trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
The real reason Futarchists are doomed
by lc — 2022-04-01T18:37:20.387Z

There are a lot of little ways political leadership is organized differently throughout the world. Looking just at outcomes, states themselves vary widely on a bunch of axes - you have command economies, like North Korea, and market economies, like Singapore and Switzerland. You have nation states with high state capacity, like North Korea, and nation states with low state capacity, like Somalia. And you have states that don't seem to have high per worker productivity, like North Korea...

But if you really look at how political leadership is chosen, there are only really two ways people govern. On the one hand you have representative republics, where citizens meet at a regular cycle to discuss and select rules by some kind of majority vote. On the other, you have autocracy, where a select group of individuals rule indefinitely and with relatively little checks on power, fighting (maybe bloodlessly) amongst themselves when any given ruler dies for the privilege. The quality of life of their citizens vary wildly and lots of the countries of the world must cope with very different cultural, economic, and geopolitical circumstances. Despite this, the means by which they do so tend to be mostly the same.

This is curious. There's not a whole lot else that you can say about every country in the world. The fact that things seem to resist being organized any other way should give you pause.

Despite this, rationalists, at least in my experience, tend to be big fans of alternative forms of policymaking. I don't find this strange. It seems like a natural side effect having a lot of nonstandard policy opinions and nerdily detailed models of economics and public choice that one might think that we need a better system of picking laws, perhaps even a radically different system. After all, even in Norway and Singapore, people seem to manage to commit gross inefficiencies all of the time. Surely there's some better, more ambitious political decision making process that sacrifices normal democracy in favor of jury voting, or prediction markets, or some other mechanism that is less biased towards the whims of the masses who have no particular personal incentive to get things right at the ballot box.

I like many of these proposals, but I am not so optimistic about their implementation. I'll clarify actually - I suppose no one is optimistic, but I have specific reasons t...
To Make Better Software, Do What Artists Do
by matto — 2022-04-01T18:34:45.502Z

Special thanks to Justis for proofreading this post and to the LW team for setting up the proofreading program.

As developers, we like to believe that we do engineering. Our industry is filled with traditional manufacturing methods and metaphors: "architects" create "specifications" that software engineers use to "build" features, which are then "deployed" after going through a rigorous "quality assurance process."

But this picture doesn't match reality. For example, it's almost impossible to correctly estimate how long a task will take, and because estimation errors accumulate, projects are often late. And quality varies widely, even across a single company, leading to outages and data-breaches that make the news, as well as imposing costs (read: pain) on end-users.

We can't engineer our way out of this problem because the engineering metaphor itself is part of it. It blinds us to some inconvenient yet critical facts about making software, so in our confusion we repeat the same mistakes again and again. It's a classic case of the map not fitting the territory.

There exists another metaphor that, while not recognized by mainstream programming culture, has shaped the industry from the very beginning. It doesn't even conflict with the engineering frame--instead, it extends it to acknowledge that writing software involves a kind of illegible creativity. That's a quality we usually associate with art, but I believe it has an outsized effect on the quality of software we make.

To explain what I mean, let's talk about how writers produce books.

Composition

Every writer can use the same words as every other writer--there are no secret dictionaries available only to masters of prose. Yet some writers produce boring, trivial pieces while other create works that move people, and continue doing so for decades or longer.

It boils down to how the words are arranged--composition. Somehow, those who do it well pick just the right ones and set them in just the right order, producing beautiful sentences. Then they string a couple of those into paragraphs, then paragraphs into chapters, and finally chapters into novels. But there doesn't seem to be a simple, clear process behind it, nothing someone else could just replicate.

I suspect it's because there are many dimensions to writing: grammar, style, voice, plot, world building, etc. Imagine that these are planes along whi...
Good Heart Donation Lottery
by Gordon Seidoh Worley — 2022-04-01T17:51:24.235Z

Note: This was for April Fools. I'll leave the original top text for posterity, but see the updates for the current state of actual donation lottery.

Greetings, all!

Good Heart Tokens are clearly the mechanism we need to do more Good in the world. To that end, I'm starting a donation lottery.

