll be meeting to do fermi estimates and maybe sing.

(I won't be making it)

Discussion article for the meetup : Next Meetup: Fermi Estimates and Singing
The Cold War divided Science
by Douglas_Knight — 2014-04-05T23:10:38.181Z

What can we learn about science from the divide during the Cold War?

I have one example in mind: America held that coal and oil were fossil fuels, the stored energy of the sun, while the Soviets held that they were the result of geologic forces applied to primordial methane.

At least one side is thoroughly wrong. This isn't a politically charged topic like sociology, or even biology, but a physical science where people are supposed to agree on the answers. This isn't a matter of research priorities, where one side doesn't care enough to figure things out, but a topic that both sides saw to be of great importance, and where they both claimed to apply their theories. On the other hand, Lysenkoism seems to have resulted from the practical importance of crop breeding.

First of all, this example supports the claim that there really was a divide, that science was disconnected into two poorly communicating camps. It suggests that when the two sides reached the same results on other topics, they did so independently. Even if we cannot learn from this example, it suggests that we may be able to learn from other consequences of dividing the scientific community.

My understanding is that although some Russian language research papers were available in America, they were completely ignored and the scientists failed to even acknowledge that there was a community with divergent opinions. I don't know about the other direction.

Some questions:

Are there other topics, ideally in physical science, on which such a substantial disagreement persisted for decades? not necessarily between these two parties?

Did the Soviet scientists know that their American counterpoints disagreed?

Did Warsaw Pact (eg, Polish) scientists generally agree with the Soviets about the origin of coal and oil? Were they aware of the American position? Did other Western countries agree with America? How about other countries, such as China and Japan?

What are the current Russian beliefs about coal and oil? I tried running Russian Wikipedia through google translate and it seemed to support the biogenic theory. (right?) Has there been a reversal among Russian scientists? When? Or does Wikipedia represent foreign opinion? If a divide remains, does it follow the Iron Curtain, or some new line?

Have I missed some detail that would make me not classify this as an honest disagreement between two scientific es

...
A puzzle concerning CS major vs. engineering major salaries
by JonahS — 2014-04-05T07:13:16.667Z

In the process of investigating the relative merits of majoring in computer science versus various engineering specialties, I came across the following puzzle, which I've been unable to solve. Maybe one of you can.

The puzzle is that:

Computer science majors make about the same as mechanical and electrical engineering majors do in general.

For colleges with top computer science programs and engineering programs, computer science majors' starting salaries are far higher than mechanical and electrical engineering majors' starting salaries.

Some supporting data below:

Computer science majors make about as much as mechanical/electrical engineering majors

The 2013-2014 Payscale College Salary Report gives the following figures:

Major / Starting Salary / Midcareer Salary

Computer Science / $60k / $102k

Mechanical Engineering / $61k / $100k

Electrical Engineering / $64k / $106k

Here the figures are very close.

----

A Payscale report from 2008 gives a breakdown of mid-career salary by major and percentile:

Major / 10%-tile / 25%-tile / 50%-tile / 75%-tile / 90%-tile

Computer Science / $56k / $74k / $95k / $122k / $154k

Mechanical Engineering / $64k / $76k / $97k / $120k / $163k

Electrical Engineering / $69k / $83k / $103k / $130k / $168k

This gives the impression that CS majors generally made less than electrical and mechanical engineering majors at the time.

----

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (2013) gives percentile breakdowns for programmers, software developers, electrical engineers and mechanical engineers. This isn't strictly data about salaries by major but nevertheless serves as a proxy to salary by major (with programmers and software developers being associated with the computer science major)

Job / 10%-tile / 25%-tile / 50%-tile / 75%-tile / 90%-tile

Computer Programmer / $44k / $58k / $76k / $98k / $124k

Software Developer / $56k / $72k / $92k / $117k / $144k

Mechanical Engineer / $53k / $65k / $82k / $103k / $123k

Electrical Engineer / $57k / $70k / $89k / $113k / $139k

Pooling together the programmers and software developers would give salary figures in line with electric and mechanical engineers' salary figures.

For recent graduates from top schools, the situation is different

I looked at salary data from the 6 top ranked colleges (roughly speaking) in computer science and engin...
Community overview and resources for modern Less Wrong meetup organisers
by BraydenM — 2014-04-04T20:53:41.678Z

I've been travelling around the US for the past month since arriving from Australia, and have had the chance to see how a number of different Less Wrong communities operate. As a departing organiser for the Melbourne Less Wrong community, it has been interesting to make comparisons between the different Less Wrong groups all over the US, and I suspect sharing the lessons learned by different communities will benefit the global movement.

