trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Native Russian speakers wanted (for proofreading LW texts)
by listic — 2012-05-20T15:58:11.247Z

As part of an effort to familiarize Russian-speaking audience with Less Wrong materials, I am participating in an ongoing translation of a certain sequence of texts to Russian.

Now I need volunteers who are willing to read the text and give feedback on its quality. If you are native Russian speaker and can dedicate around 40 minutes to reading the sequence, please drop me an email to nickolai@intelligence.org and I'll give you the link. Later I'll update this post with an information on which text this was and which feedback I have got (your exact words can remain private if you wish).

I'm doing it this way so that name of the text and other's opinion won't influence your decision to participate and your opinion. Frankly, I think this mode of interaction should be a standard option in popular forum software, but it isn't.

Update (24 May): I have only got 1 (one) volunteer to date. I would like more Russian speakers to read this. If you are a native Russian speaker, could you please consider proofreading the text?
Live web-forum Q&A on Friendly AI, Thu. May 24 (Hebrew)
by JoshuaFox — 2012-05-20T15:54:37.449Z

On May 24 from 7 to 9pm Israel time, I will be answering questions and leading a discussion (in Hebrew) sponsored by the Galileo popular science magazine.

The topic of discussion will be my article "Superhuman Intelligence, Unhuman Intelligence," from the May edition of Galileo.

URL for the discussion: http://forums.ifeel.co.il/forum_topics.asp?FID=17
Shaving: Less Long
by Bart119 — 2012-05-20T14:52:06.422Z

OK, OK, it's not the weightiest of topics, and it's not rocket science. But I searched the site for "shaving" and "razor" and didn't see where it had been previously addressed.

I had a beard for nearly 30 years, but have been shaving again the last 6. I have always (since a brief experimental period in high school) used an electric razor for shaving. So did my daddy and his daddy before him, back through history.. wait, that can't be right. But my daddy and his daddy did, anyway.

I can shave with my electric in about 45 seconds, or maybe twice that if I'm trying to do a great job. What on earth do men see with wet shaves? Assuming they don't find the process inherently rewarding, the only argument I've heard is that you can get a closer shave. Which brings me to rationality.

Why does one want a close shave? Beard grows continuously throughout the day and night. Let's take as a guess that after two hours, beard growth will transform a very close wet shave into hair length immediately after an electric shave. Assuming it is the ratio of hair length that determines the relative utility of two different beard configurations, the advantage of the closer shave falls throughout the day. The ratio would be 2.00 after four hours, 1.50 after six hours, etc. If wet shaving takes something like 10 minutes, if desired one could do a second electric shave in the men's room late in the afternoon and come out with less stubble for the vast majority of the day with less total time invested.

If there is some particular moment at which the least possible beard growth is desirable, for instance for a photo shoot, then I can see the advantage of the closest possible shave. A date is another possibility, though there is anecdotal evidence that some women prefer a hint of stubble to a smooth baby face.

But with those rare exceptions, the goal isn't to have zero stubble. It's to have stubble that's less long.

Similar arguments pertain to various sorts of housecleaning. Since whatever you're cleaning starts getting dirty again immediately, putting lots of effort into extraordinary levels of cleanliness seems to have little value unless you inherently value that moment of extraordinary cleanliness.
Zombie existential angst? (Not p-zombies, just the regular kind. Metaphorically.)
by Annie0305 — 2012-05-20T10:41:18.081Z

(Or possibly the worst kind of zombie. But still, metaphorically.)
Since I was a kid, as far back as I can remember having thought about the issue at all, the basic arguments against existential angst have seemed obvious to me.
I used to express it something like: "If nothing really matters [ie, values aren’t objective, or however I put it back then], then it doesn't matter that nothing matters. If I choose to hold something as important, I can't be wrong."
However, a few months ago, it occurred to me to apply another principle of rationality to the issue, and that actually caused me to start having problems with existential angst!
I don't know if we have a snappy name for the principle, but this is my favorite expression of it:
"If you’re interested in being on the right side of disputes, you will refute your opponents’ arguments. But if you’re interested in producing truth, you will fix your opponents’ arguments for them. To win, you must fight not only the creature you encounter; you must fight the most horrible thing that can be constructed from its corpse."
[I first read it used as the epigram to Yvain's "Least Convenient Possible World". Call it, what, "Fight your own zombies"?]
Sure, "The universe is a mere dance of particles, therefore your hopes and dreams are meaningless and you should just go off yourself to avoid the pain and struggle of trying to realize them" is a pretty stupid argument, easily dispatched.
But... what if contains the seed for a ravenous, undead, stone-cold sense-making monster?
I just got the feeling that maybe it did, and I was having a lot of trouble pinning down what exactly it could be so that I could either refute it or prove that the line of thought didn't actually go anywhere in the first place.
Now, I had just suffered a disappointing setback in my life goals, which obviously supports the idea that the philosophical issues weren’t fundamental to my real problems. I knew this, but that didn’t stop the problem. The sense of dread that maybe there was something to this existential angst thing was playing havoc with all my old techniques for picking myself up, re-motivating myself, and getting back to work!
In the end, I never quite managed to pin it down to my full satisfaction. I more-or-less managed to express my worries to myself, refuted those hal...
Work harder on tabooing "Friendly AI"
by ChrisHallquist — 2012-05-20T08:51:38.753Z