Here's how it works.

First, strong up vote this post. We need to try to get it to at least $600 worth of upvotes to maximize the payout. (though see update 1; there's no limit)

Next, give an answer to this "question" specifying the charity you'd like to see donated to.

Then, upvote answers. This will generate a weighted distribution from which I will randomly pick the winner of the lottery. So, for example, if there's 1 answer for MIRI that gets 69 Good Heart Tokens and 1 answer for AMF that gets 420 Good Heart Tokens, then I'll do a random weighted drawing where MIRI has a weight of 69 and AMF has a weight of 420. The winner gets the pot of tokens generated by upvoting this post.

You get to do what you like with the tokens on your answer. I think in good conscience you should donate them to the winner (announced in an update to the post the next day), however I have no way to enforce that.

No duplicate answers for the same charity. If you accidentally post a duplicate please delete it. If you don't, whenever I notice it I'll keep only the one that has the earliest time stamp.

Good luck!

Update 1: After posting this I quickly realized there's no $600 cap. From the payments page: "If you receive more than $600 in a year, you'll need to be entered into Center for Applied Rationality's payment system. CFAR will contact you via your LessWrong email address about next steps. (Make sure it's an email that you check regularly)". So up vote as much as you can, the sky is the limit!

To that end I'll be posting some seed answers to vote on since I'm not the bottleneck. All tokens earned on my answers will be added to the donation pool.

Update 2: Okay, so here's some updates in light of the announcement that Good Heart Tokens are extending until end of day Thursday, April 7th, Pacific Time. First, I'm going to just donate whatever amount I get to the winner of the lottery. I'll still subsidize the amount to make up any shortfall in the earnings, but I'm making a couple modifications:

I'm upping the amount I'll subsidize to $1000. This reflects the change to a cap of 1000 tokens that can be red

...
Announcing Impact Island: A New EA Reality TV Show
by Linch — 2022-04-01T17:28:23.277Z
Link: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BAYMjQtRcffgSivq5/announcing-impact-island-a-new-ea-reality-tv-show

Impact Island is the hip new reality TV show that all of your cool, chic, and longtermist impact-oriented friends would love to binge watch. Think "Survivor" meets "Shark Tank" meets "Open Philanthropy."

Premise

The premise is simple: 36 young humble aspiring effective altruists are invited to a private Caribbean Island. Each aspiring EA is expected to do high-impact projects during their stay here. They will also gossip and continuously publicly rate each other's projects, impact, and likability. Every week, an anonymous team of grantmakers rank all participants, and whoever accomplished the least morally impactful work that week will be kicked off the island.

At the end of the season (36 episodes), the single remaining most impactful participant will be given 10 million dollars of seed funding for their new org.

How will you select participants?

Participants will be chosen via a formal selection process combining past track records, good looks, EA promisingness, movie chemistry, reference letters, and the coherent extrapolated gut feels of leading EA grantmakers. Of course, all participants are expected to be polyamorous.

How much is this project? Do you need more funding?

Our current budget is $25 million dollars. We have already secured funding from reputable EA sources, such as the FTX Future Fund, Open Philanthropy, Longview Philanthropy's Media Engagement arm, actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and real estate mogul with political and reality TV experience Donald Trump.

However, 25 million is only enough money to tide us over for season 1 (36 episodes). As we (the producers) believe strongly in patient longtermism, we would ideally like to run for 3 quadrillion seasons. Thus, we have extremely large room for more funding, which we do not expect to fill any time soon, making us the premier community building EA megaproject.

Do you plan to seek additional sources of funding?

Yes, we believe in being self-financing as quickly as possible, so we plan to mint an NFT of every episode.

What is the expected impact of this project?

We think the expected impact of the project is so high it is literally incalculable. If we're forced to put numbers on this, we think we can get at least 10 million viewers, and conservatively 1% of those people (1 billion viewers) will counterfactually become EAs. This will be the largest and most successful community building megaproject EA ha...
Accounting For College Costs
by johnswentworth — 2022-04-01T17:28:19.409Z

Why are costs of certain things, most notably education and healthcare, skyrocketing so quickly, with relatively little improvement in quality? A few years ago, SlateStarCodex and Marginal Revolution both had interesting pieces on this "cost disease" phenomenon. I think both of them were coming at it wrong.