For aspiring organisers, or leaders looking at making further improvements to their community, there already exists an excellent meetup organisers handbook, list of meetups, and NYC case study. I'd also recommend one super useful ability: rapid experimentation. This is a relatively low cost way to find out exactly what format of events attracts the most people and are the most beneficial. Once you know how to win, spam it! This ability is sometimes even better than just asking people what they want out of the community, but you should probably do both.

I'll summarise a few types of meetup that I have seen here. Please feel free to help out by adding descriptions of other types of events you have seen, or variations on the ones already posted if you think there is something other communities could learn.

Public Practical Rationality Meetups (Melbourne)

Held monthly on a Friday in Matthew Fallshaw's offices at TrikeApps. Advertised on Facebook, LessWrong, and the Melbourne LW Mailing List. About 25-40 attendees. Until January, were also advertised publicly on meetup.com, but since then the format has changed significantly. Audience was 50% Less Wrongers, and 50% newcomers, so this served as our outreach event.

6:30pm-7:30pm Doors open, usually most people arrive around 7:15pm

7:30pm sharp-9:00pm: Content introduced. Usually around 3 topics have been prepared by 3 separate Less Wrongers, for discussion in groups of about 10 people each. After 30 minutes the groups rotate, so the presenters present the same thing multiple times. Topics have included: effective communication, giving and receiving feedback, sequence summaries, cryonics, habit formation, etc.

9:00pm - Late: Unstructured socialising, with occasional 'rationality therapy' where a few friends get together to think about a particular issue in someone's life in detail. Midnight souvlaki runs are a tradition.

Monthly Social Games Meetup (Melbourne)

Held in a ...
New LW Meetups: Las Vegas, Warsaw
by FrankAdamek — 2014-04-04T16:14:49.885Z

This summary was posted to LW main on March 28th. The following week's summary is here.

New meetups (or meetups with a hiatus of more than a year) are happening in:

Las Vegas/Henderson, NV: 01 May 2014 06:00PM
Warsaw: 30 March 2014 03:00PM

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

Hamburg - 4: 31 March 2014 06:00PM
Helsinki Meetup: 13 April 2014 03:00PM
Munich Meetup: 06 April 2014 01:00PM
Philadelphia, PA: Goal Factoring Exercise: 30 March 2014 12:47AM
Princeton NJ Meetup: 29 March 2014 01:00PM
[Tel Aviv] Israel Less Wrong Meetup - Social and Board Games: 03 April 2014 06:00PM
Urbana-Campaign: Discussion (Folk Wisdom): 30 March 2014 02:00PM
Utrecht: More on effective altruism: 05 April 2014 10:00AM

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:

[Berlin] Community Weekend in Berlin: 11 April 2014 04:00PM
Boston - Schelling Day: 16 April 2014 07:00PM
Brussels - all fun and games: 19 April 2014 12:00PM
NYC Rationality Megameetup and Unconference: April 5-6: 05 April 2014 11:00AM
Salt Lake City, UT: Schelling Day: 20 April 2014 02:45PM
Washington DC: Robin Hanson visits to talk about giving: 30 March 2014 03:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Cambridge UK, Canberra, Columbus, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Mountain View, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, Waterloo, 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, but you'll also have the benefit of having your meetup mentioned in a weekly overview. These overview posts are moved to the discussion section when the new post goes u...
LINK-Bayesian methods in drug development and regulatory review
by polymathwannabe — 2014-04-04T14:58:04.476Z

This year's first issue of Pharmaceutical Statistics is all about Bayes. All the articles are free downloadable PDFs:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pst.v13.1/issuetoc?campaign=dartwol|42819650
Meetup : Bratislava Meetup XII.
by Viliam_Bur — 2014-04-04T14:27:01.346Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Bratislava Meetup XII.

WHEN:
28 April 2014 06:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Bistro The Peach, Heydukova 21, Bratislava

The same place; topic not decided yet.

Zvyčajné miesto a čas. Téma zatiaľ neurčená.

Discussion article for the meetup : Bratislava Meetup XII.
Meetup : Bratislava Meetup XI.
by Viliam_Bur — 2014-04-04T14:20:11.648Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Bratislava Meetup XI.