This is is an outgrowth of a comment I left on Luke's dialog with Pei Wang, and I'll start by quoting that comment in full:

Luke, what do you mean here when you say, "Friendly AI may be incoherent and impossible"?

The Singularity Institute's page "What is Friendly AI?" defines "Friendly AI" as "A "Friendly AI" is an AI that takes actions that are, on the whole, beneficial to humans and humanity." Surely you don't mean to say, "The idea of an AI that takes actions that are, on the whole, beneficial to humans and humanity may be incoherent or impossible"?

Eliezer's paper "Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk" talks about "an AI created with specified motivations." But it's pretty clear that that's not the only thing you and he have in mind, because part of the problem is making sure the motivations we give an AI are the ones we really want to give it.

If you meant neither of those things, what did you mean? "Provably friendly"? "One whose motivations express an ideal extrapolation of our values"? (It seems a flawed extrapolation could still give results that are on the whole beneficial, so this is different than the first definition suggested above.) Or something else?

Since writing that comment, I've managed to find two other definitions of "Friendly AI." One is from Armstrong, Sandberg, and Bostrom's paper on Oracle AI, which describes Friendly AI as: "AI systems designed to be of low risk." This definition is very similar to the definition from the Singularity Institute's "What is Friendly AI?" page, except that it incorporates the concept of risk. The second definition is from Luke's paper with Anna Salamon, which describes Friendly AI as "an AI with a stable, desirable utility function." This definition has the important feature of restricting "Friendly AI" to designs that have a utility function. Luke's comments about "rationally shaped" AI in this essay seem relevant here.

Neither of those papers seems to use the initial definition they give of "Friendly AI" consistently. Armstrong, Sandberg, and Bostrom's paper has a section on creating Oracle AI by giving it a "friendly utility function," which states, "if a friendly OAI could be designed, then it is most likely that a friendly AI could also be designed, obviating the need to restrict to an Oracle design in the first place."

This is a non-sequitur if "friend...
Is a Purely Rational World a Technologically Advanced World?
by tygorton — 2012-05-20T04:40:00.015Z

What would our world be today if humans had started off with a purely rational intelligence?

It seems as though a dominant aspect of rationality deals with risk management. For example, an irrational person might feel that the thrill of riding a zip line for a few seconds as being well worth the risk of injuring themselves, contracting a flesh eating bug, and losing a leg along with both hands (sorry, but that story has been freaking me out the past few days, I in no way mean to trivialize the woman’s situation). A purely rational person would (I’m making an assumption here because I am certainly not a rational person) recognize the high probability of something going wrong and determine that the risks were too steep when compared with the minimal gain of a short-lived thrill.

But how does a purely rational intelligence—even an intelligence at the current human level with a limited ability to analyze probabilities—impact the advancement of technology? As an example, would humanity have moved forward with the combustible engine and motor vehicles as purely rational beings? History shows us that humans tend to leap headlong into technological advancements with very little thought regarding the potential damage they may cause. Every technological advancement of note has had negative impacts that may have been deemed too steep as probability equations from a purely rational perspective.

Would pure rationality have severely limited the advancement of technology?

Taken further, would a purely rational intelligence far beyond human levels be so burdened by risk probabilities as to render it paralyzed… suspended in a state of infinite stagnation? OR, would a purely rational mind simply ensure that more cautious advancement take place (which would certainly have slowed things down)?

Many of humanity’s great success stories begin as highly irrational ventures that had extremely low chances for positive results. Humans, being irrational and not all that intelligent, are very capable of ignoring risk or simply not recognizing the level of risk inherent in any given situation. But to what extent would a purely rational approach limit a being’s willingness to take action?

*I apologize if these questions have already been asked and/or discussed at length. I did do

...
How to brainstorm effectively
by PECOS-9 — 2012-05-19T21:29:46.832Z

Mr. Malfoy is new to the business of having ideas, and so when he has one, he becomes proud of himself for having it. He has not yet had enough ideas to unflinchingly discard those that are beautiful in some aspects and impractical in others; he has not yet acquired confidence in his own ability to think of better ideas as he requires them. What we are seeing here is not Mr. Malfoy's best idea, I fear, but rather his only idea.

- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

I want to emphasize yet again that the tools [described in Serious Creativity] are deliberate and can be used systematically. It is not a matter of inspiration or feeling in the mood of being "high." You can use the tools just as deliberately as you can add up a column of numbers.

- Edward De Bono, Serious Creativity

I will summarize some of the techniques for how to generate ideas presented in Serious Creativity. The book also has other material, e.g. interesting deep theories about why these techniques work, arguments for the importance of creativity, and more techniques beyond what's described in this post, but in the interest of keeping this post concise and useful, I will only describe one kind of technique and urge you to just try it. You should read the book if you want more detail or techniques.
These techniques can be used both when you have a problem you need to solve and when you have a general area that you suspect could be improved or innovated, but don't have any specific ideas of what's wrong (or even if you don't feel like there's anything wrong at all).

The technique I will describe in this post is that of "provocation" followed by "movement." A provocation is a seemingly random or nonsensical sentence or phrase. Movement is the process of going forward with a provocation and actually generating an idea. There are precise, formal techniques for generating provocations and movement, which I will describe after giving an example of how this "provocation-movement" process works.

Example

Provocation: Planes land upside down.
Movement: We can imagine this actually happening, and observe that the pilot would have a better view of the landing area. This naturally leads us to consider other ways to improve the pilot's view of the landing area. Perhaps we could move the cockpit to the bottom, or add video cameras. So using this technique, we've identified an area for improvem...
[SEQ RERUN] Timeless Beauty
by MinibearRex — 2012-05-19T19:11:23.128Z

Today's post, Timeless Beauty was originally published on 28 May 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

To get rid of time you must reduce it to nontime. In timeless physics, everything that exists is perfectly global or perfectly local. The laws of physics are perfectly global; the configuration space is perfectly local. Every fundamentally existent ontological entity has a unique identity and a unique value. This beauty makes ugly theories much more visibly ugly; a collapse postulate becomes a visible scar on the perfection.

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 Timeless Physics, 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.
Depression as a defense mechanism against slavery
by snarles — 2012-05-19T11:45:10.617Z

Individuals who have to conform to an external authority too powerful to resist often get depressed: which among other effects, includes lower productivity and higher risk for suicide. This suggests one way how a tendency for depression, and resulting behaviors of akrasia and suicide, enhances survivability. After all, humans have always had to live with the threat of being conquered and subjugated by other tribes. A conqueror has a choice to kill a prisoner or to use them for labor. A prisoner who becomes depressed and thus poses a lower threat to the conqueror is more likely to be spared. However, survival as a slave is difficult if the master imposes too many hardships on the slave. Therefore, it makes game theoretic sense for a defense mechanism to exist which makes it undesirable for a master to make life too difficult for the slave, in the form of the effects of depression. The lowered productivity resulting from depression means that a master gets diminishing or negative returns from working his slaves harder. At an extreme, the risk of suicide means that a master who pushes his slaves too far risks losing them.

It would seem that such behaviors are less adaptive in civilized countries, where the risk of being enslaved is much lower. However, depression may still be of some benefit due to the fact that the master-slave relationship continues to exist, in diluted form, in hierarchical institutions.

What consequences would this theory of depression have for the goal of controlling akrasia? Firstly, it suggests that the individual experiencing an impaired ability to realize certain goals first ask themselves, "Are these goals really mine, or were they imposed by external authorities?" If so, perhaps being able to convince yourself that your goals are really what *you* want would help motivate you towards achieving them.
Value of Information: 8 examples
by gwern — 2012-05-18T23:45:53.204Z

ciphergoth just asked what the actual value of Quantified Self/self-experimentation is. This finally tempted me into running value of information calculations on my own experiments. It took me all afternoon because it turned out I didn’t actually understand how to do it and I had a hard time figuring out the right values for specific experiments. (I may not have not gotten it right, still. Feel free to check my work!) Then it turned out to be too long for a comment, and as usual the master versions will be on my website at some point. But without further ado!

The value of an experiment is the information it produces. What is the value of information? Well, we can take the economic tack and say value of information is the value of the decisions it changes. (Would you pay for a weather forecast about somewhere you are not going to? No. Or a weather forecast about your trip where you have to make that trip, come hell or high water? Only to the extent you can make preparations like bringing an umbrella.)

Wikipedia says that for a risk-neutral person, value of perfect information is “value of decision situation with perfect information” - “value of current decision situation”. (Imperfect information is just weakened perfect information: if your information was not 100% reliable but 99% reliable, well, that’s worth 99% as much.)