Cost disease is really about two questions:

Costs in education, healthcare, etc keep rising faster than inflation, so where is all that extra money going? This is an accounting question.
Why is so much money going there? This is an economics question.

Both the SSC and the MR pieces were mostly speculation on the second question. I think that's premature; the first step should be to go look at where all the extra money is going. Don't try to draw a map of a city by sitting in an apartment with the curtains closed; go look at the world, in detail, and let that steer the theorizing.

In this post, we'll dig into the accounting data for college costs, especially for 4-year private nonprofit colleges. The main theory we'll end up at, based on the accounting data, is that college costs are driven mainly by a large increase in diversity of courses available, which results in much lower student/faculty ratios, and correspondingly higher costs per student.

Accounting Data

For any particular college, if you had access to the books, you could simply look through all the expenditures, add it up, and see how expenditures changed over the years. I don’t know of any college which puts its books on the internet for all to see going back to the ‘60’s. But there is the National Center for Education Statistics, which compiles some high-level accounting data on all colleges in the US, and publishes an

annual digest

.

Let’s start at the beginning: what’s the cost of college, by year?

Source

This is undergraduate tuition & required fees at 4-year colleges. Data separating private nonprofit/for-profit only goes back to 1999, because enrollment in for-profit colleges was negligible prior to the late ‘90’s. Note that all costs in this post, both in the graphs and the discussion, are adjusted to 2013 dollars.

From here on out we’re going to focus only on private, nonprofit 4-year colleges from 1999 to 2013, because that’s what the Digest of Education Statistics has data on. (Again, if anyone can find good data back to the ‘60’s, please let me know!)

We’re going to follow the money on i...
Using prediction markets to generate LessWrong posts
by Matthew Barnett — 2022-04-01T16:33:24.404Z

I have a secret to reveal: I am not the author of my recent LessWrong posts. I know almost nothing about any of the topics I have recently written about.

Instead, for the last two months, I have been using Manifold Markets to write all my LessWrong posts. Here's my process.

To begin a post, I simply create 256 conditional prediction markets about whether my post will be curated, conditional on which ASCII character comes first in the post (though I'm considering switching to Unicode). Then, I go with whatever character yields the highest conditional probability of curation, and create another 256 conditional prediction markets for the next character in the post, plus a market for whether my post will be curated if the text terminates at that character. I repeat this algorithm until my post is complete.

Here's an example screenshot for a post that is currently in my drafts:

Looks interesting!

Even this post was generated using this method.
Blatant Plot Hole in HPMoR [Spoilers]
by AprilSR — 2022-04-01T16:01:45.594Z

Epistemic status: Relies on the testimony of our trusted friend, Professor Quirrell

A thousand of your measly tokens pale in comparison to a single Quirrell point.
- Quirinus Quirrell

Harry and Hermione each had, like, 200 Quirrell points each, each of which was apparently worth at least 1000 US Dollars. $400,000 ≈ £300,000 ≈ 6,000 galleons. That’s a whole 10% of Harry’s debt to Lord Malfoy. I don’t really know what “pale in comparison” means, but it sure sounds like an order of magnitude. This important source of money is entirely ignored by every character in the story!
How Does The Finance Industry Generate Real Economic Value?
by johnswentworth — 2022-04-01T15:21:08.890Z

Note: This piece will use “capital” in the popular sense, i.e. as a synonym for “money”.

Plenty of people argue that some or all of the modern finance industry is engaged in zero-sum games. In particular, speculators, high-frequency traders, and broker-dealers are frequently vilified in this manner.

I don’t particularly care about moralizing, but as someone who’s interested in making money from the capital markets, I’d much rather play a positive-sum game than fight over a fixed-size pie. If there’s real economic value to be generated, then I don’t necessarily have to outsmart everyone else in order to turn a profit. Thus the question: does the high finance industry generate real economic value, and if so, how?