WHEN:
07 April 2014 06:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Bistro The Peach, Heydukova 21, Bratislava

The same place; debate about how to spread rationality and LW culture in Slovakia.

Zvyčajné miesto a čas. Téma: Ako šíriť rozumnosť a kultúru LessWrong na Slovensku. A iné témy, podľa záujmu.

Discussion article for the meetup : Bratislava Meetup XI.
Meetup : Chicago: Seeing with Fresh Eyes Review
by Nic_Smith — 2014-04-04T12:26:25.371Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Chicago: Seeing with Fresh Eyes Review

WHEN:
05 April 2014 03:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
Corner Bakery, 360 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL

After a month-long hiatus, we'll be resuming with a meetup focusing on the highlighted entries in the Seeing with Fresh Eyes sequence:
• Cached Thoughts • We Change Our Minds Less Often Than We Think • Hold Off On Proposing Solutions Feel free to join even if you read these a long time ago, read a different parts of this sequence, or just have something related to share.
http://www.meetup.com/Less-Wrong-Chicago/events/174360732/

Discussion article for the meetup : Chicago: Seeing with Fresh Eyes Review
Meetup : Moscow Meet up
by Yuu — 2014-04-04T06:38:21.790Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow Meet up

WHEN:
06 April 2014 04:00:00PM (+0400)

WHERE:
Russia, Moscow, ulitsa L'va Tolstogo 16

We will have:

Answers for your questions about cognitive behavioural therapy.

One or two short presentations about cognitive biases.

Presentation about externalism.

Presentation about TRIZ.

Exercises from Impro.

We gather in the Yandex office, you need the first revolving door under the archway. Here is additional guide how to get there: link.
You can fill this one minute form (in Russian), to share your contact information.

We start at 16:00 and sometimes finish at night. Please pay attention that we only gather near the entrance and then come inside.

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow Meet up
Career prospects for physics majors
by JonahS — 2014-04-04T03:02:22.299Z

Physics is attractive to many highly intellectually capable students, because

Physical theories represent pinnacles of human achievement

It's intellectually stimulating

It has a reputation for being a subject that smart people do

See the comments on the post What attracts smart and curious young people to physics?

But what of career prospects?

In an answer to the Quora question What is it like to major in physics? PhD physicist Joshua Parks wrote:

It may not be too crazy to claim that as far as career options go, physics majors may be much more like English or other humanities majors (who often make career choices unrelated to their study) than their science and engineering counterparts.

At Physics Forums, ParticleGrl wrote

If you are an engineer, you can almost certainly get a job in a technical field right out of college. Physics majors, on the other hand, end up all over the place (insurance, finance, teaching high school, programming, etc).

We discuss some career paths for physics majors below.

Summary

The primary reason to major in physics (outside of intrinsic interest) is as a prerequisite to a physics PhD or as background for teaching high school physics.

Over 50% of those who get PhDs in physics don't become physicists, often because of difficulty finding jobs.

Physics majors are able to get jobs in other quantitative fields, but often with more difficulty than they would had they majored in those fields.

The popularity of physics as a major

The fraction of students who major in physics is small. What's It Worth?: The Economic Value of College Majors by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (pg. 162) reports that there are 936k people with Bachelor's degrees in physical sciences, but only 91k with degrees in physics. Assuming that there are 50 years worth of people with Bachelor's degrees in the United States, we get figures of about 20k physical sciences majors per year and 2k physics majors per year. This is in consonance with a report of the National Center for Educational Statistics, which gives a figure of 20k physical science majors who graduated in 2005. There are about 1.3 million college majors a year, so on the order of 0.2% of college graduates majored in physics.

The proportion increases significantly if one considers the population of highly intellectually ...
Thermodynamics of Intelligence and Cognitive Enhancement
by CasioTheSane — 2014-04-03T23:17:48.130Z

Introduction

Brain energy is often confused with motivation, but these are two distinct phenomena. Brain energy is the actual metabolic energy available to the neurons, in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) molecules. ATP is the "energy currency" of the cell, and is produced primarily by oxidative metabolism of energy from food. High motivation increases the use of this energy, but in the absence of sufficient metabolic capacity it eventually results in stress, depression, and burnout as seen in manic depression. Most attempts at cognitive enhancement only address the motivation side of the equation.

The “smart drug” culture has generally been thinking pharmaceutically rather than biologically. Behind that pharmaceutical orientation there is sometimes the idea that the individual just isn't trying hard enough, or doesn't have quite the right genes to excel mentally.