1 Melatonin

http://www.gwern.net/Zeo#melatonin & http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin

The decision is the binary take or not take. Melatonin costs ~$10 a year (if you buy in bulk during sales, as I did). Suppose I had perfect information it worked; I would not change anything, so the value is $0. Suppose I had perfect information it did not work; then I would stop using it, saving me $10 a year in perpetuity, which has a net present value (at 5% discounting) of $205. So the value of perfect information is $205, because it would save me from blowing $10 every year for the rest of my life. My melatonin experiment is not perfect since I didn’t randomize or double-blind it, but I had a lot of data and it was well powered, with something like a >90% chance of detecting the decent effect size I expected, so the imperfection is just a loss of 10%, down to $184. From my previous research and personal use over years, I am highly confident it works - say, 80%. If it works, the information is useless to...
Meetup : Meet Up: Dallas - Fort Worth Less Wrong Meetup 5/20/12
by jumandtonic — 2012-05-18T21:25:34.992Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Meet Up: Dallas - Fort Worth Less Wrong Meetup 5/20/12

WHEN:
20 May 2012 01:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
America's Best Coffee, Arlington

This group is really starting to build up some momentum! We have a handful of great folks and keep adding more every meeting.

Our agenda's typically include some guided discussion, rationality/debiasing games, and how to improve your own rationality.

We look forward to you coming out and meeting the rest of the group. Message me to ask to join our google group: http://groups.google.com/group/dfw-lesswrong-meetup

Discussion article for the meetup : Meet Up: Dallas - Fort Worth Less Wrong Meetup 5/20/12
Meetup : Mountain View sequences discussion
by RomeoStevens — 2012-05-18T19:33:29.140Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Mountain View sequences discussion

WHEN: 22 May 2012 06:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE: Sylvan Avenue & Sevely St, Mountain View

We will be meeting at Sylvan Park near the playground. This is a meetup to discuss specific posts in the sequences. The material we will be covering is the beginning of the Seeing with Fresh Eyes sequence.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/j7/anchoring_and_adjustment/

http://lesswrong.com/lw/k3/priming_and_contamination/

http://lesswrong.com/lw/k4/do_we_believe_everything_were_told/

http://lesswrong.com/lw/k5/cached_thoughts/

It would be ideal to show up having read (or reread) these posts, and jotted down some notes you can discuss. OTOH please don't NOT show up because you feel guilty about not-having-done-your-homework.

Food: no one is obligated to bring snacks but it is most welcome.

Time: I will arrive at 6pm, discussion of the sequences will begin at 7. I am soliciting info about parking and will update.

Discussion article for the meetup : Mountain View sequences discussion
Weekly LW Meetups: Berkeley, Dallas, Pittsburgh, Vancouver, Washington DC
by FrankAdamek — 2012-05-18T14:31:56.287Z

There are upcoming irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups in:

Vancouver Politics Meetup: 12 May 2012 01:00PM
Washington DC meetup: 12 May 2012 08:34PM
Dallas - Fort Worth Less Wrong Meetup 5/13/12: 13 May 2012 01:00PM
Pittsburgh: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: 18 May 2012 06:00PM
Brussels meetup: 19 May 2012 12:00PM
Less Wrong Sydney - Rational Acting: 21 May 2012 06:00PM
First Berlin meetup: 05 June 2012 07:30PM
Phoenix, Arizona: 15 June 2012 07:00PM

The following meetups take place in cities with regularly scheduled meetups, but involve a change in time or location, special meeting content, or simply a helpful reminder about the meetup:

Big Berkeley Meetup: 16 May 2012 07:00PM
Cambridge, MA Third Sunday Meetup: 20 May 2012 02:20PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Cambridge, MA, Cambridge UK, Chicago, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Mountain View, New York, Ohio, Ottawa, Oxford, Portland, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Toronto, Waterloo, and West Los Angeles.

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, and have fun!

In addition to the handy sidebar of upcoming meetups, a meetup overview will continue to be posted on the front page every Friday. These will be an attempt to collect information on all the meetups happening in the next weeks. The best way to get your meetup featured is still to use the Add New Meetup feature, but you'll now also have the benefit of having your meetup mentioned in a weekly overview. These overview posts will be moved to the discussion section when the new post goes up.

Please note that for your meetup to appear in the weekly meetups feature, you need to post your meetup before the Friday before your meetup!

If you check Less Wrong irregularly, consider subscribing to one or more city-specific mailing list in order to be notified when an irregular meetup is happening: Atlanta, Berlin, Helsinki, London, Marin CA, Pittsburgh, Southern California (Los Angeles/Orange County area), St. Louis, Vancouver, Washington, DC.

If your meetup has a mailing list that you'd like mentioned here, or has become regular and isn't listed as such, let me know!

Want to help out the common good? If one o...