The following sections explore ways to create real economic value through finance. Each section starts with a way to create value in a more intuitive market (grain), and then moves to capital markets by analogy.

I will omit the standard explanations of both banking and insurance, since they are explained

just

fine

elsewhere. That said, bear in mind that the functions of both banking and insurance are not exclusive to institutions with “bank” and “insurer” on their business cards - both borrowing/lending and risk pooling occur in capital markets more generally, and real economic value is created accordingly.

Gains From Trade

Let’s start with the simplest possible econ-101 example.

A farmer grows some grain, and wants money. A consumer is hungry, has five dollars, and for some reason has a hankering for unprocessed wheat. A bushel of wheat is worth more than five dollars to the consumer, and five dollars is worth more than a bushel of wheat to the farmer. They trade, and each is happier - real economic value has been created.

What’s the analogous scenario in a capital market?

A company wants some capital, e.g. to buy a new oven. Somebody saving for retirement has some money, and wants to invest it. The company issues some stock to their newfound investor, in exchange for the money.

Now it starts to get interesting. With the farmer’s wheat, it was pretty clear how both sides benefitted from the trade: the farmer had lots of wheat, the consumer was hungry. But what about the stock example? In order for the company to benefit, their capital investment (e.g. the oven) must boost their earnings enough to justify the new stock issued. So for instance, i...
Kosher Hot Dogs
by johnswentworth — 2022-04-01T15:10:39.537Z

If ever there were an industry that no one in their right mind would trust, it's hot dogs. First rule of hot dogs: you do not want to know what's in it. But in this unsavory industry, Hebrew National stands out. The slogan on the company's site summarizes their advantage well:

When your hot dog's kosher, that's a hot dog you can trust.

And indeed, people do trust Hebrew National's hot dogs.
This is more remarkable than it might seem at first glance. Consider the problem from the perspective of a hot dog company. This company wants to carve out a niche: they will produce high-quality hot dogs, and sell them at a correspondingly higher price. Many people will happily pay extra to know that their hot dogs do not contain ground-up lucky charms, bits of fur, or the occasional lost dog. But how can the company communicate their quality to prospective consumers? How can they convince the public of the superior quality of their hot dogs? What claim could they make which an unscrupulous competitor could not copy?
This is the problem known in game theory as signalling: one party wants to communicate their superior quality to another party, but in order to do so they must send a signal which their unscrupulous competitors cannot easily copy. A certification body can solve this problem. Consumer Reports, for example, provides unbiased analysis of a wide range of products. Unfortunately, this solution is subject to attack in the real world by exploiting the limited information capacity of consumers. Any company can (and does) invent arbitrary metrics by which their product performs best. A less cynical interpretation is that each company stakes out a niche, claiming that their product is the best for X. If you want X, you buy that company's product. Just within hot dogs, we have Ballpark's "Angus", Applegate's "Organic", Nathan's "Bigger than the Bun", Oscar Meyer's "Selects", and several brands of "Premium Jumbo". Many of these brands have multiple lines of hot dog servicing different niches. Consumers with limited attention to devote will ignore most of these, and most are useless anyway. Thus the true signals of quality are drowned out by the noise of their competitors.
If a company is to charge extra for a truly superior product, then they need a more dramatic way to signal quality. Hebrew National does this by invoking kosher rules. Implicitly, the entire weight of the J...
The Calculus of Newcomb's Problem
by Heighn — 2022-04-01T14:41:06.957Z

In the previous post, we applied some calculus to game theoretic problems. Let's now look at the famous Newcomb's problem, and how we can use calculus to find a solution.

Newcomb's problem

From Functional Decision Theory: A New Theory of Instrumental Rationality:

An agent finds herself standing in front of a transparent box labeled “A” that contains $1,000, and an opaque box labeled “B” that contains either $1,000,000 or $0. A reliable predictor, who has made similar predictions in the past and been correct 99% of the time, claims to have placed $1,000,000 in box B iff she predicted that the agent would leave box A behind. The predictor has already made her prediction and left. Box B is now empty or full. Should the agent take both boxes (“two-boxing”), or only box B, leaving the transparent box containing $1,000 behind (“one-boxing”)?