-Ray Peat, PhD

Cellular Thermodynamics

Any simple major enhancement to human intelligence is a net evolutionary disadvantage.

-Eliezer Yudkowsky (Algernon’s Law)

I propose that this constrain is imposed by the energy cost of intelligence. The conventional textbook view of neurology suggests that much of the brain's energy is "wasted" in overcoming the constant diffusion of ions across the membranes of neurons that aren't actively in use. This is necessary to keep the neurons in a 'ready state' to fire when called upon.

Why haven't we evolved some mechanism to control this massive waste of energy?

The Association-Induction hypothesis formulated by Gilbert Ling is an alternate view of cell function, which suggests a distinct functional role of energy within the cell. I won't review it in detail here, but you can find an easy to understand and comprehensive introduction to this hypothesis in the book "Cells, Gels and the Engines of Life" by Gerald H. Pollack (amazon link). This idea has a long history with considerable experimental evidence, which is too extensive to review in this article.

The Association-Induction hypothesis states that ion exclusion in the cell is maintained by the structural ordering of water within the cytoplasm, by an interaction between the cytoskeletal proteins, water molecules, and ATP. Energy (in the form of ATP) is used to unfold proteins, presenting a regular pattern of surface charges to cell water. This orders the cell water into a 'gel like' ph...
Meetup : LessWrong Hamburg - Report from Berlin
by Gunnar_Zarncke — 2014-04-03T19:42:15.442Z

Discussion article for the meetup : LessWrong Hamburg - Report from Berlin

WHEN:
26 April 2014 05:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Einstein Bistro, Grindelberg 81-83, 20144 Hamburg, Germany

Main topic for this meetup is a report of my (Gunnars) participation in the European LW Community Event in Berlin. It is expected that this will lead to lots of side track discussions so no other topics or agenda but only games.

New participants are explicitly invited to this meetup! Even if you don't plan repeated participation you may want to know how the Berlin event went.

The location is the same as for the first meetup, directly next to the train and bus station Hoheluft, easily reachable from campus, central station and the homes of some participants. We will have a sign so you can find us. Sorry to say but it being a restaurant you will have to pay for a dish or drink.

Einstein Bistro: http://www.einstein-bistro.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&catid=36%3Akontakt&id=74%3Ahoheluft&Itemid=60

The mailing list: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/lesswrong-hamburg

Discussion article for the meetup : LessWrong Hamburg - Report from Berlin
The Study of Anglophysics
by Scott Alexander — 2014-04-03T17:36:55.000Z

I.

Dear Dr. McCord:

Seven years ago, our research staff read with interest your work on Berkeleyan idealism. We were particularly fascinated by your seemingly outrageous claim that it might be possible for individuals to imagine mental worlds so strongly that they would take on a reality of their own.

At the time, as our laboratory had an interest in novel solutions to the overpopulation problem, we embarked upon a test project to see whether a parallel world could be imaged and then colonized by citizens from our own dimension. Using advanced science you could not possibly comprehend, we came up with a practical implementation of your idea. Dr. Michael Adwell, whom I believe you met during your time in Oxford, volunteered to enter the device we had constructed as our first research subject. We very briefly imaged an alternate world based on the contents of Dr. Adwell’s mind before the good doctor unfortunately had a grand mal seizure. He was disconnected from the device and rushed to the hospital, where he passed away several hours later.

Two years ago we revisited some of our calculations on the project and determined, to our surprise, that the world Dr. Adwell had created might still exist in some sense; that it had somehow managed to sustain itself separate from the doctor’s mental activity. We worked feverishly to construct a device that might let us interact with his imaged world. Six months ago we succeeded. The computational demands of the machine were immense, but after throwing the remainder of our budget for the year at the Kyoto Supercomputing Laboratory, we were able to rent enough processing power to translate myself and Dr. Lachlan Fairchild into the imaged world, which we dubbed “Adwellia” after our late colleague. Our superiors informed us that when the next fiscal year rolled around in four months, there would be enough money in the budget to translate us back home.

II.

On first arrival, Adwellia seemed much like home. We landed on the shores of a small lake in what seemed to be a wooded area. Since it was getting dark, we soon set to pitching camp for the night. Our first unpleasant surprise was that the kerosene heater we had brought with us wouldn’t work, leaving us cold and disheartened. Lachlan collected some logs to build a fire, but our matches didn’t seem to work either. I remembered the seventh page of...