First, we need to come up with a function modeling the amount of money the agent gets. There's only one action to do: call this a. Then V(a) is the function for the amount of money earned for each action (one-boxing or two-boxing). However, as you might know, historically, thinkers have diverged on what V(a) should be.

Causal Decision Theory

Causal Decision Theory (CDT) states that an agent should look only at the causal effects of her actions. In Newcomb's problem, this means acknowledging that the predictor already made her prediction (and either put $1,000,000 in box B or not), and that the agent's action now can't causally influence what's in box B. So either there's $1,000,000in box B or not. In both cases, two-boxing earns $1,000 more (the content of box A) than one-boxing. Then V(a)=B+1,000a, where B is a constant representing the amount of money in box B and a∈{0,1}, where a=0 is one-boxing and a=1 is two-boxing. V′(a)=1,000>0, and of course V(a) returns the most value for the highest value of a: a=1 (two-boxing).

This is all pretty straightforward, but the problem is that almost all agents using CDT ends up with only $1,000, as the predictor predicts the agents will two-box with 0.99accuracy and put nothing in box B. It's one-boxing that gets you the $1,000,000. Enter logical decision theories, e.g. Functional Decision Theory.

Functional Decision Theory

Functional Decision Theory (FDT) re...
The Calculus of Nash Equilibria
by Heighn — 2022-04-01T14:40:59.937Z

Now that we know a bit about derivatives, it's time to use them to find dominant strategies and Nash equilibria. It helps if the reader is familiar with Nash equilibria already.

Prisoner's dilemma

The payoff matrix of the Prisoner's dilemma can be as follows:

We can see that the payoff for Prisoner 1 depends on her own action (Cooperate/Defect) but also on the action of Prisoner 2. Therefore, the payoff function for Prisoner 1 is a multivariable function: V1(a1,a2), where an is the action of Prisoner n (and n∈{1,2}). Let's say an=0 when the action of Prisoner n is Cooperate, and an=1 for Defect. So an∈{0,1}. Then V1(a1,a2)=20−20a2+10a1, and crucially, V1′a1(a1,a2)=10. So for Defect (a1=1), Prisoner 1's payoff will be 10 higher than for Cooperate (a2=0), as can be confirmed in the table. Note that a2 doesn't show up in V1′a1(a1,a2): Defect gives $10 more for Prisoner 1 regardless of what Prisoner 2 does, which makes Defect a dominant strategy. Don't get me wrong: Prisoner 1's payoff certainly does depend on what Prisoner 2 does. The point is that no matter what Prisoner 2 does, Prisoner 1's payoff will be $10 higher when she (Prisoner 1) defects - and that's what's reflected in V1′a1(a1,a2)=10.

Since the payoff matrix is symmetrical, V2(a1,a2)=20−20a1+10a2 and V2′a2(a1,a2)=10. Prisoner 2 therefore also has a dominant strategy: Defect. The Prisoner's dilemma, then, has a Nash equilibrium: when both prisoners defect. With the partial derivatives, we demonstrated that when both prisoners defect, no one prisoner can do better by changing her action to Cooperate. If e.g. Prisoner 1 were to do this, then a1 would go from 1 to 0, and since V1′a1(a1,a2)>0, that would lower V1 (regardless of a2). By symmetry, the same is true for Prisoner 2.

Nonlinear payoff functions

In the Prisoner's dilemma, the payoffs of both players (prisoners) can be modelled by linear payoff functions. What if the payoffs are nonlinear?

Let's say V1(a1,a2)=−a21 and V2(a1,a2)=−a22+a2. Then V1′a1(a1,a2)=−2a1 and V2′a2(a1,a2)=−2a2+1. A Nash equilibrium is a point where no player can do better by doing another action given the action of the other player; therefore, V1(a1,a2) should be ma...